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Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans with herbs and lemon

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Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans

Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans

Early on this sweltering June morning, the first real day of summer vacation, you could find my Malcolm in a shady room, watching Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress. We all watched it together, some time ago, and he liked it so much he asked me to get it again. (The film is best-known, probably, as the inspiration for George Lucas’ screenplay for Star Wars: A New Hope.)

I was on my way out the door, and I just stopped, and sat with Malcolm and watched it again. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. The film is moving, on so many levels. In the very first scene, we see two peasants, backs to us, walking away. They’re highly animated, squabbling and quarreling, bickering about plans for a future they have absolutely no control over. And then a wounded samurai careens into the frame from a crazed angle, followed by men on horseback who stab him, repeatedly, in an oddly beautifully choreographed dance. (I apologize in advance for using the word “beautiful” hundreds of times.) The peasants are caught between warring clans, and they’re captured and forced to bury the dead and dig for gold. During an uprising they escape, and they find a bar of gold hidden in a log of wood. And then they meet Toshiro Mifune, and they spend the rest of the film walking; following him, running from him, racing back to him.

They’re traveling with hundreds of bars of hidden gold and a princess disguised as a mute peasant. They walk through ghostly bamboo forests, slanting rain, stands of bare trees in the fog, soldier’s spears and flags, they thread their way through one beautiful vertical arrangement after another. They enter the frame unexpectedly, from any side at any time, in stark contrast to the standard left to right movement we’ve come to expect from a hollywood film. They creep, muttering, in one direction and dash, screaming, back again in the other. And they walk in and out of stories.

Each time they stop a small tale unfolds, a small perfect interaction between them or the people they encounter. They start the film as fools, comic and ridiculous, but the thought of gold makes them nearly imbecilic; they can’t control themselves and they stumble and flail, and say things they aren’t supposed to say, and fall all over themselves trying to escape from their poor tangled fate. We laugh at them, but we empathize with them as well. They’re poorer than poor, and they’re caught in a violent struggle that holds no meaning for them, but could destroy their lives.

The princess (Misa Uehara) is also caught in this struggle. She, too, is bound by the history of her family to behave in a certain way. She’s pretending to be mute, but her expressions as she sees a world she’s never seen before–outside of the castle, with people who behave unpredictably because they don’t know who she is–her face as it lights up at the sight of ordinary people doing ordinary things, is wonderful to behold.

In the midst of all the death and violence, all the scheming and subterfuge, all the struggle to keep power and wealth, the travelers happen upon a fire ceremony. Everybody sings and dances as one, as they throw logs into a huge bonfire. Our friends are forced to throw all of their gold into the fire. The peasants are beside themselves with grief and worry, but the princess looks freed, transcendent, as she joins in the dance and sings the odd, dark, existential song. She recalls it later after they’ve been captured, and she sings it in a beautiful scene that places all of the beautiful and ridiculous drama of the movie, and of our lives, too, into a strange, somber, hopeful sort of perspective.

The life of a man
Burn it with the fire
The life of an insect
Throw it into the fire
Ponder and you’ll see
The world is dark
And this floating world is a dream.

I missed a few scenes because I was making the boys’ breakfast. When I returned, the princess sat in a wild tangled bower of bushes, smiling with a sort of happy wisdom, as at something she’d never seen or noticed before. I said, “Malcolm, why is she smiling.” He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the birds.”

This is a summery roasted vegetable dish. It combines new potatoes, beautiful red and golden beets, white beans, shallots, olives, capers, herbs and lemon for a bright roasty flavor. It would be nice with a sauce, like a pecan tarator sauce or a spicy tomato sauce. It makes a meal with some sort of grain–farro, millet, quinoa, rice and a salad, and it would make a nice side dish as well.

Here’s the main theme from Hidden Fortress. The soundtrack is spectacular.

