a thank you to our essential workers

sunday at home -- week seven

 i baked a coffee cake this morning, before we listened to first unitarian's service.

----

longing for spring

come, lovely may, with blossoms

and boughs of tender green,

and lead me over the meadows

where cowslips first were seen.

for now i long to welcome

the radiant flowers of spring,

and through the wild woods wander,

and hear the sweet birds sing. 

german folk song

----

 

it's another very cloudy, very dark day, with the wind moaning through the courtyard outside our windows.

----

 it rained all day and i made shepherd's pie for dinner (with leftover veggie box carrots from two weeks ago), while trying to put together my dye materials for the dye-along oysters and purls began. i discovered that my enamel dye pot that has served me so well for ten plus years has a deep rust spot. i can't use it as the iron will change the color of my dye bath. i was going to borrow my friend janet's dye pot, but she has been dyeing with it, so i ordered one online. it's a 20 quart stainless steel pot, advertised for $22. the price might be too good to be true. it hasn't been shipped yet, so i'll just have to see if this actually goes through.

chanda suggested we play set tonight . . this is not a game i'm very good at, and i finally took out my knitting while she and greg went to town on finding matches. however, i did get one match, which ending up creating a tie between the two of them. chanda was pleased at this result, though greg wasn't. he's very competitive.


i also watched met opera's la cenerentola (you can watch it, streaming on their website, until 6:30 pm monday night). the singing was incredibly beautiful, though i thought the set was incredibly ugly, and the lighting was so dark that it was difficult to see the chorus, or anything happening in the background. perhaps it would have been different in the theatre itself. bravi to all the performers! i thought they were all wonderful.

knitting and books

my latest knitting project is rainshadow, by melanie berg. i caught an interview with her the other day, during which she explained how she enjoys relaxing with simple patterns, and, thus, likes to design simple patterns for others to enjoy also. i have to say that this is a very enjoyable pattern, but i'll save labeling it as simple for when it's completed.

i've been reading three summers by margarita liberaki. i saw it in our neighborhood bookstore, and then found it at our library (now i have it out indefinitely). she was born in 1919 in athens, greece and lived there until 1947, when she moved to paris. three summers is about three sisters during three of their young adult summers living with their mother, aunt and grandfather in the countryside of athens. 

". . . an orange moon appears from behind the mountain and falls on the reeds, the stream is gurgling, the frogs begin their nightly song, an owl gives a shrill hoot landing on the roof. i wish i could take it all in, hold it in my arms or be held in its arms. something is swelling inside me, getting larger and larger . . . i sigh. "what's the matter, katerina? are you sad?" everyone asks. "no, " i answer. "i'm perfectly happy." i'd have whispered in mavroukos's ear if he were still alive, becuase he too would often lower his head between his paws in the evenings, and sigh deeply. inside him something was surely swelling and overflowing."

i guess i should add that she is writing about her bulldog, mavroukos. i found her memory so poignant as our bulldog, jack, used to do the same thing; he would place his head on his paws with the deepest sigh, and i would always look at him and breathe deep myself in empathy.

" . . . . for the universe is limitless, and the earth so intricate . . . . "

----

joining ginny and friends . . before april ends . .

another poem - for wednesday's breakfast

 oatmeal

 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 wtih

an imaginary companion,

and 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 with it--those were his words--"oi'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 god's reckless 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 about 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.

by galway kinnell (from when one has lived a long time alone, 2016)

monday poem

applesauce

i liked how the starry blue lid

of that saucepan lifted and puffed,

then settled back on a thin

hotpad of steam, and the way

her kitchen filled with the warm,

wet breath of apples, as if all

the apples were talking at once,

as if they'd come cold and sour

from chores in the orchard,

and were trying to shoulder in

close to the fire. she was too busy

to put in her two cents' worth

talking to apples. squeezing

her dentures with wrinkly lips,

she had to jingle and stack

the bright brass coins of the lids

and thoughtfully count out 

the red rubber rings, then hold

each jar, to see if it was clean,

to a window that looked out

through her back yard into iowa.

and with every third or fourth jar

she wiped steam from her glasses,

using the hem of her apron,

printed with tiny red sailboats

that dipped along with leaf-green

banners snapping, under puffs

or pale applesauce clouds

scented with cinnamon and cloves,

the only boats under sail

for at least two thousand miles.

by ted kooser (from delights and shadows, 2004)

----

above is a slice of fresh strawberry rhubarb pie, the first of the season (?) that chanda bought on saturday from meredith's pastries, a food stand at our green market. are strawberries and rhubarb really so early this year?! or was it made with last year's bounty? it was very good, nevertheless . .

earth day and morgan's show

 today was such a special day. first, it was earth day and we celebrated with brooklyn's first unitarian universalist congregation online; second, morgan performed a wonderful show via zoom that we had such fun seeing and participating in.

