carrot soup with miso (and more)

this soup is a bit of a mash up: part Christopher Kimball’s Cookish and a whole lot of Smitten Kitchen

soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds carrots, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 large or 6 small garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
at least 2 tablespoon finely chopped or grated ginger

2 sprigs rosemary, chopped
4 cups carrot juice

1/4 - 1/2 cup white miso paste

shichimi togarashi (optional)

creme fraiche (optional)

pickled scallions

finely chop 4 green scallions and let them sit in a mixture of 6 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon of Kosher salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar.

to make

Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add carrots, onion and garlic sauté until onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add carrot juice, rosemary + ginger. Cover and simmer until carrots are tender when pierced, stirring occasionally, at least 30 minutes. while the soup is simmering make pickled scallions

Add 1/4 cup miso, then puree soup in batches in blender, or all at once with an immersion blender.

Taste the soup and season to taste with more miso and/or shichimi togarashi which will add heat.

I also whisked in 1/4 c of creme fraiche but that’s me, and I like things creamy.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with pickled scallions.

notes:

I am notorious for not measuring but rather cooking by taste.

It’s a problem and it works for me, so I suggest you consider using the spice measurements as a guideline and taste as you go.

You can omit the rosemary, use less garlic or ginger ~ it’s really up to you! The shichimi togarashi (Japanese 7 spice) adds heat quickly ~ the tiniest dash packs an interesting punch, but it may not be to your palette.

Finally, if you haven’t cooked with miso before it is salty delicious by nature ~ I added no additional salt to the stock but plenty of miso, one spoonful at a time.

A Birdcage is a Cage

A birdcage (or bird cage) is a cage designed to house birds as pets. 

When I was a child, I suffered from seasonal respiratory allergies. Acute asthmatic bronchitis, restricted my capacity to breathe, to engage in strenuous physical activity, to be outside. 

I was often isolated, imprisoned within the confines of my air- conditioned bedroom. Through the window glass, I heard my friends’ shrieks and laughter, but I was withdrawn from the experience, seemingly too frail to participate. 

It was during this time that I began to draw bird cages. Elaborate Escher-esque interiors: room upon room, one unfolding upon another. I used a ruler to delineate and precisely layer a series of stories, then “decorated” each room in diminutive detail. 

Antique bird cages are often popular as collector’ items or as household decor. Still, they are not suitable for housing live birds, being too small, improper shape, using unsafe materials or construction. 

Each of these interiors was multiply bound: a specific home, scaffolded within another hand-drawn exterior metal birdcage-like structure, contained within the pages of a spiral-bound A4 sketchbook. I can see the origin of my interest in considering constricted containers, exploring the edges, and remaking the same space over and 

over again. I believed that if I retold the story, I could change the story. I could set myself free. 

Although I never drew figures, I did write dialogue for the characters I envisioned living within these architectural spaces. 

Was I afraid that, like the caged inhabitants that I too was invisible? 

I needed to know my friends would remember me when I was well enough to emerge be in their company again. 

The amount of time the bird will spend in the cage each day is also a factor. 

When I was ten, I became imprisoned in another gilded cage. It began with another diagnosis: idiopathic scoliosis. A large spinal curve in my left lower back, with a complementary twist behind my right shoulder blade. 

I remember the orthopedist scrutinizing the glowing x-ray while my body shivered beneath a pilled cotton gown. He took red grease pencils, protractors, and rulers, precisely marking the silvery image like a geometry theorem. In less than 30 seconds, I became a by- product of these indelible, external markings; I felt myself vanish. 

For the next decade, I wore multiple back braces, twenty-three hours each day. Like a corset, each brace imprinted and abraded my skin. My body became a site of intervention, a problem to be solved. 

I longed to know myself as more than a collection of symptoms, and yet I knew no other way. Every day, I silenced that desire as I stuffed my torso in the plastic and metal enclosure, cinching the velcro straps tightly across my spine. 

In general, the larger and more active the bird, the larger the cage one should use. 

Of course, the years passed, and I got better. I got married.I became pregnant.

