You know sometimes when life seems to stop along the pathway and you can see how beautiful it is where you have been travelling? That is the effect that watching my birthday DVD has had on me. My dear niece, Lizzy, wrote to me and said that she found herself smiling so much at the images that her cheeks hurt, but that “it was a good kind of pain.”
Of course a birthday celebration movie doesn’t contain all the sad and bad parts of one’s life in it. Who wants to watch images of all the things that hurt or were disappointing despite your best efforts? Who wants to rake through all the times you fell on your sword in the name of doing the right thing, or maybe doing the wrong thing because you didn’t know any better?
Someone I didn’t know very well said today that the movie seemed “idyllic” as though nobody’s life could or should look that good. It was a slightly cynical, somewhat sardonic way to describe it and it took me aback a little. I thought about it afterwards and decided that the many images of nature, food, flowers, the ocean, Christmas are at the center of my consciousness and what my life is really about, not merely decorations or extras: they are intrinsic and intentional to these moments that have made up my days for me and my family.
Someone else long ago had commented, also a little sardonically, that my home was like a “still life” and that there were many of them all around. While I might contend instead is that it’s a kind of messy still life as I pick up and move things around, trying to find a place for everything. What this illustrates to me also, is that I want to live the idyl every day that I have left. I’d also like to look a little trimmer as I have in earlier photos, keep growing my hair long and stay healthy.
That doesn’t mean that the areas of my life that have been disappointing are swept under the rug. They aren’t and God knows I have belabored most of them to death, second guessing myself, wondering if I could or should have done something different that would have resulted in a more positive outcome. I have sometimes reached out against my better judgment and thought of ways to gain closure for unresolved loose ends. I am satisfied that I have indeed beaten it to death, one way or another. And that those hurts are behind me, even better, they’re just not in the frame of my life anymore.
I hope that’s okay with the people who want me to know that my life is not an idyl but I’m afraid they might be disappointed that my life does happen to look a lot like the DVD. . . pretty much, I’d like to say.
Postscript: I was reading about a woman in South Hadley who was dying of pancreatic cancer and after a number of unsuccessful marriages, found “the one.” Her advice: “Don’t yell at each other unless the house is burning down!” She lived for six years after her first diagnosis and offered herself up to nursing students to visit and ask any questions they might have liked. Here’s a link to that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/us/fatally-ill-and-making-herself-the-lesson.html?hp
For awhile now, I’ve had a sister blog started called “A Life of My Own.” It’s obviously a take-off on Virginia Woolf’s book called “A Room of My Own.” Earlier, Emily Dickinson, in the 19th century wrote the poem, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too?” Now, we women living in the 21st century have had opportunities to make rooms for ourselves and to live a life of our own. Some of us might still be in the process of looking for one.
As I have said in the expanded version of “About” on that website, a very wise woman told us decades ago at one of our Smith College Wednesday assemblies that “life is long.” What she meant was that because women of our generation (graduating in the 1960’s) would still be spending lots of time raising families, taking care of others, working and helping elderly parents, we might be putting our own ambitions or interests aside for awhile. The idea of sequential fulfillment was introduced during that little talk, and each year that I have before me brings home how profoundly true that observation has been for me.
Youth is wasted on the young, they say. But not necessarily, I say in return. We all go through times when we think we know everything, even now! But what occurs in our lives is unpredictable, the good and the bad. Whether we end up with the love of our life is also unclear for a long time for some of us. In any case, I’m lucky to be able to say I am married to mine.
So, if you would like to take a look and join in the conversation, please visit this website and send me your story ~ about your arrival at a life of your own, or your continuing journey along the way. Here’s the link: http://alifeofmyown.net/
Yesterday, don’t ask me how, I happened upon a recipe for Vegan Pho. Pho, as you might know, is a classic Vietnamese beef broth, made with beef, leeks, charred ginger root and a melange of spices. When serving, the broth is clarified (defatted) rice noodles cooked and added to the broth, fresh, thin slices of prime beef, fresh mint, basil and cilantro leaves. Serve with lime wedges, bean sprouts, siraicha and hoisin sauces. Quite elaborate for a dish that is a national country specialty, right?
I’ve never tried to make it but yesterday at our local Vietnamese grocery store, I picked up a pack of beef short ribs to add to the marrow bones I found at the butcher’s across the street from the frame shop I visited (that’s another story.)
So today, since it’s a Sunday, the sun brightening the day outdoors, I Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been interested in saori weaving for a long time, having seen it at a shop that taught this kind of Japanese weaving in my town years ago. The irregularity of the weaving and use of color appealed to someone like me who eschews structure when I can manage it and who also likes to be intuitive and observe as life unfolds.
