golde!

golden days!

well today at least. it was a delirium of softness outside. a lunacy of wind and smell, laced with the fecundity of the oncoming season. the trees leaned against the gales and the grass dipped and everyone who stood outside was blown right through by it.

a person can do nothing against the impending spring in the mountains. it is not that we are starved for sunshine, for stillness or space. we don't lack variations in glittering planes, the sounds of the wild world or tiny people shaped gaps in the vice grip of relentless cold. frankly we are spoiled by climate-related niceties. but spring is Something for us mountain folks because every year we are convinced it will skip past us, and every year we are wrong.

and this morning, wearing an oversized pair of someone else's pants, a tangled braid, a few coffee stains down the front of a wool shirt and some narrowed eyes to brace the morning sharpness i was stunned and blown down the steps by warm and golden light. the dogs pointed their bodies against it, i rolled my sleeves up to welcome it, opened wide my eyes and swooned in the parking lot of our little building spilling coffee all over Daryl. he forgave me.

but the truth is in the air. while spring can hint at you, spear through the thawing loam and cause the aspen trees to let down little caterpillar lengths of fuzz as heralds of spring a mountain lady is never Sure spring will come until it blows into her and the dust and stillness of winter is blown out and back.

gold everywhere. and tomorrow, fittingly, the promise of snow.

 

 

in honor of Gold Day:  two burnished golden challahs, a golden jar of daffodils (yes, i bought flowers, can you believe it? not usually my bag.), and a bowl of golden salad with some golden (well maybe that's pushing it ) viognier.

thank you (as usual) to Deborah Madison for her Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone which can provide exactly what one wants for dinner no matter what state one's belly is in. 

this is a clean and bracing salad:

quinoa, jalapeño, lime, cumin, ginger, scallion, champagne mango (still preoccupied), and pressed tofu marinated in mirin, sesame, tamari and coconut oil and fried until, you guessed it, golden. i ate the majority of a two person portion while fussing over the crossword. all in all it was a proper solo-lady evening.

: :

this guy has serious talent. geography bees, flag identification games, crossword clues, you name it. if it's related to the shape of the earth's continents, their whereabout or weird taxonomies you can bet he can inform the pants off you about it.

the other day, in response to some particularly low morale and seated over the chairs in my little art room whose tiny height do nothing for one's pride, actual art therapy occurred. read: giving a 32 year old man a clutch of homemade playdough and encouraging him to "play it out." below are the impressive results. good god.

saturdays

most Saturdays this house is filled with lounging. dogs in sunbeams. men with crossed ankles poring over monthlies. plants drinking quietly out the windows. most everyone but myself. i have an official, potentially clinical, deficit in Sitting Around skills, my body just won't let me. and it is due to this wiggly impetus that Saturdays are also days when baking abounds, the oven is full, the stove is snapping and the kitchen fills the building with proper Breakfast smells.

below is an adaptation from Marion Cunningham's Fanny Farmer Cookbook which a go-to tome for all the basics. (i was schooled in this by a Maine farm wife who was advising me on beginning my cookbook collection. she said "if you need to make a chicken pie or a vodka gimlet this is the cookbook for you." chicken pies and gimlets aside she was right (who are these people having dire, frequent needs for vodka gimlet recipes?), it is a kind of rustic mirror of The Joy of Cooking, which of course everyone's cookbook collection needs, but without the insistence on aspics, milk toast and anatomical drawings of the tastiest bits of a butchered raccoons...) Marion Cunningham also has a no nonsense cookbook called The Breakfast Book  out of which I would certainly glean more mileage, likely. Fanny Farmer and I don't have much of a dialogue past baked goods and kitchen basics. But. the point is that she has good things to say about baking a proper biscuit- an airy one with loft and crust. one that can be tamed and softened with buttermilk. one rolled maniacally in butter, sugar and cinnamon. some fashioned with cream and entitled (squeamishly) Lady Cream Bread Fingers. and this particular adaptation which sought to use up the fistful of marjoram and many dry knuckles of cheddar cheese lurking in the fridge turned out to be one hundred percent great. one of the men of the house happily misheard me suggest "herb and cheese biscuits" and, upon breaking them open said, "what's so urban about these again?" thus:

 

 

Urban Cheese biscuits

(adapted from Fanny Farmer)

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (rosemary, tarragon, marjoram, thyme, sage, etc.)