Before I knew I had a daughter or a son, I knew I was having a child, a child to be named in knowing that they would be a seeker of their knowledge. 

And on the day they went to college, I gave them a tiny birdcage of their own. One in which they could open the door and the bird could fly free. 

It is illegal in some countries to house a pet bird in a cage that does not permit it to spread its wings. 

the art of mending

Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will mend the earth at the same time ~ Yoko Ono

I use my email inbox as a filing system of sorts: marking things “unread” as means first to tag, then retrieve in another time...

But really, who am I kidding?

My method is a disorganized, quirky habit masquerading as a system only unto me.

Until it isn’t…

And elegies begin to emerge.

Hidden jewels that resurface and reverberate above the daily doomscroll patiently waiting to be revealed.

Such is Yoko Ono’s “Mend Piece,” a work that I became familiar with over a year ago in Improvised Life:

As an exhibition, the viewer is invited to enter a white room with a white table strewn with fragments of broken cups to be mended with scissors and tape, rubber cement, and twine. After mending, the pieces are displayed on white shelves. The viewer becomes the maker, experiencing the art through the process of their participation. “Mend Piece” encourages the viewer to become the participant, to transform broken fragments into objects that both reveal as well as repair the violence of their rupture. The quality of the mender’s touch becomes integral to the making of meaning ~ a silent, collective healing.

The whiteness is not lost on me…

Yoko Ono writes:

“MEND PIECE is a wish piece. You might think you’re just mending a cup, but you’re actually mending something within you. The process of mending is the experience. ”

It’s been almost ten years since I got sober, but in so many ways that time feels reminiscent of where we are now. How does one begin the process of being and doing the things we have always done, but with fresh eyes and an awareness of the work we have never really known?

How I stopped drinking, the steps I took, are for another story, but what I can say, was that the process began a journey, and so too, a gradual return to light.

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. So too sobriety, for I had to relearn everything. I had to begin again.

Then as now, it began with a series of unseen acts of mending: sewing the many badges on my child’s scouting sash. Running stitches that had come undone under the seam of a collar. The hemming of trousers just slightly too long. A few small repairs.

And slowly, that light and my life became brighter, although I knew not everything that would be illuminated along the way.

Which is how feel again in this spectacular now, and I ask myself: what is it exactly I am mending?

Before the possibility of healing, I must continue to sit with my uncomfortability. Among other things, I must address my white privilege and my complicity, in ways I simply never understood. It’s work I can only assume for myself, and in time in the company of other white bodies, but is not my place to be a leader. I will make mistakes and I will continue to be teachable. I can pick up the shards, and examine how the broken edges might begin to come together…it will be a deliberate work in process, and it is how I will continue to be just so.

cold things: two noodles to know

CASHEW SESAME NOODLES

INGREDIENTS

1. For sauce

   • 2 large garlic cloves, chopped

   • 3 tablespoons soy sauce

   • 1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar

   • 1/4 cup Asian sesame oil

   • 3/4 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes, or to taste

   • 1 teaspoon sugar

   • 1/2 cup salted roasted cashews

   • 1/3 cup water

   1 pound thin spaghetti

   garnish: chopped salted roasted cashews and fresh coriander sprigs

PREPARATION

1. Make sauce:

   1. In a blender blend sauce ingredients with salt and pepper to taste until smooth. Sauce may be made 3 days ahead and chilled, covered. Bring sauce to room temperature and stir before using.

   2. Just before serving, in a 6-quart kettle bring 5 quarts salted water to a boil and cook spaghetti until al dente. In a colander drain spaghetti and rinse well under cold water. Drain spaghetti well and in a bowl toss with sauce and chopped coriander.

2. Garnish sesame noodles with cashews and coriander.

This is the most endlessness forgivable recipe, in heavy rotation since 1995. Potluck perfection.

