Category Archives: sauce

Roasted tofu with smoky chipotle tamarind sauce

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Roasted saucy tofu

Roasted saucy tofu

I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if everyone was exactly like me. Well, not like me, necessarily, just exactly like each other, but since I’m writing this from the confines of my own brain, that’s how I’ll imagine it. Think of the peace! The concord! We’d all have the same views on religion and politics. Would we even need politics anymore? We’d have no disputes to settle, no conflicts to solve. We’d have a natural empathy that would require no effort at all. We’d understand each other’s needs because they’d be our needs! So much nastiness in life is caused by envy and insecurity, but those problems would be eliminated. Nobody would be prettier than anyone else, or smarter, or more successful! Everybody would be equally good at the same things. Of course, everybody would be equally bad at the same things, too. So if everybody happened to be exactly like me, we’d have no buildings to live in, in fact our shelters would be ramshackle at best. We wouldn’t be able to help much if people got sick, because we’d never have been able to invent medicines. We wouldn’t have cars and roads, but we’d be okay with that because we’d all be pretty happy just walking around town. Of course we wouldn’t be a town, just a disorganized mess of poorly constructed lean-tos. And when there was a thunderstorm we would all go into a cold panic, huddled in our hovels, with no rational person to comfort us. We would all appreciate each other’s films (although in certain moods we’d be hyper-critical of them), and they wouldn’t cost much, because all of us would decide that we have no need for money. But we wouldn’t actually be able to make them, because we wouldn’t have ever invented the technology necessary. We would like all the food we made, but we’d have limited supplies to cook with, because we’d have no idea how to harvest wheat, or how to grow half the vegetables that we would love to eat if only we’d ever encountered them. And would we even want to cook anymore? Because we wouldn’t have the joy of sharing something with somebody, waiting to see if they like it, and then rejoicing when they do. And, you know, it wouldn’t be too boring at first, because all of us talk to ourselves in our heads half the time anyway. Eventually, yes, it might get a little stale to never ever have a new idea based on some experience you’d never had yourself, to never hear a word you’d never heard before. To never have a conversation with somebody that’s delightful because it’s completely unexpected and surprising. Never mind the fact that after a few nights of insomnia I’m so sick of my own damn thoughts that I could cry. Never you mind that! And we’d all get along, and it would be pleasant enough, we’d all sort of be friends. But there wouldn’t be anybody to be a special friend, to share a moment of unexpected intimacy, to charm you with their odd turns of phrase and fascinate you with their unique experiences or beliefs. There wouldn’t be anybody to vex you with their contrariness. There wouldn’t be anyone to surprise you with an unexpected gesture. There wouldn’t be anybody to love because they’re strange to you and you’ve never met anybody like them.
roasted tofu

roasted tofu

This is only the second tofu recipe ever on my vegetarian food blog! Weird, right? The truth is I only like tofu when it’s crispy, so I fry it in olive oil on the stove, but then my kitchen smells funny for days. Well, I thought I’d try roasting it. And I roasted it in a sauce made of smoked paprika, tamarind, chipotle, onions, shallots, sage…a version of barbeque sauce, I guess. I think it turned out very good. Not crispy, exactly, but with a nice texture, firm and yummy. The boys liked it, too, which was my goal in making it in the first place. The kids need protein!

Here’s Jumping Someone Else’s Train by The Cure. Again and again and again and again…

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Tarragon and walnut pesto

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tarragon and walnut pesto

tarragon and walnut pesto

Hey, kids! It’s Saturday storytelling time! As I’m sure you recall, this means that along with your daily recipe and song, you’ll get a story, too! Each week, everybody in our small salon of auteurs (well, generally me and one or two other people) writes a story based on a found photograph. If you’d like to write a story about it, and I hope you do, send me a copy and I’ll post it here, or send me a link if you have somewhere of your own to post it. Who are these men? Where are they? What are they reading?
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I bought a bunch of tarragon. I put some in a tart, and I had a lot left. I love tarragon, but I can’t put it in every single meal! So I decided to use it all in this pesto. We ate it with flatbread, beans and greens. You could toss it with pasta, or spread it on a pizza, or even serve it as a dip with chips or crackers. Strangely, Malcolm has said in the past that he doesn’t like tarragon, but he loved this, an gobbled it right down. It is very tarragon-y. This is vegan, but if you wanted it to be more like a traditional pesto, you could add parmesan, if you liked.

