restingmotion

Adventures in Cooking

By the time I moved I was ready to cook.  I'd been eating out for most of a month, and frankly, although I had needed to cook in order to eat when I was packing up the old house, most of that cooking was extremely basic.  It had been months since I had cooked just for the sake of cooking and I was ready to play.

 

My cookbook collection was unpacked early on, along with the kitchen, and although there were lots of old favorites I could have made, I was also eager to try something new. I wasn't quite sure where to start however, and I was feeling, rather oddly, unsure of myself in the kitchen.  I read about the Food52 cookbook club somewhere, and since their June cookbook would be any of the works by Yotam Ottolenghi, books I already own, I thought that joining would be just the inspiration I needed.  

And participating in the group did give me the push I needed, at least initially.  I started off making the Cucumber and Poppy Seed Salad from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. I really liked the salad.  I altered the recipe slightly, using sweet-hot peppadew peppers rather than the ones called for simply because I had them on hand and needed to use them up.  I've made the recipe several times since, both as written and with the peppadews, and think I prefer the peppadew version.  It is a nice alternative from my usual Thai-style cucumber salad.

 

Then I floundered a bit. Mostly this was just the repercussions of cooking for one.  Most recipes are written for 4 to 6 servings, leaving me with leftovers.  I also hadn't really stocked my pantry yet, having intentionally run the cupboards bare before moving, and having this idea that I would simply restock as I needed items.  But shopping every time you want to cook gets to be a bit of a drag as well, and there were days that, by the time I drove around locating ingredients, I was too tired to cook.  The result was less culinary experimentation than I had hoped.  Still, I was determined to continue trying new things.

I had purchased My French Family Table by Béatrice Peltre on a bit of a whim; I don't, after all,  need more cookbooks but this one looked really appealing.  I baked the rolls I posted earlier in the month.   After purchasing couple of bunches of radishes at the farmer's market, I made Peltre's radish greens soup. I love radishes and hate to waste edible food, but hadn't found a way to cook the greens that I consistently loved.  The soup was delicious but a little heavy on the potato for my taste.  The second time around I increased the proportion of radish greens relative to potato slightly, not so much that I lost the silkiness of the finished soup,  and liked the soup much better.  Perhaps I went a little overboard on the sliced radish garnish in the photo above.  It is difficult not to get carried away with the delicacy of spring radishes after all, and since this had been a rather wet spring and early summer, the radishes have been exceptional.

 

My next adventure was with a dish from Ottolenghi's newest book, Nopi.  I had seen fresh soft-shell crabs in one of the markets, and was excited as I usually see pre-cleaned crabs which are none too fresh.  That was one of my first shocks moving to Knoxville, it never occurred to me that a soft shell crab, even if cleaned, wouldn't be absolutely fresh.  Of course I didn't ask either.  But anyway, onward.

I tried a more ambitious dish called Soft Shell Crab with Sweet Black Pepper Sauce, Okra, and Cinnamon Pickled Cucumber.  It wasn't actually that difficult as the pepper sauce and cucumber can be made ahead, and the preparation for the crab is fairly simple.  The problem was that it was a lot of work for a dish that I wasn't all that thrilled with.  Mostly I didn't like the crab, and I should have known better.  The recipe calls for the crab to be dredged in cornstarch and then fried.  I know from experience, and should have remembered, that I don't really like fried soft-shell crab unless it is dredged in cornmeal.  I like the contrast of the crunchy cornmeal and the soft crab.  Whether that is a New England thing, related to my living in the Northeast for so long, or related to my love of cornmeal crusted fried catfish from my Texas childhood, I don't know.  But I've tried various alternative techniques before, and I've always been disappointed.

 

Then there were the sides.  The okra was fabulous and I will make it again.  The technique is much like the one used for cooking pimientos de padron, simple and brilliant.  The flavor on the cinnamon picked cucumber was also good; it was flavored with a syrup made with cinnamon and star anise, a little sweeter than I usually prefer, but quite wonderful.  I didn't feel the long ribbons of cucumber worked well, although it is possible that I simply made them too thin.  But I made the pickle again, using a mandolin to make thin slices, and was happier with the results, but I didn't take another picture.  As much as I enjoyed the cinnamon cucumbers, I'm not sure how often I will go to the trouble to make them when I am just as happy with simple sliced cucumbers.

