Beetaroni pizza
beetaroni pizza
Well, here it is, my pseudo-super-8 film. I took some footage of the boys walking down to the creek, because everything about going to the creek captures everything about the height of summer nostalgia, to me. The song is Tezeta, by Mulatu Astatqé, I believe that “tezeta” means nostalgia. It certainly sounds as though it should!
Goat cheese tart with eggplant and olives
It’s a summery tart! The eggplant is from the farm, of course, which means it’s really really the middle of summer. This whole tart is quite light and fresh-flavored, I think. The crust has semolina in it, which makes it extremely crispy, and it has lemon in it, which makes it bright. I think olives, eggplant and goat cheese form a sort of perfect trinity of flavor. So there it is!
Here’s Up on the Roof by the Drifters
Pesto potato “pie” with fennel, tomatoes and olives
Pesto potato pie with fennel, tomatoes and olives
Here’s Our House, by Madness, because somebody was listening to it as I walked down the street earlier, and I remembered how much I like it, and it’s very cheerfully about ordinary life.
cherry tart with almond pastry cream
If you’d like to write a story, send it to me and I’ll post it with mine after the jump. Or send a link, and I’ll include that here.
Cherry tart with almond pastry cream
Here’s John Lee Hooker with Standing by the Wayside, because I borrowed a few lines for my story.
As ever, the story is after the jump.
Pizza with tarragon pumpkinseed pesto
It’s the summer solstice and the first day of summer vacation. After a spring that saw hot humid days alternate with days of freezing rain, the weather is finally perfect. And I found myself in the worst mood. Cranky, anxious, discouraged. I couldn’t tell you why. Well, I could, but then I’d have to think about why, and that won’t do no one no good. I always feel horrible when I’m dejected and sweary around the boys, it feels almost abusive. And some part of me begrudged the time I have alone when they’re in school, when I can be as indulgently miserable as I want. But not today, today it was not okay, I could feel that in the way the boys kept giving me little sidelong glances and gentle pats on the back.
And now I’m going to share the saga of my changing mood. This morning I went for a scamper with Clio, and when we came to the end of our journey we found a dead tree bathed in golden light, stretching upward with branches like the rungs of a ladder. Each branch held small swallows, making grumpy buzzing noises. When bigger swallows flew above them, they flew up and kissed in mid-air and then then swooped away, as in some mad beautiful dance.
And then I was in a foolish rush to get things done, but I was arrested by the sight of a sleek grey dog lying in the sunshine outside the door, golden and blinking, and Malcolm stopped in his backyard racing to cry, “Mom, look!” Black currants! Our bright bramble of currants is laden with fruit. I had so much to do, so much to get done, and I just stopped and picked black currants with the boys, deep in the berries’ odd acrid fragrance, trying to convince myself that this was the most important thing to be doing right now. Then Malcolm had a crazy idea of how to cook the currants, and we worked on that, but I was still in a state and cursed like a madwoman in front of the boys when the semolina flour fell out of the cupboard into our batter. (Why right in there? Why?)
And then we went up to David’s shop to build boats to take to the creek. David’s shop is like an inspiring museum of craft and creativity housed in a small post-apocalyptic compound, surrounded by miles of beautiful countryside. The man that rents him space also rents out construction equipment, and you’ll find oddly beautiful piles of giant rusted metal rings that you could walk into, and drill bits the size of cars. In the back of David’s shop, a door opens onto a long corridor where barn swallows nest. If you stand in the doorway, they’ll fly around your head in dizzying loops, with humbling speed and agility, and it’s so beautiful that you want to make a film of it, but you can’t, you can’t capture it, just like Isaac will never catch a swallow in his hands, even if he calls to them in his high bright voice that is strangely like their call.
And when I went back into the shop, Isaac leapt onto my back like a little monkey, and he said, in his way of talking that makes everything sound like a poem
Do you remember
When we went to the park
And you held my hands
And spun me around
And it felt like flying?
And they made clever boats and now we’re going to the creek, and I will sit on a rock and watch them, and do absolutely nothing, and try to recognize the momentousness of the situation.
Pizza with tarragon-pumpkinseed pesto and chickpeas
I like to make pizza in the summertime. Well, I always like to make pizza, but in the summertime it’s fun to play around with different pesto sauces with which to top it, and to think of ways to add vegetables. So this time I made a pesto of pumpkinseeds, capers, arugula and tarragon. All very strong flavors. The pesto was delicious and unusual, with a slight edge of bitterness from the arugula, but in a pleasant way. Because the pesto was so strong and bright, I added chickpeas, because they’re simple and comforting. Not bland at all, but not overwhelming. The crust is thin and crispy, as ever.
Here’s The Ink Spots with When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano.
Pistachio and arugula pizza
Here’s Billy Taylor playing the song.
Here’s Nina Simone’s version, with lyrics
Here’s a live performance by Nina Simone.
