Potatoes with goat cheese, olives and capers
Thinly sliced potatoes with goat cheese, olives and tomatoes
Here’s Sir Lord Comic with Doctor Feelgood
Thin sliced roasted potatoes topped with goat cheese, pistachios, olives and capers
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Category Archives: tomatoes
Roasted butternut, mushroom and white bean tostada with pecan chipotle sauce
Buuternut, mushroom and white bean tostadas
just thinking of the wind
it pierces my body
– Basho
All night long the wind seemed to shake the house. It sounded as though it was rushing through the neighborhood, rattling chains and knocking things over. It sounded like somebody drumming on empty barrels, and then racing away up the street. I lay awake for a while, worrying. Not about the wind, but about getting older and about disease and decay. It sounds foolish, it is foolish, and yet I lay awake letting my thoughts move from one thing to another, just like a visit to the doctor at a certain age results in one test that leads to another and another. I had no concrete cause for concern, I don’t know where the worry came from. I finally fell asleep and dreamt about owls and woke up confused. The wind was still wild this morning, blowing through us like icy knives on the way to school. When Clio and I walked home, empty garbage cans rolled around the streets, and made Clio crazy. She stopped and startled and then took off like a shot. Her hackles were raised, she refused to go down certain streets and she barked down others. She was in a panic. It struck me as strange that it’s so easy for us to recognize when somebody else’s fears are ungrounded or misplaced. It’s so easy for me to see that Clio is not going to be attacked by a garbage can, and I know that cars are dangerous for her, though she does not. It must be like that with my own worries as well. I’m barking down alleys at shadows, losing sleep over empty cans.
Roasted squash, mushroom and white bean tostadas
Here’s Skip James with Worried Blues.
Crepes with chard, olives and tarragon-almond “ricotta”
Crepes with chard, olives, and tarragon almond “ricotta”
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“He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events—sometimes just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them—assumed in Karataev’s a character of solemn fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening (they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man—not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor…”
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“Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance of any word or deed taken separately.”
To Pierre, Platon Karataev is “an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth,” and he helps Pierre to find the tranquility he has been seeking for years.
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“In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning—and all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.”
Karataev helps Pierre to appreciate the taste of a simple potato, and in honor of that scene I made some potatoes simply boiled with butter, salt and pepper. But that’s not a very interesting recipe to tell you about, so Instead I’ll share the recipe of what we ate them with. For our Mardi Gras meal we had crepes stuffed with sautéed chard, castelvetrano olives, tomatoes and mozzarella and a sort of “ricotta” made from almonds, tarragon, and capers. Delicious!
Here’s Dig It, by the Coup. I’m not sure why, but it just seems to fit. And I love it.
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Chickpea and farro soup with spinach and tomatoes
Chickpea and farro soup with spinach and tomatoes
And today’s recipe is simple but delicious. It’s soup! Because it’s still cold and snowy here, and starting to seem like it always will be! This soup is hearty with farro and potatoes, but bright with tomato and lemon and rosemary. If you have fresh basil, that’s nice with it. If not a dollop of pesto is nice, or some grated mozzarella.
Here’s a link to your interactive playlist. Add whatever song you like, or leave a title in the comments and I’ll add it for you through the week.
Castelvetrano pistachio and white bean pizza with a chickpea flour crust
White bean, olive and pistachio pizza
In this world we have to talk a little and hush a heap.
Love is just like a vein in a spring:
Keeps you with supplements to cherish up what you have.”
Amen.
White bean, olive and pistachio pizza
Here’s I Am The Light of this World.
Butternut ricotta kofta with pistachio-pumpkinseed sauce
Butternut ricotta kofta and pistachio pumpkinseed sauce
As poet R. Lee Sharpe tells us, we’re all give the tools to work with, we’re all given the lego starter set, and what we do with it is up to us…
R. Lee Sharpe
“A Bag of Tools”
Isn’t it strange that princes and kings,
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
And common people like you and me,
Are builders for eternity?
Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass, a book of rules;
And each must make- ere life is flown-
A stumbling block, or a stepping stone.
Butternut ricotta kofta and pistachio pumpkinseed sauce
Here’s The Heptones with Book of Rules, based on R. Lee Sharpe’s poem.
Roasted butternut and tomato soup with butter beans
Roasted butternut and butterbean soup
It’s dancing dogs! It’s from 200 BC! It’s from Jalisco, which is in Mexico! It makes me so happy that somebody took the time to make this. It’s so beautiful and joyful and perfect in every way. You can see the original at the Princeton University Art Museum, which is a wonderful place. And today’s Sunday interactive playlist is an easy one. It’s dancing songs, songs about dancing or songs that make you feel like dancing. It will help us all get through these dull grey January days.
And here’s a roasty juicy soup with nice plump butter beans in it and a good dollop of pesto on top. Not hard to make and very tasty. The boys ate it with pasta, as a sort of sauce.
Here’s a link to your interactive play list. Add what you like or leave a comment and I’ll try to remember to add it for you.
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Thinly sliced potatoes with spinach, tomatoes and olives
Sliced potatoes with spinach, olives and tomatoes
Thinly sliced potatoes layered with spinach, tomatoes and olives
Here’s Bicicleta from the Machucha soundtrack.
Beet green and goat cheese timbales with braised golden beets
Beet green and goat cheese timbales
It’s nice to have their company in our warm home on dark cold nights, but I’m sure that they, too, are dreaming of a long late balmy evening, when they can slip from our windows into the sweet summer air.
beet green timbales with braised golden beets
Here’s Bob Marley with Put it On. Feel them spirit!
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Spicy smoky black-eyed peas and rice
Spicy smoky black-eyed peas and rice
Then Clio ran into the trees. We heard her crying and then nothing. Malcolm and David went searching through the thorns and brambles and frozen marsh, and Isaac and I stayed on the path. For ten minutes, fifteen minutes, no sound, no sign of Clio. I tried not to think about finding her hurt or worse, I tried not to think about not finding her, I tried not to think at all. When we finally found her she was on the other side of the woods, the other side of the towpath, the other side of the canal, up a hill on route 29. A grey dog on a grey shoulder-less road on a grey day. She ran down the hill crying, and swam across the icy canal to reach us. And we had her back again, the stupid beautiful dog. The boys now understand what it means to be so worried about someone that you’re angry with them. They talked about it for the rest of the day, describing how they felt every step of the way. So we were all safe and warm with a story to tell: the losing and finding of Clio the dog. And today’s Sunday interactive playlist is on the subject of losing and finding things. You might lose your baby or your reason or your dog or your keys or your heart or your mind. You might find your soul or your voice or a pot of gold. Add your songs to the list, or leave a note in the comments and I’ll try to remember to add it through the week.
Of course we had black-eyed peas and ring-shaped bread on New Year’s day! We made the peas spicy and smoky, with ginger, jalapeños, garlic, black cardamom, cumin, cilantro and smoked paprika. I used black-eyed peas from a can, because I’m lazy like that, but you could cook them up from scratch and add them just as easily. We ate theme with basmati rice and stewed collards and potatoes. Yet another way to clear the cobwebs!!
Out of the Ordinary 