the scent of water

Small solitudes.

 

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”   ~ Tennessee Williams

In a journal he kept of his Greenlandic expeditions, Knud Rasmussen quoted an Inuit shaman as saying that all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in the great solitudes. The romantic in me fancies this to be true, the pragmatist laughs and thinks that three years roaming around the edges of Greenland isn't going to get anyone's washing done.  And you can find, Mr. Shaman, a surprising amount of wisdom in washing.

Still.  Sometimes my yearning for that kind of silence grows so strong it becomes painful.   I am no more likely to leave my family than Knud was likely to stay home with his, so where are the places, I wonder, for people like me?  

The only kind of answer I have found so far is inside the small solitudes.  The books, the journals, the wanderings of the imagination.  A solo meal.  Time with my camera.  Whether these things will remain enough, I have my doubts, but they are, at the very least, a great point for departure.

I've never been a blog of the day before.

 

It's  rather exciting, and yes, I am being a big fat show-off about it. Unashamedly so, because who wouldn't be excited about being associated in any kind of way with such a fun and funny movie?  (if you haven't seen the trailer for Julie + Julia, please do go and have a look - the scene where Julia is sitting in a restaurant talking to her husband about her talent for eating makes me laugh out loud.  Every time.) 

If you are visiting here expecting an honest-to-goodness food blog and are now wondering what on earth it is you have found, don't worry.  No-one else knows either.   This post probably explains things as best as they can be explained, but really, just make of it what you will.

PS: - Could that apron above be any more perfect?

Some things that are only mildly related to some other things.

  

Art is contagious.  ~ Brenda Ueland

I like the idea of art as a virus, infecting first the DNA of its creator and then rapidly spreading to whoever else is fortunate enough to cross its path.  There are some days when I wonder if there is any kind of point to art, and then there are days when I wonder if there is any kind of point without it?

There was a man who walked into the front garden of the house in my early morning dream and picked a bouquet of blue hydrangeas growing there.  He brought them inside as a present for our table, and to offer a warning of the danger waiting outside our front gate. Then he disappeared. Cheeky sod, I thought when I woke up, and decided that he must have come from my dream book.  His name is Luca and I am not quite sure whether anyone really knows if his heart is good or bad.

I am buying Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence as a birthday present for myself next month, partly because I love that title, and partly because in one of the lives I will almost certainly never live I hang out by myself in an isolated cabin in the Scottish Highlands.  If I can't have that particular dream then surely the next best thing is to be infected by the work of someone who can.

I'll make this as quick and painless as possible, which is to say not very.

Day 7 and we made it.  Pretty much.  Budget almost nearly kept, to within 5% anyway, which I'd call a win. I might even call it a first. 

Judging by the photos I took, it looks like we lived off snack food for the week, but we ate actual meals too.  Breakfast was mostly porridge or homemade muesli, an egg every now and then.  Lunches were sandwiches made from homemade bread, pizza rolls, bacon butties, often accompanied by fruit and popcorn, and I did succumb to cherry and chocolate chip cookie overload on one occasion or three.  You eat one and see if you can blame me.

Dinners: Devilled meatballs, roast chicken, chicken risotto, spinach and ricotta cannelloni, penne bolognaise, creamy tomato chicken, and pot roast beef.  There was even an apple crumble with cream, and a homemade peach icecream with rice pudding thrown in there too. Yes, it was rather a feast.

 

Which was the revelation.  I'm all for the organic thing, sustainability and animal welfare being rather hard to argue against, and there has been an immensely pleasurable lack of packaging hanging around the house too.  I don't much enjoy the sanctimonius whiff that seems to hang over organic stores sometimes, but maybe that is just the incense. The real epiphany came Saturday night when I answered the usual round of "what's for dinner?" with "I don't know.  Chicken something."

Because I didn't know.  None of my usual combination of recipe ingredients were in the cupboards, and the recipe books weren't of much help either.  Going to the supermarket for a top-up would really screw up the whole experiment, so I had no choice. I winged it.  Pulled out some ingredients I thought might like each other, including the stunted but still nutritious rainbow chard that has been sitting in a pot on my patio forever, and made up dinner.

Going into my pantry and finding quality ingredients there, ingredients that were costing me less than my usual chaotic style of medicore shopping, using them in a nutritious (and super yum too, she says modestly) meal that isn't in any recipe book anywhere and could only have come out of my kitchen in this season on that particular night - it was magic.  Pure and simple magic.

So the experiment continues and morphs into a lifestyle.  I am home-cook, hear me roar.

What I lack in organisation, I make up for in colour.

The courier arrived with my new old sewing machine when I was in the middle of vacumming the dining room, supervising homework, preparing dinner, and so forth.  Obviously I dropped everything to see if the machine would actually sew one piece of fabric to another.  And another.  Etc. 

 

Eilidh wants lessons and in the meantime makes do with paper and staples.  Or plastic and sellotape.  I think she had 20 such outfits in her wardrobe at last count.  I am of the firm opinion that she spent her 9 months in the womb planning all the things she would wear once she escaped into the real world. 

Random photo of dried roses.  I keep planning on using them to decorate cupcakes but have not yet been able to bring myself to such a level of sacrifice.

I almost gave up yesterday.

Because I'm good at that.  Why spend another evening cooking when I could be reading a book?  I was tired and sad and just didn't want to pull out another couple of meals from the (still surprisingly well stocked) pantry. 

One sleep and a defrosted portion of bread dough later, and I managed to tick off another day (5 down and 2 to go).  I confess there has been one last minute run to the supermarket for milk, one for my favourite English Breakfast tea (you didn't really expect me to go without did you?) and I bought the children a small treat this afternoon to celebrate the beginning of winter holidays.  It sounds a lot, put like that, but for me it's a minor miracle.

