restingmotion

Radis Au Beurre

The air has become humid this past week; welcome to summer in full.  The screened porch continues to be delightfully breezy and cool however, a haven in the late afternoon, but the early mornings are my favorite time on the porch. I love the soft rustle of the trees in the morning breeze, the quiet symphony of bird song, and with luck, baby bunnies frollicking on the lawn.

 

Inspired by a beautiful bunch of French Breakfast Radishes, one morning this week everything seemed to align perfectly into one of those fleetingly precious moments which are greater than the sum of their parts.  Radis au beurre, hardboiled eggs, coffee, memory, dreams of how the people we love shape the people we become, and the promise of spring and early morning.  It is hard to put my finger on it, and yet it was perfect. 

 

I never ate radis au beurre growing up; it was George's memory not mine.  He would reminisce about the year  his mother, his sister, and he spent in Paris before coming to America, about the American School where his mother was hoping he would get a head start in English.  It was at school he first had radis au beurre.  He would tell me about thick baguette's spread with sweet butter and topped with thinly sliced radishes, how he had never had anything so comforting and yet exotic at the same time.   Radis au beurre symbolized a moment of joy hidden within the turmoil of the time before and after, between leaving Vienna and getting settled in America, a time of promise.  

 

I am afraid I thought the combination of butter and radishes sounded weird and not at all appealing, strange considering that I grew up eating a lot of things some of my school friends would have thought odd to say the least. But eventually radis au beurre became our tradition as well, an early spring treat celebrating the first bunch of  those lovely French breakfast radishes.  But those traditions were long gone and I hadn't thought about it for years until these radishes appeared in my CSA bag.

 

There is no baguette in my version of course.  Instead I used toasted Udi's gluten-free bread, the deli version that I buy at Jason's, which seems fresher than the frozen grocery-store variety, toasted because gluten-free bread is better toasted.  There is still sweet cream butter, and thinly sliced radishes, and they form the perfect combination of soft crunch of bread, creamy butter, slight piquancy of the radishes:  crisp and soft, chewy with a touch of crunch, like the soft morning breezes and the crisp air of dawn, a perfect combination. 

 

I realized that somewhere in the process I had made my own tradition of welcoming spring, morning, rebirth.  Like the combination of toast, butter, and radishes, traditions that were separate from me have been melded into my own traditions, just as people who have shaped my past live stil in my heart and guide my future. Each morning is something new, crisp with promise and yet soft with the warmth of history and love.

 

 

Peripatetic

 

Move much and accomplish little.  This seems to be my current operating mode.  I am upright most of the time.  When I am tired I sit.  Bed is the worst, but really, don't you think I spent enough time there?  Even getting myself to go to sleep seems difficult.  I want to keep puttering about, puttering and resting and puttering some more.

It is not very efficient.  I can't lift  much.  I can't go where I want when I want because I haven't been able to drive, but that is changing.  Mostly, I can't focus.  I don't believe I have been this absent-minded in ages.  Perhaps this is some kind of reactionary inter-cellular phenomenon, freedom from excessive stillness breeds excessive puttering.  

 

I think I am calming down now.  At least I seem able to string words together into some semblence of thought.  The better I have felt physically, the more fragmented and scattered my thoughts have become.  I must be feeling better because I am getting particular again, starting to set things to rights around the house, my version of "rights" that is.

 

Some parts of this process are good. It is good to be taking care of myself, taking care of my space.  

I went to the farmer's market with a friend who could drive and schlepp.  She even brought one of the chairs around front from the back porch, so I could sit and plant the flowers she so kindly carried for me.  Even that, without lifting or bending, was enough work.  But the joy experienced for the effort expended is phenomenal.  There are no more dried twigs in the planters, stark reminders of my incarceration.  Instead there are flowers. And the flowers make me smile.   Soon I will sit out on the screened porch, surrounded by flowers and soft breezes. Monday was pollen scrubbing day, although I only did a tiny bit of the scrubbing and none of the heavy lifting.  There is still a little scrubbing left, but  only the small stuff, the things I can do myself.  I can accept that it may take 2 days to accomplish what took half a day last summer, and I suspect that there is a lesson there somewhere, about enjoying the process of one's life.  I hope I don't lose that thought along the way.