Make it your own by adding shredded rotisserie chicken or perhaps some shrimp. Diced red peppers or shredded carrots could also be nice ~ YIELD Serves 6 to 8 as a side dish

from Alison Roman’s newsletter on Substack

SECRET INGREDIENT PASTA SALAD 

1 lb rigatoni ounces of pasta

Kosher salt,

freshly ground pepper

1⁄4 cup olive oil, plus more
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

crushed red pepper flakes

1 pound any type of tomatoes (I like the smaller ones on the vine),

quartered1⁄2 cup sun-dried tomatoes (!), chopped, sliced, whatever
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1⁄2 red onion, sliced (not too thin)
Coarsely grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

1. Cook pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until just al dente; drain and drizzle with a little olive oil to prevent noodles from sticking.

2. Meanwhile, combine onion and vinegar in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper, let sit while everything else cooks.

3. Heat 1⁄4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook, swirling the skillet occasionally until the garlic is tender and just starting to brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Add crushed red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Cook, tossing occasionally until the fresh tomatoes are just burst and juicy (you can use a spatula or wooden spoon to encourage them to break down if they started out especially firm), 5 to 8 minutes.

5. Add pasta and tomato mixture to the bowl with the onions. Drizzle with a bit more olive oil and season again with salt, pepper and your spicy something if you like. Toss, toss, toss until every piece of pasta is evenly coated. Let it sit for 10 minutes or so and toss it again. Think of it as marinated pasta.

6. You can eat it immediately, but it’s truly better after a few hours, cold or at room temp. This is perfect “eat out of a container” food at the beach, on the grass, wherever. Top with lots of cheese before eating and drink with something cold and effervescent.

Serves 6 (or less if you’re into leftovers)

garlic scape pesto

• 10 garlic scapes, finely chopped

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan (to taste and texture)

• 1/3 cup slivered almonds (you could toast them lightly, if you’d like)

• 1/2 cup olive oil (more or less)

• sea salt

Put the scapes, 1/3 cup of the cheese, almonds and half the olive oil in the bowl of a food processor (or use a blender or a mortar and pestle).

Whirl, chop and blend all the ingredients ~ then add the remainder of the oil and, if you want, more cheese.

If you like the texture, stop; if you’d like it a little thinner, add some more oil. Season with salt.

Smear your pesto on broiled bread, roasted chicken, grilled scallops; toss with pasta or (my unadulterated favorite) eat directly from a spoon ~ YUM!

If you’re not going to use the pesto immediately, press a piece of plastic against the surface to keep it from oxidizing. The pesto can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days or packed airtight and frozen for a couple of months, by which time tomatoes should be at their juciest.

yield: 1 cup

Key Lime Bars

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CRUST:

• 1 (11-ounce) box vanilla wafers

• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

• 8 tablespoons/113 grams unsalted butter, melted

FOR THE FILLING:

• 1 ¾ cup/420 milliliters condensed milk (1 14-ounce can plus 1/2 cup)

• 5 large egg yolks

• ¾ cup/180 milliliters Key lime or conventional lime juice

• 1 teaspoon lime zest

FOR THE TOPPING:

• 1 cup/240 milliliters cold heavy cream

• 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

PREPARATION

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-inch square pan with parchment paper, leaving a 2-inch overhang on two sides. In a food processor, combine vanilla wafers and sugar, and pulse until you have fine crumbs. Add butter and process until evenly moistened. Transfer mixture to prepared pan and press it down into an even layer. Bake until fragrant and a shade darker, 15 to 17 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: In a medium bowl, whisk together condensed milk, egg yolks, lime juice and lime zest.

3. Pour filling over crust (it’s O.K. if it’s still warm) and bake until the filling is set, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely, then cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

4. Use a sharp knife to release edges. Using the parchment overhang, carefully lift and transfer the bar to a cutting board. Just before serving, whip heavy cream and confectioners’ sugar until soft peaks form. Top bars with whipped cream and cut into 16 squares to serve.

may day

Is it just me, or does the phrase May Day swing wildly between hopeful and ominous? Perhaps it’s more a connection of our current moment, a taut thread revealed beneath the surface of this year, although I can’t be sure…

In her recent essay, Katy Simpson Smith explores a similar meeting in Eudora Welty’s work and life as intertwined with her own. Confluence. Two rivers merging, inexorably, magically, disturbingly. Fate gently takes the reins from Chance. 

