Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart
Tomme de savoie and mushroom tart
Here’s Barbara Dane and The Chambers Brothers with Come By Here.
Tomme de savoie and roasted mushroom tart
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Corn, avocado, french feta and cherry tomato salad
We’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.
Cornmeal-crusted roasted potatoes
Cornmeal crusted roasted potatoes
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I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping
And the whole album carries on at this pace, moving from song to song with a quiet, steady beauty. So today’s Sunday Interactive Playlist, is on the subject of walking. Songs about walking, songs that sound like walking, songs you like to walk along to. As ever, the playlist is collaborative, so feel free to add what you like, or leave a comment and I’ll try to remember to add it for you. I’ve been bad about this lately, but the boys go back to school tomorrow and I’ll have hours and hours to drag songs into playlists. And now, we’re going for a walk!
We got these tiny potatoes from the farm. I scrubbed them, coated them with a little beaten egg, coated them in herbaceous cornmeal, and then roasted them in olive oil. They turned out nice and crispy on the outside and soft and tender in the middle. Perfect! And very very easy. I used sage and black pepper, but you could use any kind of herbs you like.
Gianduja cake
There’s a pleasant sort of anxiety about the last week of summer vacation. We made plans to do every single fun thing we’ve talked about doing all summer long! All in one week! At the moment, of course, the boys are watching dumb cartoons, and I’m sitting in front of the computer writing about cake. (Did you ever see the Simpsons when Homer thinks he’s going to die, and he promises that if he’s allowed to live he’ll never ever waste another moment of his life? He lives, and the credits play out to the sounds of Homer watching bowling on the TV. It’s like that.) But we did go for a walk in the woods. The far far away woods. It was a big adventure. The weather was crisp and perfect, and the boys turned the walk into a search for efts and salamanders. There was a scoring system! Points were awarded! Four points for a red eft, and I can’t really remember the others. Well! The woods were teeming with efts! Generally we’re lucky to see one or two, and we saw hundreds of the tiny, unbelievably beautiful chinese-red, green-spotted, soft-skinned, dog-like, sweet-fingered little creatures. I went ahead at Clio’s pace, and stood to wait for the salamander searchers. The light was dappled and shifting. If you tried to take a picture of a boy glowing in a pool of sunshine, you couldn’t, because he’d walk into the shade and then the sun and then the shade again. The light ran over the moss and rocks and leaves like water, swirling with the shadows of branches far overhead, branches moved by a wind that felt like autumn. The earth was soft with dead leaves, which had been packed down year after year after year, and left the ground under our feet feeling hollow and sweetly, whisperingly resonant. I looked back at my three boys, bent over a stone or log that they’d moved, just for a moment. They ran their fingers through soft decaying wood and soil, wet and rich and fragrant. They bowed their heads together over outstretched hands, and David held their palms towards him as if he could read their future. They replaced the rocks and logs to their place of quiet, slow decay, and they ran to catch me up, nearly knocking me over with the force of their hugs. And so goes another summer, and I wonder what it feels like for the efts when they know that winter is coming. Do they remember their watery birth? Do they have dreams of their return to the water when the time is right?
Malcolm dressed as a red eft
I made this cake for a back-to-school luncheon for the teachers. And, of course, I made one for us, too, just to be sure it was edible. It’s a French-style cake, quite simple, but very tasty with hazelnuts and chocolate. I made it almost all in a food processor, except for the egg white-beating, which I did by hand. It’s a simple cake…but flavorful and pleasing. Like soft, intensely flavored brownies, maybe. Very easy to make, and very tasty with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon or wine after dinner, like all good-hearted cakes.
Here’s Flatt and Scruggs with Wildwood Flower.
Chard puree baked with olives and smoked gouda
Baked chard, olives and smoke gouda
This is sort of like a lazy person’s souffle. It’s light and tender and flavorful, but super-easy to put together. You sauté some greens (I used chard and spinach) with garlic, rosemary and olive oil till they’re bright and tender, and then you process them with eggs, milk, smoked gouda and olives. Bake them till puffed and golden, and that’s it! Pretty and tasty. We had this the night we had the eggplant croquettes, and I found that the maple-dijon sauce was nice drizzled on this, too, so I’d recommend trying it that way.
Here’s Sure Shot by the Beastie Boys…the only kind of shot that Malcolm likes.
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Leeks, white beans and French feta AND smoked eggplant-couscous croquettes
Leeks, white beans, & French feta
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Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Eggplant couscous croquettes
Here’s Kimya Dawson with I Like My Bike.
Broccoli rabe with corn, tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella
Broccoli rabe with corn, tomatoes, basil and mozzarella
Broccoli rabe, corn, basil, tomatoes and mozzarella
Pistachio chocolate chip cake
Pistachio cardamom chocolate chip cake
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His poems seemed washed in the affectionate, melancholic light of memory, so that everything he touches quietly glows. We all cast mythical shadows in his poems, we’re all the gods and goddesses of our own creation. However humble our labors may seem, they become honorable in his words.
Probably not a very scholarly or accurate thing to say about his poetry, but that’s how it feels to me, and that’s how it fits my mood lately.
When asked to choose two poems that summed up his life’s work, he chose two with mythical overtones. In The Underground, he imagines a scene from his honeymoon in light of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
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THE UNDERGROUND
There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed
Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.
Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons
To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.
Damned if I look back!!
This is a mild, plainish cake, with subtle flavors. A tea-cake, if you will. Good with your coffee in the morning, your tea in the afternoon, and your wine after dinner. It’s very easy to make, I did it all in the food processor in a matter of minutes. It has pistachios ground right into the batter. It’s flavored with vanilla and cardamom, and of course it has chocolate chips, because all good cakes have chocolate chips!! I made it in the French style, with whipped eggs and no extra leavening.
Here’s Seamus Heaney reading The Underground, for your song today.
Leek and caper tart
Leek and caper tart
I think my favorite thing we’ve gotten from the farm this summer is leeks. They’re supposed to be a peasant food, they’re supposed to be something that the characters in Au Hazard Balthazar might eat when they’re down on their luck. But they’re quite expensive around here! So it has been a treat to get thin, beautiful, sweet bundles of leeks from the farm. I decided to make a big flat tart with some of them…almost like a pizza with a pastry crust. I sauteed the leeks with thyme, capers and white wine, and then made a custard of eggs, milk, and two kinds of cheese. I suppose gruyere would be the ideal cheese to use here, but it’s beyond our budget at the moment, so I used a combination of sharp cheddar and mozzarella.
Here’s Ride Your Donkey by the Tennors.
Semolina crusted roasted eggplant, potatoes and butterbeans
Semolina crusted eggplant, potatoes and butterbeans
I tried to find more information on them, and apparently they were a loose collection of musicians that collaborated and travelled under various names, and went on to work with other groups in other styles. I love the idea of artistic collaboration, be it musical, or visual, or filmic. Especially when they’re bursting with love for what they’re doing and who they’re doing it with, as they seem to be here.
Here’s another video of The Washboard Rhythm Kings, with some astounding washboardery.
Semolina coated eggplant, potatoes and butterbeans
Here’s a whole album of The Washboard Rhythm Kings.
Out of the Ordinary 