It's exactly a week after my last post, in which I rhapsodised bit about the Haruki Murakami book I was reading 1Q84. At the time I was still on volume one. I have now, just a couple of hours ago, come to the end of the book. Sigh. It's in three volumes, drew me onward and onward, and delivered fully on its promise by the time I'd reached the end, over 1100 pages later. I am so sad to have finished it. And now the story, and the intricate puzzle pieces from which it is assembled will go on reverberating and cross-connecting in my head.
But there's no time for all this! I must get on with immediate tasks! Book tour starts soon, and lists of recipes to teach, photos to show, talks to give, are scribbled in various notebooks, actual and electronic, in various places. Yikes. Time to take hold!
No, no, let's cool it down a little: over-anticipation and over-readiness is not useful. It just means that I spend too much time on a project or an obligation. So I'm working on keeping my equilibrium, getting things done as necessary, but NOT trying to get ahead of the list, or in other words, making a real effort not to over-anticipate.
Tomorrow there's a journalist coming to shop with me and then cook all day from the BURMA book. We'll have fun, I expect. And I'm also looking forward to it as an opportunity to get a better idea of which recipes I should pick for book tour. There's a nice end to the day too, because I'm expecting a bunch of people to drop by in the late afternoon and evening, ready to eat and drink and chat. There will be loads of food waiting for them, if the day goes as planned.
Everyone is coming by because the following day Dom, my older kid, (a young man of twenty-four in fact) is heading to London for three and a half months to philosophise with various professors and students at the University of London. What does that mean? I gather it means spending time reading, writing papers, and talking with people once he gets there. And what it means for tomorrow is that we will come together to celebrate his departure and tell him how much we'll miss him while he's gone.
Good thing there will be lots of food to console ourselves with.
This hot sunny weather that is giving us sweet ripe peaches and tomatoes is almost successful at disguising the fact that we've reached late August. But it can't really keep the news from us, for the angle of the sun, the place it reaches in the western sky as it sets, has already shifted a number of degrees southward.
I'm not ready for this lovely summer to be over. No-one is, are they? It's been a delight, full of enriching travel and experiences, and new beginnings of various kinds.
August is also bringing us a blue moon this coming week. A beautiful card came today from a friend reminding me of that fact. Let's be sure to celebrate its specialness. The clear limpid skies of the last six days have let us see the moon grow from slender elegant sickle standing tall on its pointed end to fattening-into-fullness glow. She seems so rich and rounded at this time of year, already full of the promise of autumn fruitfulness. No wonder the ancients worshipped her.
And in my garden the tall anenomes are coming into bloom. Their luminous white glow is another signal that August is coming to an end. They'll stay in bloom until the first frost, bright against the dark wood of the building out back, glowing in the dusk of the last days of summer.
We'll see them out there as the evenings grow shorter, as we retreat inside to eat our evening meal. And they'll be small consolation for losing the pleasure of eating out under the summer sky, as we've done for the past three months and more.
Now I'm whining. Sorry!
It's time to think of the positive: the surge of energy that comes with cooler weather, the chance to bake, and to roast meat and vegetables, the opportunity to rediscover our sweaters and other interesting layers, and our boots. Tomorrow we'll be making several Kachin meat dishes, and a Shan spiced jerky, as well as a grilled eggplant dish, heartier fare generally than most people would associate with the subtropics. It's a good start on autumn cooking. And to acknowledge summer there will be lighter dishes too: a Burmese ginger salad and an easy vegetable stir-fry, as well as Shan tofu and silky Shan soup.
Can't wait!
Showing posts with label blue moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue moon. Show all posts
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Thursday, December 31, 2009
DANCING OUT THE DECADE UNDER A BLUE MOON
There's a blue moon to end this decade, the oughts or noughts or whatever we end up calling these last ten years. Here in Toronto it's raining, weeping for us? or perhaps simply washing us clean? as we move on into 2010.
Last night we kicked up our heels and our hearts and danced with friends until the early hours of the morning. It was a very happy evening here with conversation and food, as well as dancing and laughter, with people of all ages and stages (we had every decade covered, from under ten-year olds to over seventy-year olds, a lovely mix).
This morning I woke up feeling a little stiffness in my shoulders and couldn't figure out what dancing effort might have caused it. And then I remembered the start of the day; dancing had nothing to do with it! I'd gone to Kensington Market to food shop and by the time I was walking back I was seriously overloaded with pounds of root vegetables of all kinds from Potz, a pound of Ethiopian coffee, two beautiful chickens from a new local butcher, and other oddments too, like pressed tofu, ginger, green onions, etc.
