on pizzi (a loose, visual recipe)

sometimes we make pizzi. it is a stretched out effort made all the easier by doing it slowly, with good company and a few bottles of beer.

we particularly like this recipe for the dough (but, be warned, it needs to sit overnight or the scant helping of yeast can't be coaxed into a billowy crust.) on days when we haven't had enough foresight we use this recipe to an equally delicious if more swift effect.

I think half of this company likes pizza because it enables us to use the grill in the winter time. (Crank it  to upwards of 500, or as hot as it will go, add the bread stone, let it sit for a while...)

And also because we can reenact the college job of throwing pizzas while in our new, less poverty-stricken and Scandinavian-mega-store-furnished nest.

 

And then the best part. Crowding the counter with any manner of things to put on top of the pizza. (Plus a sauce of whole tomatoes, a glug of olive oil and a smashed garlic clove let sit to sputter and melt into the sauce. Simple and light.)

we are frequently inclined to use cheese we make ourselves, but just as soon not. 

and we get in a frenzy, and we burn our tongues instead of waiting for three minutes for the cheese to solidify instead of swooping off the end of a slice, or we get confused about what pizza has just come off and when we need to dash out and put a new one on...



and in the end all of it is good medicine.

and. so. the point is that you can venture onto the deck in your muck boots to peel pizzi on and off the hearthstone just as easily as in the summer, and it is always rather exciting to find such a novelty as summer-fare on the table when the frost is blowing sidelong and you're already (!) beginning to ache for green buds to appear.

the gates

The last day of the year today. Wide open and blue, enameled, light blowing and all the snow crystals sitting up into the sun.

 

Being at once a person who likes to document, label, and record...

...as well as someone who does not care very much for convention, formal goals, or Plans, the last day of the year always makes me a little sad and a little tired. The light seems too soft and too folding, like dying flower petals,  or old flannel.

 

Perhaps it's because I know that a large door is closing. (True, these doors are always closing, but the bigger doors making more resounding thumps.) But maybe also because I always want to look back and have a smug, folded-arms-feeling of satisfaction with regards to the way I've used all three hundred and sixty five of the preceding days.

But I never do.

Not because I don't feel many beautiful and immaculate things have happened, nor that I've gone without revelation, but more because who can say with surety that "yes, that year was a good year. we got many things done, ticked many tasks off the lists with a sharp and cedar-y smelling pencil, are taller, cleaner and more fiercely practical folks than we were last year this time." And from there, a winding downwards staircase can be traveled until you end up in a mildewy basement of forlorn flatness wishing you had thought to buy, perhaps, some shining, steel, red-enameled, steel, German-manufactured, hand-held, single-barreled pencil sharpener. Perhaps that was what was missing, perhaps it was only a small oversight.

And if one lets oneself sink into the basement of despair one gets sidetracked in peeking into old cartons, unlatching boxes, listening to wailing voices that have been set aside for later and one fritters away the whole day.

Maybe this is why there is this universal urge to Resolve things in the New Year. To try and make promises and bargain with oneself, so next year it wasn't all the fault of the mystical pencil-sharpener-that-got away.

Whether or not Resolutions are really the answer, though, isn't relevant. The act and the urge to kindle dynamism and light and to blow around in the fierce winter wrapped in feathers and bravery is the point. And while getting there often lacks grace, if we can even begin the heave of effort we can make it. Usually by appreciating the very small until we are so overwhelmed with little miracles the daunting task of Doing Life can seem a little sweeter.

like life blown into life indoors

or the details of something profound and powerful of whom you know only the leftover

or a newly illuminated site you've seen a thousand times...

...over.

and of course, sharing meals

made slowly and deliberately by hand

and of the love that knocks and whistles, all around us.

let the gates open into the year, welcome, greetings and farewell.

gaps

gaps and howling wind.

heartbreak has happened, sutures also. the light has dimmed and threatens to fail. all cold is brought close and heat pushed outwards and so. winter begins.

welcome.

 

forcing green inside. also the most beautiful reading under the eiderdown. i cannot recommend enough this novella