 

The other problem was with the Sweet Black Pepper Sauce. My sauce really had no real sweetness to it; in fact it was rather salty and overpowering compared to the delicacy of the crab.  Now, although I followed the recipe exactly, this may have been at least partially due to the quality of the ingredients I used.  I try to get the best I can, but there were several things which may not be the same in gluten-free versions.  But I had extra sauce and I wondered if it would work well with other dishes. 

In the long run the sauce surprised me.  It is the one dish that may eventually end up being a staple in my kitchen.  After 24 hours it had mellowed substantially, and the flavor softened and developed a rich subtle umami which continued to develop over time.   I think it would be good on several different kinds of meat, but this month, in the flurry of unpacking and work and sometimes general tiredness, I found it worked wonderfully on a simple burger.  I've used up that first batch of (still not so sweet) Sweet Black Pepper Sauce.  I probably need to make another batch.

 

So the failed crab dish put me off experimentation for a little bit, and I was trying to use up groceries anyway.  The next time I was inspired to cook, I was once again leaning toward Peltre.  I wanted to try her Chicken Drumsticks with Spices and Coconut Milk.  I am always looking for a good drumstick recipe.  Drumsticks are not necessarily my favorite part of the chicken, but at the same time I feel strongly that if we are going to be conscientious about living on this earth, and caring for its resources, we need to encourage nose-to-tail (or leaf-to-root, in the case of radishes) eating.  That means if I'm going to eat chicken I can't just eat the breasts and the thighs.  

When the two local farms from which I buy chickens have birds I buy whole birds.  I often cut them up, which means the drumsticks accumulate, as I use the breasts and thighs more routinely, and the backs and wings often go into my chicken stock, as do chicken feet when I can get them.  In late May and early June there were no local chickens so I bought packaged organic chicken.  Just buying packaged chicken is no excuse, at least for me, for avoiding the less desirable parts.   Anyway, I bought drumsticks, organic drumsticks and tried Peltre's recipe; it was fabulous.

 

So there you have it, a month's experimentation.  Some things I will make again:  radish greens soup, chicken drumsticks, perhaps black pepper sauce.  Some things, like the quinoa rolls and the two cucumber salads will be made less often, partially because I consider them treats, but also because they are really dishes that need to be shared. I have no regrets, but I also need to get a little more settled.  Cooking is fun, but it is most fun when you are feeding others.  That is the next step.

 

 

  

Connecting A Few Dots Through Reading

Disparate bits sometimes float through our lives, something we read here, an encounter there, and occasionally they bind together in unexpected ways.

 

Nearly a month ago I was in Chicago for a short, roughly 25-hour, jaunt. I went to my appointment, had dinner with a friend I had missed during my previous visit to Chicago, and slept for 10 hours; none of these events offered up a defining moment.  And yet there was one, a brief feeling of disquiet, of unmooring, that I initially dismissed, but which has proven to have more significant repercussions, reverberating both through my understanding of myself, but also of the world around me.

 

As I walked through O'Hare, roughly mid-day on a Friday, I felt distinctly lost.  I was not lost in any physical sense; I knew exactly where I was going, exactly how to get there.  There was nothing unfamiliar in the scenario, and yet it felt unfamiliar.  I had been reading a novel on the plane, and I was deeply engaged with the story and the characters.  I wondered if I was simply still in that liminal space between story and reality.  I also wondered if I was simply tired.  I was tired.  I dismissed my thoughts, got my bearings, and moved on.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across this abstract:

Among young adults, we show that refugees that enter the U.S. before age 14 graduate high school and enter college at the same rate as natives. Refugees that enter as older teenagers have lower attainment with much of the difference attributable to language barriers and because many in this group are not accompanied by a parent to the U.S. Among refugees that entered the U.S. at ages 18-45, we follow respondents’ outcomes over a 20-year period in a synthetic cohort. Refugees have much lower levels of education and poorer language skills than natives and outcomes are initially poor with low employment, high welfare use and low earnings. Outcomes improve considerably as refugees age. After 6 years in the country, these refugees work at higher rates than natives but they never attain the earning levels of U.S.-born respondents. Using the NBER TAXSIM program, we estimate that refugees pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S. ¹

 

The last two sentences are the ones that roil around in my brain.  I can usually quote all kinds of statistics about how influx of immigrants into a community actually raises the standard of living and the job prospects of the native-born residents already in that community.  It has also long been known that children under the age of 14 pick up language and social skills much more adeptly than older children and adults. But I am also aware that we are in a period of great unrest and that immigrants get more than their fair share of the attention, unfairly because the issues are really not about the immigrants, and they have not really done anything to warrant our attention or feelings of ill-will.  The roots of the issues are different, but are deeply buried in places we aren't sure we want to go.  Immigrants make good scapegoats.¹