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Farro, mushroom and turnip croquettes

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farro-croquettes-mushI can’t stop listening to the same three Nina Simone songs! As soon as they’re over, I go back and listen to them all again. It’s not just that I love them, but I feel as though I need to hear them. They happen to be the first three songs on our new album…My Baby Just Cares For Me, I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free, and Ain’t Got No…I Got Life. I’ve been in such a strange mood, lately, and something about the strength and frailty of these, the doubt and joyousness, just feel perfect to me right now. And the boys have started liking them, so they ask to hear them over and over. It’s gotten to the point that the songs are stuck in my head (and David’s too!) all night long. They’re taking over! I feel as though I need to listen to something else for a while. This isn’t the first time this has happened…when the boys were little and I was feeling old and tired, I discovered the Arctic Monkeys, and played their albums till the songs wore a hole in my head. When I was in my twenties, I became obsessed with Old blues guys and Tom Waits, who has always sounded like an old guy. I think I needed some weight and gravity in my life, and I played these songs until I was in a blue mood, but it always made me feel better somehow. So this week’s playlist is songs that go beyond earworms to take over your life. Not just a pleasant song that gets stuck in your head, but songs you need to hear over and over and over and over. Does anyone else do this? Can you remember songs from various points in your life that have meant a lot to you at that time? That you listened to as you lay in awe on the bedroom floor? As ever, I’ve made the playlist collaborative, so add what you like, or leave a comment and I’ll add it.

farro, turnip and mushroom croquettes

farro, turnip and mushroom croquettes

We had some leftover farro, so I decided to make farro croquettes. I used small, sharp asian turnips from the CSA and roasted mushrooms. This was very loosely based on something called “turnip paste,” I think, which is boiled turnips mixed with shitake mushrooms, steamed, sliced and fried. Someday I’ll try to make the real thing. The flavors were nice here…roasty, nutty, with just a bit of edge from the turnips.

Here’s your link to the collaborative playlist.

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Pizza with pumpkinseed-tarragon pesto, chickpeas and arugula

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Pizza with tarragon pumpkinseed pesto

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

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.

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Chard and white beans with raisins, walnuts and smoked gouda

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Chard and white beans with walnuts and smoked gouda

Chard and white beans with walnuts and smoked gouda

If you’re following along at home, you’ll recall that yesterday found us, here at The Ordinary, seeking some solace from our busy thoughts in the form of quiet film scenes. David mentioned a film we’d watched last week, Le gamin au vélo, and I thought “ah, yes, of course.” I was going to add a scene from the movie to yesterday’s post, but in watching the scene, I realized that this was one I want to go on an on about, so that’s where we find ourselves today. The film is by the Dardenne brothers of Belgium, renowned for making emotionally and stylistically bleak and austere films, most notably La Promesse in 1996. They almost never use non-diegetic music–they don’t have a soundtrack. The sounds of the film are those that people make going about their day, and these sounds become oddly compelling as we become immersed in the rhythms of the character’s lives, as we learn their routine and become alert for any small change in the patterns. All of their films are quiet, they’re a succession of silent moments. And that’s why this scene is disarmingly beautiful. We’re given music! We’re given, specifically, a small, moving swell of music, like a warm gentle wave; a few notes from the second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto. And then we return to the quiet world of this ridiculously beautiful expressive boy, to the sound of his breath, and of his madly pedaling feet. Throughout the film, in certain scenes, this music washes over us, just a few notes, and then recedes. You feel that you need to hear the rest, you want the notes to resolve themselves. You want the boy’s life to resolve itself, you want him to care for himself, you want him to let somebody take care of him. The Dardenne brothers’ films, though beautiful, are often hard for me to watch. The very honesty and rawness that makes them wonderful makes them painful. Their characters are battered by life, conflicted and rejected, and they spend a lot of time alone. We’re compelled to watch them in their solitude, drowning in the silence of their own company, facing rotten choices and making regrettable decisions. They raise all sorts of questions for me, as a film viewer, and as somebody that hopes to one day call herself a filmmaker again. You could make a film this revelatory of human nature as it actually is–you could, and you probably should, but why would you? Why watch something so depressing? The older I get, I find I have less tolerance for unrelentingly grim movies. When I was younger I could watch anything, but now that I have children, I just can’t–particularly if the movie involves kids the age of my boys, as this film does. I don’t need a happy ending. I don’t want to watch sickeningly sweet saccharine feel-good movies, but I do need some small hopeful sign. So I will admit to you that when we watched this film, we stopped halfway through, and I read about how the film ended, and only then did we watch the rest. But we did watch the rest. Because in being entirely honest about human nature, you have to include moments of warmth and generosity and connection, and that’s what this film does, quietly, slowly, without melodrama or judgement. The few notes of Beethoven that we hear throughout the film are full of sweet sadness, the music veers between hope and despair, light and darkness, but it’s so beautiful that we need to follow it to the end, which they finally allow us to do during the credits. And that is why you watch a movie like this one.

