Category Archives: salad

Corn, avocado, french feta and cherry tomato salad

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corn-and-avocado-saladWe’re just coming out of summer…floating up through the thick moist august air into the cool days of autumn, and I feel as though I’ve got the bends! I’m forgetful and moody and I’m having a hell of a time concentrating on anything. The boys are back in school, and my list of things I’ll get to it as soon as the boys are back in school is languishing in some pile of other things I’ve misplaced and forgotten all about. As the mornings and evenings draw in dark and chilly, I feel as though I’ve started casting out my silky and yet freakishly strong threads, and I’m winding them around everyone I love, pulling them home, where I’ll feed them warm food and keep them safe. I feel a bit like Clio, actually! Walking Isaac to school and meeting the boys at the end of the day are the highlights of my life at the moment, and everything in between is a confused blur. I’ll get back into a pattern, eventually, there’s so much I want to do. But for now, I’ll enjoy walking Isaac to school as a sort of meditation, a facet of my training as a student of Isaacstentialism. In my dazey half-awake state, I’ll put my hand out without looking, and know that his will be right there to take it in less than a moment. I’ll half listen as he talks and talks and says the sweetest things, and I’ll think about them for the rest of the day. Today he said that when he grows up he’s going to have a big field in his back yard, with grass in it that’s taller than his children, and they’ll play hide and seek in the grass, and Malcolm’s children will come over too, so all four of them (?!?!) will be there. And there will be a sort of maze in the grass, but a path through it, too, so they can all find their way home safely. And Isaac will have a porch above the grass so that he can see where his children are running, and he and Malcolm will sit on the porch and talk while their children play in the long green reeds below. Yeah. Next week everything will be clear and organized and I’ll get to work. This week, I’ll imagine myself like a child, running through long grass taller than me, all the world a beautiful shifting confusion of green, with a path to carry me safely home. “When a body catch a body coming through the rye…”

Leftover corn-on-the-cob is fun! Who knew!! This time I combined it with avocado, cherry tomatoes, french feta (but you could use regular feta or any crumbly cheese you like), fresh basil, fresh cilantro, pine nuts and lime juice. Fresh, sweet, salty, tart. Very nice indeed. I didn’t add any oil as a dressing, because I think the avocado serves that purpose. And the cherry tomatoes from the farm have been sweet as candy, so between those and the corn, I didn’t feel I needed to balance the lime juice with any extra sweetness, but you could always add a drizzle of honey. You could also add roasted garlic, hot sauce, or any other thing you like.

Here’s Whispering Grass by The Ink Spots.

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Pistachio basil curry with crispy pistachio crusted eggplant sticks

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Pistachio basil curry

Pistachio basil curry

Well the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your cryin don’t do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

So goeth Tom Waits’ Come on up to the House, and so goeth our interactive Sunday playlist. We’re looking for songs about strange and intriguing places. They could be hotels, houses, islands, parks, churches, but there should be something mysterious about them, something that makes you want to explore them. Maybe they’re sheltering, maybe they’re scary, but they’re the stuff of local legend.

Pistachio crusted eggplant

Pistachio crusted eggplant

Wasn’t this a green meal? It’s a curry with chickpeas, red peppers and cherry tomatoes in a sweet spicy sauce of pistachios, baby spinach, and lots of basil. And I made thinly sliced crispy pistachio-crusted eggplant to go with it.

Here’s a link to your interactive playlist.
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Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets, pecans and shaved goat cheese

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Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets and pecans

Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets and pecans

“Hey, Claire,” I hear you say, “Why the hell have you never mentioned the ‘kitchen sink’ films of the sixties? Aren’t they perfectly Ordinary?” And then I slap myself on the forehead and say, “OF COURSE! Of course they are! And I love them! They’re some of my favorite movies of all time!” And then I think it over a little more and decide that some are more Ordinary than others, and maybe these are the ones I’ll talk about. The kitchen sink films, for those who don’t know, are British films made in the sixties that are notable for showing working class people going about their ordinary lives. They’re mostly black and white, and though simply, even roughly, shot, they’re gorgeous. They’re often filmed on location with natural lighting, but I would happily save each frame of most of them as a beautiful still photograph. The term “kitchen sink” was inspired by a painting by John Bratby, and this drive for social realism was part of a broader movement that included art, theater and literature.
John Bratby's Kitchen Sink