 

 Despite this outburst, this is not really a political blog.    Yet, in my mind at least, these two things are related.  They are related through the novel I was reading at the time of my trip to Chicago, Mr and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya, a novel I have actually been rereading as thoughts swirled around in my brain. The simple story is that the novel is about Job and Ifi, a Nigerian couple who have come to live in the United States.  It is a complicated story about leaving one's culture, trying to fit into another, and never quite succeeding. It is a story based on lies, the lies the characters tell each other and the lies they tell themselves, a fiction based on fiction.  And yet it is also a story about the way we all dance around the truth in order to protect ourselves and others, and the ways change and hope come in the ways one might least expect.

 

It is not the easiest book.  At the times the plot seems to be only partially assembled, much like Job and Ifi's plans in America.  The primary characters are not particularly likeable by the standards of polite, educated, American Society, and the Americans they encounter are not, for the most part, the kind of Americans we are proud to call our own.  And yet the characters are richly developed, and there is a sense that their story is told with love and empathy, an empathy that is fully available to the reader who is willing to push past initial discomforts and stereotypes.

 

Pulled into the story and the lives of the characters, I felt disoriented in O'Hare that day in early June.  But the truth is that I am also perhaps more likely to feel that sense of disorientation, as this experience also made me realize how much I tend towards feelings of isolation in large crowds.  There are those who are agitated in large crowds, those who thrive on them, and I am sure that I am not the only person who feels increasingly cut off and out of touch in very large groups.  The larger the crowd, the more isolated I feel, and I am sure that this is some variation on my basic introversion.  And yet this character trait also helped me feel in microcosm, the smallest sense of what it could feel like to live in a world that is in many ways the antithesis of everything you believe to be true and right, to walk through the world, knowing where you are going and doing what you think is right, only to have the world swirl on around you in incomprehensible ways.

 

And how does that second quote apply?  It may be obvious.  Job came to this country as a college student but he flunked out of college; his entire life is built around a lie, a lie that he cannot admit, even to himself.  Job is man who is, in many ways, quite simple.  There is much he doesn't understand, doesn't seek to understand, and he can be oblivious to that which seems obvious to the world around him.  But do not think that makes him any less complexly human. His simplicity, his confusion, and his complexity are all apparent in the opening pages of the novel, but the depth of Jobs own self deception, and the extent to which he has closed himself in on himself does not become apparent until much later.  I'm not sure that he ever becomes more likeable, but the reader does become more sympathetic toward him.  Job works two jobs, two jobs that barely allow him enough money to live in a slum.  He works harder than the other residents of his housing unit in many ways, hence the above quote and yet in many ways they are better off than he; certainly no worse off.  He, and all the Nigerians in this story, work hard, work very hard, and tell themselves stories to make their lives easier.  The book revolves around Job and Ifi, although Ifi may be the more interestingly complex character.  The book is their story, but it is not their story alone.

 

We are a nation of immigrants.  In fact we are all immigrants.  We are born immigrants, brought into a world of which we have no understanding.  Often the world we are born into is not the world we end up in, and whether or not we adept depends on how open we are to change, whether or not we can empathize with others, whether or not we can find that part which is human, and is common to us all.  Books can help with understanding in a way that sometimes one-on-one contact cannot, in that books allow us to reach outside ourselves in a safe environment, thereby opening our minds to future encounters.   

 

This is a book about the American Dream.  Or perhaps it is about the myth of the American Dream; about the myths people tell themselves about progress, about class and race, about sexism. It is about the way the world we dream about doesn't really exist, and the way, even when we struggle to escape one set of biases, we bring them with us, and encounter new walls as well, walls that may be built on our own false expectations.  But it is also a story of hope, and of the knowledge that the future can be a better one, only not perhaps in the way we imagined it in our dreams.

 

1.  http://www.nber.org/papers/w23498#fromrss

 

 

Summer Closet

Moving offered magnificent opportunity for sorting through the various garments in my closet, something that had somehow previously been difficult.  This seems odd because I am not generally sentimental.  I love living in an old house, I love that I have, and use daily, items made by and/or used by my grandparents and great grandparents, but I don't keep things just because they have history.  I think there is a connection between things and the earth and our lives, but I am not sentimental.  I can usually give away things I've made, or that came down to me from people I know.  My memories are not dependent on the things, and yet the things we surround ourselves with are still a part of who we are.