1/4 cup shredded or crumbled sharp cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon coarse black pepper

1/2 cup butter or shortening

2/3 cup buttermilk (or 2/3 cup sweet milk + 1 tablespoon white vinegar)

in a food processor combine all the dry ingredients. drop in the fat (i think butter makes for a tastier biscuit while shortening makes for a flakier one) and pulse a few times until the mixture looks like rough sand. tip in the cheese and pulse only a few more times. turn into a bowl,  add the buttermilk and deftly and firmly bring together into a loose mass. turn onto a floured counter top bringing the dough together with as little handling as you can manager. i like use a bench scraper to help with this. pat into a disk and cut into triangles or cut with a biscuit cutter. this dough, which relies on chemical raising agents, will produce the tallest and loftiest biscuits if cut with a sharp blade/biscuit cutter.

bake these guys at 425 for 15 - 20 minutes. 

cheers!

birthday curd

lemon curd day! and special lemon curd too. to be layered with swiss meringue vanilla buttercream and a satiny kind of lemony layer cake. brisk and over the top for a birthday.

5 egg yolks | 1 cup of sugar | pinch saffron | pinch ground coriander | 4 meyer lemons divested of zest and juice | 1 stick of butter divided into cold little knobs

zest, juice, whisk, boil, stir, chill and voila! yellow magic (or "yellow gold" as it was aptly christened). there was an over abundance, but we are steadfast in our aim to get the full mileage from the concoction. it's been spread on everything. the terrible thing is seeing to the bottom of the bowl.

decrees

 

courtesy of school, forty six students and four adults were funneled into the salt lake valley to visit this gem. such a maniacal collection of fussy cataloguing, bone chips, various bits of easily-overlook-able debris labeled with the neat proclamations of age and worth make me giddy at any rate. but this. this floored me.

thanks to thoughtful grant writing and a turn out of chad punching Salt Lake Locals (who do, as it turns out, have opinions about the health of local museums) the natural history museum was moved from a stuffy mausoleum of a place to a new beautiful location that was built to blend in almost perfectly with the sand stone bluffs of the foothills.

the above photograph is an aerial view of a simulated sandstorm. it whirls, day in and day out, the sand below changing and drifting in a tiny mimicry of the real and roaring thing. the plexiglass window, perfect for squashing a nose against, is roughly three feet across and lit from above. of all the muddy, slimy, tactile, shiny and speaking exhibits the small ones visited (they are at the oldest six) the blowing sand enthralled them the very most.

to try to assign any mouthful to the visual order and impact of a natural history museum -- that of sandwiching eons of time into neatly labeled glass cubes-- and this natural history museum in particular, is somewhat bootless. but to try to reign in the gesture of such a place is more manageable.

there is, i think, a reason humans of all ages ogle and become giddy in these buildings that house physical records of dirt, slime, bones, rocks and mud. perhaps it is the relief of knowing that some white-coated and sagely collection of scientists have made visual order of our natural world when that task is otherwise so hugely daunting. or maybe it is our preoccupation with condensation and distillation; that the novelty of such a compression of time and space thrill the pleasure nerves we are such slaves to.

for me it is, as usual, the exaltation of the mundane. for only very infrequently does a case containing neatly numbered and labeled rocks of all the same size, shape and color lift the hair on anyone's neck. but somehow, a museum demands that we evaluate the placement of the exhibit. it is the age old question asked of artists and art critics- Duchamp most famously- why does an object become suddenly important when it is on stage? the exhibition space and the object have a babbling silent dialogue with one another as to who bolsters the existence of the other and it is over this dialogue that we, the viewers, float to ask ourselves why we are looking at a case of rocks with anything other than a flitting gaze. this is the magic of museums! and surely clenching a fist around any cupful of dirt in the outside world should kindle a similar luminous light if only we knew where the pullstrings were.

this kind of ranting make one hungry to go load up arms in the library with the opinions of various people on the subject

Edwin Teale (any, all) on the intimate lives of quiet things (mainly insects, trees and rocks)

Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood) on the epiphanies of the wild (silver eels migrations across meadows, the new found sight of previously blind cataract patients, etc.)