Here’s Duppy Conqueror by Bob Marley. It’s about ghosts, you know.
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Soba noodles with potatoes, black beans and spinach in red pepper sauce

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Roasted red pepper and black bean sauce

Roasted red pepper and black bean sauce

Each day on our way to school, Isaac and I pass a house that half-burned down a few years ago at Christmastime. Apparently it will be torn down before too long, but now it’s oddly beautiful with its charred, inside-out appearance. Many of its lovely architectural details remain intact, but now it feels as though you can catch a glimpse of its pretty bones. The last few times we’ve passed, a giant black vulture has peered down at us from the roof. I happen to think black vultures are remarkable birds–beautiful in their black-upon-black scruffiness. We have a lot in our area, and we’ll see them lined up with gothic gravity on abandoned barns and silos, or perching with unlikely balance on slim branches their weight should snap. They seem social, as they all stand together, long wings stretched in a wide arc to catch the sun. When we passed our local vulture today, my little modern-day Ben Franklin said that he likes turkey vultures better than eagles because eagles kill their prey, whereas vultures just take what’s already dead. They just clean up. So between Franklin and Isaac, we’ve established that bald eagles are thieves and murderers, whereas turkeys are brave, and turkey vultures mild and helpful. It’s funny that we saw the vulture just now, because my boys have spent the week scavenging. Not for carcasses of course (we’re vegetarian!) but for junk. It’s sparkle week in our town, which means that people put out their still-sometimes-useful garbage, and other people pick it up and take it home. It’s a nice idea, really, and many people I know have furnished their house this way, and in quite a stylie style, too. However, if you have two small pack rats, it can become dreadful. Isaac is sparkle-obsessed. He wants everyone else’s half-broken toys. He flies from garbage pile to garbage pile shouting “sparkle! sparkle!” Like some mad trash fairy. He roots through broken glass and dog crap, convinced that a treasure awaits if he only looks hard enough. Malcolm is an admirably efficient sparkler. He found a working door knob, a working watch, a perfect darth vader mask, and any number of small, intriguing objects. I suppose this bodes well for his chances of surviving in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He’ll build us a home of packaging foam and old dressers, and we’ll cook our food on abandoned grills and dismantled ovens. Personally, I’ve always been a little wary of used goods and thrift-store clothes. I can’t shake the idea that they take on the personality of the people that owned them. That they’re imbued with the sadness or happiness of the lives they were part of, and that they become spirits of their own as they pass from person to person. It’s silly, I know! I should saunter down the street, like Malcolm, hand in pocket, flannel shirt catching the breeze, coolly appraising each pile of reusables, happy to be part of the cycle of renewal that takes place each spring in our small town.

Soba noodles with roasted red pepper sauce, black beans, spinach and tomatoes.

Soba noodles with roasted red pepper sauce, black beans, spinach and tomatoes.

I seem to still be making warm and earthy meals, despite the fact that on paper it’s springtime. We’ve had a damp and chilly spring, and I haven’t found mounds of sweet peas, fiddleheads and ramps. Even the asparagus looks thick and woody, and costs a bundle for a bundle. So I’m still in the warm and saucy world of food. I think this would make a nice summer meal, though. It has the appealing color of a sun-drenched brick wall in summertime. It involves red pepper, which is summery, which I roasted under the broiler, but which would be even better grilled. Malcolm loves soba noodles. They’re made of buckwheat, and they have a nice nutty flavor. They go nicely with earthy potatoes and black beans, and I mixed them, in this instance with smoky peppers, smoked paprika and spicy red pepper flakes and jalapenos. You could eat this over rice with tortillas, or even on it’s own as a sort of chili.

Here’s Decemberists’ Sweet Clementine, because I borrowed a phrase for my essay today!