 

But back to the closet.   I already knew this was my house, and the previous house was just a holding area.  Through finding a house, I also in a sense, found myself, and sorting became easier.  I also knew I would spend a month in transitional housing.  I had two basic goals: 

1) pull out clothes that would see me through that transitional space (May) and the rest of the summer (June-August), therefore giving me time to unpack the house and settle in without having to worry about what I would wear,

and

2) just sort through the clothes and eliminate anything that obviously wasn't working.

 

Dresses were the easiest place to start as they really don't have to match anything else.  The questions were simple: did it fit? Had I worn it? Would I wear it?  A few things were obvious.  A hand-knit alpaca dress was a no-go, despite the fact that I love it, because it is too hot to wear in Knoxville.  Even when it is cold outside, buildings are heated.  That dress suffered the same fate in Hyde Park -- it was too hot to wear in any heated building.  It would be fabulous if I lived in a drafty old castle, or perhaps during a power failure.  Chalk it up to education and move on.  If, when I find myself in my 70s or 80s, I am always cold, I can always knit another dress.

 

Then it was time for everything else.  I started with bottoms, and laid them all out around the master bedroom.  Then I went through everything else in my closet (except undergarments and jewelry) and put it in the appropriate pile, the bottom piece I decided it went best with.  I wasn't worried about pieces that could be used in multiple ways, I was just looking for what worked.  If a stack didn't contain at least three pieces, one bottom and two tops, out it went.  If there was a top that literally went with nothing in that room, out it went.   The pile of widows and orphans was larger than the piles of keepers, and they were all donated, sold, or given away.  What truly surprised me was the way the things that remained complemented each other.  What remained was a wardrobe that looked like it belonged to one person, a wardrobe where most of the pieces would work together rather than against each other.

 

I stacked the things that would work for late-spring and summer on the bed and packed everything else. This is what was left, 35 pieces of clothing (I'm not counting shoes or scarves here). Less two pairs of pajamas, each of which I counted as one piece, one swimsuit, and four summer dresses, I was left with a wardrobe of 28 mix-and-match pieces to cover every activity from working-out to dressing-up.

The wardrobe has worked fairly well.  Three pieces that were needed for a trip to Chicago in early May, pieces which contained wool, were swapped out upon my return.  They were replaced by three t-shirts, purchased at Uniqlo, also while in Chicago.

      

A few things didn't work.  They gray cardigan in the center of the picture doesn't thrill me anymore and I don't enjoy wearing it. Another, more fitted, sweater has taken its place.    The deep periwinkle shorts, and lighter periwinkle shirt, which were already pretty heavily worn, got covered in paint and retired. A favorite, lightweight sweatshirt, perfect for early mornings or cool evenings, progressed from threadbare-but-still-in-one-piece to tatters.  The remaining clothes work together well, and my wardrobe does not feel at all limiting or restrictive.  If anything, it feels incredibly generous.  I probably wear more of my clothes now than I did when there were more clothes in my closet.

Or at least it didn't feel restrictive until the last week or two.  As we progress into summer heat, navy woven slacks and dark jeans feel hot and heavy, at least psychologically.  I wanted something lighter and a touch of midsummer madness set in.  I went shopping, ostensibly looking for something white or off-white but ending up with acid yellow and pale blue chinos, both from Anthropologie, shown above and below.  They actually work better in my wardrobe than white would have. I counted six different outfits that work with the yellow, and at least another four for the blue chinos, if not more. The navy slacks are out until September; the dark jeans remain, with reservations.

I've learned a few things.  I've got a better sense of what I like to wear and have a wardrobe that supports that reality.  I am not, ultimately concerned about numbers in the closet.  Although I started with 35 garments, I am not really interested in adhering to rules, or adhering to a program like project 333.  Even though I am talking about clothes for 3 to 4 months, this wardrobe is not 1/4 or 1/3 of my wardrobe.  Although there are a handful of garments that are only worn one season, most of these clothes are worn at least through three seasons, if not all year.  These 35 garments represent half my complete wardrobe in its current state, and hopefully eventually will represent more than half.  Even in this America, land of overstuffed closets, it feels like a lot. But as I said, I am not really interested in numbers but in use, and it is not about whether I have more than some (I do) or less than others (also true).  I want the things I have to work for me; I do not want to be a slave to them. 

