Category Archives: pie

Roasted butternut red pepper and goat cheese pie

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Roasted butternut and red pepper pie

Roasted butternut and red pepper pie

There’s this thing I’m quite taken with at the moment. It’s an “app,” I guess, but I’m not sure exactly what makes something an app. It’s called What Would I Say, and it takes random words you’ve written and combines them to create short statements. I suspect it’s only remotely interesting to the person whose words are being combined, and most of the statements are repetitive or very dull or so nonsensical they’re not worth reading. And yet there’s something very addictive about it! I love words, of course, and in a very self-involved way I’m fascinated to see which words I use very often. And I love the randomness of it. There’s something freeing about having words combined for you, about not having to think about it at all, and having completely no control over it. I spend so much time thinking about how I’m going to put words together that it all starts to feel very heavy and tangled. This is like throwing the words in the air, and watching them flutter all around you, or float away, and searching for meaning in the patterns that they make. It’s like found poetry, and I love the fact that words mean different things when combined in different patterns, and I love the feeling of my brain scrambling to make meaning of it all, and to remember why I used the words in the first place. It’s like a confused, shifting memory, like a dream of only words. I like the fact that many of mine end with the phrase, “And Isaac’s the lead singer.” This is a phrase I feel we could all end more sentences with, as we go through our day. This one, for instance, “Isaac, holding a crescent of cantaloupe, I stole the mooooooon, and Isaac’s the lead singer.” I like this one, which sounds like an ee cummings poem, “If you have a field far away to the air, but we’d glued the boys’ feet behind me, waving them sit on the flowered air, beneath the rising from mounds of the 2 coryadoras, and we don’t know” And this one sounds like a poem to me, too. Maybe cummings via Basho, “A little boy oh boy who could not sure the best lack all conviction, while I’m depressed by the windbeaten orchard, near the way.” But mostly I like when they’re very simple, and oddly perfect. LIke this one, “Watching around town, we have the best kind of each other.” And my favorite of all, “Thanks for there is a handful of today.” I love that! I wish I’d thought of it myself!

Roasted butternut and red pepper pie

Roasted butternut and red pepper pie

I sort of thought of this as a savory pumpkin pie. It’s got a yeasted whole wheat crust, which is vegan, although the rest of the pie is not! It’s got a soft custard of roasted butternut squash and ground pecans, a pecan frangipane, almost, which is flavored with allspice, nutmeg, ginger, smoked paprika and sage. It’s got goat cheese to cut through all of the sweetness of the squash and peppers, and smoked gouda to add to the roasty smokiness of it all. I thought it was very tasty! Maybe next time I’ll throw all the ingredients in the air and let them combine themselves randomly, and see how that works out!

Here’s Word Play by A Tribe Called Quest.

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Roasted butternut, chickpea, & apricot pies

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Roasted butternut, chickpea, and apricot pies

Roasted butternut, chickpea, and apricot pies

Malcolm is an owl and Isaac is a ghost bat. They’ve been home from school for two days and they’ve been wearing two-year-old halloween costumes most of that time. Like Max in his wolf suit, they’ve been bad. Like Max in his wolf suit, they’ve chased the dog around the house. A manic owl and a screaming bat. Or maybe it was the dark day of cold november rain and homework and no fun. Some of us tackled each other, some of us whined and shrieked, some of us yelled. We all feel bad about it now. This morning we had to get out, we had to leave the house.
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It’s a golden day. A wintery white-gold glowing day. Really the only leaves left on the trees are the golden ones, and they fall all around you in a bright shower. The boys flew out of the house, gleaming, a bat and an owl with fiendish expressions and madly flapping wings. They chased each other down to the towpath where fallen leaves of every color trail along the surface of the fast dark water like strings of christmas lights. Isaac loves this weather because he was born in this weather. I tell them about the day they were each born, unseasonably warm for November, unseasonably cool for July, both perfect perfect days. When we got to the part of the towpath where the trees have brown-paper leaves that smell like burnt sugar, a whole pack of teenage girls ran by. A track team, maybe. They were very serious, staring straight ahead. I know they know Malcolm, they’re not much older in actual chronology, but they didn’t say hello. He was quiet and thoughtful in his owl suit, for a minute or two. I thought nothing gold can stay, nothing gold can stay. And then he raced ahead after Isaac. Clio pulled me ahead and the boys fell behind, lost in serious conversation.
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I looked back at them, with their bright heads bent together, and I wondered what they were talking about. It was what they would do if somebody took Daddy and me away. They’d walk miles to Dad’s shop and get a bow and arrow. They’d buy a thousand nail guns. They’d save up their money for a paintball gun and fill it with pebbles. Then they’d find us somehow. We got to where we were going, a big field, and heavy indigo clouds rolled in, and the trees were bright like fire against the dark sky.
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Everbody flew around the field, and Isaac gave me hugs to knock me over. His skin smells beautiful, like sunshine and summer. I told Malcolm it wouldn’t rain, but of course he was right and it did rain, a fine cold rain. Isaac put up his ghost bat hood. We made it home, and the boys filled the house with the scent of clementines while they waited for warm lunch. Just a bat and an owl sitting together and resting a moment, before they return to their dizzying flight.