 

There, I think my head may be a trifle clearer now.  Perhaps a little nesting helps the brain to settle as well.

 

Music: Final Spring Concert

Spring seems to be the primary music season and one of the things I missed the most during my confinement was attending concerts.  To some extent, this caught me by surprise because earlier in the season I missed a few performances, fraught as they were with memories of shared expeditions with George. I had no way of knowing if a concert would be a joyous occasion or filled with tears, and I suppose, in a misguided attempt to avoid the tears, I would avoid the concert, thereby missing the joy as well.

 

Therefore it may come as no surprise that I was determined that, if at all possible, I would attend the last concert of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra last Friday even though it was a mere two days following my surgery.  Admittedly it was a bit of a stretch, and on Thursday morning it seemed like an impossible dream. By Friday morning however it was evident that I was most comfortable sitting and that I could easily sit for a couple of hours; I could also stand for long periods of time and walk, although stiffly and slowly for moderate distances.  A friend had offered to drop me off at the door to the Tennessee Theater, and it was an easy walk to my seat, conveniently located on the aisle, although I have requested a change for next year.  I managed to convince myself that the healing power of music is exactly what I needed.

 

Indeed it was.  I do believe that this was one of the best, if not the best concert I have heard the Knoxville Symphony perform. The concert opened with Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio and although it was an acceptible performance, I thought it sounded muddy in places.  It is possible that the problem lies at least partially with my ears.  I suspect however that someone or section is slightly off beat, but I can't really distinguish different instruments well from my seat, so I am hoping that, by moving up to the balcony next year I will have a different perspective on the performance.  At any rate the opening was lovely, and warmly received, and it certainly did not detract from the two highlights of the concert, Beethoven's Piano Concerto #4 in G, and Shostakovich's 10th Symphony.

 

The soloist was a young Pianist named Spencer Myer, a name I did not at first recognize. When he came on stage and began to play I realized I had indeed heard him play before.   He is an excellent pianist who plays with fluidity, precision and nuance. Listening, and watching, him play, I felt his sensitive phrasing helped me to hear parts of the music with renewed appreciation.  This was especially well realized in the second movement, where Myer and Richman worked well together in controlling the dynamic between the piano and the orchestra, and it was in this movement that I felt Myer's combination of subtle passion held by restraint was particularly effective.

 

The Shostakovich was surprising in just how good and enjoyable it was.  It is a piece I have heard performed enough times that I was cautious in my expectations.  Shostakovich is never easy, although I do think Richman excels in 20th century works and his affinity for the intersection between classical and popular works should work well with Shostakovich.  And I have to admit the piece was joyous and exciting.  Again there were sections that sounded slightly "muddy" to me, I suspect that there were discrepencies in timing which blurred the sound in my location.  The orchestra managed to capture a sense of that contrast that is always present in Shostakovich, of joy and pathos, hope, yearning, beauty, horror, absurdity. The second movement captured that sense of brutality well, and the final movement was triumphant.  The audience was silent, rapt throughout the performance, and it errupted upon the finale.  The gentleman in front of me was bouncing up and down in joy through parts of the performance, a welcome change from the sometimes bored placidity of the New York audience.  A gentleman behind me said "yes" once, and "no, no, no" on at least two other occasions.  I might have agreed with him, but overall, I found the performance exciting and enjoyable.  The piccolo was fabulous. My only complaint might be that the work was somewhat muted in its impact and mainstreamed.  Yes the second movement was forceful.  Yes Shostakovich triumphed over Stalin in the music but the dynamic was slightly subdued,  the contrast between joy and pain, beauty and horror, not quite as heart-stopping and shocking as it should have been.  The first movement especially did not seem to have that nightmarish quality that you can't quite pinpoint that I find most compelling in some performances: an eerily haunting listlessness in the strings, that leaves one unnerved on the deepest level, the almost hroat-clenching pain of the sudden outbursts.   Still, these are very small complaints in a work that was extraordinarily difficult and very well and powerfully performed.

