I know

it's Theme Thursday, but my Kitchen post is only half-done (I'll finish it; it's more about cookbooks than kitchens at this point). I'm just back from seeing Eileen Ivers's wonderful Beyond the Bog Road multimedia event. I learned quite a bit, too, about the Famine. Interesting that the Cherokees, just before their enforced march known as the Trail of Tears, were able to send $170.00 to the Irish in their time of anguish and need, but the English . . .

Here is a little bit of a promo for the event:

Prosaic

Bear upon a chair



The moon caught in a tree

Music Monday

This is just a song, no video to go along with it except for an odd picture!

It is by School of Seven Bells. 
-L

My own plans for summer produce

In recent years, we've belonged to one or another CSA. Before that, we had a community garden plot at Crabtree, which turned out to be logistically challenging, as it's on the other side of town and lacked facilities to clean up after digging and weeding. I had tried to secure one at the local community center, only to discover that I am seventh on the waiting list. So, this year (mainly for financial reasons) we are going to try to fill the above pots (plus some others) with the seeds below.



I have from Renee's Garden (formerly Shepherd's Seeds):

• a lettuce mix, Paris Market Basket
• carrots, Bolero Nantes
• radishes, Petit Dejeuner
• beets, Baby Ball
• a container (!) cucumber, Bush Slicer
• bush French beans, Rolande

from Seeds of Change:

• lettuce, Bronze Arrow
• radish, Cherry Belle

from last year's CSA, squash, Delicata

flowers from Helen, Ladybird Poppy, which didn't fare well in 2008, so it's getting another chance

and some lavender seeds from Suffolk Herbs, in England.

We'll also get, as seedlings, tomatoes, peppers, basil, dill, maybe potatoes (which I've read you can grow in a barrel). The garden behind the pots contains a lot of thyme, sage, chives, marjoram, oregano, etc., and the tomatoes and herbs usually go in there. I'm hoping to put in a horseradish root in a corner. There's nothing like the sinus-clearing jolt you get grating a fresh root of it.

I'm eager to see how we do in the hot weather, keeping everything watered. I'm trying to get a rain barrel set up, so am reading up on mosquito control.

I'm also reading up on planting by the phases of the moon . ..

A short view of the sky the other evening . . .

the first video is only funny/understandable if you've ever suffered through the extreme hell that is AP Chemistry.



Edith Piaf est magnifique!

-L

lingual

I'm trying to read Snow by Orhan Pamuk, but haven't been able to find a decent place/time to sit down. And Merisi is who put me on to this book in the first place . . . I didn't get this in first time around.

I also have another of his books from the library: Istanbul: Memories and the City. Last evening, while waiting in the car for L to finish playing with her quartet at a fundraiser for the food bank here, I started it.



I was very intrigued by the following:

In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences, . . .

This made me think about other complexities of personality and thought process that in English we cannot give voice to because we don't have the tense that expresses them. What are we locked out of because of linguistics?

Theme Thursday: Chair

I have three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

-Thoreau

This is the chair I think of when I think of a CHAIR: Van Gogh's Chair painted in Arles in the winter of 1888/1889, making this its 120th anniversary, if paintings have such things. In reading about it, I've discovered that it is actually one of a pair of paintings. The other is of Gauguin's chair, a painting I hadn't seen until I pulled an art history book off the shelf and then looked around on the Internet.

The art history book goes on a bit, in art historical fashion: "Van Gogh's conviction about the importance of this chair [his, above] penetrates us and holds us, until we feel a mystery in its presence." Well, something like that, I suppose. I just like it, and used to have an art card of his bedroom, which also has this chair in it, up in my dorm room in college. It's interesting paired with its mate, though. Gauguin's looks and feels so much like his paintings:



My chair for reading cookbooks and trying to come up with dinner was rescued for $1.00 from the side of the road in Whitingham, Vermont, years and years ago.

cookbooks

Just another stack of books, but I find lately that I look through them for protracted periods of time, comparing recipes or just reading. The personality of author is so clearly drawn, sometimes, in the explication of the process of making something. Laurie Colwin is just perfect. As are her novels.

