365 Days, Day 129

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly (M. F. K. Fisher)

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good (Alice May Brock)

It's the company, not the cooking, that makes a meal (Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky, 2006)

I am going to share some recipes with you. Seeing as the photo is of a mushroom (you’d never have guessed? I was on my Lily-walk in the forest today when I saw this half-dried neglected mushroom lying next to the path. It had to come home and be photographed – that was the end of Lily’s “heel” training because I needed my left hand to gingerly carry the fragile mushroom) - my recipes will be mushroom recipes.

Mushroom Soup.

This recipe can be prepared in 20 minutes.

INGREDIENTS:

* 25g butter

* 1 small onion, peeled and sliced

* 225g button mushrooms, washed and sliced

* 25g flour

* 600ml chicken stock (home-made if you have some in your deep freeze)

* 150ml milk

* Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the butter and fry the onion until soft. Add the mushrooms and sauté for about 5 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, and then add the stock and milk gradually. Bring to the boil stirring all the time. Season well, cover and simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

Serve hot, garnished with chopped parsley if liked.

Comfort food:

Jamie Oliver’s Grilled mushroom risotto

A mushroom risotto can be taken in many different ways, depending on what kind of mushrooms you have and whether they are introduced at the very beginning of cooking or just added at the end, as I’m going to do here. The inspiration for this recipe came when I was in Japan and saw mushrooms being cooked completely dry on a barbecue or griddle pan. This way of cooking brings out a really fresh and nutty flavour in them; perfect for being dressed lightly with olive oil, salt and lemon juice or stirred into a risotto at the last minute before serving.

Ingredients

• 1.5 litres hot chicken stock
• a handful of dried porcini mushrooms
• olive oil
• 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, trimmed and finely chopped
• 400g risotto rice
• 150ml white wine
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 large handfuls of wild mushrooms (try shiitake, girolle, chestnut or oyster – definitely no button mushrooms, please!), cleaned and sliced
• a few sprigs of fresh chervil, tarragon or parsley, leaves picked and chopped
• juice of 1 lemon
• 25g butter
• 2 nice handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving
• extra virgin olive oil

Heat your stock in a saucepan and keep it on a low simmer. Place the porcini mushrooms in a bowl and pour in just enough hot stock to cover. Leave for a couple of minutes until they’ve softened. Fish them out of the stock and chop them, reserving the soaking liquid.

In a large pan, heat a glug of olive oil and add the onion and celery. Slowly fry without colouring them for at least 10 minutes, then turn the heat up and add the rice. Give it a stir. Stir in the vermouth or wine – it’ll smell fantastic! Keep stirring until the liquid has cooked into the rice. Now pour the porcini soaking liquid through a sieve into the pan and add the chopped porcini, a good pinch of salt and your first ladle of hot stock. Turn the heat down to a simmer and keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and massaging the starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next.

Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. This will take about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, get a dry griddle pan hot and grill the wild mushrooms until soft. If your pan isn’t big enough, do this in batches. Put them into a bowl and add the chopped herbs, a pinch of salt and the lemon juice. Using your hands, get stuck in and toss everything together – this is going to be incredible!

Take the risotto off the heat and check the seasoning carefully. Stir in the butter and the Parmesan. You want it to be creamy and oozy in texture, so add a bit more stock if you think it needs it. Put a lid on and leave the risotto to relax for about 3 minutes.

Take your risotto and add a little more seasoning or Parmesan if you like. Serve a good dollop of risotto topped with some grilled dressed mushrooms, a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Tom: guess what I’d like this weekend for a meal (besides sushi)?

My four paintings are almost finished – I have to ready myself to be brave enough to take them to the gallery once completed… And then I will start on a new series. Not sure of the theme yet. No, as beautiful as this little skirted mushroom is, it won’t be mushrooms. Although having said that…

Will keep you posted.

365 Days, Day 128

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together (Jack Kerouac)

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world (Lois Wyse)

I have been having bizarre dreams lately; hopefully not everyone has these kinds of dreams! Last night I dreamt I was putting out the rubbish and saw a cheque lying next to the bin. When I went to pick it up it was partially torn – the name of the recipient had been torn away. Whilst I was bent over I heard someone speaking Afrikaans and thought: oh, we have Afrikaans neighbours in the UK, I must say hello. I looked up and there was a bright blue-haired lady staring at me…

Our ties to some people, places or experiences have a long-lasting place in our Quilt of Life. Starting at birth we are physically joined by a cord to the womb of our mothers: our first tie is a strong one. Mothers’ unconditional love is a primal one; a collective memory from our ancestors. Along the way we have minor ties that are not always strong or even long-lasting. Even short-lived they leave a stitch on the Quilt of Life.

The long-lasting ties are the ones that from knots and help you to hang on. Thank you to all of you who have tied knots with me: my lifesavers.

And much love to the friends who are my connection to life: who represent my tie with my history or to the future and who are part of the insanity that is my life!