Chard and white beans with walnuts, raisins and smoked gouda

Chard and white beans with walnuts, raisins and smoked gouda

Greens are my favorite! This time of year is the best! We’re getting greens by the armful from our CSA–chard, kale, spinach, broccoli rabe. I love to come up with new ways to prepare greens, and this one turned out really good. It’s a twist on the old chard/raisin/pine nut combination that I love so much. This one adds white beans and smoked gouda, for extra substance and flavor. We ate this with whole wheat pearled couscous, which I prepared “according to the package instructions,” except that I cooked the couscous in olive oil and herbs at first. You could eat it with pasta, rice, millet, farro, a big bed of lettuces, or as a vegetable side dish. You could eat it in a box, you could eat it with a fox.

Here’s the second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto.

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Broccoli rabe with lemons, pecans and french feta

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broccoli rabe, pecans and french feta

broccoli rabe, pecans and french feta

Here at The Ordinary, everybody is in a tizzy. It’s the last week of school! There’s so much to remember and sign, and turn in, and bring home, and so many places to be at certain times and letters to write and cookies to bake and presents to procure. When I say everybody, I mainly mean me, because all the other little Ordinarians are taking it all in stride, as they take most things. I feel a little anxious, I tell you! It’s a feeling of the end of something drifting into the beginning of something else; the clash of memory and anticipation. I’d like to approach summer like Finn dealt with his fear of the ocean…just hit myself over the head and let myself sink peacefully into it, till I lie in a gently undulating bed of underwater plants. Barring that, I’ve been trying to think of quiet scenes from movies. I keep talking about how I love quiet scenes–either quiet scenes from quiet movies, or unexpectedly quiet scenes in noisy movies. I’ll try to remember a few now. Can you think of any?

Whisky, from Uruguay is an entirely quiet and beautiful movie. I’ll probably go on and on about it someday, but for the time being, here’s a small clip.

The ridiculously beautiful end of 400 Blows.

Of course, the moment in Bande a Part in which Godard demonstrates the meaning of room tone.

And Ozu’s “pillow shots,” I’ve linked to this before, but they really are beautiful.

Well, that’s all I can think of for the moment, because I’m surrounded by CHAOS! of the excited small boy variety. I’m sure I’ll think of more in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, and I’ll tell you all about them some other time.

Broccoli rabe, pecans, and french feta

Broccoli rabe, pecans, and french feta

This dish is simple! We got some broccoli rabe from our new CSA, and it’s the best broccoli rabe I’ve ever had! Just the right edge of bitterness. I also treated myself to some French feta from the local market. I wanted the flavors to be strong and clean, so I didn’t even add garlic or shallots. Just greens, herbs, lemon, feta, and pecans for a bit of crunch. If you can’t find French feta, (which is a little creamier and milder than Greek feta), Greek feta would work fine as well.