John Bratby’s Kitchen Sink


The films are also called “Angry Young Man” films, because many of them concern themselves with just such a character, but I find that my favorites are more complicated than this, they’re not always about men, and the central character is not simply angry, but has a conflicted attitude to their home and the humdrum life they find themselves stuck in. One such man is Billy Liar, played with pathos and comic genius by Tom Courtney. This film has an extraordinary balance of darkness and light. Billy works in a funeral parlor, and he woos one of his many girlfriends in a cemetery. His parents needle him to grow up and take responsibility. He dreams of someday escaping to London, preferably in the company of Julie Christie. But the truth is that Billy escapes his dreary reality every day: he has a world in his head, a country called Ambrosia, where he is a hero, or several heroes. Billy’s goal in life is to be a script writer, and through his fantasies, he writes a script for himself, for his life, that helps him to transcend the weighty worries of his real-life. When he’s offered a chance at a actual grand gesture, a genuine adventure, he decides not to take it, and the ending of the film is suffused with a melancholy sense of failure, but once again Billy’s imagination saves him. Billy Liar is a comedy, but it’s a complex one, with layer upon layer of questions about life and society buried deep in each scene. Billy’s world is far from perfect, but seen through his eyes, it’s beautiful and funny and touching. The ending is bittersweet and complicated, just like life. I think Billy has made happiness for himself, and to me that means he’s not a failure at all.

Stay tune for further installments of Claire’s favorite Kitchen Sink films at an Ordinary near you!

Roasted carrot and beet salad

Roasted carrot and beet salad

It’s been too hot to cook, so we’re having lots of salad. But when a salad is your meal, you want it to be hearty, you want it to have nuts and cheese and then you want to try to use up all of your vegetables from the farm, so you add roasted beets and carrots, and then you treated yourself to some special hard goat’s cheese from Spain and some special hard sheep’s cheese from the Basque region, and you want to shave some of that on there as well. And you end up with this big beautiful tangle of greens and everything but the kitchen sink!

Here’s The Decemberists with Billy Liar.
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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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Roasted beet and butterbean salad with spinach, arugula and smoked gouda

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beet-and-butterbeanWhen I was younger–shall we say early twenties?–I wrote a screenplay about a man who wouldn’t leave his front porch. He’d travelled the world, and then something happened, but I don’t remember what, or maybe nothing happened–I’ve always been a big fan of the anti-drama–and he sat in a rocker on his front porch and refused to leave. His mother fussed over him and consulted various experts to aid in his cure. She talked to ministers and doctors and wise neighbors. He chatted with the mailman and with small children that ran by the house. We worry about him, because he’s not behaving like everyone else, he’s not normal. But he seems okay. He’s a little confused, but he’s pleasant and cheerful. He’s alright. It turns out he’s trying to rid himself of fear and desire, based on some combination of ideas gleaned from several philosophies that I barely understood at the time and understand even less well now, all these many years later, seen through a haze of crumbling memory. I still think about this from time to time. Would I want to rid myself of fear and desire, assuming I had the strength to do so (I don’t)? In all honesty, I don’t think I would. Desire, like hunger, is such a part of being alive. Wanting keeps you wishing and hoping and trying. And fear is so closely connected with imagination and creativity and dreams. The idea seemed good at the time, I suppose. I was confused, myself, and so full of wants and worries. But in thinking about losing myself, I was doing the opposite, I was completely self-conscious and self-centered. We all look at the world through our own eyes, through the prism of our own fears and desires. As Hobbes so delightfully says…

    …for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.; not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.

“Only to him that searcheth hearts”!!! I love that! Where was I? Ah, yes. I’ve been remembering my juvenile struggle with all of these muddled ideas lately because of all the memes! The memes and soundbites and super-designed quotes and quips and words of wisdom. It feels, sometimes, as though we’re taking little pieces of these philosophies that we don’t understand, and spinning them around to become something entirely new. Like all good twenty-first century Americans, we’re stripping them of their original meaning and making them all about making us feel better about ourselves. So that they’re no longer about losing ourselves, but about loving ourselves. We don’t have to rid ourselves of anything, cause we’re okay! Reduce a philosophy to a few pithy phrases, superimpose it over a rainbow or some flowers, and its meaning is distilled–it’s all about me! I know, I know, I sound hypocritical and hypercritical. But it seems as though if we’re going to appropriate ideas we should at least read enough of them to be confused by them, to let the words get us into a muddle, to struggle to understand something of the original wisdom, and not just swallow it down like some sugary pill that makes us feel better with no side effects. We should have more respect for the words than to make them into social-media-ready memes. That’s what kittens are for!