Roasted butternut chickpea and apricot pies

Roasted butternut chickpea and apricot pies

My friend treefrogdemon (yes that is her real name) happened to mention that she ate a chicken and apricot pie. It sounded so good! I resolved at the time to try a version with chickpeas and apricots. And when it came right to it, I decided to add roasted butternut squash, pecans, sharp cheddar and some spices…ginger, nutmeg, coriander and allspice. The result is a pretty, tasty, autumnal pie. A nice holiday meal for vegetarians, I think!

Here’s Park Life, by Blur, because my boys are completely obsessed with it at the moment.

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Roasted beet, mushroom and butterbean galette with walnut crust

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Roasted beet, mushroom and butterbean galette with walnut crust

Roasted beet, mushroom and butterbean galette with walnut crust

Today we’re going to do a cheater’s version of Saturday storytelling time. I didn’t actually write a story this week, but I’ve thought about it a lot. Incessantly, so surely it’s only a matter of time before it pops out of my head fully formed. So this is a story I wrote a few years ago. In honor of Halloween, it’s a monster story! It’s a story for children (childrens’ book publishers form an orderly queue) about a boy and his monster. Here are some pictures I did for the story. The text is after the jump.
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flying-monster

And, as ever, we have a recipe, too! This is an autumnal galette. The crust has walnuts and black pepper, and the inside has roasted beets and roasted mushrooms, as well as butterbeans sautéed with chard. It’s all topped off with smoked gouda. Lots of warm, sweet, earthy, smoky flavors!

Here’s The Boogie Monster by Gnarls Barkley

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Roasted butternut, pecan, & mushroom pies

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Roasted butternut French lentil pies

Roasted butternut French lentil pies

This weekend marks not only the second anniversary of The Ordinary, but the first anniversary of Clio’s stay in our house, as well. She’s lived with us a whole year! I remember when I went to get her. She was an hour’s drive away, and I was so nervous I felt sick. After weeks of begging for a puppy like a spoiled child, and nights of being sure someone else would adopt her first, I had gotten my way and I was plagued by saucy doubts and fears. Clio had met twenty other prospective families, or so her foster mother had said, and none were right for her. Would she like me? Would I like her? There was another family there to meet another dog. This dog was older, very calm and quiet and frightened, and the foster mom said, “Yes, she’s very good, you’ll have no problems with her.” And then she said, “But I’m not sure about this one,” and let Clio out of her cage. She bounced with joy! She jumped in my lap and licked me madly! She jumped in the lap of every member of the family there to meet the calm dog! She tried to kiss the man behind the counter! And that was that, she came home with me, and she’s been here ever since. People who know me get sick of hearing me say all the things I like about Clio, but it’s her anniversary, so I’m going to tell you here. I love her paws!! She’s a rough and tumble dog’s dog, but her paws are surprisingly elegant. They’re white and silky, and she holds them like a dancer. When she lies down she crosses them, and she’s got many different styles of cross-paws. There’s demure cross paws, and ballerina cross paws, and the extreme, one-arm-slung-over-the-other-I’m-so-glad-you’ve-joined-me-in-my-library-for-a-cognac-in-our-dressing-gown cross paws. Her paws are very speaking, she grabs hold of you and tries to make her wishes known, but we’re so slow! I love the way she sings when she’s nervous. I love the way she hugs–she stands and hovers for a moment and then puts one paw on either side of your waist and squeezes and whuffles. I love the way she cuddles, and especially the way she waggles her head contentedly when she lays it on your arm or leg, as if to get as close and comfortable as possible. I love her sweetness…she loves every dog she’s ever met, even though she’s been bitten badly twice. I’ve never heard her growl at another dog. And she loves most people, unless they’re wearing sunglasses or excessive cologne. And I love the way that she’s leapingly happy, jumpingly joyful. So, in honor of the anniversary of her stay here, today’s Sunday interactive playlist will be on the subject of jumping, leaping, hopping, bounding, bouncing.
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This is the dinner I made for David’s birthday. It’s a very fancy Ordinary dinner. It employs some Ordinary staples, such as french lentils and roasted mushrooms. It’s autumnal, because it also has roasted butternut squash, smoked gouda, and pecans. I made it in big muffin tins, with large holes in them, but if you don’t have those, you could make little free-form galettes and they’d be just as tasty.