Here’s Nina Simone with Sounds of Silence.

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Butter beans with chard, asparagus, fennel, and castelvetrano olives

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Butterbean and spring vegetables

Butterbean and spring vegetables

I’m always in a hurry when Isaac and I walk to school. He’s an ambler, and he’s not concerned at all about the dire consequences of tardiness. One of us has to be! As a mother, I think the responsibility falls to me. So I’m always rushing him along, yelling, “With me!” as if he’s a dog I’m teaching to heel. Not this week, though. It’s the last week of school. Monday morning the air was just right, like water of a perfect temperature. In a sleep-deprived daze following a weekend of insomnia, it seemed as though we were swimming serenely through the air. It felt perfect to walk along, holding Isaac’s hand, answering true and false questions about matters big and small. I didn’t want the walk to end.
“True or false, the universe has a universe.” True!
“True or false, all bats are scaly and rough.” Well, that’s complicated, because all bats are different. “Wrong! It’s false, all bats are incredibly soft and furry.” Wait a minute, just because your brother touched one bat and it was incredibly soft and furry does not mean that every bat in the whole world is soft and furry. That’s faulty reasoning. “Nope, Malcolm said so. All bats are soft and furry.”
“True or false, when a bat flaps its wings, the vibrations can be felt on the other side of the world.” Um, true? Short pause. “Dad said it was false.” Well, where did you hear it was true? Longer pause. “Batman. Why are you laughing?”

I’ve been feeling like a literary magpie, lately. Or maybe just an airhead. I’ll happen across a small passage that intrigues me, and then I’ll buy the whole book from the magical used book store across the street, which has every book you can ever think of, precisely when you’re thinking of it. Then I’ll read a chapter, be completely charmed by it but understand it not at all. I’ll read a wikipedia entry on the text, feel slightly more informed and slightly guilty, and then some new passage will capture my gnat-like attention, and I’ll chase after that like Clio chases after dried leaves. A bit of Aristotle, a bit of Hobbes, a bit of the Mahabarata…maybe a few pages of Tintin to clear the palate. And of course I want to talk about whatever I’m reading, I want to discuss it and try to understand it, but my lack of comprehension combines with my inability to string words together to form a sentence and I sound like a complete idiot. But I think I’m okay with that. I’m not in school, I don’t have to write an essay or pass a test. I don’t even have to finish a book if I don’t want to! Although I usually do want to, if only for a feeling of completion. I like to read books about other people trying to figure things out, even though I don’t believe it’s possible to do so. I love the language, particularly in the very old books, I like the perfect parallel between my inability to understand a concept and the strangeness of the words themselves. I’m fascinated by the connections between books from around the world and throughout history, by the patterns that form, and the way everybody was influenced by somebody else, their thoughts echo the thoughts of those who wrote before them. In a poem Isaac described himself as “a thinker.” I’m so glad that he is, and that he knows that he is! I like to see Isaac and Malcolm make sense of everything, everything that teachers tell them, and friends tell them, that they tell each other, everything they read, and yes, even all the important scientific facts they learn from a batman cartoon. They’re processing it all, and learning to doubt and to reason, and it’s a beautiful process to watch. There’s a beautiful portrait of young Francis Bacon by Nicholas Hilliard with an inscription that translates as, “If only I could paint his mind.” I know what he means!

UPDATE! This was our conversation on the way home from school, and it seemed relevant, and I want to remember it, so here you go…

Isaac: I frequently think about what was there before space.
Me: Do you frequently think about that?
Isaac: Yes.
Me: And what do you think was there?
Isaac: Well, I get frustrated, because I think there was nothing, but then I think about what color nothing would be.

Butterbeans and spring vegetables

Butterbeans and spring vegetables

This was a green meal! A spring green meal. We kept it fresh and simple, with a saucy sauce of white wine and lemon. We used greens and fresh herbs from the CSA, and a special treat of castelvetrano olives from the market up the road. The boys ate this over gemelli pasta, and I ate it over a mix of lettuces from the farm, and arugula and fresh spinach, as a sort of warm salad. Good either way!