365 Days, Day 127

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many coloured lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead (Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk, in Shoe)

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another (Brenda Ueland -American feminist and author 1891-1985)

Sometimes when I sit down to write I have no idea what to say. I stare at the screen until drops of blood appear on my forehead! I then do like I have done in many an exam: waffle. It seemed to work alright for the exams…

Beading can be very therapeutic. And so I guess can writing. I admire and covet the life of an author. I know it is hard work. But I wish that there was a story inside me that needed to be written. That obsession that drives you day after day. It would be rewarding if it could be like stringing beads in kindergarten. Although I must say my memories of nursery school are often clouded by being fearful, and sleeping under the teacher’s table because a tall Afrikaans boy called (François?) used to pinch me at ‘nap-time’. He’d find me and lie next to me and pinch me. I wonder why I didn’t just kick him… I was very shy back then.

The smell of a nursery school classroom or a grade 1 classroom has a particular smell… which to this day makes my stomach turn slightly. It is a mixture of sandwiches with marmite or fishpaste or cheese-spread or that vomit-looking spread (sandwich spread?) and fruit (slightly over-ripe). And paint and plasticine and shoes. How many years did I spend teaching nursery school and grade 1…?

Thinking back, I have taught thousands of children over the years… the good and the bad… and the quiet ones. But that is a story for another day.

For now I need to clean up the blood from my forehead.

365 Days, Day 126

A man not old, but mellow, like good wine (Stephen Phillips (1845-1915) Ulysses, III. ii)

How much better is thy love than wine! (The Song of Solomon, 4:10) [no regrets]

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out... (Kingsley Amis Everyday Drinking)

Wine is rather fine. But I don’t like it.

If I have to select a bottle for social occasions, I make my choice by the label. The label has to catch my attention. Quite a few winemakers are making use of humour in their labels – which I love. The Tall horse range of wines with their giraffe labels are fun. The name Fat Bastards also catches my attention. I have no idea what the tastes like of should taste like. Sometimes the bottle shape or colour will also attract me: I had quite a few blue wine bottles at one stage (I made them into a hanging artwork for my garden. They hung from a beam outside our Estelle Street bedroom. But we thought they might fall and break and we’d have broken glass everywhere. So I took them down. I loved the light shining through them).

Mom and Dad have been enthusiastic wine tasters for years. I have tried to like wine, but I am afraid I can’t even “want to like it”! Ariél had to attend a wine tasting course when she was waitressing at a fancy restaurant in Truro. She doesn’t seem to like wine much either though. Even so she did gain an awareness of how food affects the taste of wine and why some wines tastes ‘better’ with some foods than others.

Nicki learned somewhere on her travels that when you say cheers with your glass of wine (or other beverage) you MUST look the other person in the eye as you clink glasses: otherwise you will have seven years of bad sex. [Swavka says: Seven years of any sex, good or bad, would be better than no sex. So she doesn’t look in you the eye].

Karen texted me at the weekend saying she was sitting outside on her [beautiful] patio reading the Sunday papers and drinking a glass of chilled wine. Hmmm sounds wonderful. Although… I would rather have a chilled glass of Ginger Ale with lemon and ice. Or a milkshake.

Having said that, I do enjoy, in Winter, a glass of home-made Gluhwein…

Cheers! *{looking you in the eye}*

365 Days, day 125

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul (George Bernard Shaw)

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in; their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)

This is just a little dedication to the true beauty of all the people whom I love: there is a light from within. Each of you shows that light in your own unique way. Never let it go out.

Child-like, I am drawn to images distorted through glass. I like contrast of the ‘straight’ image with the distorted one. I wonder what that says about me?

Keep your light shining, even in the darkest hours.

Much love

Diego

Dear Diego,

I know you can't actually read this, and that if you could you probably wouldn't be able to understand it anyway.  I also know this may sound a bit melodramatic, as you have just moved homes, you haven't gone to heaven or anything like that.

I would just like to tell you though, that although cats are just supposed to be pets, I love you like you are a very special person to me.  I have missed being away from you these past two years, but at least I knew I could come and visit you.  Now, however, I will just miss you forever.  

I am sorry if it felt like I was betraying you and abandoning you, I wasn't.  I just want you to have the best home you can; you deserve to be treated like the prince you are.  I know you will be very spoiled at you your new home - don't eat too much you greedy little boy.  Please don't forget me, as I will never forget you.

I love you so much Diggy, and I know that everyone else who knows you loves you too (though I love you the most!).  I hope you are blissfully happy in your new home, and I hope that I can be too, even without you there with me.

Too much love to put into words,

Ariel (your human slave and tummy scratcher)

365 Days, Day 124

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it (Michael Jordan)

You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you (Orson Welles)

May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart might desire (Irish Blessing)

Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door (Coco Chanel)

I guess we all build walls around ourselves in our journey of Life. I know I have a few layers. Sometimes you meet someone along the way, for whom you let some of your walls down. I have never forgotten what P said to me at Findhorn: how I let her into my light but not far enough that she lost herself. I like that. I do think we need some form of ‘barrier’ to protect our inner selves.

Today we went to Craft Fair in a little town called Ditchling. I found the art pretty but ‘safe’. There was nothing that gave me the “wow” feeling. If walls keep us too safe we will not grow. we need to creep out from behind our walls once in a while and do something that scares us, that bares our souls, that makes another/others sit up and go “helloooo!?” Haha just thinking: As long as it is only your soul you bare and not your body! Although dancing round a fire naked has always held a primeval attraction to me… (hahahaha)

Alright, I shall go back behind my wall and behave myself now.