friday night dinner

delicious salmon from the lobster place . . with quinoa and sautéed zucchini and garlic (and kombucha, it must be getting warmer out as i only enjoy kombucha in the warm weather).

a painting day

morning

by emily dickinson (1830 - 1886)

 will there really be a morning?

is there such a thing as day?

could i see it from the mountains

if i were as tall as they?

has it feet like water-lilies?

has it feathers like a bird?

is it brought from famous countries

of which i have never heard?

oh, some scholar! oh, some sailor!

oh, some wise man from the skies!

please to tell a little pilgrim

where the place called morning lies.

tuesday breakfast

oatmeal

by galway kinnell (1927 - 2014)

(poet laureate of vermont, 1989 - 1993)

i eat oatmeal for breakfast.
i make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
i eat it alone.
i am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
that is why i often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
nevertheless, yesterday morning, i ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with john keats.
keats said i was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
  he said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly ok to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with edmund spenser and john milton.
even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
yesterday morning, for instance, keats told me about writing the “ode to a nightingale.”
he had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words “ii ‘ad a ‘eck of a toime,” he said,
more or less, speaking through his porridge.
he wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn’t figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn’t sure to this day if they got it right.
an entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
he still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
he said someone told him that later in life wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
  i would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
when breakfast was over, john recited “to autumn.”
he recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
he didn’t offer the story of writing “to autumn,” i doubt if there is much of one.
but he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started
on it, and two of the lines, “for summer has o’er-brimmed their
clammy cells” and "thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,”
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
  i can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff - gazing into the glimmering furrows,
muttering - and it occurs to me: maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion’s tatters.
for supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
  i am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore i’m going to invite patrick kavanagh to join me.

dinner with korrina

korrina works in the kip's bay area of manhattan at riverpark, a restaurant that serves farm to table and is part of a large corporate center overlooking the FDR drive and the east river. the restaurant hires a farmer to oversee it's farm space outside their doors on the deck, and also their micro greens that they grow in the basement. they also order from nyc greenmarkets and local farms.

 

 the entrance to the office building and to the restaurant.

 the smaller restaurant that is used for breakfast and . . . maybe catering parties?

 everyone was incredibly nice and, well, to say the food was out of this world is an understatement. i can't get over how delicious everything was and how beautifully everything was plated. each dish was a work of art. above is buffalo's milk burrata with apple crisps and a toasted slice of their delicious bread. in the middle is a salad of butternut squash purée with fresh radishes, cucumber and black rice crisps. in front of korrina is the baby octopus with chorizo, lemon and garlic aioli.

 half the fun was talking with our server about the treats he kept bringing out. the bar menu had just changed to spring drinks and we were asked to try two of them: hibiscus and pernod with orange; tequila and matcha with dill and cucumber. there were a few more ingredients in there, but korrina will have to fill us in later.

 special pasta dishes: pantacce (i think) with fresh peas, spring onions, mint, and a cream sauce; cavatelli with fresh fava beans, tomatoes and beef.

 the sun set over the 59th street bridge, long island city and the east river . . 

 and all the city lights came on . . my favorite time of day.

 delicious lamb . . 

this is korrina's piéce de resistance: scallops with sicilian pistachios, blood orange and butternut squash purée. when korrina works, she handles all fish plates. the butternut squash purée was what she had made on saturday. it was incredibly buttery and delicious, and the scallops and lamb were so tender.

 our dessert: rocky road ice cream, spiced pear sorbet and maple brown butter ice cream: all homemade! 

the buttermilk panna cotta with mandarin gelée . . and a cappucino . . by this time i was so full that i honestly, and sadly, could not eat another bite. i did make a good dent in that panna cotta, however. but i was very sorry not to finish every bite of the maple brown butter ice cream!

heading home . .

 

 we walked downtown past madison park to fourteenth street . .

where korrina got on the train and i walked crosstown . . it was such a great night.

breakfast with chanda and grandma boo's box

 it was so nice to have breakfast with chanda again: a blood orange from spain that she brought back with her, fried eggs, applegate chicken sausage, and lemon curd and oatcakes.

 korrina's gifts from london and paris: a camera museum bag from morgana, lemon curd from fortnum and mason, a kitty cat magnet from paris, and yarn and a project bag from la bien aimée (a favorite parisian yarn store).

 greg's cousin michael sent a big box of great great grandma's knitting, crochet and needlepoint crafts. chanda is named after musa iona piper, grandma boo, whose items these were. they chose some yarn, crochet hooks and needlepoint kits to keep. the rest we'll see about giving to salvation army.

 two of grandma boo's afghans.

daffodils in the courtyard

the daffodils in the courtyard are hardy creatures

they've outlasted snow and sleet and sooty icy blankets

howling winds and cold grey skies

now they nod about making their own sunshine.

another airport run

past the verrazano with our chronic grey skies . . 

and it was cold out! 40 degrees, so i brought her wool coat with us.

she got in fifteen minutes early and was already at the baggage claim area when we caught up with her.

she was happy to be back in nyc . .

in the car on the way to the airport greg and i had a snack of clementines and chocolate. he commented that chanda wouldn't be allowed to have any as we had paid for her to have a meal on the plane. what was the first thing she texted me when she landed? that's right, did i have any snacks for her?!

so they both had to have more food . .

even though i had dinner prepared at home . . !

heading back to manhattan . . over the brooklyn bridge.

we had cream of broccoli and red lentil soup, oatcakes and lemon curd.

there's no place like home . .

shannon, ireland

chanda had to change planes in shannon, ireland.

coming in for a landing in beautiful green ireland.

morgana and molly at versailles

 morgana sent photos of her and molly's visit to versailles.

poem for a sunday morning in march

written in march

the cock is crowing,

the stream is flowing,

the small birds twitter,

the lake doth glitter,

the green field sleeps in the sun;

the oldest and youngest

are at work with the strongest;

the cattle are grazing,

their heads never raising;

there are forty feeding like one!

like an army defeated

the snow hath retreated,

and now doth fare ill

on the top of the bare hill;

the ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon--

there's joy in the mountains;

there's life in the fountains;

small clouds are sailing,

blue sky prevailing;

the rain is over and gone!

by william wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

back on the horse

 chanda felt like she danced very well for the audition, but wasn't called back for the interview on the second day. we were all disappointed and felt so sad. i thought it would be good for her to get up for a class saturday morning.

 she was glad she did as she really liked the teacher (layla harrison). here she's showing off a new leotard she had picked out at the swarthmore competition.

in the class she met a fellow student from julliard who is now living in london. afterwards, they went together to freed, capezio, bloch and a card shop. her friend knew where all the dance shops were and they had a fun afternoon together. above is a card she picked out for pip.

morning of the audition

i sat and worked on my yarn club project while chanda was at her audition. greg was home and sat across from me, working on his computer. he went in at 7 pm to upgrade the system while everyone was out (he worked until 5:30 am).

 trying to decide what leotard to wear . . 

 my cousin's friend's beautiful garden . . 

 riding the bus to chelsea . . 

 such pretty red seats. the yellow makes it look a bit circusee . . 

 pretty brown and grey chelsea.

she had some time before she could be at the school, so i found a coffee shop for her.

 i love the blue, brown and white decor.

 i think it's a kale, apple, cucumber juice.

 all ready to dance!

afterwards, she stopped at rococo chocolates for a gift for her hosts.