A Japanese woman named Misao Jo invented/created this kind of weaving when she was fifty-seven years old and wanted to weave herself an obi sash. Her husband and sons built her a loom and she learned two things: a commercial tradesman pooh-poohed it as not being “flawless;” and an Obi merchant sold hers right away. Thus was born saori weaving. Read the rest of this entry »
My birthday comes a few days after Christmas every year. Because 2012 happened to be a milestone year for me, we found a place on the ocean in Truro on the Cape and our family gathered for a few days to visit, cook meals for each other and walk on the beach right outside our door.
M. put together snowflake garlands and C. helped her place paper red cardinals hopping around tiny white lights set in mason jars along the window sills making the place festive and elegant. Each took turns cooking for the rest of us; then another pair cleaned up afterwards. It worked out great with meals of shabu shabu, chap jae, ham and pea soup, ham sandwiches, delectable cheeses, huge salads with pears, pomegranate seeds and maple syrup laced dressing.
I took breakfast duty each day, making stacks of french toast, light oatmeal bread dipped in beaten eggs laced with vanilla, fragrant in a large electric skillet, mounds of tender, scrambled eggs with chopped scallions, crisp bacon on the side. And lots of hot coffee.
G. and M. went to pick up the lobsters and cape scallops for my birthday dinner. Afterwards, we had M.’s homemade coconut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting lit with candles. On the last day, after packing and loading the cars, we sat down to one last round of eggs benedict, made with warmed ham on toasted whole grain and cheese bread topped with tender poached eggs and generous dollops of hollandaise sauce made with Meyer lemon.
Sand, wind, water, salt. Lots of it everywhere. Thoughtful gifts abounded, the most touching of all was a DVD with voiceovers and music made by my daughters and granddaughters, including the littlest one at the end (Josie at 27 months old) saying “hap-py birth-day, gram-my”. The DVD movie did not come across like a “this is your life” kind of tribute which always seems to me like a valedictory farewell (okay, now you can go and sit somewhere.) Instead, it was a light-hearted celebration with lots of humor, flowers and food, good times shared together. I noticed a favorite suede jacket that I wore in college and wondered where it went to. There were comments from my blog too and a parade of the countries readers originate from, set to the “Star Wars” opening trumpet theme.
All in all, for an introverted, reclusive worrywart person and mother, the thoughtfulness and affection shared by everyone during this birthday holiday made us feel happy and content, especially me. And Josie’s innocent joyfulness at being near the ocean said it all: “O-cean! O-cean! SO Happy!” We are lucky to have such a wonderful family. And my thanks go to each and everyone who made this birthday holiday so meaningful and full of love.
It’s really amazing what you can learn by watching YouTube clips. I can see now how learning from watching a “show-and-tell”video is so much accessible and easier to grasp than merely reading recipes, for example. Our Christmas Dinner is on the English side this year, roasting a filet of beef and yorkshire pudding. I’ve made yorkshire pudding before in a large skillet where you cut up the puffed up creation into wedges and serve with the slices of roast beef and pass the gravy around.
I’ve also made popovers which is a favorite in our family and they are heavenly to see and eat, with a little sweet butter and some honey.That is, when the popovers rise and when they don’t stick to the pan. I even have special “popover baking pans.” Okay, so many of you will know that yorkshire pudding is identical to popovers. The word “pudding” makes us think it’s, well, something different. But it isn’t.
Anyhow, I started looking at some Youtube clips yesterday for how to make yorkshire pudding. It was really interesting with home videos of elderly ladies in very plain kitchens throwing the ingredients together in an old plastic bowl, scraping it around, putting lard into the pans to heat up before filling with batter half way up the muffin tins. The results were small, flat, small, flat little yorkshire puddings. They seemed to be very pleased by this (small, flat) tradition in their family, though. I moved on to other cooks who put the four ingredients, flour, egg, salt and milk, always making a “well” in the flour before adding the egg; some beating up the egg before mixing with the flour but always in that order. One let the batter sit for an hour before baking but I wasn’t sure why.
All used some kind of shortening (lard, golden crisco, vegetable oil) to layer the bottom of their muffin tins which they heated to smoking hot in the oven before taking back out to pour the batter in the muffin cups halfway. On the fourth clip, some guy said he liked his puffed up so he poured his batter all the way to the rim. That made sense to me too. And his started to look like what we know as popovers.
So if you are still reading, I’ve arrived at the final and most definitive process to make what they call sky-high yorkshire pudding (or popovers) every time. And you know what, it’s really different, although there are still only the four ingredients. This lesson truly demonstrates that cooking is sheer chemistry, and that’s all. So here goes.
In the first place, this is the first demonstration that mixed up the milk and three eggs FIRST with a mixer. Then beat in an extra EGG WHITE (a la souffles and such.) So the guy is beating up the milk and eggs with a mixer incorporating lots of AIR, right? THEN, he adds the flour, but only in little bits so that it gets incorporated little by little into the batter. ALL of the other recipes instructed you to make a well in the flour, add the egg, beaten or not, and mix it together into a PASTE (translate: NOT airy.) Then add the salt and milk to it. The difference, shall we say, is night and day.
