The substantial-ness of a woman’s best friend
If I had to put a word to what I miss most about my dog Reuben, it’s his ‘substantialness’. His immensity. It’s not just his physicality – his large barrel chest, his impossibly long, crazy legs, his large, large head, 1/4 part pit bull maybe – who knows, who cares – those dark, dark brown soulful eyes, constantly watching me – but I also miss his way of being – you know the way a person, or soul and in this case a dog, fills a room, even with their quietness, their fortitude, their undying love and need to be close at all times, just to make sure, because he needed to take care of me and as it turned out, I needed to take care of him. But I also miss his soft muzzle that sometimes found it’s way into my hand when we were walking, or how his tongue grazed my palm when he drank water, or how on dark, quiet, early mornings he would jump from his bed onto our bed, next to me, to cuddle – and we’d lie there waiting for the morning to start, waiting for the day to break. Sometimes Dave would say to me – “Reub knows it’s Saturday today. He definitely knows.” I loved how he grew into every crevice of my heart, all the dark places, all the light places and all the places in between – how substantial that felt, how big, how immense. Some people said he was such a lucky guy. How he won the lottery when he first found me and then found Dave and then found his beloved grandma. But really, I’m the one who won the lottery. We were the real winners.
Filed under Random Musing
What you don’t know about food, water and energy – The National Geographic Quizz
So we’re running out of water, even if in Vancouver we feel like we have more than enough to spare for the next hundred years. So I found it interesting to find out how LITTLE I knew. Not your fault National Geographic. I know you didn’t set out to make me feel stupid. You too can test your water knowledge and prove just how smart you are! Take the quizz right here.
Filed under Random Musing
Poem of the Week: Hope by Czeslaw Milosz
Hope is with you when you believe
the earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
that all things you have ever seen here
are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
we might discover somewhere in the garden
a strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
that there is nothing, just a seeming.
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
the world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
as if snatched up by the hands of thieves.
A big thanks to Alison McGhee for her generous curation of these beautiful poems.
For more information on Mr. Milosz, please click here.
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Twitter: @alisonmcghee
Filed under Poem of the Week
These wild things
I don’t have a green thumb. I want to have a green thumb but I don’t. Every spring I buy tomato plants and every year Dave begs me to put them back. Annual rituals include the ongoing joke of “Here comes my $30.00 tomato.” Still, I get a thrill when I can present my one and only on a plate, with some prize winning olive oil, a little salt and basil. “Dig in!” I pronounce enthusiastically.
Flowers are even greater strangers to me. For many seasons our southern facing deck was barren and I wouldn’t have even noticed until I started to plant tulips. The tulips began after my mom died. We used to joke that you could throw my mother a lavish party but if we collectively failed to give her tulips she would pronounce the entire affair a failure.
So I did a little research, gathered my bulbs in the fall and planted them in dirt as instructed. When little green things miraculously started to appear in spring I was mystified – awestruck. For a girl who was raised in urban Mississauga the idea that you could put something in the ground, and some months later without any further effort on my part, would grow, was an entirely mystifying experience.
And slowly, as they poke their way up further and further, until that first riot of colour appears, the young flowers smooth and tight and then slowly over the weeks, wild and open, as the wind scatters their early perfection and nudges them to their end season state. These wild things with their deep uncompromising colour – they entrance me each and every spring.
Filed under Random Musing
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote – Book Review
There is something wistful about this novel. It makes me feel like Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a place I’ve been to before. It reminds me of a time in life when parties happened at all hours, when people came and went, where the normal rules of life were thrown out the window and where intense relationships happen and then quickly disappear leaving that mysterious footprint of “whatever happened to…?”, knowing that that person irrevocably changed the DNA of your own life, making it seem much grayer, so much less, without them.
That is the feeling I got when I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Of course, Audrey Hepburn brought Holly Golightly to life in a light, glamourous insouciant version that the world fell in love with. The real Holly, Truman Capote’s Holly, is in fact much darker, a much more layered person. When she and her brother are orphaned at a young age and she marries at 14 she runs away from this life and the person she is. She is a young, beautiful girl who reinvents herself as a highly sought after social escort who lives life as if each moment were a holiday. Holiday Golightly – Traveling is what’s written on her business cards.
The story is told from the point of view of “Fred”, a struggling young writer, who gets to know Holly when she moves into an apartment in his old brownstone in New York during the second world war. He first meets her when she appears on his fire escape but long before that, he heard the music, the parties and the voices of an endless stream of middle-aged men who came and went from her flat.
Over the course of the year and half that he knows her, Fred, a name that she gives him because he reminds her of her brother, is pulled into the slipstream of Holly Golightly, who entertains Hollywood directors, wealthy gentleman she dines with nightly and who dreams of marrying rich. Her solace, when she seeks it, is at Tiffany’s which offers an almost realized form of the life she longs for.
Her invented self is so large that the distance between it and reality is far enough that you fear that she’ll never find that centre that everyone needs to understand where they belong. “It could go on forever.” she says “Not knowing what’s yours until you’ve thrown it away.” There are only a few moments in the book where the rawness and vulnerability of her true self is momentarily revealed and it grabs your heart in the same way as when you see a wounded animal.
I had wanted to read this because I have recently seen “Capote” and I became intrigued with Truman Capote, the man who had written In Cold Blood, a genre breaking book of the 60’s. In spite of the outward lightness of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Capote ably traverses the darker shades of the human experience and I quite liked it.