I’ve always been curious about this concept of word twinning, and its sensuous duality of meaning: to contemplate the delicate balance and slippage of seeming opposites. 

kneading | needing

seeding | ceding

May Day | mayday

Of late, I’ve been experiencing this yoking all around me, this time that I can only equate with living life magnified. I’ve noticed that everything I loved before, I hold all the more dear and that my darkest fears loom even larger. 

Between the unknown and known, there is a distinct space, of fate taking the reins of seeming chance. In yoga, it is known as the dance between karma and lila, of action and play, and how we are always invited to participate fluently between both.

The question becomes, what will you create?

Consider the humble lily of the valley: both the delicacy of its bouquet but equally a highly toxic, fatal flora. It is symbolic of all the tiny things that invoke sweetness commingled with the bitter. I experience a similar foreboding each time I venture out to the grocery store: what was once banal is now fraught with anxiety. Mayday

Historically, the tradition of May Day has been one of passage, a celebration honoring both the fertility of the world as well as the laborers themselves. On a personal note, the month is swollen with this doubleness as it marks both my birth, as well as signifying my labor as a mother. In and of itself, it is magical, and yet the process of alchemy always produces dark in conjunction with light, a potent keepsake for we need one to see and appreciate the other. 

Frederick Buechner reminds us that these are the moments one is called to listen to one’s life: to see it for the fathomless mystery that it is…because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace. 

It is the irony of the earth deeply inhaling, while the virus chokes the breath from those most afflicted. What I’ve come to understand is there is no normal life or no new normal life. Rather, there is only life and in this collective pause, in the process of slowing down, we have the opportunity to notice, to connect, to participate. It’s still life, and we keep going.

May Day

favorite granola

I (mostly) follow this recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s my father’s daughter

2 cups whole rolled oats (not instant or steel-cut)

½ cup raw, whole almonds 

¼ cup pumpkin seeds

¼ cup sunflower seeds

½ tsp tandoori masala (or garam masala)

¼ tsp + ground cinnamon

¼ tsp coarse salt

½ cup real maple syrup

3 Tbsp light agave nectar (or honey)

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

½ cup + dried cranberries (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 F

Stir together the oats, almonds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, spices, and salt in a large bowl.  Combine the maple syrup, agave, and vegetable oil in a small bowl and then mix with the dry ingredients. Spread the granola out on a non stick sheet pan or a regular sheet pan covered with parchment paper and coated with a little vegetable oil. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until evenly browned.

Remove the pan from the oven, then simply spread out granola (or push it together into clumps) and let it cool. If you’d like, stir cranberries directly into granola, or add as you’d like whenever you’re hungry.

Keeps well for 2-3 months in an airtight container, but I doubt it’ll last that long..

cauliflower + kimchi "fried rice"

from Gwyneth Paltrow, It’s All Easy and this is SO easy

1 bag frozen cauliflower rice (thank you TJ)

2 tablespoons neutral oil

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1 small bunch lacinato kale, ribs removed, leaves sliced into ribbons, or whatever greens you have on hand

2-3 scallions, thinly sliced

½ cup chopped kimchi

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

3 tablespoons tamari

Heat both oils in a large nonstick saute pan over high heat until hot. Add the kale and cauliflower and saute until the kale is wilted and the cauliflower is beginning to brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and mix in the scallions, kimchi, cilantro and tamari. Taste for seasoning.

If you’d like to add a fried egg, this is the moment ~ my friend Dina has encouraged me to order an egg spoon. I’ll let you know how it goes …

Raspberry Granola Bars

from food52, because you’re never too old for pop tarts, or after school snacks

• 1 cup (115g) pecan halves, coarsely chopped

• 1 1/2 cups (190g) all-purpose flour

• 1 1/4 cups (115g) old-fashioned rolled oats

• 1/3 cup (65g) sugar

• 1/3 cup (75g) packed dark brown sugar

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, melted

• 1 cup (320g) raspberry jam

1. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C), with a rack in the center. Butter an 8-inch (20cm) square baking pan. Spread the pecans on a rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven until lightly browned and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Let cool.