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Perciatelli pasta with brothy asparagus, roasted pepper & olive sauce

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Asparagus and red pepper sauce for pasta

Asparagus and red pepper sauce for pasta

Well, I survived another mother’s day lunch shift as a waitress. Nine hours with no break at all, literally not one second to sit down. I’ll pause for a moment so that you can shed a small tear for my plight. Aw, it’s not so bad. This is a fairly typical shift for the restaurant business, and it certainly suits me better than a job at which you can’t do anything but sit! I like the non-stop pace, I like being active, I enjoy talking to people. But it was tiring, and by the end of the day I stood in the middle of the restaurant yelling, “I’M A MOTHER TOO, DAMMIT! SOMEBODY HAD BETTER BUY ME A GLASS OF WINE RIGHT NOW!!” And when I walked Isaac to school this morning, and joined a group of parents talking about their mother’s day celebrations, I said, “I spent nine hours serving mothers lunch, and let me tell you, mothers are horrible people.” Heh heh, I can say that, because I am a mother! I’m kidding once again, of course. Mothers are wonderful people, each and every one of them. But mother’s day is widely recognized in the restaurant business as a particularly difficult day. You walk away from it bewildered by just now needy everybody is. Why is this? You ask yourself, as you walk home on tired feet. Why do people seem so needy on mother’s day? Maybe it’s because mothers are as needy as everyone else, but we have to suppress that neediness 364 days of the year, and on the one day we’re told by the media and the greeting card companies that somebody should take care of us, we’re going to squeeze every drop of sympathy and attention we can get. Because mothering, though it is a gratifying and demanding job, is not a very well-rewarded job in the usual ways that jobs are considered rewarding. We have no pay, no awards, no performance-reviews, no gold stars, no bonuses, no free gifts, no paid vacations, no benefits, no gala luncheons. We do have people who don’t listen when we talk to them, who keep us up all night when they’re sick, who expect us to feed them even when we’re sick, who act embarrassed when we talk to them in front of their friends, who shudder visibly when we try to feed them delicious foods that we’ve worked on for hours. And most of the time, that’s fine. Isaac has had some sort of stomach virus the last few days, and I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep, but I’ve been thinking that it’s sort of perfect for mother’s day weekend, because it makes you realize how good it feels to be needed by someone, to actually make somebody feel better if you rub their back or cuddle with them, to love someone so much that you’re always glad to hear them call your name, even at 3 in the morning (and 4 in the morning, and 6 in the morning…). So if a mother wants to fuss a little when her family takes her out, and be sure the meal is exactly as she likes it, and that her water has precisely the right number of ice cubes and lemon slices, more power to her!! If she wants to send something back because it’s not just the way she ordered it, that’s fine–she should have the perfect meal. If she wants proof that somebody is actually listening to her, even if it’s a stranger in an apron and stupid white shoes, I’m okay with that.
For mother’s day Isaac gave me a hand-print flower glued into a flowerpot made of brown construction paper. It was quite a big flowerpot, and I believe he was supposed to fill the whole thing with a poem. In his usual wise and simple way, he wrote, “I love my mom because she’s my mom.” And that sort of says it all. It defies rational expectation, but it’s true–we love our moms because they’re our moms. Because in reality all moms aren’t wonderful people, and no mom is always wonderful, but children have a remarkably elastic and forgiving sort of love, and most of the time, that’s reward enough.

Both of my boys actually liked this meal! I made long tube-shaped pasta called perciatelli. Like spaghetti, but with a hole in it. I wanted to make a brothy sauce to go with it, so I made this concoction of asparagus, roasted red peppers, olives and capers. It’s got white wine and lots of herbs, and a little bit of tomatoes. The boys used the pasta like a straw to suck up the broth, but they ate all the vegetables as well, miracle of miracles.