Here’s a link to your interactive playlist. Keep bouncing!
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Roasted pepper and tomato tart with almond-hazelnut crust

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Pepper and tomato tart with hazelnut almond crust

Pepper and tomato tart with hazelnut almond crust

I fell asleep while watching cave of forgotten dreams. I regret it, of course, but at the time I was powerless against the great wave of sleepiness. I’d worked all day, and we’d been busy, and the film is so quiet and dreamy, Herzog’s narration so sweet and sleepy…well, that’s my excuse. I didn’t miss much, I didn’t sleep for very long. In a way, though, it seems perfect to have fallen asleep during this film, this beautiful film. It’s as though the film itself became a part of my dreams, dreams I will never forget because they’re marked on stone and captured on film. The movie has a sort of dream-like logic to it that I love: When faced with something that you don’t understand, follow it farther and deeper than you would have thought possible. Even as you’re exploring, and you realize that you will never understand, you keep looking, because the mystery itself is so beautiful. As circus performer-turned-archaeologist Julen Monney tells us, “it’s a way to understand things which is not a direct way.” This is exactly what I love. I love the idea of looking at something from the side, or from some angle we can’t even imagine. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a small glimpse into the Chauvet Cave in Southern France. These caverns contain the oldest cave paintings yet discovered, and they’re remarkable. They show bears and lions and rhinoceros and jaguars, creatures you can’t imagine living in the South of France. The pictures are layered one upon another in a marvelous design. The paintings are beautifully rendered, stylized but so well-observed you believe whoever painted them must have spent hours watching the animals. Their faces are wise and almost sweet, or so it seemed to me. They’re almost all in profile, except for one bison who looks right at you. Some are surrounded by layers of rippling silhouette as if to show movement. There are no paintings of human figures, and no human bones were found in the cave. The only sign that these marks were made by humans is a wall of palm prints, made by distinct individuals, and a footprint made by an eight-year-old boy. The boy’s footprint is next to that of a wolf, and we’ll never know if they were friends or prey. I think I must have fallen asleep through the part of the film in which they discuss the humans of the time in greater detail. I have glimpses of memory of this. But I’m almost glad to have missed this part, because to me a huge part of the wonderful power of the paintings is that they seem deeper than human achievement or understanding. Julien Monney went down in the cave for five days, and then he decided not to go down any more. He said it was too moving, too powerful. Every night he was dreaming of lions–real lions and painted lions. He wasn’t scared of them, but he had a feeling of powerful things and deep things. He said that we need to find a way to look at the cave paintings. Where would he start to look for this new way of looking? Everywhere. He tells the story of an archaeologist in Australia traveling with an aboriginal guide. They came upon some cave paintings that were thousands of years old, and fading and crumbling. His guide started to touch up the paintings. The archaeologist asked him why he would do that, and he replied that he wasn’t doing it, he wasn’t painting, it was only the hand of the spirit. You have the feeling, when looking at the Chauvet paintings, that this is the only explanation for this beautiful series of pictures. They were painted in the same style, but hundreds of years apart. Cave bears have scratched at the walls below the pictures and across the pictures, as though they were trying to add to them, or to make them disappear. I’ve always believed that humans aren’t the center of everything, that there’s some spiritual force in the earth and the air that we can’t control or understand. Maybe the animals understand it better than we do because they’re not always making noise like we are. In a strange way these cave paintings seem to reinforce these ideas. Whatever was captured in the cavern, we were part of it, but not the only part, not the most important part. And Herzog ends with shots of a nuclear power plant near the caves, and he tells us that in Lascaux, mildew formed by the breath of tourists caused the paintings to deteriorate. It gives you a powerful feeling that we have to stop destroying things, stop making noise, stop taking things apart in order to understand them. We have to keep silent, and watch and listen and feel.
Roasted pepper tart with tomatoes, olives, and hazelnuts