this morning's service was dedicated to acknowledging the work that has been done for helping to make the earth a healthier planet, and for recognizing that, of course, we still have so much to do. we sang one of my favorite songs, blue boat home by peter mayer. i searched for it just now to share it here, and found a youtube video that was just put up today from the first church in belmont, massachusetts, unitarian universalist. it's wonderful that all over the u. s., unitarian universalists were singing:

though below me, i feel no motion,
standing on these mountains and plains.
far away from the rolling ocean,
still my dry land heart can say,
i've been sailing all my life now,
never harbor or port have i known.
the wide universe is the ocean i travel,
and the earth is my blue boat home.
sun, my sail and moon, my rudder,
as i ply the starry sea.
leaning over the edge in wonder,
casting questions into the deep.
drifting here with my ship's companions,
all we kindred pilgrim souls.
making our way by the lights of the heavens,
in our beautiful blue boat home.
  i give thanks to the waves upholding me,
hail the great winds urging me on.
greet the infinite sea before me,
sing the sky my sailor's song.
i was born upon the fathoms,
never harbor or port have i known.
the wide universe is the ocean i travel
and the earth is my blue boat home.

----

at 1 pm, we gathered around chanda's computer for morgan's performance, created for their theatre program and shared via zoom (of course). it was cosmic, insightful, fun and poetically existential. i think everyone enjoyed being a part of it. maybe most important in this time of crisis, it felt hopeful while acknowledging the sadness that exists within us.

it took a little time at the beginning for everyone to gather and to figure out the logistics of zoom in terms of setting up the viewing boxes, but it was eventually accomplished and the performance could begin. i have snippets here . . i think the full piece was recorded, so maybe i'll include it another day.

morgan invited everyone to either draw, sing or record thoughts while watching, if one wanted to.

we're all under the same sky . . in our blue boat home.

----

 i also made pasta, again, tonight for dinner . .

 with just spelt flour and water . . 

and the sage almond pesto sauce.

monday's rainbow, breakfast with korrina, and bananagrams

chanda took a photo of monday's rainbow that occurred just after 7 pm that day. it made the news and you can read about it in the gothamist here. scroll down further in the article and you can hear that evening's contribution to the 7 pm cheer from a musician on his fire escape on east 7th street (paying homage to jimi hendrix's star spangled banner) and also a link to the cheers at the east river cooperative apartments by grand street and fdr drive (where someone was playing frank sinatra's new york, new york).

----

 i actually wrote this post last night, which is why this photo of our breakfast wasn't put up first. korrina popped in while we were eating (via a whatsapp video call), and it was nice to talk with her and catch up on what she has been doing. she had been out early at her green market, and was thinking of making sour dough crackers. she actually hadn't been out in a few days, and enjoyed today's sunshine.

 we had our game night this evening, since we completely forgot last night (and watched seinfeld instead).


greg won again, but chanda and i had fun creating our words.

 we were happy because we were picking up more vowels this time around.

it's much easier creating words when you have vowels.

i dusted, vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom today, and then decided we would just have popcorn for dinner while we played bananagrams. i also oiled my cutting boards. i think it's been over a year since this chore was done. i have my knitting out now. i finally started a shawl whose yarn and pattern i had bought two years ago when korrina and i went to rhinebeck together. i'll have to put up a post about it, along with the current book i'm reading. i have greg's computer set up at the moment, in order to watch ballet now, a documentary about a dance performance curated by tiler peck in 2018 for the music center in los angeles.


(p.s. i'm adding this note on sunday . . i thought this was a wonderful documentary with beautiful, fun and inspired dancing, and that tiler peck put together a fabulous show. i highly recommend it. i hope it comes out on dvd one day and that local libraries will have it for everyone to see.)

the new desk

chanda's desk, all assembled . . 

sun bathing and a new desk

 pluto likes to sit next to greg in the sun in the morning.

 chanda's new desk arrived today. we carried it together up the stairs (it was heavy!) and opened it in the foyer. there was lots of styrofoam to discard, and then we broke up the box and put it in the recycling. i wiped all the pieces down with castile soap and water. they were rather dusty; much dustier than the ikea furniture that we've purchased in the past (this desk was from home depot).

 there were lots of pieces to put together . . i guess pluto thought he could help.

 too confusing, pluto?

 almost done! (she did have to re-do one part.)

we did taco thursday this evening, rather than taco tuesday. i needed to sauté spinach on tuesday, with pasta, otherwise the spinach would have gone bad. (my sister and my friend maryann have been having tacos on tuesday for the past few weeks.)

making pasta

homemade cavatelli! (very rudimentary, but cavatelli, nevertheless.) a number of years ago i borrowed a book from the library titled, the flavors of sicily (a book that can only be viewed now, on site at the library). from that book i found a website dedicated to sicilian cooking, established by fabrizia lanza, who was maintaining the cooking school her mother had established on the family estate, two hours southeast of palermo. the villa holds workshops with renowned chefs and with fabrizia, who has been an advocate for documenting local sicilian recipes, traditions and native plants that still grow wild around the island. i think of it as the sicilian slow food movement. due to the current pandemic, they are offering online cooking classes via zoom. i've never made fresh pasta before, so i thought it would be fun to try with help from a chef i've always admired.
 