 

Saturday morning I was musing about the concert and where I might have heard Spencer Myer perform before. I suspected it was at Bard and I hoped that I had written something about the performance in my earlier blog.  Alas I was inconsistent in my blog posts, and there was nothing about Myer to be found, although I did enjoy reading my old posts.  Next I went through the old Bard Music Festival programs, where I tended to write notes about the performances, and I did indeed find a few notes about Myer, not valuable for anythng really, other than ascertaining that my memory was indeed correct.    I noted that I had thought he was enormously talented, and played with great precision, but that I felt at that time, and this was some years ago, that he was too driven by control.  In thinking about these earlier performances, and the Beethoven from Friday night, it occurred to me that although I did find the second movement compelling, the Piano Concerto as a whole was not quite my cup of tea. Myer's performance was incredible, his phrasing and coloring shapes a subtly thoughtful emotional landscape, but it lacked, to my ears at least, a certain dynamic contrast and mystery, perhaps even a bit of that sense of struggle, although controlled, of the fine line between joy and pathos that Beethoven seems so often to tread.  Yes, it is possible to over-Romanticize Beethoven, but Myer's approach was perhaps to intellectually ethereal.  Nonetheless, I think he is a pianist from whom I wish to hear more, and I am sure there are composers to whom I will find him brilliantly suited, although perhaps not Beethoven. 

 

 

 

Balance

I am learning to walk again.  At least that is what it feels like today, at this particular moment.

 

I walked before.  But those immediately post-surgical steps were small mincing steps, the steps of someone who was still frozen in place, who could not move normally, the steps of the immediately post-surgical me.  The first three days there was no question of normal gait, there was just tentative stiff movement and a body decidedly tilted to the right.

 

Now I am no longer frozen, and my legs want to stride forth in some semblance of a normalcy.  And yet, to my surprise I'm not quite sure how.  It is like all movement is precariously balanced on one tiny point and the tiniest mistake can bring it all crashing down.  I know this is, to some extent, true.  My back has been fused fromT1 to L4 since I was 15.  That leaves only L4-5 and L5-S1 for balance, for movement.   What happened to bring me to this point was probably gradual, a long series of misdeeds, and now here I am, balancing on this tiny fulcrum, this L5-S1 disk, so critical to protect and yet so necessary.

 

I must find my center, and relearn how to move deliberately, seamlessly, contracting and attempting to align muscles that only grudgingly deign to cooperate.  I call up lessons from Pilates, from Yoga, but my muscles are not yet strong enough, are not yet fluid enough,  and the delicate balance of this dance called walking proves elusive.  I think I am doing well only to let my mind wander away from the task at hand, for my body to make some minute miscalculation on a tiny intra-muscular level,  and I am frantically trying to figure out how to extricate myself from potential collapse.

 

I remind myself that balance, be it emotional, intellectual, or physical, is not learned in grand gestures but in small steps. Very very small steps.   

 

72 hours

The view from here.

Sitting at my desk, piled up with papers and stuff I have managed to avoid for two months.  Generally I have no aversion to piles, but this mess is a bit out of control.  At this point however, even a messy desk is a happy desk and I am glad to be here.

 

I am up and about, moving around the house slowly.  I am able to sit, and to stand and walk.  Bending over is not so good.  I am probably best sitting with standing being second.  it strikes me as one of those somewhat quirky twists of fate, that after two months of being flat on my back and unable to sit or stand, I am now able to sit and stand to my hearts content but I cannot get comfortable lying down.  

I am sure this will not last for two months, although 72 hours post surgery is probably still too soon for comfort.  In the meantime I am tired but happy and will write more after I have caught up on sleep.

 

Looking Backward, Moving Forward

I am not as stoic as I sometimes pretend to be.

This morning caught me by surprise; not the fact that it was morning, just that I somehow wasn't quite ready for it.

I went outside to look at the soffitts at the side of my house.  They need repair.  They weren't put in correctly to begin with and now it is a bit of an expensive issue.  Not that I ever really believed a new house was that much more maintenance free than an older house.

Then I was tired, my left leg was numb, and I was lying down, looking out my small window at the dry patchy grass on the hill behind my house, thinking about the landscaping that hadn't been done this spring.  And I remembered the view I used to have.

This view.

I started thinking about my former house, and the open flow of the space, and the deck.  I thought about how we would go out on a summer morning and take an early dip in the pool before settling down with our cups of coffee.  I thought about the fig tree that would sit on the deck all summer (you can see it in the photo below). The first crop of figs would be getting ripe about now. 