Here comes the rain again.

 

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.  ~ Chinese proverb.

No food pictures today but never fear, we are still eating.  Cookies mostly.  Instead, I've been trying to take some semi-attractive photos of a couple of books that make good cold weather reading (This Cold Heaven, and Winter's Bone, if you're interested), but the light has not been co-operating and so I am stealing these few slices of summer from my northern friends instead.  It's been a cold, hard winter.

(I dreamed a few nights ago that I was writing a book called A Strange Row of Trees, which my unconscious self thought was the most genius title ever.  Lord knows what it was about.  I also dreamed I was narrowly escaping burning meteors and aliens in tiny spaceships, so, you know.  Maybe not.)

1. a little cheer, 2. yarrow, 3. Peonies and lilacs, 4. wild things: gratitude 241.365

If the universe was a sentient being, it would so want you to make these.

 

Cherry chocolate chip cookies.  They are crisp, earthy, tart, sweet, and maybe even a little divine. I made 92 of the wee creatures, and my children rose up and called me blessed.

(I used this recipe, doubled it, and replaced some of the chocolate with cherries.  One day I'm going for Heather's suggestion of dried cherries in a sausage and wild mushroom risotto.  It's officially on my things to eat before I die list.)

These, not such a hit.  Supposedly you just melt some parmesan cheese with sesame seeds and Bob's your Uncle.  They look fine, they just taste so very parmesany. The universe says, meh.

I am so the wrong person for this assignment.

You would think after 15 years of being the main grocery shopper/meal provider for the family, I would be somewhat proficient at this job by now.  And you would be so very wrong.  I can cook well, yes, but shop well?  No. Unequivocably no.

It looks easy, when I see other people do it,  it looks like something I should be able to accomplish - just write a menu and shop to it, yes? - but I always fail at getting it right.  Always.  It's the myriad of food possibilities available, I think.  They overwhelm me.  I get side tracked by the organic dried cherries and forget the toilet paper.

Still, I valiantly made my way to the organic store this morning, clue-less and list-less, but willing to give it a go.  The store is not large, and was quite low on fresh produce (perhaps Monday is not the wisest time for a shopping trip) but I managed to get meat for the week, some baking supplies, a bit of fruit, some cheese and milk and butter.  So far the total is $224.18 + plus another $26.75 at an on-line specialty store for gelatine leaves and canneloni (yes, yes, over the top expensive for pasta, but have you ever tasted the genuine Italian article?  If I knew of a way to write ecstatic food loving noises without sounding like I'm on drugs, now is the time I would do it. )

$99 left in the piggy bank, and a bit of fruit and veg and milk left to buy.  Probably also half a dozen other important items that I will forget about until after the last cent is gone.  But still, we're looking okay thus far. Now all I need to do is figure out what one actually does with dried cherries...

Apparently, what I mostly do is ramble.

According to the newly added category cloud in the side bar.  I put it there because I like to trawl through the different categories on other people's sites, depending on my particular mood that day, and thought it was time enough to have one of my own.  I didn't really assign categories before the end of last year, so it's not comprehensive, but never mind because, really, I think  it's rather safe to say that it's all pretty much just one big ramble.

 

I can't remember any longer how I found my way to this mujadara recipe, and even less why I tried it (just lentils, rice, and onions?  how good could that be?) but I thank all things foodie that I did.  It's my new favourite lunch. Truly delicious (though you really do have to heed her instructions re. cooking the onions long and slow, it's absolutely crucial).  You can see what I thought of it by the empty plate above -  I had made two servings, one for that day, one for the next.  Hah, yeah, good joke. 

I also thought an email I received today was a bit of a good joke the first time I read it, which brings me nicely to explaining the other new (and rather premature, but I've told you before how hopeless I am at waiting) addition to the sidebar.  If you've lived on planet blogland for more than a few seconds, you'll no doubt know of the Julie/Julia project that Julie Powell started nearly 7 years ago.  Then came the book, and now the movie.  The movie website is featuring a 'blog of the day' each day until the movie's release on August 7th, and the scent of water will be there in all its foodie-wanna-be glory on July 8th (why me?  I have absolutely no idea.  I figure if we all keep quiet, no-one will realise I'm a total fraud.  So ssssshhhh.) 

I think it probably makes me and Ms. Streep practically best friends, wouldn't you say? I have mentioned before the way I feel about her.  Check out the movie trailer on the website, it looks like a great one.

As obsessed as I am with food (and I am, very), it doesn't show up on this site as much as it does in real life, but I did have one idea a few months ago that I have never gotten around to doing, and now seems like the perfect time to give it a go. 

According to a national paper, it should cost somewhere around NZ$350/week to feed a family my size on an average food budget.  If I shopped at an organic store instead of the supermarket, I wondered, and left out all of the processed gloop I lazily shove into my trolley far too often, could I still keep it to this average budget?  I'd like to try. 

On Monday I will take out $350 in cash and see what it will get me for the week.  I'll catalogue what I make and what it cost me, etc., and so forth. I have both Julie's and Julia's memoir on my bedside table to read as encouragement when I can't be bothered to pull together yet another meal, and a ridiculously large number of cookbooks to look through for inspiration.  Rock on.

(In other news, I bought an older style second hand Bernina today for almost half what it would have cost me to repair my newish flash computerised one.  It'll arrive in a couple of days, and I've already decided on my first project: produce bags like these.  Everything's coming full circle, baby.  And I'm still rambling.)