Here’s Goody Mob with Soul Food

Looking to be one of dem days
When Momma ain’t cooking
Everybody’s out hunting with tha family
Looking for a little soul food

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Collards and black eyed peas in spicy smoky broth

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Collards and black-eyed peas

Collards and black-eyed peas

I’ve been talking so much, this week, here on The Ordinary’s virtual pages. I feel like I’ve had thoughts spilling out of my head messily all over this little blank box. So today we’ll have a bit of quiet, and we’ll return to a video project I’ve been working at off and on for years. Mostly off, I have to admit, but it’s something I want to get back to, and why not now? Why not here? I’ve mentioned the whole idea before, here at The Ordinary, so I’ll briefly plagiarize myself now. I’m a huge fan of stillness in films, and quiet moments. Whether they last the whole film long, or they form a small pocket in a louder busier film. A few years ago I submitted a series of short videos to an online gallery run by the remarkable Peter Ferko, a New York artist. The series was called Now:Here:This, and it involved art made in a moment (or a few moments) by people all over the world at roughly the same space in time. I started making short, static videos. I gave myself some rules…they had to last about a minute. I couldn’t change the frame. The sound would be whatever naturally occurred for that minute. I focused on leaves, or water, or shadows, even dirty dishes in the sink. The sound generally involved my children yelling for me and trying to get my attention, which was an idea that I liked a lot. It captured my life at the time (and to this day.) I became very taken with making the videos – there was nothing brilliant about them, but I liked the way that shooting them made me think about how long a minute lasts, how hard it is to be quiet and still, how my life sounded, how pretty small things could be. We like to have a story, so any small change in the action or the sound becomes significant. The idea wasn’t inspired by Yasujiro Ozu, it’s something I’d started long before I saw my first Ozu film, but it’s reminiscent of a technique that he uses in his beautiful still “pillow shots” between scenes. They’re shots down hallways, of empty rooms, along an alleyway. They’re not entirely static – the camera is still, but there’s movement of light, or of people walking by, clocks ticking, curtains blowing. You sense that the story is playing itself out somewhere nearby. The shots are so cool, so quiet but not silent. I find them incredibly compelling. And then Ozu went and stole the idea from me! I’d like to stop and look at my house, for moments at a time, from down a corridor, when nothing is happening. Of course it wouldn’t be quiet and clean and cool, like in Ozu’s films. It would be a warm messy muddle.

Yesterday morning, as I’ve already told you, we had a thunderstorm. The weather had been mixed and moody for days, in the way that you feel inside your head. I had a lot to do, but I took a moment to sit on the couch with Clio, and listen to the rain, and think about ichneumon wasps, as I’ve also already told you.

You can hear the rain and the thunder. You can hear the cars go by, which has its own sort of suspenseful build-up of sound. You can catch a glimpse of the cool wet world outside of my curtain. You see the legos and CDs that need putting away. And you can see me breathing, because I was holding the camera on my belly, which is an idea that I like…it’s marking time, and it makes the film feel alive. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, because it’s totally cheating to tell you anything about it, it’s against all the rules.

These smoky spicy sweet collards and black-eyed peas in a very brothy sauce went with the smoky cheesy bread I shared yesterday, much in the same way that this video goes with everything I wrote yesterday. They’re simultaneous. We ate them at the same time! I made the black-eyed peas from dried, which was fun. I cooked the peas and the collards at the same time, so that the cooking water becomes the broth for the dish. The smokiness comes from black cardamom, which is such an odd looking thing, with such a mysteriously delicious flavor. We also have pepper flakes and ginger for zing and pomegranate molasses for sweet tartness, Tamari for the umami, and a bit of brown sugar for molasses-y sweetness. A nice warm meal for a chilly rainy spring day!

Here’s Fats Dominoes completely lovely song It Keeps Rainin’

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Roasted beet, red pepper and white bean dip with lime and rosemary

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Roasted beet, roasted pepper and white bean dip

Roasted beet, roasted pepper and white bean dip

I like connectedness. I like the idea that people connect images to make moving pictures–to make a film. I like that people connect facts to make stories. I like that people connect stories to make history and culture. I like that we’re all connected to each other in surprising ways. I like that we’re connected to the world around us–to the earth and the animals–in ways that we don’t always acknowledge. I like the sparking moment of connection with a stranger, when you realize you have some small thing in common. I like the glowing moment of connection with a well-known loved one, when you delight in the fact that you have everything in common, more so every day. For your Sunday morning contemplation I’ve gathered a few quotes from wiser minds than mine on the subject of connection. Ready? Begin.