Roasted pepper tart with tomatoes, olives, and hazelnuts

This tart was loosely inspired by romesco sauce. The hazelnuts, almonds and smoked paprika are in the crust, and the garlic, roasted peppers and tomatoes are in the filling. And all the flavors blend nicely together. I also added some different kinds of cheese–goat cheese and smoked gouda, and some olives and capers for briny goodness.

Here are some songs from the soundtrack of Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It’s very haunting!

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Harvest pie with potatoes, tomatoes and basil

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End of summer pie

End of summer pie

Autumn is a good season for time travel. Not extensive trips involving complicated machines, but small, simple glimpses into the past. Maybe it’s the way scents travel in the clear air, or the way the light seems more slanting and golden, but for the last few days I keep finding myself in some other time of my life. Not that I’m just reminded of another time, but for a moment I’m there. I’m a child walking to school in England, or a twenty-three year old walking through the world with my new friend David. For some reason I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days about time passing. Not in the usual way that I think about it passing in my life or in the lives of people I love or in the seasons changing, but on a larger scale, a bigger cycle, about how the world has changed so much and is constantly changing, but under all the clutter and confusion people haven’t changed that much. We still all want the same things: someplace safe to rest our head when we’re tired, enough food to eat, sunshine when it’s chilly and shade when it’s warm. People have probably always struggled, as we do now, to free ourselves from the burden of being hopelessly, irredeemably, the center of our own universe so that we could be kind to others, and see everything around us with more clarity.

End of summer pie

End of summer pie

Here’s a good pie for the change in seasons! It’s like a pizza, so you can call it that if you want. I made the crust much thicker than I usually make my pizza crust, so it would be comfortingly soft and strong enough to hold up to all the toppings. All the herbs and vegetables are from our farm. I like potatoes on a pizza, it’s one of those things that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. I parboiled these and then tossed them in a little olive oil, so they’re soft but just starting to crisp up. I love the combination of tomatoes, potatoes and basil, but you can add any kind of vegetables or cheese or herbs you like on here.

Here’s Good Feeling by the Violent Femmes. I’ve been listening to them a lot lately…talk about a portal to the past!!

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Tomme de savoie and roasted mushroom tart

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Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart

Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart

Hogarth Hughes is very brave, but he’s not fearless. When he hears a strange loud noise, he’ll head out into the darkness by himself, armed only with a flashlight duct-taped to a BB gun. But when he finds out that the loud noise was caused by a giant robot, he sensibly runs screaming. And then he turns back. What made him overcome his fear? Compassion. The giant robot is stuck in electrical wires, he’s helpless and screaming in pain. Hogarth heads back to turn off the electricity and save the giant. The giant recognizes this act of compassion, he’s grateful for the kindness, and this is how they become friends. The Iron Giant, a beautiful film by Brad Bird was made in 1999, set in 1957, and based on a fantastical novel called The Iron Man, written by Ted Hughes and published in 1968. The film is set during the cold war, the novel was written during the Vietnam war, and I write about it now after years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and frighteningly on the brink of another in Syria. And, of course, on the anniversary of 9/11, a day of sickening grief and fear. Unlike most movies about giant metal weapons, The Iron Giant is a peaceful movie: anti-war, anti-gun, even anti-hunting. Almost unwittingly, Hogarth shows the giant that he has a soul, because he cares for this little human boy. Tim McCanlies, the screenwriter of Iron Giant, has said that they chose to make paranoia the enemy in the film, rather than any physical, bomb-able character or country. The threat is fear, and the threat is the violence that our fear provokes in us. It feels right on this anniversary to watch a movie that celebrates friendship, empathy, and the strength to resist the urge to act thoughtlessly and violently in the face of our fear.

Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart

Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart

This recipe was inspired by another Brad Bird film…Ratatouille, of course! In the beginning of the film, Remy finds a piece of Tomme cheese, a mushroom, and a sprig of rosemary. He combines them all on a spit, and then he gets struck by lightning! The flavors combine to make a lightning-y delicacy. Well! I wasn’t going to actually get struck by lightning to make a tart! So I added some smoky flavor with roasted mushrooms and smoked paprika. I bought a little piece of Tomme de savoie cheese, and it was very lovely…semi-soft, creamy, mild but flavorful. If you can’t find it you could substitute any semi soft cheese–even goat cheese or brie.

Here’s Barbara Dane and The Chambers Brothers with Come By Here.

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Pesto potato-crusted “pie” with fennel, tomatoes and olives

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Pesto potato "pie" with fennel, tomatoes and olives

Pesto potato “pie” with fennel, tomatoes and olives

This is my 700th post! It boggles the mind! I should make it very clever and funny and memorable, but I’m not feeling very organized in my mind at the moment, so none of that is going to happen. Instead you’ll get a ramble from my melty brain, and it will start this way: “I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately…” As you may have noticed, I’ve been reading some Camus, specifically essays he wrote for Combat magazine as the second world war came to a close and the occupation ended. He’s so hopeful and passionate about starting fresh, about creating a new society, and he’s sorting through his ideas about politics, religion, violence, life and death. It’s an inspiring read, and it’s fascinating to see how his convictions change in response to the world around him. He starts one essay, “We are often asked: ‘what do you want?’ We like this question because it is direct. We must answer it with directness…by returning to the question again and again, we will give our answer clarity.” I love this about Camus! His answer is not entirely specific or practical, but it’s about justice and freedom and purity, and how those can probably never be achieved but they’re still worth fighting for. I’m not often asked “What do you want?” and I’m fine with that, because honestly I don’t want all that much, but I’ve been thinking about my defense of the ordinary, lately, and I have a lot of questions I return to again and again. For instance, I recently described the British kitchen sink films as Ordinary. They are about ordinary people, but they’re also about miserable people, who are trapped by an immoveable class system. And this is not something I would champion. I would not tell someone trapped in an unrewarding hopeless job, “Ah, just make the best of it and think interesting thoughts.” I would encourage them to make a change in their life, and I would hope they’d have the freedom and support to do so. But this is how the cycle continues…their new, more interesting job would become ordinary, and that would be a good thing. Because everybody lives day to day. You could have the most fabulous life imaginable, but you still live it one day at a time, you still move through it from meal to meal and sleep to sleep, from season to season: the sun still rises and sets on you. This is something we all share, and which we can’t escape. This passage through time, with it’s oddly variable, inevitable pace should join us in sympathy with everybody around us, because it makes us all equal, it makes us all Ordinary. But it also makes ordinariness unspeakably precious and not something we should feel stuck with, but something we should value and keep. I want to see a change in the world, I want to see a (peaceful) revolution that brings about the sort of justice in which everybody has the freedom to live their everyday life exactly as they would wish, with plenty and safety and inspiration. The tedious jobs should be shared by everybody, so that we all have the time to be creative and joyful. So that as we’re all stuck on this journey together at the same absurd pace, we all have a beautiful view out the window. Well, it’s 100 degrees and I’m probably not making sense, but by returning to the question again and again, we will give our answer clarity.