I would think about all the good things and the good times. And I started to cry and cry and I couldn't stop.  I wasn't really missing the place you see, although that was part of it.  But the place is only important because of the people I shared it with, most importantly the person whose presence made that place my home.  I wanted my old life back, my life with George.  I wanted to go back to a time when I didn't have to deal with everything by myself.  I wanted to go back to the safety of that deep voice and those strong arms.

 

George was the one who was good at playing hard-ball.  Arguing with the builder or the homeowner's association or a lawyer was sport to him, and he liked to win.  Me?  I just want to silently fix the problem and avoid all the arguments and politics and bickering over who is to blame and who should do what. I can do what I have to do, but I surely don't enjoy it.

But that time is gone.  I have  wonderful memories.  I also have family here, and wonderful friends, and much to be happy about. I even have friends on the HOA board.  Oh wait, I'm on the HOA board. Piece of cake.  As I said, I can do what needs to be done.  

 

But that doesn't mean I'm not lonely sometimes.  It doesn't mean that I don't cry.  Actually it is good to cry.  There was during the last year of George's life that I had stopped crying and I worried that I had stopped feeling.  I worried that I would never really care about anything again.  I was wrong.  And that is a very good thing.

 

I'm having surgery tomorrow, a discectomy to remove the piece of disk material that is compressing my sciatic nerve.  It is an outpatient procedure and I should be home tomorrow night. I am both excited and nervous, and I am sure all the anticipation contributed to my teary breakdown. I am eager to walk and sit again.  Even so, I've decided to give myself a brief blog break on Thursday, so you won't hear from me again before Saturday.

 

The pictures all appeared previously on either this blog or one of my other blogs.  The last one was taken from the master bedroom window.  

An Anniversary

I took a walk today.  I didn't go very far, but I got almost to the empty lot about half way down my street.  That was actually quite an accomplishment.    While I was walking I stopped to take some pictures.

 

This photo is the only one from my own garden, the first magnolia blossom on my small tree.  I had planned to do some landscaping to my back and side yards this spring, and update the front beds, but we know what happened to those plans... 

It is a quiet Mother's Day in my neighborhood and I hope my neighbors are spending happy days with their families.  We got together yesterday, my step-daughter Miriam, my favorite grandson Owen and I.  We had barbecue ad watched a movie. But first we made brownies in a mini-muffin tin, brownies with chocolate peanut butter cups inside them.  I won't say "Reeses" because we used the ones from Trader Joe's, and I think they are much better. Those peanut-butter brownie bites were George's favorites, and it was nice to make them and share them because yesterday was the anniversary of George's death, and we all wanted to remember him in some simple way.

It was a good way to remember.  We also watched one of the Star-Wars movies, The Clone Wars.  Owen hadn't seen it yet, and in George's final years he became quite the Star Wars fan, watching the movies over and over, marveling at the inventiveness of the films.  We all thought this was odd because he hated science fiction and fantasy films when he was younger.  But I think it was just because I turned the subtitles on and he finally knew what was going on.  I think (know) his hearing had been bad long before he was willing to admit it.  He enjoyed movies and television so much more when he could read the dialog as he watched the film. Perhaps that explains part of his willingness to go to foreign films.

 

It was a good way to spend the day for me, with the future but remembering the past.  It is true I had been thinking about this weekend, and I didn't really think it would be hard for me in some ways, but it would have been harder if I had not spent time with family.  I am no longer actively grieving his passing, but that doesn't mean that I don't mourn his loss.  And a part of that process for me has also been figuring out my role: if I still have a role in a family I think of as my own, but I wasn't quite sure if they felt the same.  In short what is the role of the stepmother when the father is gone?  There is no more Dad and Mardel, just Mardel.  Am I family?  Am I friend? Am I something in-between or none-of-the-above?  It is something George worried about, and I suppose he passed that on to me. Sometims the signals seemed mixed and I am far too prone to over-think.

A Mother's Day bouquet from my two step-children, who I will always love and fret over.