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” EM Forster

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
― Herman Melville

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
― Chief Seattle

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Man can no longer live for himself alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe.”
― Albert Schweitzer

So today’s interactive playlist is an exercise in making connections. Here’s how it works. You start with one song, and you connect it to another with any thread you can think of, be it ever so feeble. And then you think of some way to connect that to the next. The connection can be musical, biographical, autobiographical, collaborative, or any mix of any of these.

I’ll start. Tom Waits’ Jockey Full of Bourbon is in the opening credits of Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. Down by Law is a Clash song. The Clash worked with Mikey Dread (Living in Fame). Mikey Dread has a song of tribute to Bob Marley (In Memory (Jacob, Marcus, Marley)). Manu Chao also has a song of tribute to Bob Marley (Mr. Bobby). Fellow polyglot K’naan has a whole album in tribute to Bob Marley. He has a song (America) that features Mos Def. Mos Def first appeared on the De La Soul song Big Brother Beat. De La Soul appeared on the Gorillaz infectious Feel Good Inc. I’ll leave it at that for now, because the Gorillaz is a good point for somebody else to pick up the thread. You can get anywhere from the Gorillaz!! You know what’s funny? I could have gone straight from Down by Law through Mulatu Astatqe (Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers) to K’naan’s Mulatu Astatqe sampling America. Funny, right? I’m happy with tangents and misconnects. Feel free to start from any song you want.

Here’s the playlist. It’s interactive, so add what you like. If you can’t spotify, leave your songs in the comments and I’ll try to add them when I have time.

This beet dip was so lovely and simple! I roasted some grated beets, roasted a red pepper, roasted a garlic clove, and tossed it all in a food processor with some herbs and a can of white beans. I added some lime juice, because I think its tartness goes so well with the sweetness of beets. This made a nice meal with some homemade bagel chips. (I bought some salt bagels, but who knew they were so salty? They made good crackers, though, coated with a little olive oil and toasted. So we had that plus some oven-roasted french fries and a big salad. My favorite kind of meal!!

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Broccoli and cauliflower with tamari, honey, and cashews

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Broccoli and cauliflower with honey, tamari and cashews

Broccoli and cauliflower with honey, tamari and cashews

Each morning this weekend, Malcolm and I went running. In reality this involved short bursts of running followed by long spells of lazy meandering. The weather was perfect, the new green leaves glowed with all their tiny might, and Clio raced through the morning mist like a sleek grey dolphin. I was happy to spend time with Malcolm because I had to work most of the day. I was glad to have some of his thoughts to take to work with me, to mull over if things got dreary. He said he thought it would be a good superhero power to be an animal for one day at a time. So you could be a dolphin if you needed to swim in the ocean, you could be a monkey if you needed to swing around in trees, and you could be Clio if you just wanted to have fun.
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I was doing a good job of turning off my anxieties. I wasn’t listening to the little voice that considered the possible perilous pitfalls of every single situation. “Most likely it won’t happen. It could happen, it probably has happened, sometime in history…” Malcolm fell in some nettles and came up crying, holding his head. I thought he’d hit it on a rock. But he hadn’t! We thought we heard a chain saw ahead of us on a secluded path, which conjured all sorts of nervousness. But we hadn’t heard one! There was nobody there! I was anxious about going to work each day because there was a festival in town and David would be busy with the store and my boys might wander off… Probably not, but you never know! But they were fine! And our Clio was off leash, leaping up and down brambly hills, merrily greeting every dog she met, and so happy and joyful it was impossible to feel too apprehensive. And then we saw some dogs up in the distance. They were off leash, too, and getting along with each other. Clio raced towards them, around a small bend in the path. And then I heard cries of pain, and saw a little commotion. Clio came running back to us with a gaping wound in her side. It will turn out to be fine like everything else, I thought! If I pretend it’s not so bad it will go away! But it didn’t, and the poor girl needed stitches, and now she’s all dopey and crying and she has to wear what Malcolm calls the “cone of shame.” She was at the vet all morning! And I was so nervous and separation anxiety-y that David suggested I chew up some of her toys, since it seems to work for her when we’re gone and she’s missing us. And then I picked her up and she seemed subdued and reproachful, she didn’t fall all over herself with glad-to-see-me-ness, like she usually does. Oh what a dark and grey-day mood I found myself in! Because it’s a rainy day, and I kept thinking that this is what I get for letting my guard down! This is what I get for letting myself not be anxious every single second of every day! Because obviously my constant worrying is what keeps everybody safe! I make protective walls around everybody with my unceasing uneasiness! I talked to the vet and told them I think Clio’s mad at me, and they laughed at me and said, “she’s on drugs!” Ohhhhhhh. And she’s got stitches but she’s fine. She’s cuddled with Malcolm and Isaac on the couch and they’re all fine. And now I just have a little voice in my head saying, “Get over yourself, honey, you don’t have that kind of power!” And yes, it’s a gloomy day, but the new life everywhere is bursting with vivid greenness against all the grey. And the next time the sun comes out our whole world will wake up! Our whole world will shine!