And here’s The Pixies with Where is my Mind??? Which has been stuck in my head, for some reason.
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Millet flatbread

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Millet flour flatbread

Millet flour flatbread

Hello, kids! It’s Saturday storytelling time! Just kidding, of course, It’s Tuesday. It’s just taken me that long to finish this story. My original plan of not thinking too much about the stories has given way to a reality in which I think about them all the time! For some reason that makes it harder for me to finish them. But I think that’s a good thing. As you may recall, each week I post a vernacular photo, and I write a story about it an invite others to as well. Here’s this week’s photo. Who is this man and why is he on the road? Where is he coming from, and where is he going?
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I bought some millet flour a while back, because I love the taste of millet. I tried baking something using only millet flour, and it didn’t turn out too well! So this is a mix of both. It’s a yeasted batter, poured into one of my beautiful new old French pans. You could use any smallish baking sheet with a shallow edge. The bread is soft on the inside and a little crunchy outside, and it has an intriguing, pleasant flavor…I’m not sure how to describe it! Nutty, I guess, like regular millet.

Here’s Sitting on Top of the World by the Mississippi Sheiks.
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Walnut cake with cherries and bittersweet chocolate

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Walnut cherry chocolate cake

Walnut cherry chocolate cake

Happy father’s day to all the fathers of the world! And in particular to my dad, (Dad) and also to David, the father of my children! You know how when you’re little you think your dad knows everything? Well, I’m nearly a million years old, and I still believe that about my dad. And I think my boys will always believe it about David, and they’ll be right. My dad is a historian, and when the world seems crazy he’s always been incredibly comforting to talk with. He understands the big patterns, he has a profound sense of balance and a strong core of peace and wisdom. And I’m so grateful to David for teaching our boys strength and compassion, curiosity and kindness, how to draw a rhinoceros and how to catch a tadpole.

So I apologize for the predictability of this, but this week’s interactive playlist will be on the subject of fathers and father’s fathers. Also acceptable, and probably more interesting…songs that remind you of your father. As ever, the list is interactive, so add what you like, or leave a comment and I’ll try to remember to add it later. (Though I haven’t been doing a very good job as list-curator lately!)

I made this cake with ground walnuts. It has a nice sweet earthy nuttiness. I put a layer of batter in the pan, and then I added some chopped fresh cherries and some bittersweet chocolate chips, and then I added another layer of batter. The batter itself has a little cinnamon and no leavening, I wanted it to be dense and almost pudding-y, and it was. I made it in my new little, tallish french cake pan, but you can use any cake pan that’s on the smaller side and it will work fine.

Here’s a link to the interactive playlist.

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Chocolate-covered strawberry ice cream

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Chocolate-covered strawberry ice cream

Chocolate-covered strawberry ice cream

I’m at a loss for words today! I’ve started writing five times and erased it each time. It’s not that I have nothing to say, I honestly think I never have nothing to say, even if the something isn’t actually worth saying, which is probably most of the time! I’ve been thinking a lot about how people say what they say, and why they say it, and thinking about this too much can make it feel foolish to say anything at all! I have a lot on my mind, but I guess it’s not ready to leave my busy head yet, so I’ll let it marinate for a while. In the meantime, I keep coming back to this scene.

It is a sad and beautiful world! I love Benigni’s cheerfulness. I love Wait’s magpie crankiness. I love the fact that they understand each other despite the words. I love that they both love the words so much they repeat them in their own way. I love the honesty and humor of it. And the beauty, of course! It is a sad and beautiful world.