 

One of the good apects of this housebound time has been that it has allowed me to settle myeslf, to realize that I am ready for life to go forward, to blossom. And even though that long extended goodbye was at times difficult, I am glad I had that time, and those memories to savor.  I am ready to be whatever I am now, whoever I am now, and although I am not cutting off past relationships, I would love for them to continue to grow and flower into a new dyanamic,  all I can do is be myself and plant what seeds I can, add fertilizer and hope for something to grow.  I cannot control its growth.  In short I tend to fret too much and I am tired of fretting. I am tired of seeing the world through the eyes of expectation.  Instead I hope to learn to see and treasure each tendril, each flower, each encounter, each relationship simply for what it is, enjoy the flowering, savoring and nurturing what can be nurtured and accepting that the rest is outside my control, letting it be.

 

More Nattering about Books and Food

I cannot fully express the joy and sense of accomplishment I feel being at able to occasionally prepare a simple meal for myself.  My happiness is unbounded and worth the resultant exhaustion. Even though I remain only able to get up for 5 or maybe 6 minutes at a time, which limits me to simple things that allow me to stagger the preparation over a period of time, the sense of freedom gained is immense.  Being able to make a salad, or a very simple meal, even it takes an hour, is the difference between being completely dependent on others and being independent.

 

First I made the buttered spinach recipe I wrote about from The Nourished Kitchen. It was simple.  I let the spinach sweat over low heat, and this allowed me to rest, then I forced the extra moisture from the spinach, sauteed it in some butter, seasoned to taste, and added finely minced hardboiled egg.  It was a lovely combination, although I changed the proportions a bit, since I was making it for myself and planned to eat the entire thing for breakfast.  I had 8 ounces of tender spring spinach, a little under half the recipe, with two hard-boiled eggs (the full recipe amount).  It made for an excellent repast, which is not surprising since I love spinach mixed into scrambled eggs.  It is possilbe that I like hard-boiled eggs mixed into a bowl of spinach even better, and a strong possibility this may become a standard.  It is easy to toss the spinach in the pot and do other things, like make coffee and toast, chop the eggs and feed the cats, while the spinach steams. Then it is a simple task to toss everything together and eat. Of couse this implies that I have boiled the eggs previously, but that is not hard,  and hard-boiled eggs are a good staple to have in the house for those times when I am rushed and need a bit of protein to tide me over.

 

I've been reading Deborah Madison's Vegetable Lieracy over the past week or so and of course it has further fueled my desire to be up and in the kitchen.  I am not quite finished reading it but I've read enough to know that it will indeed see frequent use.   The book is divided into 12 sections representing 12 families of vegetables, and the author has some thought provoking observations on how the vegetables under consideration in each section work together.  Actually, although there is no dearth of practical information in the book, it is really more personal and anecdotal than strictly educational in approach, and that is one of the things I like about it.  The recipes sound wonderful, and given my experience with Madison's previous books, I have no doubt that they are excellent.

 

Last night I made Tuscan Kale with Garlic-Anchovy Dressing for dinner.  It was incredible.  The recipe deems this a side dish for 3 or 4, and it would be an excellent side dish.  I love a large meal-sized salad however, and four cups of Kale also made an excellent, and generous,  dinner for me, although I did use only about a quarter cup of croutons, and slightly less olive oil than called for.  Truthfully, although the croutons were good in the salad, and added a nice crunchy counterpoint, Tuscan kale retains enough crunch and texture that I could happily eat the salad without croutons, if I were making it just for me again.  But don't go thinking that I left any croutons behind either, I enjoyed every last one.  I can only recommend this recipe for those who enjoy anchovies and garlic as the olive-oil-garlic-anchovy dressing is noticably pungent.  I felt the anchovies complemented the kale well.  In fact I enjoyed it so much, I could use this dish as a reward for good behavior, an earned treat, and it would work, as I found this far more indulgent and satisfying than any junk food or pastry I can recall.

 

I wonder if that is a bad sign or a good sign.  What kind of person craves kale with anchovies and olive oil instead of dessert or french fries?  Perhaps I've finally crossed some line,  gone over to the dark side.... I've partially lost the sweet tooth that has plagued me since childhood.  I still love a sweet.  I still love a really good pastry or piece of chocolate, an excellent dessert, even an occasional french fry. I don't completely avoid these things, but when I do want to indulge, I rarely want more than a small amount.  But I could certainly eat a whole bowl of Kale with Anchovy-Garlic dressing without regret.  The recipe is generous enough with the olive oil that  I can't justify eating and entire bowl of  it every day, but at the same time, with 4 cups of kale,  I can't exactly call it junk food either.