This is another of my honey and tamari numbers. The boys loved it! It’s very simple and quick to make. We ate it with rice, but you could eat it as a side dish or with long noodles, or however you like.

Here’s Sleepy John Estes with Ain’t Gonna Worry No More. I’ve got to get a kazoo and learn to play this to chase away the worry demons.
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Roasted chickpeas, potatoes and tomatoes

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Roasted chickpeas, potatoes and tomatoes with sage and rosemary

Roasted chickpeas, potatoes and tomatoes with sage and rosemary

Thoreau famously warned us to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” As I was going about my chores this morning, thinking my confused thoughts, I came up with my own version. “Beware of any enterprise that requires you to stifle your sense of compassion.” Beware of any occupation that requires you to think of other lives as less valuable than your own life. Beware of any undertaking that requires you to treat people in a way you wouldn’t treat the people you most love. Beware of any job that forces you to think of people as enemies. If you’re being trained that the suffering of strangers is less tragic than the suffering of your friends, quit your training. Beware of anybody that asks you to respond to any situation with only anger and fear. Beware of anybody that tells you love, pity, and empathy are signs of weakness. Beware of any goal that requires cruelty or thoughtlessness to achieve. Beware of anyone that asks you to act without understanding.

    It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. – Albert Camus

So! Tiny new potatoes, chickpeas and tomatoes, all tossed together with shallots, garlic and olive oil. Seasoned with rosemary and sage, and roasted till crispy and caramelized. Delicious! This smells so good while you’re cooking it. I like potatoes and tomatoes together, for some reason it seems very summery and harvesty to me. We’re not there yet, obviously, so this is like a wish or a preview. This would be nice in summer with chopped ripe tomatoes, but for the time being I used little sweet grape tomatoes. They became almost like sundried tomatoes. Rich and flavorful. The first time we ate this, it was crispy and firm. The second time, I added some white wine at the end, used it to scrape up all the nice caramelly bits, covered it, and cooked it till everything was tender. It was very nice both ways! We ate it on a bed of baby spinach and arugula. Lovely.

Here’s Compassion, by Nina Simone.

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Creamy vegan spinach & herb sauce

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Creamy vegan spinach and herb sauce

Creamy vegan spinach and herb sauce

My favorite song at the moment is that of the white throated sparrow. It’s a simple little song consisting of four tones; apparently the second is a whole note lower than the first, and it ends a minor third below that. It sounds to some people as though the bird is saying “Po-or Jack Peabody Peabody Peabody.” And that is our clumsy, human way of describing this wild wistful little song. I asked Malcolm what it sounded like, and he said, “Sad but hopeful.” And that’s exactly how it sounds to me, too! It’s nostalgic and full of memories, but it sounds like spring and good thoughts for the future. I love the fact that birds have dialects and regional accents. Your knowledge of a white throated sparrow’s song will be different from mine if you live in a distant part of the country. I feel so lucky to have this particular song be my white throated sparrow-neighbor’s song. And a sparrow is such an ordinary little bird. If you saw sparrows in your garden you’d say, “Oh it’s just a bunch of sparrows,” and not even take the trouble to find out what kind of sparrow they are. They’re small and plump and drab and brown. But the white throated sparrow has dashing yellow spots on his head, and when he opens his mouth…glory! I love the fact that we can try to define the song according to our understanding, and describe the intervals between pitches and the rhythms of the notes, but in reality, the song contains subtleties beyond our human musical language. We can never pin down the specifics of melody or meter, just as we can never know what the bird is saying when he repeats his song over and over. And that mystery makes it even more beautiful. So this is the song stuck in my head, that I whistle over and over as I go through my day. This is my favorite song at the moment.