 

Through this whole process I learned that my closet is still too heavily weighted toward winter clothes.  Of course, I like winter clothes more than summer clothes, and I moved here from New York State, where winter was a much more significant season than summer.  Still, I am aware I have too much.  When we move into winter, I will repeat this process, and winnow the collection down to the things that really work here, for the life I have now.  Choice is a privilege after all 

 

But, although there is no point in keeping basic things that I don't wear, I'm not going to give up something special just because it is worn only rarely.  A silk party dress that only comes out occasionally stays, as will two bulky hand knit sweaters that I may wear only once or twice a winter, if we have a cold winter, and not at all if it is warm.  They are going to stay until they fall apart because I love them so, because I panic when I can't find them.  But these items aren't just another back pant, another gray turtleneck, another basic in a sea of basics.

 

I do think the whole process of packing and unpacking, the process of moving, has really made me think about what I have and why I have it.  I don't really need a bunch of things for "just in case". In my dream wardrobe perhaps I'll have fewer basics, the 28 may be reduced to 15 or 20, or not.  Basics can always be replaced after all, and more special pieces that make those basics sing. But there is no point to clothes that sing only in the closet, behind closed doors. Better to have what I use and use what I have. Better to have what I need and to use what I love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time. To. Slow. Down.

Yesterday I woke up and would have sworn that every cell in my body ached. If I could have stayed in bed I would have, but my mind was already swirling with anxieties, my usually somewhat hidden insecurities jabbing away at my tender flesh. 

 

I would have told you that I had done nothing to warrant this bodily revolt, but I knew that I would simply have been deceiving myself. The truth is I had been exhausted on Sunday, so exhausted I could barely stand and had to leave a reception early before I collapsed.  Even then, I only allowed myself 2 hours before pushing myself further, pushing myself until I had to stop, and starting up again the moment I had the slightest charge in my energy stores. 

It seems I am the queen of unrealistic self-expectation.  For some reason this second round of unpacking has been harder than the first.  Then, I was so happy just to be here that I gave myself space.  Now, I've been here a month, and I inadvertently let my evil doppelganger out of her box, the little voice that says "why aren't you all unpacked yet?", "why haven't you weeded all the flower beds", "why haven't you trimmed the shrubbery", "why haven't", "why haven't", "why haven't....."  The problem with that voice is that it looks for all the failures, and refuses to see all the successes.  I know perfectly well that there is no rush.  No one expects more, or cares, and even if they did, it would be their problem, not mine.    But I've spent nearly 60 years letting that voice butt-in and have her way.  Perhaps it is time to stop.

 

Yesterday, really for the first time since moving in, I sat down and wrote my morning pages.  I wrote again this morning.  I had to give myself permission to write first, rather than unpack, work in the garden, or take my walk.  If I do all those things first, I will never write, and if I never write out my thoughts, I let my guard down.  If I lose touch with my thoughts I let those little worms of insecurity rise up to the surface where they have no business living.   In retrospect it seems I do this every summer, try to cram everything into the early morning, and then end up struggling all the more. But this summer the stress of the move, even of a good move to a place that feels so strongly my place, has amped up my tendency toward self-criticism.

 

In a couple of weeks I'll be embarking upon my 60th year on this earth.  This is not something I want to carry into my 60s.  It is time to let the things I think and say and believe, the words I tell everyone else, sink into the deepest darkest recesses of my own heart.  It is time to hammer the last nail into that coffin and seal up that little voice the screams "not good enough" once and for all.  I don't have to have a perfect house, or a perfect garden, if I am tired and forget to run the dishwasher the world will not end. I am allowed to fail, to be tired, to be wrong, to make mistakes

 

I am still tired today.  But I will not push myself.  The new bookshelves arrived, but if I don't have energy to carry them up the stairs today, so be it.  There will always be another day.  And if there is not another day, if today is the last day, bookshelves will be the least of it.

Yesterday, I wrote my morning pages, and I let Tikka drag me out for a walk.  It was a longer walk than I felt like taking, but I felt better for it.  Afterward, as I stood in the shower, I was struck by the combination of color shown above.  Such a simple thing, a bathroom wall, a door, a towel, fog on the shower door.  But it changed my perspective.  I thought how lovely it was.  I didn't pick the wall color, it was here before me.  The towel may not really match, but I didn't think about that, didn't berate myself because I still haven't gone out and purchased a towel bar on which to hang the towel.  Instead I thought how lovely it looked draped over the door, how happy that momentary observation made me. 