I bought strawberries and then we picked strawberries, so we had a lot of strawberries. I wanted to make them into ice cream, but I don’t always like strawberry ice cream. Sometimes the strawberries lose their flavor when they’re too cold. Aha! I thought to myself, what if they have a protective coating of bittersweet chocolate to shield them from the cold! Because chocolate covered strawberries are delicious, and they could only be better if folded in vanilla ice cream. This turned out really good!! A nice balance of bitter and sweet, fruity and creamy. The boys loved it, and asked for many many helpings. The strawberries aren’t completely coated in chocolate, but they each had enough chocolate clinging to them to get nice and melty with the ice cream. Well, it was very tasty!

Here’s Irma Thomas It’s Raining. Well, it’s also from Down By Law, and it’s beautiful.

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Roasted beet and arugula salad with farro and smoky pecan-rosemary sauce

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Roasted beet and arugula salad

Roasted beet and arugula salad

When my brother and I were little, we had our own country. It was called Bouse, and it was top secret, so don’t tell anybody about it. Bouse was shaped like our dog, Tessie (her eye was a lake.) All of the animals in Bouse could talk, and they were all very friendly and happy–we had feasts and dances and plays. There were no people, no cars, no factories on Bouse, but in neighboring Karnland, there were only cars, or everybody was part car, I can’t remember, and they were enemies of Bousishians. All animals go to Bouse when they die, and some kind humans do as well.I speak lightly of Bouse, but it was incredibly important to me growing up, and in many ways remains so to this day. It was formed by who we were and what we believed, and it informed our beliefs and our behavior as well. Now my boys have a world of their own. It’s called World Tenn, and the world is made like a giant tennis racket with water inside, and everybody has shoes made out of tennis balls. My boys have different names there, and they have sisters and a baby brother and a dog who can fly. At first I was charmed by the stories, they’re delightful and inventive, but lately it’s starting to feel more serious for them, and I can’t account for how happy this makes me. Yesterday Malcolm and I took a walk after dinner. Malcolm is fun to ramble through the woods with, except that he always has to have a stick, and he always has to hit things with it. He smashes trees, he slices through weeds and tall grass. We’ve told him a million times not to, that it’s better to leave everything as you find it, that he might be destroying the homes of animals, birds, or insects. But he did it anyway. Yesterday he told me that he’s not going to do it anymore. “Why is that?” I asked. It turns out that it goes against the prevalent morality of World Tenn. The enemy of World Tenn is a king that hates mother nature and spends all of his time trying to destroy plants and animals. My boys have the job of protecting nature. Ack! It just kills me that they share a world forged in the fiery furnaces of their imagination and their affection for each other. And they’ve invented a moral code that they need to live up to. They’ve made their own political philosophy, their own religion, just like my brother and I did. Like all good religions it contains myths and far-fetched stories, it borrows from older tales and legends, it contains strife and violence, it reassures them with an afterlife, and it suggests a way to behave in harmony with the creatures of the actual world around them. There are portals into World Tenn–one is a beautiful winding path that branches off from the secret passage on the other side of the other side of the canal. This morning Malcolm told me that there’s one on the roof outside of his window, because a squirrel sat there for a long time, and didn’t seem scared of Malcolm watching him. Of course the real doors into their world are in their minds, and they can take that with them wherever they go. Whatever they do, they have the comfort and strength of their creativity, of their love for each other as brothers, of their lives as heroes, of a world all their own. And nobody can take that away from them.

Roasted beet and arugula salad

Roasted beet and arugula salad

When I made this sort of warm salad of arugula, roasted beets, farro, goat cheese and pecans, I kept the farro separate. I thought it might be the only part of the salad the boys would eat. Silly me! They gobbled down the beets, goat cheese and pecans, and didn’t have much interest in the farro! So you could serve this with the farro as a layer below the arugula, or you could mix it right in with the arugula if you liked. We ate this with tiny new potatoes, boiled and tossed with butter, salt and pepper, and I recommend this. It’s a serving suggestion!!

Here’s My World by the Rascals

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