the scent of water

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.)

Some days the jewellery gods just aren't smiling.

So said Caroline, who sat behind me in yesterday's (last!) jewellery class.  Mel told me she thought it looked homemade.  I think she meant in a good way.  I decided that the rushed and crumpled bezel looked less like a ring and more like a free form pastry galette.  Rainbow Moonstone Galette.   If I ever decide to become a hippy, that's so what I am going to call myself.

Sewing machine repair man said this week it will cost $800 to replace the pc board in my machine.  Ouch. And the application I finally plucked up the courage to send in to a writing course at the local university never got to the right people until it was too late because of a technical error at their end.  Double ouch.  And so on. I think what this means is that it must be time to eat an enormous pile of jelly belly beans, because I'm sure I read somewhere that sugar = happy.

 

Make that sugar + books + tea + lap rug.  I finally finished said rug and am pleased to say that it works perfectly.  I might declare it winter every season, so I can curl up under it with the aforementioned happiness supplies and pretend that life is perfect after all.  I am sure that will work,  for one whole hour at least.

Tea break.

"I turned my head, only for a moment, and that moment became my life."    ~Anon.

The last few nights I've been lying awake until the early hours with a racing heart and no real idea precisely what it is my body is panicking about.  It started with watching the movie Easy Virtue, a supposed romantic comedy which had me sobbing most of the way through.  Though I am not blonde, gorgeous, from Detroit, particularly witty, married to an English gentleman, nor a great fan of any kind of motorsport (and I have never,  not even once, sat on anybody's Chihuahua), I was still ripped apart by the heroine's valiant attempts to stand up for her life in a situation where those she wanted to please the most cared the least, where all her good intents were met with  hostility, and where being true to herself meant the destruction of a future she had thought was hers.  That Noel Coward.  Who knew?

I took another road to the lovely Larita.  Laid low, kept the peace, harmony at all cost.  I thought it was loving and honorable, but it wasn't, not truly, and least of all to myself.  Wiped me out, in all senses of the word.  When I was racing to hospital a couple of months ago after coughing up copious amounts of blood, I thought the chances were pretty high that I was dying.  And I was too tired to care.

I quoted MacBeth to Nathan recently, the "I am in blood, stepped in so far" speech, and explained to him that MacBeth, given an opportunity to stop the killing and perhaps gain a measure of redemption, decided that returning across the river of blood he had created was just as 'tedious' as carrying on through it, so he might as well just keep on keeping on.  It didn't matter to him anymore, he had long since fallen from hope.  Too tired to care.

Nathan was perturbed by this attitude, as all 11 year olds should be (show me one who understands despair and I will show you angels weeping);  he thought MacBeth should try at least.

I don't know about MacBeth, but I know that I am not ready to give up, tempting though it seems some days.  It's not a matter of pulling my socks up and trudging through another day any longer, but of taking a tea break from life's relentless forward march and seeking out those parts of myself I left behind, back in the day.  I'm sure they will still be waiting there, if I look hard enough.  If I even did leave them behind.

Dreaming

 

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ~ Oscar Wilde

1. they were so lovely., 2. Pickled, 3. layers., 4. cupcakes, 5. flower blur., 6. little red shoes, 7. hello, again, 8. Produce bags from Betz White's book Sewing Green, 9. * *

Winter.

I saw one of these in Mrs. Parlane's class at the children's school.   She said it was a little like having a baby, the fun of waiting for it to erupt into full hyacinth blossom.  I went out and got one for myself a few days later.

It's a season for waiting in my life right now, literally and metaphorically. I'm not very good at it.  I pace a lot.  Eat a lot.  Grumble a lot.  What to do until it's time for Spring again?  Clear the leaves, prune the branches, feed the soil.  Maybe even sow some seeds. Maybe.

I can feel something good ahead, almost see it sometimes, like a shadow of promise out the corner of my eye.  I don't know the shape of it yet, or anything much other than for sure it's on its way.  So I'm getting ready.  Removing the clutter, the habits, the activities and even, painfully, brutally, the relationships that my heart says will smother (not always for bad reasons, but smother nonetheless) any chance this unformed thing would have of growing strong and bearing fruit.  It feels necessary, compelling.  Also cold and barren.

What was it I read just a few days ago?  Oh,  yes, this quote from Cesare Pavese: 

To cover the houses and the

stones with green – so the

sky would make sense – you

have to push down black

roots into the dark.

 

Exactly.  That.

Solder is my friend.

It gives me kind of a thrill to light up a gas flame and weld one piece of silver to another.  It's easy to muck it up with such small pieces of metal and I often do.  But not always.  Not today.

I didn't plan this pendant, (wot, me plan?) but I love how it turned out.  I even set a stone.  Cool. 

Issue 9

 

MixTape 9 is out, and it's the best one yet!  And not just because I'm in it!  Though that helps!

Order your (full colour!  professionally printed!  limited edition!) copy here. 

A reminder to myself on a bland day.

 

Play keeps us vital and alive.  It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable.  Without it, life just doesn't taste good.    ~ Lucia Capocchione