 

And I rested.  Later, I realized that the colors in my bathroom are the colors in my new glasses. As I sit here right now I see the same colors in the walls of my office, in the shadow of light passing through a sheet of glass and a watercolor on vellum, in the colors of the clouds on this rainy morning.  These are the moments that count, not the stories we tell ourselves so that we feel more successful, or accomplished, or whatever.  We are already accomplished; we are already perfect.  Perhaps that is another myth we tell ourselves when we think we are striving for perfection.  What if it is our striving that actually makes us imperfect?  What if we only see our perfect selves in those quiet moments when we touch someone else's hand, when we watch the bird in the tree, when we listen with our hearts and our minds, when we just allow ourselves to be?

In the Garden

I thought I would share a few photos from my garden:

I feel incredibly fortunate to have found a house I love surrounded by a garden filled with the kinds of plants I love.  Most of this garden has nothing to do with my efforts.

The West side of the house in the early morning, when the hydrangeas still shine and the daylilies have not yet awoken.  In the afternoon the daylilies dominate and the hydrangeas slip into the background.

I have started working in the garden, mostly in the early morning and evening, when the heat does not offend my sensibilities, or trigger my tendencies to get headaches.  Most of my efforts fall into the category of scut work:  weeding, pruning, deadheading.  It can be enjoyable in its own slow meditative way, but perhaps only in the small doses I allow myself.  The garden will be here, and I will catch up.

The ferns I had originally planted next to the front door were moved; they needed more sun.  I was aware of this when I planted them but hoped for the best anyway.  They are happier now.

When I planted the small towers next to the ferns I was initially disappointed. I figured I would be replacing the plants within days, but they have settled in nicely.   Perhaps it is all too much greenery, and flowers would have been better, but it is late June already, and it is possible that there is some disconnect between what is currently available in nurseries and what I am willing to plant.   The hedges need pruning as well, which requires another trip to the store for the requisite tool.  I've lived all this time and never needed to trim a hedge. 

 

There is always something new to be discovered, one might as well take time to enjoy the process.

 

 

Quick Post on Thursday Morning

There was a lull in the unpacking.  I was behind on several fronts and my outside life intervened, demanding that I pay attention to obligations too long abandoned. 

Then, Tuesday, I experienced another fit of profound unsettledness and the shifting and opening of boxes, with the attendant piles of paper and general chaos resumed.  Although it was really only a brief side-line from the main activity center, the last three boxes were unpacked on the morning room, and I was able to bring in a small table and the two extra dining chairs that don't fit around my table without the leaves.  The two chairs are actually too big for the small outdoor table that currently resides in that space, but I have the table, and as the major kitchen appliances have issues and a kitchen remodel is vaguely scheduled for the next year or so, it works for now. 

 

In fact, aside from inability to deal with unpacked things, I am rather amazed at my ability to be patient with what is not done.  In the old house, "not right" was a burden, here it is just a meh.  The difference seems to be that this house simply feels like home to me and the old house didn't, although it took me a long time to articulate that feeling.   This house is my sanctuary and home, even unpacked and unsettled.  

 

But back to unpacking...

 

My main push on Tuesday was to find the printer and start getting the office together.  I'd been struggling with shelving issues in my office, (the Billy bookcases were a failure) trying to balance my need for bookshelves on a budget now with my dream of a future library.  I eventually realized the two commercial kitchen-style steel wire shelving units sitting unused in the garage would fit in my office space.  Even if they are too deep, at 18 inches, I already own them, and hence no additional cost is incurred.  Then I realized I had another, 14" deep unit in the basement that would work upstairs, and so the unpacking of the office began. 

I got the smaller unit upstairs and assembled on Tuesday, and got my printer, tv, and some books in place.  The plan was to spend the rest of the week disassembling the garage units and reassembling them upstairs, but I had a couple of the contractors here for another task and they helped, working far faster and more efficiently than I could have.  They even carried my desk upstairs.  Much as the sunroom was lovely, it was unpractical in the late afternoon and evening, as there was too much glare on my screen.  The room is great for reading, and needlework, and chatting with friends, but no so much as an office.

 

So most of Wednesday was spent shifting boxes of books, unpacking, sorting and shelving.  I will have to buy at least two more units, and for those I will buy the 14 inch shelves, which will be worthwhile even if, at some point, should my dreams of a library become reality, they need to be replaced with wider 18" utility shelves when they move back to the basement or garage. 