2. Whisk together the flour, oats, sugars, salt, baking soda, and cooled pecans in large bowl. Pour in the melted butter, and using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, stir until well combined.

3. Press two-thirds of the oat mixture (about 3 cups/470g) into an even, firmly packed layer on the bottom of the baking pan. Using an offset or rubber spatula, spread the raspberry jam evenly across the surface of the dough, leaving a 1/4-inch border uncovered at the edges (the jam will melt and spread closer to the edges). Evenly sprinkle the remaining oat mixture over the jam.

4. Bake until the top is golden brown, about 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. Let the granola bars cool completely in the pan on a rack, about 3 hours. (Or go ahead and sneak one while they’re still warm—they’ll be a little crumbly but so good.)

kitchen sink still life(s)

Being at home with my thoughts has inspired me to consider older work, to review unfinished projects.: to question when and why I stopped considering myself to be an artist?

The murmuration of making continues to swell…

For now, I’m allowing myself simply to not overthink my process, rather to ”sketch” with color and light.

Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts….

seeking solace, rather than solution

I bear burdens

they begin to be remembered 
as gifts, goods, a basket

of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me

in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.

(final fragment from Denise Levertov’s Stepping Westward) 

This was the week I began to crumble, pulled towards the overwhelm of the unknown more so than to allow myself to shelter into the source of my strength ... this is the week I may have watched way too much Ozark.. It’s kind of like when you have children: for better for worse, you make a lot of mistakes with your first, your starter child, because you’ve never done this before. So too pandemics.

When Evan was born, I received sage advice from their pediatrician, “There will be days when you feel like killing your child. I mean don’t do it, but know that it’s okay to feel that way.” Becoming a mother, getting sober, ending a marriage ... everyone’s life is filled with firsts, and no one said the act of living was going to be easy...but it’s still a path. It’s messy and complicated and all the more extraordinary, because it is still life.

We all have a path marked and measured with both stumbling blocks, as well as stepping stones. I can remind myself to be gentle, and that any experiences can be met with a quiet determination, rather than as merely something to be endured. It’s a practice; it’s my practice, that allows me to begin again.

This morning Noah and I are savoring this sour dough, for there are blessings in our burdens, in the bitter and the sweet. We are choosing to be gentle for “in fragrance, (we) can eat as (we) go.”

it's all in the char

I’m currently grocery shopping less frequently, preferring to buy hardier vegetables in bulk, relying on what I have on hand to create flavor and technique. Roasting vegetables has always been my go to, but lately I’ve been preferring to char. Broccoli and green beans are the perfect complement to pasta, stir fries, or on their own. The trick is high heat, a heavy bottom pan, and patience. Allowing the vegetables to sear in an even layer, undisturbed, gives them time to blister without cooking all the way through, so they retain some crunch. You might begin with this recipe for Blistered Broccoli Pasta with Walnuts, Pecorino + Mint, from the NYT, then adapt the technique however you’d like.

INGREDIENTS

• Kosher salt and black pepper

• 12 ounces riccioli, fusilli or other short pasta

• ½ cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling

• ½ cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

• ¼ to ½ teaspoon + red-pepper flakes

• 1 bunch broccoli or cauliflower (about 1 1/2 pounds untrimmed), florets roughly chopped and stalks peeled and sliced 1/4-inch thick

• 1 lemon, zested (about 1 teaspoon) then quartered

• ½ cup grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan, plus more for serving

• 1 cup packed fresh mint leaves or parsley leaves

PREPARATION

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions until al dente.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Add the walnuts and red-pepper flakes, if using, and cook, stirring, until golden and fragrant, about 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer walnuts and red-pepper flakes to a small bowl. Season walnuts with a little salt and pepper.