But there’s more. After this light, airy batter is well mixed, put it into a container with a spout in the refrigerator OVERNIGHT. Something must happen to the gluten in the flour during this standing step. The next day, heat up your muffin cups with the grease in it until smoking hot, stir your batter lightly to incorporate after resting, and quickly pour the batter to the TOP. Apparently, the temperature deferential between the smoking hot oil in the pan and the very cold batter that’s been sitting causes an EXPLOSION which results in huge popovers! Put them into the oven and do not open the door for 25-45 minutes depending upon how many you’re baking.
These babies are amazing–HUGE puffed up tops almost toppling over from their bases and they pop right out of the pan too (couldn’t resist that.)
So, I’m excited about trying this out for our dinner. I have every confidence that they will turn out to be sky-high too. If you’d like to watch that YouTube clip too, here it is.
Oh, and he forgets to tell you how much flour to use so there’s a footnote underneath. If you’re like me, you’ll have to Google the conversion from milliliters of milk and grams of flour. I already did it so I’m happy to share with you that it’s about a cup and a half of each when all is said and done.
Enjoy!
Postscript: I’m happy to report that the recipe here will work well, as long as: a) you don’t put in too much oil in the shallow muffin pans so that oil spills over into the bottom of your oven at high heat and “catch fire” (that’s right!) and b) you let them bake at high heat 425-450 degrees for 15-20 minutes until they pop but don’t take them out yet, turn the heat down to 350 and let them bake for about 15 minutes longer. On Christmas Eve, they popped hugely (and the grease spilled over) but I took them out too early and they immediately deflated into little wisps of nothing.
Tonight (New Year’s Eve,) I made them again without the fussiness of making the batter and letting it sit overnight although I did whisk two eggs and 1 cup milk together first and added 1 cup flour/pinch of salt in small amounts into the liquid and let the batter sit on the counter while waiting to bake. I heated the oven to 450 degrees, sprayed Pam in the cups along the sides and used my deep, cone-shaped popover pan instead of the shallow muffin pan. I put a teaspoon of oil in the bottom of each cup and let the pan heat up in the oven for 10 minutes. As a precaution, I lined a cookie sheet with some aluminum foil and placed it on the lower rack underneath where the popover pan would go. I took the hot pan out and filled the cups almost to the top (less 1/8 inch) and the batter filled five cups, not six.
The popovers popped with huge heads in about 15 minutes; I turned down the heat without opening the oven door and let them cook about 15 minutes longer so that the popovers would actually bake. When I took them out, they came out easily and ratained their shape, crunchy outside with a smooth popover-y inside. Smeared with sweet butter and honey, they were sublime. In fact, now that this popover recipe has been tweaked (to death!) I have come to think about how they might serve as the main attraction for any meal–with a nice fruit salad with greens or a cup of soup. Mostly, people fight over the popovers (we split the fifth one.) Hope this will inspire you to try it yourself. . . and that you will enjoy this simple, delectable treat with self-satisfied smiles between bites: that’s how we enjoyed them tonight!
Do you know of things that seem to happen EVERY YEAR in your family while preparing for the holidays? In ours, it seems that the Christmas tree stand cannot be found. Anywhere. Each year, I vow to be sure to store it beside the lights so that the tree can be set up and the lights put on it. Without these two steps, we’re stymied. Usually the tree lights don’t work either.
So yesterday, while the weather was going at it in our town with an icy sleet-like snow, spitting ice bits, forming an invisible sheet of ice that kept you from moving very quickly from the front steps to the car, we looked high and low for the tree stand. By late afternoon, we had searched for it in the closets (3,) the basement, the barn, again in the basement but to no avail.
G. planned to go out to deliver the mince pies to family and neighbors leaving around 4:15 p.m. Unbeknownst to him, I had been on the phone upstairs calling around to Rocky Ace Hardware stores, Lowes, Jerry’s Hardware and found out that one Ace Hardware store had a metal tree stand and I asked him if he would kindly hold it for me: he said he would but that they closed at 5 p.m. on Sundays.
I put on my jacket, went outside on the slick ice on our driveway and noted that G.’s truck was still here. Of course, he had taken the Subaru because it has all wheel drive. Nonplussed, I called him on his cell phone and after about ten minutes, he picked me up and we headed Read the rest of this entry »
So today is Saturday and on a lighter note than in the past few posts, I’m going to describe the very cute mince pies that I made tonight. About a year ago, I was looking at the Williams Sonoma catalog which shows up pretty often. I usually avoid buying anything because the wares seem overpriced or meant for kitchens much more elaborate than mine. On that particular day though, I was taken by an appliance called the Breville pie maker. I had fantasies of making miniature chicken pot pies from leftovers, quick little apple pies for dessert from leftover fruit in the fridge.
I played around with it when it first arrived and then I put it on the back shelf in the pantry. I felt guilty about it a little bit but it wasn’t hundreds of dollars and I forgot about it. Over Thanksgiving, Read the rest of this entry »
mulberryshoots 