Springtime with its damp fragrant earth and unfurling ferns always makes me crave beets. So I bought a big bunch. My favorite method of cooking beets is one that Malcolm invented…grated, tossed with olive oil and herbs and roasted. So that’s what I did here. And I roasted some buttery butterbeans in butter. And I sauteed some spinach with garlic, and I mixed all of these things together, stirred in a little black truffle butter, added some ripe avocado, piled it into a nest of fresh wild arugula, and grated smoked gouda on top. Delicious! A warm, hearty salad with such lovely melty, smoky, sweet and buttery flavors.

Here’s Tom Waits with Just Another Sucker on the Vine, just because I love it.

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Creamy vegan salad dressing that Isaac likes

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Vegan dressing/dip

Vegan dressing/dip

At 5:30 this morning, Isaac had a nightmare. He stood outside our door and quietly said, “mommy.” Of course we heard him. Of course we were both suddenly wide awake, and I told him to go back to sleep, and David gave him a hug, and the dog thought it was time to wake up! And eat! And play! I always worry in the summer that I won’t hear the boys in the middle of the night if they need me, through the sounds of fans or air conditioners. But I always do. You always hear your child’s voice. I think I’d hear them calling me however far away they are, however old I am. When they were tiny they’d laugh in their sleep, which is surely one of the best sounds in the world, and we’d lie awake watching them and wondering what they were dreaming about. Now Malcolm talks in his sleep, and says the funniest, sweetest things, which he doesn’t remember the next day. Isaac’s voice is clear and pure, like cool water, and his thoughts, as he expresses them are clear and sweet, they’re perfect, with their odd logic, and as necessary as water. The sound of children playing together on the playground after school, laughing and yelling with happy urgency, sounds like a memory of sunshine. Well, it’s no wonder that musicians use the sounds of children’s voices in their music from time-to-time, and that is the subject of today’s Sunday interactive playlist! Songs that have children’s voices in them, singing or yelling or talking.

Malcolm's self portrait playing his trumpet

Malcolm’s self portrait playing his trumpet

Isaac surprised me the other day by saying that he ate three salads at lunchtime at school. Apparently, everybody gives him their salad at lunchtime. It’s something he’s known for. I have trouble selling salads to him at home. It’s the dressing. He likes french dressing and ranch dressing. I don’t generally dress my salads with creamy dressings, but I was willing to give it a try, for Isaac. So I made this creamy vegan dressing or dip. And he likes it! He ate salad, he ate carrots and broccoli dipped in it. And Malcolm likes it too! He ate it on a veggie burger as a sort of special sauce. It’s got almonds, smoked paprika, garlic and onions (sauteed, so they’re not too strong or bitter), a bit of honey, a bit of dijon. Spicy, sweet, smoky and delicious!

Here’s a link to the children’s voices playlist…I’ll make it collaborative, so feel free to add what you like! I haven’t gotten very far with it and I need some help!

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Roasted chickpeas and cauliflower with kale, raisins and almonds, and manchego cheese

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Roasted cauliflower and chickpeas

Roasted cauliflower and chickpeas

Welcome to The Ordinary: Extreme sports zone! As you no doubt know, we have an extensive sporting complex, here at The Ordinary: from the pristine olympic-sized pool on the roof, to the climate-controlled underground basketball court, to the miles and miles of jogging track that wend their way through our orchards and vineyards. In all honesty, we’re not that sporty. I like playing tag, from time to time. And I like shooting baskets with the boys, although my prowess has earned me the nickname “misses Adas.” I don’t like professional sports at all – at least in America – and find them bloated, cynical and joyless. But the boys are both playing basketball, and this I love!! Malcolm is at such an age that the sport is starting to be taken very seriously, and some of the parents are depressingly aggressive in their court-side advice. Malcolm seems happily oblivious to all this. Strangely, my son – my son – doesn’t have a lot of competitive instinct. He likes running back and forth on the court, but he doesn’t feel particularly happy about beating friends on the other teams. And Isaac is playing, too, for the first time, and I can’t tell you how beautiful it is to watch a bunch of seven-year-olds play basketball! Isaac-basketballThey don’t understand the rules, they don’t keep score, they can’t keep track of all of the things they’re supposed to do at once. Either they don’t dribble at all, or they dribble with painstaking care, watching the ball as it rises and falls with such rapt attention that everything else fades into a colorful blur. They’re easily distracted, practicing dance moves or pulling up knee pads as the ball rockets towards them. Nobody knows who they’re passing to, least of all themselves, until the ball is lobbed through the air in no particular direction. And they hop around like popcorn, so excited and happy, bopping and dancing, dribbling themselves up and down rather than the ball. And then a coach will yell “hands in the air,” and all of them will throw their hands in the air as in joyous celebration! It’s a beautiful thing, I tell you! It’s a mother-flipping life lesson for us all!