3. Add the broccoli to the skillet and toss to coat in the oil. Shake the skillet so broccoli settles in an even layer. Cook, undisturbed, 2 minutes. Toss and shake to arrange in an even layer again and cook, undisturbed, another 2 to 3 minutes; season with salt and pepper and remove from heat.

4. Drain pasta and add to the skillet along with the lemon zest, cheese, toasted walnuts and half the mint; toss to combine. Divide among plates or bowls and top with remaining mint, more cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Serve with lemon wedges, squeezing juice on top, if desired.

TO CHAR GREEN BEANS:

Trim 1 lb green beans into 1” pieces. Heat 1 1/2 tbsp oil in a heavy based skillet over high heat until almost smoking. Add the beans, spreading out to cover base. Leave for 1 minute. Quick stir, spread out, cook for 30 seconds. Stir, then leave for 30 seconds, then repeat once more (so 2 1/2 minutes in total cook time) until beans are charred but tender crisp (not withered and floppy). I usually add red pepper flakes, garlic and ginger during the last minute for extra flavor, then toss with a grinding of sea salt. If you like, here is a recipe for a ground pork (or whatever meat you have on hand) stir fry … I think red peppers would be lovely in this too.

savory matzo brei

browned onions + sriracha = fork worthy matzo brei

• 2 + sheets matzo

• 2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter / olive oil

• 2 + large eggs

• Large pinch fine sea salt, more to taste

• Large pinch black pepper

• small-ish sliced onion

set aside two eggs and two sheets of matzo per serving. Start by running the matzo under cold water to soften it slightly. (Some people skip this step, or take it further by soaking the matzo. It all depends on how much crunch you like.)

Beat the eggs in a bowl. (If you like it fluffier, add another egg.) Add the matzo to the eggs, breaking up the sheets, and season with salt and pepper. Set this aside while you make the onions.

To make the browned onions, heat a pan without any oil. Add a small sliced onion (or some sliced scallions or a shallot), and let it cook for a couple of minutes without moving it. This gives it a deep-brown color at the edges, but doesn’t fully caramelize it or make it mushy. Add a slug or two of oil or a chunk of butter, then toss the onions energetically to soften them slightly. Now add the egg-matzo mixture to the pan. Let it cook, stirring occasionally, until done to taste, usually 1 to 3 minutes. Serve it all with loads of pepper and Siracha sauce, then sprinkle with some flaky salt on top.

Skip the syrup! With all those onions, sweet isn’t where this matzo brei wants to be.

I don't know what I would do should anything happen to you...

It had been two weeks. Two weeks since my boyfriend and I isolated ourselves from one another. Two weeks since our respective children had come home from college, and were subsequently both symptom-free.

March 31. I awoke to a text, “Can’t wait to hold you tonight.”

Illness and isolation are the fraught and familiar territory of my childhood. Diagnosed with severe asthma, I would seasonally succumb to the confines of my air conditioned bedroom, waiting for my fragile lungs to heal. My world was  reduced to listening to the laughter and shrieks just outside my window. Oh how I loathed those endless summer days. I never imagined I would relive such an experience again although this time, I am not alone.

The landscape of our current quarantine is singularly and collectively new. It challenges us to question and affirm our individual decisions about survival. Last week I wanted to believe that I was terminally unique, that Matilda’s Rules did not apply to me. I wanted to be with my boyfriend.

And then, Andrew Cuomo announced that his brother had tested positive for COVID-19. I didn’t want to listen, but had no choice, because “love sometimes needs to be a little smarter than reactive,” he said.

Love in the time of Coronavirus means being willing to sacrifice. In my gut, I began to question what only that morning had felt so true. Maybe our decision wasn’t right, only righteous. 

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts,” I texted. Rather than try to convince me otherwise, John called me. He told me he had just found a letter from his grandfather while deployed overseas. It was a letter he had written to the woman who would someday become John’s grandmother.

“I hope you don’t get that terrible disease, it certainly is claiming a lot of people. Really dear, I don’t know what I would do if anything should happen to you.”

The letter was dated 1918.

Silence.

“We have to wait till the end of the month to be together.”

“I know,” he said. 