Pesto potato pie with fennel, tomatoes and olives

Pesto potato pie with fennel, tomatoes and olives

This is all from the farm! Potatoes, herbs, tomatoes, fennel. I wanted to put it all together with the smallest amount of heat possible. So I cut the tomatoes very thin and cooked them quickly. And I sauteed the fennel and herbs. But beyond that it’s all made (quickly) in the toaster oven. You could use the regular oven and broil it, and everything would be cooked in about ten minutes, so it wouldn’t be hot for very long. It’s kind of like a pizza, except that it’s gluten free! The boys liked it, and so did we.

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.

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Pistachio ricotta tart topped with greens

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Pistachio tart with greens

Pistachio tart with greens

“You’re probably a year old! You’re not a puppy anymore! Stop chewing up my reading glasses.” “You’re a big seven-year-old boy, stop crying over every little thing.” “You’re nearly eleven years old, learn how to share with your brother!” Yes, I’ve been resorting to the tired parental chestnut of “you’re too old to behave that way,” and this has been my constant refrain of late, generally said with a weary sigh. Of course I realize that my boys could easily answer back, “Well you’re a middle-aged old fool and you cry at stupid things, too.” And Clio could say, “Well, teach me how to read! I want to reeeeeaaad!!” And they would all be right. I read an article recently that examined our changing ideas of how we should all be comporting ourselves at a certain age. People in their twenties used to be considered adults, with jobs and houses and responsibilities and children, and now they’re just roustabouts clinging desperately to every shred of youthful irresponsibility. And by the time we’re fifty or sixty we’re pretending to be thirty or forty. It’s all just one life-long delusional muddle. And maybe they’re right, the writers of this article. They’re probably right. But it’s hard to move through life gracefully, acting as expected at every stage. It’s hard to respond with appropriate maturity to all of life’s frustrating situations. Sometimes it seems as though everybody is constantly struggling not to act like a toddler, desperately trying not to pout or scream about not getting what they want. Some days it is hard to keep from crying over every little thing. Many days I feel less mature than the boys: when I yell at them irrationally or say something petty and childish. They’re very patient with me. From time-to-time I feel that Malcolm is even taking care of me. He saw a biting fly in the car just before I drove off, and he tried to show it the door. When it wouldn’t leave he said, “Mom, don’t get scared and crash the car.” One day, he and I went for a walk and it started to thunder. I grabbed his arm. He said, “sometimes I feel as though I’m the parent and you’re the child.” I laughed until he added, “I hate that feeling.” Sob! Since then I’ve been more careful. I have a lot of fears, but I’m a strong person, and I understand why it’s important for him to know that. And I am a useless lout of a forty-four-year-old ne’er-do-well, and I do go into a sad panic at the thought of growing older. But part of what makes it less frightening and even hopeful is the thought of my boys growing big and strong and funny and wise, the thought of them meandering through life at whatever the going rate is when they’re twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds, the thought of them making sense of their own beautiful muddle of time passing.

Deep pistachio tart

Deep pistachio tart

David said this might be his new favorite! I’m very excited about it! For my birthday I got a lovely deep tart pan (thanks mom & dad!). I decided to make a high crust, with a layer of pistachio ricotta custard, and then to sautée some greens and pistachios to pile on top. It worked very well! A nice combination of flavors and textures. You could really taste the pistachios in the custard, which was a treat. The crust is half semolina flour, which makes it very crunchy. I used garlic scapes with the greens, because it’s that time of year, but you could use regular garlic. You could also add tomatoes or olives to the greens if you were feeling fancy. And you could absolutely make this in a normal-sized tart pan or even a cake tin.
pistachio tart with greens

pistachio tart with greens

Here’s I was Born, by Billy Bragg and Wilco, featuring Natalie Merchant. She doesn’t know how old she is!