 i was ready to go by 9:45 am . . (the workshop didn't begin until 11). all ingredients were out and measured: flour and one egg (a mix of whole wheat and all purpose as we weren't able to find durum semolina), 1/2 cup water, 1 cup almonds, 6 tablespoons parmesano, 1 1/2 cups olive oil, 1 cup fresh sage leaves and two cloves of garlic. water was in a pot, ready to be heated, and the food processor was out, ready for the sage pesto to be mixed (my breakfast of oatmeal and muscovado sugar is in the bowl on the right).

 there were only eight students in the class, so they were able to check in with each one of us. "dorina, how is your dough. let's see your dough . . " well, my dough was not the best! the whole wheat flour made it a little heavy. it needed a little more water than the recipe called for, and it needed to rest a little longer. i finally just had to work with it as it was. the first time i rolled it a bit too thick; the second and third times were better. after rolling a long tube, you slice pieces off with a sharp knife, and then roll it along a citrus grater to rough it up and curl it in. you could also use a cavatelli board, if you even knew that such a thing as a cavatelli board existed (i didn't).

after rolling out the cavatelli, you place it on a floured cloth until the water is the proper temperature and is at a rolling boil (and after you throw in a good amount of sicilian sea salt). you then boil it until it rises to the top, or until it's a uniform color when cut in half . . or until you think it tastes done! before scooping it out of the pot with a slotted spoon, you mix some of the pesto with cooking water, then add the cooked pasta, followed by more  pesto on top, and then mix everything until combined. 

it was delicious! my word to describe it to the rest of the class was: very hardy. (my enjoyment of whole wheat flour isn't shared by everyone in my family.)

since i wanted greg and chanda to eat the pasta while it was still hot, i brought it to them: greg had his while finishing up work before his lunch break . . 

and chanda had her's while finishing up whatever she was watching . . 

there was so much to clean up after! i don't think i've ever made such a mess in the kitchen before. 

i'd like to try making the dough with spelt flour, and there's still plenty of pesto left for it.

sunny tuesday

spring and all

by the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

all along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines --

lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches --

they enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. all about them
the cold, familiar wind --

now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

one by one objects are defined --

it quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

but now the stark dignity of
entrance -- still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

by william carlos williams (1883 - 1963)

rainy monday

old man rain

old man rain at the windowpane
knocks and fumbles and knocks again:
his long-nailed fingers slip and strain:
old man rain at the windowpane
knocks all night but knocks in vain.
old man rain.

by madison cawein (1865 - 1914)

happy easter

an easter wish

may the glad dawn

of eastern morn

bring joy to thee.

may the calm eve

of easter leave

a peace divine with thee.

may easter night

on thine heart write

O Christ, i live for thee. 

traditional

 

 i was happy with how the hot cross buns came out. i baked them this morning. the second batch went in on a slightly lower temperature, and i discovered that it's better to do them for less time on a higher temperature, as the first batch at the higher temperature was more moist. the icing was difficult . . i tried piping it on with a plastic bag, but it came out in a clump and was very sticky. i think this has happened before . . but i always forget.

it was so nice to join first brooklyn's service this morning. it was thoughtful and joyous and peaceful. and fun too. everyone is always happy to see each other in their little boxes on screen, with lots of hellos called out before it all begins.

 

 brunch, which served as breakfast and dinner (we were so full, we didn't need dinner).

 

 greg made deviled eggs, and had a sandwich, while i made chanda and i scrambled eggs with two spring onions and some spinach from yesterday's vegetable box. chanda had carried it home all the way from union square. it was quite heavy! (we also had chicken and fish stick leftovers from prior dinners.)

 chanda is now setting up for our family reunion chat on zoom.

 here we are all together . . the highlight of my day. it was fun to catch up.

  of course we did all try to talk at once!

 saying good-bye . . we came from two different countries and four different states.

 pluto is patiently waiting for his bowl to be filled.

after the zoom get together, greg called his mom and the three of us had a good time catching up with her on speaker phone. she had watched three different sermons on tv this morning (she said, "i guess i must be pretty sraightened out by now!") we heard how the family in florida was doing . . who was still working and who wasn't (most were as their work is considered essential. we have one security guard, one police office, and two who work in stores that supply food - walmart and a tractor store). her assisted living complex was getting ready to have an easter egg hunt. they all wear masks when out in the halls, and all are eating in their apartments. grandma has only gone out for doctor visits and for walks outside. she spends most of her time in her room, reading her danielle steel books, and watching the news. she says she likes to know how all the states are doing with the virus. she was in good spirits and it was great to talk together.

a poem for saturday and easter preparations

the rainbow

love is a rainbow that appears

when heaven's sunshine lights earth's tears.

all varied colors of the light

within its beauteous arch unite:

there passion's glowing crimson hue

burns near truth's rich and deathless blue;

and jealousy's green lights unfold

'mid pleasure's tints of flame and gold.

o dark life's stormy sky would seem,

if love's clear rainbow did not gleam!

by effie waller smith (1879 - 1960)

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 morning breakfast (toasted banana bread) . . before cleaning around the apartment and preparing hot cross buns.

 hot cross bun dough rising . .

 and a few eggs in with onion skins . .