In the meantime there is more unpacking ahead.  My plan was that I would have philosophy, religion, classics, and literature, along with a few other small categories in my office.  History, biography, and science have been relegated to the basement to wait for that dream library.  At the moment it appears that I may have extra space on the shelves, although it is too early to determine how much extra space, or which books will be allowed to migrate up into the land of light.

 

 

A Perfect Start to the Morning

Somehow, in the midst of unpacking, and rearranging a few cabinets in my kitchen and pantry so that they were more efficient to work with, I got distracted and obsessed.

 

As a result, the house is filled was filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread this morning.

I hadn't really planned on baking.  I hadn't baked for quite some time, but there is something about the new house that makes me want to play.  Or maybe I just wanted to avoid the annoying problem of what I'm going to do with my books between now and the time that custom bookcases can be made. It is proving to be a more complex problem than I had originally anticipated.

 

And so it came to pass, that when I was looking up Béatrice Peltre's recipe for radish greens soup, I got distracted by the recipe for quinoa and oat bread rolls.  I ended up spending too much time searching for the ingredients for the rolls, but now think the results were worth the effort.  Of course it would all have been easier if I had basic gluten-free baking supplies in my pantry, or I had given myself more time for planning.  But I wanted to make bread, and I didn't really want to wait, by which point the inspiration would surely have fled.

I enjoyed the first roll with my breakfast, sitting outside on the deck, enjoying the cool morning air, a cup of coffee, and a tender crisp warm roll with my eggs.  A perfect moment. The roll lived up to all my expectations, crisp outer crust, tender interior filled with air pockets, wonderfully complex bread flavor, and gluten- and dairy-free to boot.  I'm taking the rest of the rolls to a luncheon today, but I will surely be making them again. 

Accounting for Books

In my imagination, May, especially early in the month, during that transitional period before moving into the new house, was going to be a period filled with open expanses of time: time for engaging with books, for reading and writing, for sharing those things that moved me in one direction or another.  Alas it was not to be.  There was a necessary period of post-packing naps, but otherwise my time was often too full with obligation, and although there were moments of blessed solitude, freedom of time seemed illusory, always hoped for but just slightly beyond reach.

 

It is not that there was no time for reading, plenty of reading occurred in the first half of the month, but there was no time for reflection, and as the month went on, that reading became more insubstantial and less likely to induce frustration at my inability to write out or talk out my thoughts on what I was reading.

 

Haruki Murakami's Men Without Women arrived just as packing was winding down, and I was so eager to get started I plunged in at the first opportunity after closing on the old house. I was not disappointed, although I did struggle with the first story and wondered if this would be the first Murakami I did not love. But each subsequent story drew me in, and although each story was separate and completely different from its predecessors, the progression of the stories seemed to build layers of insight, creating something that was simultaneously disconnected and unified.  As usual, the characters and stories were complex, quirky, and profound and I wished I had spent more time and thought with the book, wished I had been able to explore my reactions more fully.  I may well be reading it again soon. 

 

I also wish I had been able to explore the multiple levels of interconnectedness, lies, and self-delusion in Domenico Starnone's Ties, a novel that is raw, often painful, but also insightful on many levels.  It is not the easiest read, primarily due to the rampant emotions, deceit, and the slow dissolution of the walls the characters have built around themselves and between themselves as the family unravels.  The book begins and ends in fury and it could be easy to read on that level alone, taking sides and blaming, but there is much more to this book. The beginning reminds me of Elena Ferrante's Days of Abandonment, but Vanda remains trapped in her fury, and this book is far more complicated, examining the story from the perspectives of all the family members, weaving a complex fabric of the many ways we layer and entwine ourselves without really understanding the consequences.   I was so upset after reading it I thought I would never want to go back to it, but now wonder if perhaps I have left it unfinished, and need to return  and wrest with my thoughts more deeply. 

 

Partly due to this frustration over being able to work out my reactions to the above books, in my head and on paper, my further reading leaned more toward works suited to my transitional mind-set, insubstantial reading which was entertaining and often captivating, but which did not leave me yearning for my pen. Memoirs and personal reflections figured highly, including Betty Halbreich's I'll Drink to That, which I found charming and, at times, touching.  Yes, the book is about clothes and style and the women who buy clothes, but really that was only a small part.  It was the perfect book for those first days after moving out of my old house, light but not completely insubstantial.  I followed this with Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, which is more a memoir than a book about how to write.  King is nothing if not a good storyteller, and the story of his life and how he came to be the writer he has become is entertaining and fascinating.