 

Aside from cooking and reading cookbooks, I can't say that I have been very ambitious this week.  I've basically been filling my time, between cooking attempts and doctor's visits, with light escapist reading.  

 

BMBG recommended that I try Lawrence Block's The Burglar in the Library and I took her advice, although, as I was only familiar with Block's darker novels, I had trouble imagining Block as the author of laugh-out-loud mysteries.  Obviously I knew nothing of the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels.   With nods to Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett, skill and tremendous imagination, Block's humerous mystery had me rolling on more than one occasion.  

 

I enjoyed the book so much that, feeling not particularly focused on more thoughtful literature and non-fiction, I went back to the first book, Burglars Can't Be Choosers,  and have been working my way through the series.  Block is a good writer; he is also a writer with a great sense of humor and a wicked wit who brings a light touch and a certain brash outrageousness to the most clichéd plot devices.  In fact the clichés are part of the point and part of the fun; Block never forgets his reader and never seems to doubt the reader's intelligence.  The books do build on each other and are worth reading in sequence but I enjoyed the first book I read, which is not the first of the series, immensly anyway.  And the Burglar series, although light and deliciously humerous, hold up to being read in quick succession, no easy feat.  I'll probably finish off the series over the rest of this week, or through the weekend, and they are books I would probably enjoy coming back to for a quick escapist bit of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

Duck Egg Blue

Have you ever made a mistake, usually a simple mindless one, felt flustered, and then later realized that in that mistake was some kernel of hidden truth?  

 

That happened to me a little over a week ago.  I was commenting on a post over at Lisa's blog when I made a typing error and posted that I wore "ducky shades" when I meant to say "dusty shades".  Lisa caught it and I immediately said it had been a typing error.  But for days after that my mind was entranced with the idea of "ducky shades".    I couldn't shake it, and some part of me wanted to say that I do, indeed like those very colors -- ducky shades -- if only I knew what they were.  Then it hit me.  I was thinking of duck eggs, and in some sense "duck egg shades" could kind of run into "ducky shades", or at least it could with a stretch of the imagination, or perhaps a month of mental-fog-inducing pain medications.

 

I don't know if you have ever encountered duck eggs. I remember the bowls of duck eggs a local farmer would sell when I lived in the Hudson Valley and would go to the Rhinebeck Farmer's Market, of the beautiful blue-greens and soft-grayed greens, sometimes with a bit of yellow in the green, but all the shades blended together; some bright, but not shockingly bright, softly bright, perhaps a little muted, or a little grayed.  Some eggs were white too, but not the relatively bright white of a chicken egg, a softer white, a white I could wear. Mostly I remember the blues and greens, the colors you see here, below, in this photo of duck eggs:

 

 

I don't wear true pastels well.  And although true blues are acceptable on me, the greener blues are better, and the periwinkles.  I've always had trouble describing my blues. The deeper ones are along the lines of the deep periwinkles and the blue-teals, but the lighter blue-greens have always stumped me. How would I describe them?  And it suddenly occurred to me that duck egg blue is in fact one of my blues.  As I thought about duck eggs and their lovely range of colors, I realized that I could in fact wear all those colors.  Granted some of them are too light for me, but all of the subltle variations of duck egg colors are all colors that would work with the colors that I think of as my colors, both the color wheel colors that work with my physical color palette, and the colors that I personally think of as "mine" the ones that I tend to be drawn to as part of how I see myself.  And yes even that somewhat yellower grayed green that you see in the back of the above photo, those would blend with my eyes, which are green, but a grayed, yellowed green, that is sometimes more intese than others, and occasionally have been mistaken for hazel, but they are not.    

 

Perhaps it is true.  Perhaps my colors are "ducky colors" and perhaps I should seek them out more. 