A book that I just borrowed from the library is the companion to the dreadful PBS series On the Road Again, Spain, starring a falstaffian, often inebriated Mario Batali, along with Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman of the NY Times and another actress, Claudia Bassols. This TV series is such a grandiose exercise in self-indulgence, that I couldn't believe it. I kept checking back; surely there would be some real cooking, something for the viewer to grasp on to. No, it was the four of them, sitting around tables in expensive restaurants, eating. Or driving expensive, brand new cars through the countryside to get to an expensive restaurant to be filmed sitting around eating. The book is worse! It seems to have actual dialogue from the TV shows and occasional lists of favorites: Mario's favorite candybar is a Nestle's Crunch, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.

His Babbo cookbook is informative . . . although complicated.

Music Monday

Out of the loop

Sorry, any and all. I haven't been around to the blogs I enjoy so much and I haven't been posting. I've been concentrating on a new job for a new client.

I even put D on Period Patrol in the vast undergrowth of footnotes. Each, of course, must end with one.

I haven't even tidied up the side bar; tomorrow is Thursday Theme: Tables!

Music Monday

for some reason only half of the video module seems to show up!
I removed the first video because I decided to just keep it to one video like the other posts.

the song is M79 by Vampire Weekend
-L

Good Wishes

I really appreciate those whose wonderful, interesting, idiosyncratic, welcoming blogs I read, and those who come by here. Best in 2009!

last of 2008

Music Monday~
-L

Raisin bread

Another recipe from The River Cottage Family Cookbook. L's first attempt at breadmaking, and except for some advice on kneading time, I stayed out of the proceedings.

The text and picture:

L's loaf:


The offspring got good oven spring, no?

Shelf, ii

Zuni Cafe cookbook is a good one to curl up with. Nigel Slater is a great almost daily read, and his photos were taken on the day he made whatever he said he cooked and ate. Interesting to think of the lighting as being (it is hoped) natural, reflecting the season, the dish, the time (the light falls the way the light fell . . .)

yesterday . . .

Christmas dinner. Even after an early morning (L still is up first; Santa has come for a good many years and this was the first, frankly, that he passed us by), we pulled the energy from our reserves and cooked up the roast and the Yorkshire pudding.







We did NOT go out today; any day I don't have to drive anywhere and/or spend money is a good one. Tomorrow I think L and I will see the movie Milk.

Sunday I'm slated to attend a citizens' forum on health care. As both D and I are self-employed, we've been paying for private health insurance for more than 20 years, so I have a great interest in what is happening.( I could go on, oh I could . . . ) I received the following from its organizer: "President-Elect Obama is doing something unprecedented. He is asking what we think, and what we want. We don't have much time. All these discussions are taking place between December 15 and 31. Let's get together and let our voices be heard." You can read more about it here: http://change.gov/participantguide

Some cookbooks, no. 1

Avid Reader really is avid; I can't keep up. But here are some of my cookbooks. I really like reading Tessa Kiros's book, and the photographs are so beautiful. They are inspirational, really . . . and make me want to travel.

Music Monday(HOLIDAY edition!)

in the description on youtube for this video the person who put this up(not me!!!) says: "Pay special attention to the girl in the pink dress she seems so free and happy. I'd like to feel that way."
that is kind of sad but nice.


a nice winter solstice song! found by tut-tut herself!

Happy Holidays! Whatever you are celebrating!

-L

Interesting Things!

Youtube forever!! A few picks from guest blogger L!

I heart Hugh

I love Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall; I really do. It is extremely difficult to watch his work at River Cottage here in the US; but following the link you can find many of his episodes, beginning with Escape to River Cottage. (I don't understand why DVDs are region-specific. Just another way to control the market, I guess.) He is so very hands on, jumping in with enthusiasm and vigor. [Actually, a better link to the River Cottage series is http://www.factualtv.com and Search for River Cottage]

We have here The River Cottage Family Cookbook, one I can recommend hands down (JGH, if you don't have this, search it out), written by Hugh and Fizz Carr (I love that name). L made some homemade candies for her friends, the peppermints from this book frankly came out better than the pictures. We have the British original version, so we get to figure out the conversions too. I had thought that double cream was the equivalent to heavy cream here, but not so. L's attempt to make the chocolate truffles was not as successful, but we'll try and tweak it after her French exam today.



Since I'm such a fan, I have a few of his others, bought without ever having seen him in action, so to say:




The book is not crammed full of recipes, although there are plenty. Rather, it is a real guide for kids and teenagers to understand where their food comes from and actually how to make something that tastes good.