By seven-thirty in the evening the chickens were roasted and carved (and the carcasses immersed in water for today's soup); there was a large Le Creuset pot of mung dal (tart with tamarind and aromatic with Bengali seasonings and a secret shot of red wine) hot on the stove; the sticky rice was steaming and perfuming the house; two trays of mixed coarsely chopped root vegetables (beets, blue potatoes, black radish, parsnips, parsely root, rutabaga) had roasted in the oven to tender intense flavour (dressed only with olive oil and salt before hand) and were out in a large bowl (though the beets were in a bowl on their own, tossed with a little cider vinegar); two boxfuls of mandarins were heaped on a huge wooden bowl-platter; and friends were starting to arrive with various extra food and drink treats. Of course the party started all jammed up in the kitchen, but eventually, seduced by artfully spun music, some of us moved out into the cleared-of-furniture living room and the dancing began.
It's like a happiness treatment and celebration, dancing. And last night there was a lot to celebrate, apart from the wonderfulness of our extended family of friends old and new coming together. The best was the triumphant survival of a good friend KCC who this time last year had just been diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer. Things looked hopeless for him. Twelve months and experimental chemo and other chemo etc etc later, he is cancer free and looking and sounding like himself again. I like this kind of miracle.
Several of us were talking together late last night about his harsh year, and how hard it had been for his family too, of course. David said that for him the painful and scary passages of life are like a run of very bad luck in a poker game: "It's easy to play a good hand; the hard thing is to play a bad hand well," he said. "You just have to survive and stay solid until your luck changes." Great advice.
So as the numbers turn on the decade clock, and the moon glows full for the second time this month, I wish for all of you an interesting open-horizoned new year, with lots of stamina for enduring the rough passages and plenty of glad-heartedness and generosity for revelling in the smiling times.
Last night we kicked up our heels and our hearts and danced with friends until the early hours of the morning. It was a very happy evening here with conversation and food, as well as dancing and laughter, with people of all ages and stages (we had every decade covered, from under ten-year olds to over seventy-year olds, a lovely mix).
This morning I woke up feeling a little stiffness in my shoulders and couldn't figure out what dancing effort might have caused it. And then I remembered the start of the day; dancing had nothing to do with it! I'd gone to Kensington Market to food shop and by the time I was walking back I was seriously overloaded with pounds of root vegetables of all kinds from Potz, a pound of Ethiopian coffee, two beautiful chickens from a new local butcher, and other oddments too, like pressed tofu, ginger, green onions, etc.
By seven-thirty in the evening the chickens were roasted and carved (and the carcasses immersed in water for today's soup); there was a large Le Creuset pot of mung dal (tart with tamarind and aromatic with Bengali seasonings and a secret shot of red wine) hot on the stove; the sticky rice was steaming and perfuming the house; two trays of mixed coarsely chopped root vegetables (beets, blue potatoes, black radish, parsnips, parsely root, rutabaga) had roasted in the oven to tender intense flavour (dressed only with olive oil and salt before hand) and were out in a large bowl (though the beets were in a bowl on their own, tossed with a little cider vinegar); two boxfuls of mandarins were heaped on a huge wooden bowl-platter; and friends were starting to arrive with various extra food and drink treats. Of course the party started all jammed up in the kitchen, but eventually, seduced by artfully spun music, some of us moved out into the cleared-of-furniture living room and the dancing began.
It's like a happiness treatment and celebration, dancing. And last night there was a lot to celebrate, apart from the wonderfulness of our extended family of friends old and new coming together. The best was the triumphant survival of a good friend KCC who this time last year had just been diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer. Things looked hopeless for him. Twelve months and experimental chemo and other chemo etc etc later, he is cancer free and looking and sounding like himself again. I like this kind of miracle.
Several of us were talking together late last night about his harsh year, and how hard it had been for his family too, of course. David said that for him the painful and scary passages of life are like a run of very bad luck in a poker game: "It's easy to play a good hand; the hard thing is to play a bad hand well," he said. "You just have to survive and stay solid until your luck changes." Great advice.
So as the numbers turn on the decade clock, and the moon glows full for the second time this month, I wish for all of you an interesting open-horizoned new year, with lots of stamina for enduring the rough passages and plenty of glad-heartedness and generosity for revelling in the smiling times.
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