roasted-cauliflower-and-chiI started this meal before we left for the epic hour-long basketball game, and I put it all together when I got back. So it’s a good meal for when you’re distracted, it doesn’t take long to make, and it keeps well, either together or in its separate elements. You roast the chickpeas, cauliflower, shallot, garlic and herbs all together, and if they sit in a warm oven, they only become better. You boil the kale on top of the stove, and then you add the raisins, almonds and cheese at the end, with a squeeze of lemon. If you don’t have manchego, not to fear! Any cheese you like would work here, or no cheese at all! Similarly, if you don’t have kale you could substitute chard, spinach, or collards. The boys mixed this with basmati rice to make a sort of pilaf, and David and I ate it atop lightly dressed lettuce and arugula to make a sort of warm salad. Good either way!!

Here’s Jurassic 5 with The Game.

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Warm salad with roasted mushrooms and tiny roasted potatoes and tarragon-white wine dressing

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salad-isaacIsn’t it funny how big events seem to go so quickly in other people’s lives? They fly by in bright fleeting flashes of significant moments. You hear somebody is pregnant, and next you know they have a baby. None of the seemingly endless slow growth and change, the day-in-and-day-out joy and discomfort and bewilderment. To hear about somebody else’s trip abroad is planning, postcards, and stories when they get home; they’re back before you knew they were gone. They talk of going to college, you blink, and they have a degree and a job.

I suppose our memories of our own lives are like this as well. You never remember the hard work and the tedium, the work to raise each day above the tedious. You don’t remember the hours of sitting and waiting, between events, soaked in anticipation or recollection. When my boys were little I was sure I would remember every single moment, every gurgle and wave of the chubby little fist. Of course I don’t! They’re all mixed together in a sleep-deprived slurry of good intentions. I mostly remember the moments we photographed, which is why we take photographs, after all.

I love this quote about Rupert Brooke, “He was magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life.” Not me! I’m ready! This is one test I’m completely prepared for! I love the littleness of each day, the petty pace of each tomorrow! Because, honestly, that pace is picking up, it’s not creeping any more, it’s flying, and I’m limping after it, trying to catch up. I want something big to work towards, of course, but thank god for the small things to look forward to each day. The cup of coffee, the making of a meal, the eating of a meal, reading with the boys, Malcolm’s happy walk, Clio’s sweet grabby paws, David putting his arm around me in the middle of the night, Isaac’s lovely silly songs, walks to school and home again, Clio leaping at us with frantic kisses every single time we walk in the door, inevitable spring, day after day, season after season, year after year.

I used to wish time away a lot when I was younger. I was so eager to get on to the next thing, and I’d wish away large chunks of days and weeks. I was thinking the other day that I don’t do that any more; there aren’t enough hours in the day for all of the foolish little things I want to get done. Where am I going with this? I don’t know!! Another incoherent ramble brought to your by your friends at The Ordinary. It’s a drizzly day, is all, and it’s January, and that’s the kind of mood I’m in!

mushroom-potato-saladWe’ve decided to eat mostly vegetables for a few weeks. I mean, we always eat mostly vegetables, because we’re vegetarians, but we’ve decided not to combine them with pastry and, you know, all that stuff, but to make them the stars of the show. So… soups and stews and warm salads like this one. This was delicious! So tasty that I couldn’t save any to photograph prettily the next day. It involves a bed of baby spinach and arugula topped with tiny roasted potatoes, crispy roasted mushrooms, crunchy walnuts, smoky smoked gouda, and a dressing of tarragon, shallots, garlic and white wine. Crunchy, soft, warm, cool, Yum!