And here’s an absolutely remarkable extension of the song, also Nina Simone live.
pistachio and arugula pizza
umami scrolls
We used to break down the sense of taste into four categories: bitter, salty, sweet and sour. And then we identified a fifth! Umami is that flavor. It’s a pleasantly savory, meaty flavor. As a vegetarian, I love the challenge of trying to create an umami flavor whenever I can. These rolls are a companion to the chocolate-covered cake of yesterday’s post. They, too, were meant for a wine tasting of Australian shiraz(es?). They, too, are very loosely based on the recipes of The Guardian UK’s Australian baker, Dan Lepard. Apparently, in Australia, one can find cheese and vegemite scrolls, which are like savory cinnamon buns. So I made these with marmite, tamari, spinach and balsamic. I thought these would be nice with wine.
Here’s Common with The Sixth Sense.
Kale, cranberry and chickpea empanadas
I’ve been thinking about the way our world changes, and specifically about the way people bring about that change. Our history as humans is a pattern of progress and change, progress and change. We’ll head blindly in one direction, unable to see quite where we’re going because it’s so close, and then somebody or somebodies will push us in another direction. With a grand gesture, with a slow protest, with a war, with a sit-in, with a newspaper article, with a violent act, with a strike, with a clear bold voice, or in a confused tangle of contradictory words.
I’ve been thinking about certain small acts of rebellion that I love, certain quiet ways that people have changed the rules. They change the world slowly, almost imperceptibly, but the change grows in widening waves. The personal becomes political and art becomes powerful.
I love to read about blues musicians from the last century, growing up in a world of poverty and discrimination and finding a way to make music no matter what the odds. Nobody hired them a music teacher so they’d understand the rules of musical theory. Big Bill Broonzy made a fiddle from a cigar box, Elizabeth Cotten taught herself to play guitar upside-down, they figured it out themselves, with the help of some friends. They sang about their lives, the way they actually were, the trains running by their door, the work they had to do, and they sang about the way they wished their lives could be. The rules they answered to in life were harsh and unjust, but in music they made their own rules, they made music the way they wanted it to sound–that was theirs.
And with books like Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird, we find a whole new world of writing, with the language people actually use, according to the rules of conversation and not those of grammar. These books are intimate and personal and real, and they describe the lives of normal people as they actually are. This small feat frightened people enough that they were all banned, at one time or another.
And, of course, I love filmmakers who make films the way they think they should be. Hollywood films have quite a rigid set of rules that dictate the way they’re made. These rules are nearly invisible to the viewer, because they’re designed to make a film seem more realistic, and because we’ve grown up with them, we’ve learned them, without even realizing. Well, I love a director like Yasujiro Ozu, who defies these rules. He sets the camera where he thinks it should be, he moves it when it needs to be moved (not very often!) he crosses sight lines, he leaves out plot points. Not to be rebellious, but because he knows how he wants his films to look. His films are mostly about middle-class families going about their lives. They seem placid and uneventful, at least compared to most movies. But in showing us the way we live, in showing us hurtful pettiness and gossip, thoughtlessness and ingratitude, he makes us think about the way we could live, the way we could treat the people around us. It’s subtle and slow, but it seeps into you and makes you notice everything differently and more clearly.
And I believe this small slow change is the most important, and that it extends to all things…not just to art and politics, but to life, which is the very heart of art and politics. We can change the world with the food that we eat, the cars that we drive, the books that we read. We change the world by struggling to understand it, by recognizing the rules that govern us as they are, and by deciding the way we want them to be. We change the world with every kindness to another person, and it’s a shame that this sounds sappy, because it’s true.
Kale, chickpea and cranberry empanadas
Well, I totally wasn’t going to go on and on about this today! It’s been on my mind, man. I think it’s because David and I just bought some Big Bill Broonzy CDs and they’re phenomenal, and because I’m reading this biography of Jean Vigo. Yeah. So! These are summery sorts of empanadas, I think. I made them for our anniversary picnic dinner. Empanadas make the best picnic food, because you can eat them with your hands and walk around with them, and they combine so many flavors and food groups in one neat package. I also boiled some little potatoes and tossed them with herbs and butter, and they are also a fun, if messy, picnic food. Our picnic was spoiled by dozens and dozens of ticks…a sickening tickening…but we came home and sat in our backyard and finished our empanadas, or lovely smoky, savory sweet empanadas.
Here’s Big Bill Broonzy with Feelin Low Down. Phew, what a song!
Asparagus, pistachio, castelvetrano tart
Asparagus pistachio castelvetrano tart
Here’s Dolcissimo Sospiro (I think it means “sweet sighs”) sung by the remarkable Montserrat Figueras
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Spinach and goat cheese tart with roasted peppers and tomatoes
Roasted pepper and tomato tart
Here’s Belle and Sebastian’s Get Me Away from Here I’m Dying because he says, “Oh, that wasn’t what I meant to say at all,” which is such a lovely thing to hear in a pop song!
Out of the Ordinary 