James Putnam (Art and Artifact) on the question of museum and display as art object

Candy Jernigan (Evidence) on showcasing the every day

France Morin (Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Songs) on the economy of the visual in the metaphorical and literal sense

Anne Carson (Nox, Plainwater, Autobiography of Red, Decreation,)  on the saintliness of any and all things

Gregory Blackstock (any collections) the autistic visual cataloguer who draws, from memory, collections of various kinds

i could go on and on. but it is important to be steeped in these variations on the plain. it is this kind of ritual for the sacred that has sustained humanity since the beginning. we could be so lucky to learn to fine tune our eyes to the every day, even in the smallest ways.

 

spring Springing!

in honor of spring some unseasonable luxuries! er, also known as forced-spring novelties. but nevertheless these hit the spot when camped out in a the lengthening sunbeam that tracks across the carpet letting us know, by lumens, how the season is expanding.

champagne mangoes are in season- those delicate and easily-bruised palm-fitting and brightly saffron fruits, quite small and packed in lavender tissue. we eat them turned inside out in their husks, cut into a bowl, dusted with chili powder, sprinkled with lime juice and rough salt, yes please!

and incidentally, it was opening day for gin and tonic season.

additionally, some progress in that vague mention of starting some actual sewing work which is not my forte. and when i say not my forte i mean i have never, ever sewn a single thing in my life. ever. not by pattern, not freehand, nada. so it is all a trial and so far it's been highly satisfying to see something spring from a tissue tracing into something roughly garment shape. more to come...

and lastly the tradition of bringing a new loaf into the world as spring dawns on us all. it feels poignant and meaningful to kindle and breathe life into a loaf while the earth is similarly warmed and greened over. this one with cracked wheat, buttermilk, millet and a frivolous butter top. yowsa!

living the...

the blessed life is luminous and flourishing over here. spring is Springing, truly. warm winds are rounding the sharp edges of everything. everyone nearby is nourishing and even braving the mud into work has offered up little altars of goodness to take home.

thanks goodness the Waxing part of the year is nearly upon us, all starved for abundance after subsisting on bravery and stoicism for the last long while.

gifts at school...

...and the gifts at home

opening and all

so a few good things! firstly, School decided they would take me furnishing me with an electronic mail, a physical letter, a list of candidates willing to talk to me about the glamorous life of a PhD candidate and a rather solemn and overwhelming course listing for the coming year. now we have two We'll Take You! letters pinned up on the fridge next to the animal hospital magnets, the fancy beer caps, the Important Drawings and the pictures of a rather boozy two of us at a wedding two years ago. all in all it's shaping up to be a top notch refrigerator display.

secondly an Opening that featured myself and a stranger (Steve Larson is his proper name but we've never met.) the reception was well-turned-out and the little pins kept everything as it should be, more or less flat, against the wall.

details below...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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new work

new work for a show next month at the Kayo gallery. lately i have been thinking all about archaeoastronomy which is a new word that has endlessly interesting possibilities!

 

spring time tricks

spring is coming, which means frivolity is allowed. hence: fashionable moments at school

more importantly is the cuisine of spring- those episodes in unseasonable lightness, where one braves the crisp cold in bare arms or strives to survive on light salads and steamed fish. these of course are often disappointing exploits but they cannot, seemingly, be avoided.

the most recent project was inspired by reading a batch of new cookbooks

(this, this and this!) also the joyful eyefuls of this blog. 

and although i am not as eager to proclaim "goat is the new cow" as Miss Britton brashly can, I was seduced by the billowy cloud of homemade ricotta.  this stuff is unlike any solid tupperware-shaped block of ricotta that comes trembling into a bowl when one undertakes lasagna. it is a revelation not only dairy- and delicious-related but also in the homestead sphere where it is, actually, possible for the everyday gal to make cheese in her kitchen! yes truly, with such a breezy and delicious project as ricotta cheese making one can, for awhile at least, where the hat of the Cheese Mongress!! (obviously worth it.)

the effort is minimal, the time is a laughable! get after it and spread it on toast with jam, spoon it over wide eggy noodles with arugula pesto, eat it from the jar in the bask of the refrigerator light at midnight, frivolity is the rule of the day, remember?

homemade ricotta

(adapted from the My New Roots blog)

1 quart whole milk (the fattier the better!)

juice of half a lemon

generous pinch salt

pinch nutmeg

warm the milk over medium heat stirring often to prevent scorching. right before the milk boils, when a billowy swinging of steam begins to fog your glasses, turn off the heat, tip in the lemon juice, salt and nutmeg and stir gently. the milk will respond at once and become curdy. leave this mixture to sit for five minutes. while the milk is resting line a bowl with cheese cloth.