As much as we wanted to justify our actions we could not. And truthfully, how can I ask my children to do what I am not willing to do myself? It’s simple. I can’t. We can’t. Because no one is immune.  We must all lead by example, we must trust in the wisdom that sometimes intimacy is distance. And sometimes true love is worth waiting for.

John O’Donohue wrote, “Wherever there is distance, there is longing. Yet there is some strange wisdom in the fact of distance. It is interesting to remember that the light that sustains life here on earth comes from elsewhere. Light is the mother of life. Yet the sun and the moon are not on the earth; they bless us with light across the vast distances. We are protected and blessed in our distance. Were we nearer to the sun, the earth would be consumed in its fire; it is the distance that makes the fire kind. …There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging.”

And so for now, we wait. Every day we meet at the park in Fairport where years ago I had my first kiss. John and I take socially distanced walks, separated between my two Newfoundlands. As of this week, we wear masks. Our path snakes along the Erie Canal. A delicate dance between two people who are momentarily afraid to touch ~ it is our courtship.

Wherever there is distance, so too there is longing. But we stay in presence, because we believe in our future.

Bridge

I had hoped to make it back to the Eastman Museum to take in Bea Nettles “Harvest of Memory” one more time…a loss as trivial as it profound for a body of work that deserves to be seen.

In so many ways Nettle’s work is the perfect visual trope of our current time. Her domestic narratives  makes  visible the maternal, and what it means to create and shelter in place before that phrase became a part of our vernacular. As these days of isolation continue, I recall the emotional overwhelm of when I first became a mother: moments of terror and delight, moments both fleeting and precious. It was the realization that the landscape of my life would never be the same, and yet it would continue to be.

Nettles exposes the messiness of what it means to be a mother, to put one’s personal desires aside for a greater good. “Balancing priorities and making compromise(s).” Rather than a dilemma it’s where we all find ourselves in this present moment, trusting that this compression of life and time has purpose and profound meaning. Collectively, we find ourselves on the bridge to the other side, when we begin to be again.

The exhibition catalogue has become my bridge to experience Bea Nettles’ work, and its purchase  allows me to support the artist and the institution. You might wish to buy one yourself, or someday I would be happy to lend you my own. 

second start(er)

Full disclosure: beyond being a beautiful image, my first sourdough starter was an epic fail. It never began to bubble or rise. It never started. 

So too many of my initial naive thoughts about what this pandemic pause might be: the perfect opportunity to organize, to “make a plan” for the days and weeks to come. Things fell apart pretty quickly: while cleaning my closet I discovered I owned 13 cream coloured and 15 black turtleneck sweaters. I texted my boyfriend. “I think this is a problem,” and because he is a wise ass, his response was, “I think you have some shopping to do.” 

There comes the moment when you realize your pandemic flexing is over, when you come to terms that binding oneself to busyness is merely an attempt to not be overwhelmed by the waves of sadness, fear and even rage. There is nothing perfect about a pandemic, except the perfect moment, the only moment to get quiet, and to find grace in all that we do have, what it is we can embrace, and all that even in times of isolation, we still have something essential to offer.

I think that’s why I cook, because at least a recipe “offers the solace of a plan. follow the steps, measure carefully, and even the worst failures are minor and contained.” (Molly Fischer)

Now more than ever, it is critical to be honest with ourselves ~ to welcome our feelings, neither as successes or failures, but merely to honor where we stand. Regardless, we are still here. 

So here is my second confession: I purchased a live sourdough starter from breadtopia because clearly a pandemic was not the time to pretend I am a scratch homesteader. Hopefully this second start will be a trace, a taste of remembrance of what I did, when I could seemingly do nothing. A return to what I know, what I have always known, my recipes for (re)collection.

ginger carrot soup

minimally adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Easy

2 T coconut oil

1 large onion (halved and thinly-sliced)

salt

2-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2-4 T chopped fresh ginger

2 t cumin

3/4 t ground coriander

1 t karma masala

1 lb + carrots, peeled + cut into 1 in pieces

32 oz chicken or vegetable stock/bone broth (

1/2 c creme fraiche or sour cream

freshly ground pepper

Heat the coconut oil over medium heat in a heavy bottom saucepan. Add onion, large pinch salt. Cover the pot and sauté over low heat for about 20 minutes, until onion is very soft and sweet.