 

Then I read An Economist Gets Lunch by Tyler Cowen, which I suppose is technically not a memoir, but then I'm not really sure what it is.  It is not a book about food, and yet it doesn't escape food, or Cowen's personal experiences with food, although it is not so much about preparing food.  It is also a book about economics, but economics mixed with personal annectdotes, and food history, and politics and a little mishmash of this an that.  The title actually describes the book well.  It is a book about an economist who gets lunch, and the explorations, mental and physical that arise from two simple precepts: that one must get lunch, and that the author makes his living by thinking about things, The book is an exploration that arises from those two principles.  I personally loved it, economics, history, idiosyncracies, and all, but I recognize that it is most definitely not a book for everyone and many will find it boring, tedious, and/or unfocused.

 

The last memoir, read just before I moved in to my hew house was Susan Hermann Loomis's On Rue Tatin, the story of finding and renovating her family's home in France, with recipes.  I have enjoyed Loomis's cookbooks, and I enjoyed the story of finding her crumbling old house and making it her own.  It made me yearn for my own house, which is not as old, probably not as charming, and in far better shape.  In the end though, I am a person who likes stories, and I connected with this book.  Loomis is very good at describing the tastes and smells of France, of exploring the sights, the interactions, the rubbing together of cultures and expectations.  It was a lovely, and yes, escapist, read; a story revolving around people, time, place and the bonds that are formed. 

 

The two more significant books that I read during this period, Tyler Cowen's The Complacent Class and Lior Lev Sercarz's The Spice Companion, will influence my thoughts for some time to come. I don't always agree with Tyler Cowen's analyes, and I don't have to agree with an author to love a book, but he has made me think, and reconsider some closely held shiboleths. The resulting insights will continue to influence my thoughts and my choices and I think the book is well worth reading.    The Spice Companion is not so much a book to cook from, although the author does offer menus for spice blends and ideas on how to use spices, but an inspiring look at spice and flavor and the way flavors work together, or against each other.  Reading the book has already had an impact on the way I cook and think about cooking even though I haven't picked it up since moving into the house and filing it on the shelf. 

  

On a lighter note, I listened to Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer while I took my morning walks during my period of transition and, as always I enjoyed it immensely.  I have not read the series in order, but that really hasn't hurt my enjoyment of the books at all.  I also found Ilia Delio's Care for the Earth: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth to be very light reading, although I believe my EFM classmates found it more inspiring and more difficult than I did.   I would say it was clearly written, and my main objection to it was that it mostly consisted of stringing together ideas from other books, books I had already read and found more insightful.  I suppose then that, in my case, the author was preaching to the choir, but it is probably a good introduction to the idea that caring for the earth is both a moral and a spiritual or religious responsibility and in helping the reader articulate a theological response to environmentalism. 

 

I'm hoping to be more focused in June, but it may be simply wishful thinking.  Either I'll pull myself together or I'll abandon book posts all together.

 

 

 

Three Things Thursday

A minor set back or two this morning, and I need a tiny break, a few deep breaths.  No boxes will be unpacked today.

1. This is the view from my desk, where I am perching on the edge of the chair, a chair I am sharing with Moisés, who is still adapting to the fact that his world has been completely transformed while he was away.  I am perching on the end, because if I scoot further back, said cat will bite my backside.  I'll dump him out later, but for now, I am willing to concede a little space.

It is a nice, hidden place to be this morning, even though this is not the permanent location of my desk.  But it is a good temporary space, and a good place for settling in.  I can see glimmers of cars, of people walking or running by, but I remain hidden.  This sun room is a room I will spend much time in.  My needlework chair is already here, and there will be a sofa, and hopefully many hours creatively spent with either thread or a good book.

 

2.  Homemade breakfast in my own dining room.   

 

Sometimes things just come together in the most wonderful ways.  A couple of eggs and a slice of ham were joined by a tablespoon of gremolata (sans anchovy), a third of an avocado, and a couple of slivered peppadew peppers, all remnants from the previous evening's dinner party,combined to make a delicious breakfast.  The added seasoning was the memories of fellowship evoked by those bright and cheerful flavors.

3.  Late afternoon light looking in to the sewing room.  Yet unpacked but full of promise.