Here’s Everyday by Yo La Tengo.
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Isaac’s magic brussels sprouts

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Brussels sprouts, carrots, cashews

Brussels sprouts, carrots, cashews

Today’s Sunday playlist is on the subject of love. Not romantic love, but the deep, compassionate love of one person for all the people and the animals of the earth. The love that binds us in communities, and makes us part of one community the size of the whole world. The love that makes peace inevitable and war impossible. The love that makes us glow, together, so that we can keep out the darkness of ignorance, want, and cruelty. Love that makes us powerful as people, and as a people. It’s harder than it sounds, and I need your help!! I’ve made the playlist collaborative, so if you can think of a song, you can add it.

Speaking of love, Isaac loved these brussels sprouts. Yes, the boy who won’t eat anything ate three helpings of this. Never in the history of the world has a mother had to say to her son, “go easy on the sprouts, lad,” and yet I did, the night we ate these. I was worried he’d get a tummy ache, eating all of those tinsy cabbages! It’s quite a simple and quick preparation, and it would work for carrots alone, or for broccoli, or cauliflower, or spinach, or probably any other vegetable you can think of, if you have an intransigent sprout-hater. I used black sesame seeds and black mustard seeds, but you could easily use the paler kind, or leave them out altogether. Similarly, skip the red pepper flakes if you think your child will be put off by them. The important things are the tamari, honey, lime, and cashews. You could serve this with rice or pasta, and you have yourself a quick and tasty meal!! If you serve it over a bed of greens, you have a nice side dish or salad.

Here’s the LOVE playlist, as it now stands. It’s a work-in-progress.

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Roasted brussels sprouts with castelvetrano olives and walnuts

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Brussel sprouts and castelvetrano olives

Brussel sprouts and castelvetrano olives

If The Ordinary had a poetical patron saint, it might be William Carlos Williams. I love so many of his poems and his ideas about poetry and art (as I’ve read and understood them) that I wish I could sit down and talk with him. Or maybe make a meal for him. I wonder if he likes brussels sprouts? I’d certainly serve plum tart for dessert! Williams was from New Jersey, home of The Ordinary. He was a pediatrician as well as a poet, and I’ve spoken in the past about how I like the idea of an artist having a grounding, regular job, and about how serving people as a profession seems to make one’s art more honest, warm, and resonant. Williams believed that poetry was important – necessary, even – to understand the chaos of life, and I’d agree that some form of creative outlet (as an artist or as an appreciator of art) is essential for a life well-lived. He chose as his subjects the ordinary and the every day, the regular people that he encountered as he moved through life. His language celebrates the rhythms of real speech as he heard it all around him, spoken by Americans, who were so close to the cadences and patterns of their words that they almost didn’t notice them. He was an innovator, not only in championing this entirely new, fresh form of American poetry, but also in introducing a variable foot and a triadic line break, based on his observations of the sound of the world around him – of his world. He was generous – he was a mentor to many younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg (also a Jersey boy!). He stressed the importance of the local – of appreciating and understanding your home and the ways that it shaped you – but he was not provincial. He studied and travelled abroad, and was fascinated by new ideas and new forms of art. I love poetry that seems simple, effortless and formless, but which is revealed, upon closer examination to be carefully, lovingly crafted, with attention to every small detail. I love the picture of Williams that I conjure as I read about him and read his poetry. He seemed a passionate, creative, warm and generous spirit. I love the fact that, in an era during which many artists thought of themselves as a superior, supersensitive class, he spoke about “common” people, and not in a deprecating, patronizing fashion, but as such a person himself, sharing his voice and his observations. His poems are spare and beautiful – frequently he describes a moment using images (not ideas but things) and odd particular details that convey far more meaning and emotion because we make the connections for ourselves.

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

In which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle

Salad of warm brussel sprouts

Salad of warm brussel sprouts

Speaking of bottle green, have you ever seen such a pretty salad? We bought a giant alien-looking sprig of brussels sprouts. I cut half of them from the stalk, roasted them, and tossed them with walnuts, arugula and castelvetrano olives, to make a sort of warm salad, or vegetable side dish. I dressed it with melted butter and balsamic. That’s right! A butter dressing for a salad. I thought it was ridiculously tasty – salty, juicy, and crunchy all at once. Even Isaac liked the brussel sprouts! I think they get a bad name, like many brassica, because they’re stinky if you broil them. But they’re lovely if you roast them!

Instead of a song, today, I’ll leave you with Williams reading his most famous poem.

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