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Asparagus and pecan tart

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Asparagus and pecan tart

Asparagus and pecan tart

Last week I inattentively read an article in the Guardian UK about a mother who left her three very young children to do stand-up comedy 100 days in the row. She cited an article by a woman who said every mother should only have one child in order to achieve her full professional potential (or was it creative potential? I’m losing points for comprehension and retention on this one!). She also mentioned a response by Zadie Smith who said, Well, Tolstoy and Dickens had dozens of children each. The whole exchange seemed so strange, to me, so judgy and self-righteous, that I heaved an exasperated sigh and forgot all about it. Until last night when I couldn’t sleep, of course, and the conversation went round and round in my mind like a squeaky hamster wheel. The comedian’s oddly-humorless article pretended to disparage anybody who would leave their small children at night, but she was obviously very proud of herself, and expected us to ignore the fact that it would be absurd for anybody to do 100 stand-up shows without a night off, regardless of how many children he or she had, and (if I was being ungenerous I might say) we can only assume this gimmicky trick was meant to hide the fact that she’s not all that funny. And I hope nobody made this other writer feel bad about having only one child, because I can’t understand why you’d write such an article unless you’re feeling defensive (although I haven’t read the article!). And I hope Zadie Smith doesn’t feel excessive in having two children, and I hope she realizes that Tolstoy and Dickens are pretty bad examples of successful working mothers, but that she herself might be a very good example, because she’s written some remarkable books. The comedian seemed to suggest that it’s impossible to achieve professional or creative satisfaction without sacrificing your marriage and your sanity, at least sacrificing them enough that you can write a book about the experience. And she made a big point of saying that it’s perfectly fine if you stay at home all the time with your children and have absolutely no ambition outside of their needs, in the most condescending and contradictory manner possible. Well I find the whole conversation frustrating! Of course having children is going to cause you to sacrifice some of your time and alter your ambitions, but it’s hardly the only thing that will! I could blame the boys for the fact that I haven’t made a movie in over a decade, but that would be foolish of me. I made two features films before I was thirty, and they cost a lot of time and money, and although I’m proud of them and glad that I made them, in any practical reading of the situation, they failed. That’s discouraging! That makes it hard to muster the energy and optimism to make another. Let alone the money. And you can’t forget about the money, because films are expensive. I could blame the fact that I don’t have a flourishing professional career on the boys as well, but we all know that started much earlier, with my inability to network or sit at a desk for eight hours or behave myself in an office setting. Oh, and my determination to make feature films instead of concentrating on a practical career! The truth is that it’s all very hard. And I’m very lucky, I had a lot of opportunities and support. Plenty of people work at night without a break because they have to to keep a roof over their head. Plenty of people have jobs that don’t allow them opportunity for advancement or a satisfying creative outlet. Whether you have children or not, it’s hard to get ahead, it’s hard to do all the things that you want to do, it’s hard to find time for yourself. And the truth is that there are plenty of people that manage to work things out, that have a few kids, and work full time at a job they find fulfilling, or write novels and make films that they feel good about. I always think of Agnes Varda, who joyfully, humorously, poignantly, put all of these challenges into her work, and made it stronger and more appealing in this way. When she was pregnant, she made short films, not about being pregnant, but informed by the process. Her films seem are full of life in the best possible way–full of her life. And now she makes movies with her children–they’re in her films, they shoot her films. I’m determined to do this with my boys, to soak up some of their creativity and imagination and wit, all of which makes any time I’ve given up to care for them well-spent. Showing them the movies and books and pictures we love, sharing music with them, watching them experience the world through their eyes is the best inspiration I can think of. For me it all comes down to thinking of life as a process and a balance, and trying to notice and understand everything, even though this is impossible. To try to make all the ordinary things as beautiful and creative as possible, so that you don’t sit around waiting for the right moment to do your great work, so that you’re always working on one big great rolling series of works. You let it all in, and you process it, and you find some way to share it, if you need to, you find a way to speak it or draw it or film it or sing it or tell jokes about it. And that’s how I feel about that.

Asparagus pecan tart

Asparagus pecan tart

Speaking of babies and creativity, I made this tart for the baby shower of my sister-in-law and her wife, who are two of the most creative people I know. They’re constantly busy, and they’ve made pregnancy part of their beautiful creative process–they’ve expressed their joy and anticipation so solidly that it glows, and I’m sure all the moments of their daughter’s life will be caught and held, with wonder and love. Yeah. Well, this tart has a pepper pecan crust, and a mild yet flavorful filling of asparagus, spinach, a bit of thyme, and some sharp cheddar. It’s pretty easy to put together, and has a nice combination of green and nutty flavors.

Here’s Who Feels it Knows It, by the Wailing Wailers, just because I love it.

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