Add the garlic and ginger, sauté for 1 minute, then add spices. Sauté for another minute; add the carrots and continue to stir until everything is combined and beginning to meld together. Add stock, and another large pinch of salt. Bring mixture to a boil, then gently simmer for at least 20 minutes, until carrots are very tender.

Remove from heat, add dairy, then blend the soup in the pot with an immersion blender. Season to taste with additional salt and lots of fresh pepper.

Pantry notes: The original recipe does not include sour cream/creme fraiche so add or omit as you’d like. The amount of spice (including ginger + garlic) have already been increased. It’s not overwhelming at all but again, know your personal heat preferences and adapt accordingly. If you happen to be making during a pandemic and there is no fresh ginger to be found, I discovered jarred minced ginger (readily available in the Asian section) is a lovely substitute.

still life

for even in this stillness, it’s still life…

Ever since I was a child, I have constructed still life tableau ~ tiny worlds within worlds, sometimes hiding in plain sight, more often tucked into cozy containers . My mother presented the following to me when they last moved (note the rendition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The First Four Years as it may be my first artists book):

Still life is a practice I continue to this day, although now I consider these arrangements more to be gatherings. Traces bearing witness to memory and moments of time. I am finding solace in these cozy corners of my home for while I currently shelter in place, they remind me of journeys near and far. They allow me to “dwell in possibility.” (Emily Dickinson)

We stay still, but even in stillness, it is still life.

sweet (and heat)

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

One of my favorite yoga Teacher Training exercises comes from allowing students to trust their voice, to teach from their heart, and to share what they already know to be true. Thank you to Michele Thompson for sharing your family recipe, thank you for your sweetness.

Preheat oven 350° + Grease/Spray bundt pan

Cream:

1/4 lb softened butter

1 c sugar

1 t vanilla

2 eggs

Add:

2 c flour

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 pint sour cream

Filling | Topping:

1/3 c sugar

1 heaping t cinnamon

(pinch of Tandoori Masala seasoning powder, optional)

Spoon half the batter into prepared pan and spread to the edges. Sprinkle 2/3 of cinnamon sugar filling. Spoon in remaining batter (and spread to the edges again). Sprinkle remaining cinnamon sugar filling. Bake 30-32 minutes.

Pork Ginger Soup with Ginger and Toasted Garlic

Oh Alison Roman, let me count the ways I love you ….

reprinted from the NY Times

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tablespoons neutral oil, grapeseed, vegetable or canola

• 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

• 1 pound ground pork

• 1 ½ teaspoons red-pepper flakes, plus more to taste

• Kosher salt and black pepper

• 4 cups chicken broth

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari, plus more to taste

• 1 large bunch pea leaves or spinach, thick stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped

• 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger (from about a 1 1/2-inch piece)

• 6 ounces rice noodles (thick- or thin-cut), cooked and drained

• ½ medium red, yellow or white onion or 3 scallions, thinly sliced

• 1 cup cilantro, leaves and tender stems, coarsely chopped

PREPARATION

1. Heat vegetable oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium.

2. Add garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the slices become nicely toasted and golden brown, 2 or 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove garlic and set aside.

3. Add pork and red-pepper flakes to the pot, and season with salt and pepper. Cook, using a wooden spoon or spatula to break up large pieces, until the pork is well browned and in small bite-size pieces, 5 to 8 minutes.

4. Add chicken broth, soy sauce and 4 cups water. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5 to 8 minutes or so, until the pork is very tender and the broth tastes impossibly good. (Give it a taste and season with salt, pepper, red-pepper flakes and soy sauce, if you want.) Add pea leaves, half of the onion slices, and all of the ginger. Stir to wilt the leaves.

5. To serve, ladle soup over noodles and top with remaining onion, cilantro and toasted garlic.