This week’s interactive playlist will be all of our favorite songs at this moment in time. I obviously need your help with this one, or it will just be a short list of songs that I like. Funnily enough, all of the songs I added to the list sound wistful to me. Must be springtime! I haven’t been listening to anything new lately. I’ve been playing some songs for the boys that I used to love, and I’ve had a few longtime favorites buzzing around in my head for one reason or another. What about you? What have you been listening to? Add your songs to the playlist, or leave a comment and I’ll add them myself.

This vegan sauce was very smooth and flavorful. I utilized two of my favorite creamy-vegan-sauce making tricks…cauliflower and almonds. They’re both quite mild flavors, but they blend up nicely. This sauce, as you can see, is lovely and GREEN!! It’s a good sauce for spring. I added grape tomatoes and capers, for a little juicy tangy kick, but you could use it as it is, or add any kind of vegetable or bean you like. White beans or chickpeas would be nice. We ate it over orchiette pasta. If you add less water, you’d have a nice purée as a side dish or base for a more substantial main meal. If you added more water or vegetable broth, you’d have a smooth velvety soup…a bisque.

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Pizza with baby spinach, rosemary-roasted mushrooms and brie

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Roasted mushroom, spinach and brie pizza

Roasted mushroom, spinach and brie pizza

I find it very beautiful and moving that people make connections–not just that we’re able to, but that we need to. We connect little bits of fact to make stories, because it helps us to understand and to share those little bits of fact. When an event occurs that’s hard for us to understand or explain, we find ways to connect ourselves to it, to make sense of it through our experiences. We do this almost without thinking, it’s our first reaction. And our second is to share those connections, to tell others about them, to talk and talk and try to understand. We’ll say, “I’ve lived in that place,” “I knew that person,” “I knew someone that knew that person.” We’ll make connections to other similar events that we’ve lived through, that we’ve survived. It’s tempting, in a less generous or a myopically hypocritical moment, to say, “We only talk about violence when it happens in a place where we love, to people like us!” Or even to shout, “It’s not about you!” But, of course, it is about you, whoever you may be. It’s about all of us. It’s our way to lend our strength to strangers we may never meet, to suffer with the sufferers and explain the inexplicable. It’s our way to give hope for a better time after a strange, sad time. It’s our way to connect ourselves not just to events but to people, our way to extend our sense of family, to create new bonds of responsibility and affection through compassion and empathy. It’s probably facile and foolish to say it, but it seems that if we could expand these connections to reach beyond similarities of geography or experience, if we could make a larger more universal connection–if we could sympathize with somebody not because we lived in the same place but because she, too, has a daughter, or is a daughter, or is human, or, simply, is alive–if we could do this then we would have fewer of these incomprehensible events to explain, and fewer people to mourn.

So this is what I’ve been thinking all morning, as I kneaded dough and rolled out dough and shaped quite a few tarts. Baking as comfort and therapy! Over the weekend we made some pizzas. I wanted to make something the boys liked to eat, that they’d actually look forward to, and pizza never fails. I made the dough before I went to work, and then when I came home we made all the toppings. The dough rose for quite a few hours, this way, but it turned out extra crispy! This makes two big cookie-tray-sized pizzas. I made one plain, with just sauce and cheese, and one fancy, with spinach and musrhooms and brie. I’ve given the toppings in amounts here to make two fancy pizzas, but do as you like! That’s the beauty of pizza!

Here’s Elmore James with It Hurts Me Too. One of the best songs ever ever ever.

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