pour the curdy, hot milk into the bowl, bring the cheese cloth up and tie tightly in a knot. suspend the cheese over a bowl hung on a wooden spoon or, in a more ghetto fashion, suspend from the neck of the sink with kitchen twine. leaving the cheese  for 45 minutes makes delicate, light, soft ricotta. the longer the hang the richer and stiffer the cheese will be. like most soft dairy products (yogurt, kefir, etc.) this will be happiest in the fridge in glass for up to a week.

cheers!

eating what is around us

we are not eager meat eaters. we are sometimes too sensitive about an animal we don't know to feel completely at ease nourishing ourselves with it. there are of course exceptions, occasions and kinds of hunger and in this case it was a gift. a friend with a good eye, a soft heart and a good many friends gifted us a hefty portion of elk meat she got from last fall's hunt.

this gesture is slightly foreign to me- to load oneself with loud and sharp and bring home food in the clearing. but in other ways it is honest and humble and it is truly unusual to be so touched by every part of the animal's life, departure and presentation in one meal. this is a feeling i get also when the gifts of salmon and halibut are stacked carefully in the freezer. friends returning from the coast up north, friends whose boats tilted in breezes and swells and who hauled up, with sweat and jaw set, animals that feed their close families. we ration this kind of food, save it for evenings when we can sit quietly before it, spend time in the kitchen paying close attention, and making all gestures rituals before eating.

this morning, through previously uncharted territory, we had elk steak and eggs for breakfast. it was a good start to a day with a long walk and a big moon on the rise. everyone was grateful. dogs included.

souffle

eggs, eggs yolk, scalded milk, flour, salt, butter, humboldt fog, meyer lemon.
it can be done. the fuss is not so much, really.

snow emergency provisions

three nights ago a blizzard clamped itself over the city and held us all in its swirling white throat. this year that kind of storm has been infrequent. snow hissed against the windows, wind chimes were throttled in gusty gales and the roads swarmed with snow.

no one could get out or about, hopefully all who needed to get in could. roads were closed, drifts leaned. bottles of wine were opened and pots of chocolate put on, midnight sledding escapades ensued. all good things.

except at this house, where the larder was lean and discouraging. but in the face of a weather event one has to be celebratory! so practicality was thrown to the wind, and a frivolous, chocolate chip strewn dinner for one was flipped about on the stove.

come on snow!

on the thaw

sometimes a body can be overwhelmed by the bleakness of the mountains in March. not bleak in the visual sense- for the brightest and most glittering part of the year is when the snow loads gleam blindingly  at midday. rather, I mean bleak in terms of the unchanging days, the absence of color and the cold that keeps us bundled and indoors. part of this is because you hear nice things about sprouts occurring in other parts of the world, sweet winds moving across the frozen ground, that sort of thing. sometimes this happens close to home indeed, in a valley not far off...

and of course, this is an inspiring phenomenon. literally, hope pushing sharply upward, a forceful stretch into brilliance. but up high March has never been a herald of spring, indeed sometimes March marks just the beginning of the snow. more frequently though, it is a stubborn, and convincing extension of the cold unchanging whiteness of February. as a result our antennae at this elevation are more finely tuned to the subtleties of spring. what we notice, zipped up in down and wool, is a kind of softening of edges. a warming in the spectrum of the many whites that snow takes on. the shadows seem velvety as they drape the snowfields instead of sharp and cutting.

if we are still enough, turn our noses to the wind, squint towards the sky, we can feel spring. inwardly only, but still there is a stirring! we go climbing about the drifts in thick socks and bare arms. heads uncovered. gum boots.

there is a kind of frivolous delirium, traveling to investigate where else the minute and clandestine thaw is making itself known. sometimes we overdo it and we end up with wet sock consequences...

 

but we find, anyway, that it helps. for early March is the time when we are thirstiest for color and movement. maybe because we are so frequently cold, or because we've catalogued all the kinds of white we can. 

ice rot white

frozen aqueduct white

snow under halogen white

moon on snow white

snow on snow white

the whiteness of deep sleep

thirst

restlessness

white quiet

regardless, to know that spring will in fact spring, as it dependably does is a kind of savior. we strive to bear it gracefully. we go out into the gray in our brightest hats, with our faces turned upwards.