 

 

But I actually don't wear those colors very much.  Why not?  The truth is that I have trouble finding them.  Perhaps I shop in the wrong stores.  Perhaps they are just rarely fashionable.  In looking around the web I have found myriad paint colors called duck egg blue.  I've found a board on pinterest devoted to the color, but it mostly shows furniture and decoration, which is in keeping with the many paint samples I've also found. But I've found little in terms of clothing, a few soft aqua pieces, some of which might border on duck egg blue. I would say soft aqua is actually a different color although it is a color I've been known to wear.  I've found a clothing store in Australia called Duck Egg Blue, although they don't seem to carry any more duck egg blue clothing than anyone else.  I sometimes find that green, the second paint color from the left, and I find the far right color the most often, but the middle color would be the one I want to find, the blue I would live in if I could.  I had a suit that color once and I wore it until it was literally threadbare.

 

In fact, if I want to wear these colors, I seem to have the most success with yarns.  It is true that I could knit more sweaters, and am happy to do so.  But this limits duck egg blue to a role as more of an accent than a primary color, which is fine, as there are plenty other blues, and grays, and purples and the rose colors, that are also my colors. But it does make me wonder.  I can easily find something for my house in those duck-egg colors but why can't I find clothes as easily? Or am I truly looking in the wrong places?  If you know where I should look, please advise.

 

 

The photo of the duck eggs was not taken by me, but you can probably tell that is not from the Rhinebeck Farmer's Market by the Chinese characters.  Fiona Reilly of the wonderful blog, Life on Nanchang Lu, graciously let me use her photograph.  The truth is I didn't discover her blog until I was looking for photos of duck eggs on Google, and was unsuccessful in many ways, which don't need to be explored further at this point.  But I did find this photo which captured the range of beautiful colors that I remembered.  Through this photo, I discovered Fiona's blog, and I have since looked through her archives, have been enchanted, and have subsequently started following her posts. I do wish you would take a look as  well. 

 

The color of paint samples is a screen shot from the top of a google search. The individual paint sample colors come from these sources, from left to right:  art-paints.com, marilynandmelrose.co.uk, firedearth.com, decorsupplies.co.uk, and handyhippo.co.uk

An Afternoon Snack and A Few Thoughts on Recent Books

It's about time to catch up on reading again, although I have actually read very few books of late, only 3 since the last post.  What can I say?  I am too easily distracted?  I can't do anything consistently week after week without change?  Well, yes; it seems I am all to prone to human foibles.  

 

But first I will distract you with yesterday's mid-afternoon snack:  toasted Udi's bread, homemade ricotta made from local organic grass fed milk, cucumbers, and pickled red onion. 

 

It is the pickled red onion that is important here because it represent my first tiny foray into the kitchen.  Truly I was desperate to make something myself and this recipe,  from here, seemed easy enough.  Unfortunately my red onion was too large, so it was only half pickled by the time I was so ravenous I could wait no longer.  I eventually had to add a little rice wine vinegar and now my pickled red onions are also bright pink throughout.  But those half-pickled onions were surprisingly tasty.

 

I probably won't be expanding my repertoire very rapidly, sliceing the onions and mixing them together pretty much exhausted the limits of the time I could spend on my feet before resting, a new record yesterday, at 4 1/2 minutes per session.  Baby steps, it is true, but progress nonetheless, and a small achievement.  Of both I am very proud.

 

 But back to those three books.  They could not be more different.

 

First, I spent a good part of one day perusing The Nourished Kitchen by Jennifer McGruther who writes a blog of the same name.  Both the blog and the book are based on the traditional foods movement and the research of the Weston A. Price foundation.   As such, the book, some sections more than others, will not appeal to everyone. I've been eating primarily locally raised pastured poultry and meat for quite some time, I buy a significant amount of what I eat at farmer's markets, and don't really worry about the other stuff.   Although I haven't cooked anything from the book (see above about the limits on my cooking) a good proportion of the recipes are for the kinds of food I already love and I am looking forward to trying them out, but there are also many things that are new to me, including a section on fermenting vegetables.  I do keep a small selection of fermented foods, and think it would be fun to try my hand at making my own.   At any rate, the book is filled with good information and was a lovely read, the photographs are gorgeous, and it left me hoping that I can get back to my kitchen soon.  I'm thinking that the recipes for Blistered Radishes with Parsley and Buttered Spinach might be manageable with my current limitations, that is if I can keep myself from eating all the new spring radishes raw.