Filed under Book Reviews
Almond Cake from the South of Spain
I might possibly be the only food-loving traveller in Italy who actually lost weight while I was there. Not being able to eat gluten had its challenges in a country that has made an art of pasta, pizza and pastries. I made up for not being able to eat pasta by eating a lot of the local seafood dishes, grilled veggies and fabulous salads that are served ubiquitously. I made up for pizza by order a large gluten-free pizza from Panago when I got home – but the pastries were the ones that really got me. I stood longingly before many, many bakery windows staring and salivating at all the wonderful pastries.
Sicily specializes in marzipan – beautiful, fabulous, perfect, marzipan all artfully formed in the shape of fruit. I had my fill there. But there are numerous versions of almond cakes that equally whet my appetite but which I couldn’t enjoy. So I came home determined to find an almond cake I could eat. I have a few on my list to try but this is the first of them which I found on Simply Recipes. This cake is made with almond flour, eggs, and sugar. No butter, no wheat – easy to digest for those of us with monster stomach problems. Adding a touch of whipped cream to serve makes this cake almost perfect. It’s super light and not too rich. (not that that would never stop me from eating a cake:)
Go check out Simply Recipes. Lots of great recipes on there in general,
Here goes:
INGREDIENTS
4 eggs, separated into 4 egg yolks and 4 egg whites, room temperature
2 Tbsp lemon zest, packed
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup (100 g) white sugar, divided 1/4 cup (50 g) and 1/4 cup (50 g)
1 1/2 cup (170 g) finely ground almond flour*
1 teaspoon baking powder (make sure your baking powder is fresh!)
1 teaspoon white or cider vinegar
Pinch of salt
Powdered sugar for sprinkling
* If almond flour is not available at your market, you can grind up blanched, slivered almonds in a food processor until finely ground. I would start with a little more than 1 1/3 cups, perhaps 1 1/2 cups. Our local Whole Foods carries a Bob’s Red Mill brand of finely ground almond flour which is what we used for this recipe.
METHOD
1 Preheat the oven to 350°F (175 °C). Place a round of parchment paper on the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan, and grease it and the sides of the pan with butter or cooking spray.
2 In a large bowl, beat together with a wooden spoon the egg yolks, lemon zest, and 1/4 cup sugar until smooth.
3 In a separate bowl, whisk together the almond flour, ground cardamom, and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the egg yolk mixture and beat until smooth.
4 With an electric mixer with a very clean bowl and clean whisk attachment, beat the egg whites, starting on low speed and gradually increasing the speed. When bubbles start to form, add a pinch of salt and the teaspoon of vinegar (both the salt and the vinegar will help the beaten egg whites maintain better structure, as will the sugar in the next step). As the egg whites begin to increase in volume, sprinkle in the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar, a little at a time, as you continue to beat the eggs whites. Beat until soft peaks form.
5 Fold the beaten egg whites into the almond mixture a large scoopful at a time. You won’t get much lift with the first third of the egg whites, but as you add more, you’ll be able to gently fold in the whites in such a way as to create a light batter.
6 Gently scoop the batter into a the prepared springform pan and place in the oven. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Run a sharp knife around the edge of the cake helping it to separate from the side of the pan. Release the springform pan sides, and gently move the cake (on parchment) to a cake serving plate. Sprinkle with a little powdered sugar before serving.
Filed under Desserts and Cakes, Recipes
Poem of the Week: Wedding Cake by Naomi Shihab Nye
Once on a plane
a woman asked me to hold her baby
and disappeared.
I figured it was safe,
our being on a plane and all.
How far could she go?
She returned one hour later,
having changed her clothes
and washed her hair.
I didn’t recognize her.
By this time the baby
and I had examined
each other’s necks.
We had cried a little.
I had a silver bracelet
and a watch.
Gold studs glittered
in the baby’s ears.
She wore a tiny white dress
leafed with layers
like a wedding cake.
I did not want
to give her back.
The baby’s curls coiled tightly
against her scalp,
another alphabet.
I read new new new.
My mother gets tired.
I’ll chew your hand.
The baby left my skirt crumpled,
my lap aching.
Now I’m her secret guardian,
the little nub of dream
that rises slightly
but won’t come clear.
As she grows,
as she feels ill at ease,
I’ll bob my knee.
What will she forget?
Whom will she marry?
He’d better check with me.
I’ll say once she flew
dressed like a cake
between two doilies of cloud.
She could slip the card into a pocket,
pull it out.
Already she knew the small finger
was funnier than the whole arm.
A big thanks to Alison McGhee for generously curating these beautiful poems.
For more information on Naomi Shihab Nye, please click here:http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/174
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Filed under Poem of the Week
Ding a Dong Doo Where Are You? Michelle Sauve and Bill Lyons
I have a childhood friend called Michelle Sauve. Her mother was best friends with my mother. Our moms lived in Holland together and somehow ended up living about 10 km from each other in Canada for the rest of their lives. I got to know Michelle a bit better when my mom got sick because both she and her mom were very supportive of her and our family during that time. Over the course of the next few years Michelle and I swapped emails, shared stories and talked about our grief at losing our much loved parents. One of life’s great surprises is when she told me she had always wanted to be a children’s illustrator. Anyways, she had met a gentleman in the care home where she worked and they devised an excellent plan to collaborate together on this story. And here it is. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimers Societies. It’s great to see dreams come true,
Check out Ding a Dong Doo Where Are You?
seniors home.
Filed under Book Reviews, Random Musing
Condofire 