 

Dennis Lehane's The Given Day really surprised me.  I thought it was a good novel and I got completely wrapped up in the story and the characters.  Well, truthfully there are only two characters who are fully developed, Danny Coughlin, and Luther Lawrence, with everyone else basically acting as set pieces needed to fill in the narrative or illustrate certain points.  So basically to like this book you have to like Danny and Luther, or you have to get wrapped up in the historical aspects of the novel, which is set in Boston immediately following WWI, between the influenza epidemic and the policemen's union strike. I liked both the history and the main characters, who I found quite compelling. Perhaps I've known too many young men just like them, and I could hear their words in my mind, superimposing the characters in the novel with other people I've known. Both men start out as rather shallow, happy-go-lucky young men, who glide through life, both try to do the right thing but learn that knowing what the right thing is far more complicated than it would seem.  Lehane handled the complexities and the subtleties of both men's struggles well, and I thought he also dealt well with the idea of family, and the unfortunate truth that we often start out thinking of our families with a hazy glow, wanting what is best, but woefully unprepared for the repurcussions when life doesn't turn out quite the way we imagined it.  Lehane has a gift for capturing the cadence of a speaker, and many times the voices would ring in my haad, so that even a simple dialog could be filled with meaning.

 

I also loved the sense of history: the details of time and place and a period of history I don't know enough about.  The book seems to be well researched but it is quite dense, as it seems this was a very dense and volatile period. There were sections that dragged, almost as if there was just too much in to the story, and yet I would say that most of  the detail and various plots were important to the development of the characters and the conclusion of the story. Reading about the influenza epidemic was powerful, and  reading about young police officer Danny dragging bodies out of buildings reminded me of a story we read in fifth grade, where a girl was describing looking out her window onto the bodies stacked on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up and carted away, something I am sure I had not thought of once in the intervening 45 years. The rather long section leading up to the strike, and Danny's infiltration and exploration of the various labor groups and leftist organizations, as long as the rather paranoid reactions of the people in power were tedious at times, but were important for Danny's growing understanding that the world was more complicated than the world as seen from his parent's house.  Danny was a character of great hope and naiveté, and yet possessed of a great inner strength (not just physical strength which is played up in the book). 

 

There are also some minor sections that are profoundly powerful.  Eddie McKenna is one of the polarizing characters of the book, and I feel his presence is necessary.  Near the end when he is speaking to Luther, telling him that he can never be an American, never be as much of an American as he (Eddie), the first reaction is to pull back from the appalling violence and racism of his statement.  Of course many felt the same way.  But upon thinking further, you realize that Luther's family had been in this country for generations even though they were originally brought to this country as slaves, and Eddie had come to America as a boy, trying to escape a kind of slavery, the bleak prospects and lack of promise of his lot in Ireland.  Not only did Eddie embrace America as a place for those who would change their lives, as he did, and embrace it with a proud love, in this scene Eddie also reminds of the dark side of an emotion that exists in all of us.  We see it all the time.  Another extreme example is the rich New Yorker I knew, who upon buying and restoring an old run down estate in an economically downtrodden town, became obsessed with buying up small properties near his house, partly because he wanted more land, but partly because he didn't want to see their mobile homes or run down houses, when he drove up his driveway.  The presence of a poorer population violated his sense of how the world should be, so his response, much like Eddie's, was to make it go away. 

Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel,  I can't say that it left me feeling like it is something I want to read again. It was not a novel that brought new insights or understanding, Well, it left me with a profound dislike of Calvin Coolidge.

 

Lastly I read a Kindle Single called Planet Carnivore by Alex Renton.  The book seems to be fairly clear-headed, well-researched, and not particularly polemical.   Renton begins with the latest meat scare du jour and then uses that as a starting off point to discuss modern meat production and the true cost of the cheap meat we have grown so used to in western industrial nations and its environmental and health impact. He also reviews thoughts and suggestions concerning a more sustainable future from other authors as well as ideas of his own. I would quibble about a few things, but they are really secondary, not about his main thesis.  Recommended   But then I am inclined to believe we should think more and take less for granted.