After talking with the newly named "Supreme Auntie Mary Jo," I started thinking about the meaning of ingredients.
She and I were talking about the novelty that many children have when they discover that foods aren't always the thing in itself. I don't think that's an unusual discovery for many kids. When a child first encounters the idea that jam isn't picked from the jam tree, Coke isnt' siphoned from Coke Lake, it is startling.
There are consequences to this lack of information. Jam is a great example since so much jam is just sugar, fruited up. The consumption of Cokes and candies would suffer greatly if a label visualizing the volume of ingredients were on the package.
At some point, I started thinking about how you decide what the ingredients will be. I cook improvisationally so I get this in a deepish way, I hope. Recipes, ingredients, come from learning standards and taste curiosity. For cooks, a question gets lodged somewhere in them and helps form their cooking and eating identity. Usually the question is seemingly harmless like "What would happen if I added this? What would that taste like?" Man, that opens a can of corn, so to speak. You can't stuff that Pandora back into her box once she's on the scene.
So typically, an ingredient is a question answered or an experiment that will provide an answer or at least clarity. Nope, no more popcorn casseroles, as an acquaintance found out.
You, my three loyal readers, know that I keep trying to exhaust the stores of metaphors available in English. I keep thinking that if I find the perfect one, then the merry-go-round of Life will start spitting brass rings at me. With any luck, not at a high velocity.
In my current store of recipes, I've been ticking off the ingredients and finding the roster a bit tired. What to add, what to take away? More than that, I've been gripped with the fear that I might have missed key ingredients that I don't even know exist. Maybe that's a natural consequence of just asking the question. Maybe it might do me well to enjoy the meal in front of me, take it with, you know....
Score one for Proust! Hydrangeas just crashed in on me. As I was walking aimlessly on Sunday, the newly budding hydrangeas at my building were doing their thing on a dull, chilly Father's Day. Flowers hold a special place in the reconstructed narrative of my father, nurseryman. So that would include his mother, my Bubba, as well. While much of America was occupied with crisping meat on the grill, swelling the nation's collective tie rack and just taking a tiny moment for thanks, I was remembering the largest of my three grandmas.
Bubba lived about 15 miles from us in a quiet resort town, Fairport, Ohio. I have strong, iconic memories of the place for many good reasons. Some confusing ones as well. Mostly, Fairport had an instinctual childhood gravity for me, both weight and grounding. In the deep of a starving night, I see three images from my childhood: a set of tiny vacation cottages, huddled under snow; icy tree fingers clicking after a winter's freezing rain; and golden memories of fairport summers.
"Hydrangea" was far beyond me. "Snowballs" was the proper name for the giant, showy guys in front of bubba's porch. When I was tiny, I didn't know from flower names. Peonies appealed because they attracted so many ants. I liked that. The pink of the flowers provided a vivid backdrop for my industrious brethren. Ants were my tinier analogues, buggy dopplegangers for me, the boy fetus. By some sketchy association, I too was abnormally strong and to be feared, in spite of my size. When you're a kid, everyone's larger than you. But Bubba was a presence, overweight and big-boned.
Bubba's house too had a number of outsized features, large and round. There was the spectacular wall of rose vines along her straight shot driveway. The purple smoke tree in her side yard was one of the most mysterious things I'd ever seen. (My poor vision certainly played to the tree's strength and appeared even more nebulous than possible when in flower.) She always had Persian cats, fluffy beyond belief. It was hard to tell where the fur ended and the atmosphere began. I remember the name "Smoky."
How she lived contained seeming contradictions -etherial and earthy- but her tastes were not a surprise to anyone who knew her. She expected some types of excellence in her life, regardless of her circumstances. Bubba was an expansive soul and she was dirt plain too. For instance, her hounds were always named "Puddles," her stove always had the same few dishes simmering away, ready for ladling, and she was must have owned two, perhaps, two and a half, house dresses; her house had an indelible smell, changed only when overwhelmed by a new dish on the stove.
She never let complexity get the better of her. That could look like the limited response of a simple person. Not so from my reckoning. She understood that the reasonable thing to do was to apply what she had at hand, not lament what wasn't available to her. I don't think that she saw much value in trying to undo the pecking order of the universe. To my memory, her wry smile acknowledged the sad, unchanging joke of living. Laughter was always a sensible response to anything out of her reach.
Fairport memories abound for me. My near-blind Uncle Dave, the skeet-shooting champion. Aunt Marcha (still no clue on how to spell her name), who I thought was part horse. His son, David, the bully, least likely to succeed with a skull dented from one of Bubba's cast iron frying pans. One other memory of him: being horrified as he tried to nail the barnyard cats with darts. He's dead, suicide, just like his father. Aunt Susie, ripping the joint up with her accordion. Aunt Margie, her house on the beach; the Urbans; the lighthouse; the little store where we could get a treat. Most of all, I remember the crazy rhyme she'd do with us kids in some Slovak language. The key was the way she bounced our heads around in her giant hands in time to the rhyme. That was some fun. Bountiful memories.
I was desperate as a child to fit myself into this world. Honestly, I bet I was a pain more than anything. Didn't like David. Didn't like Bubba's food (when I was tiny). Felt too fragile for such a robust place. Never felt comfortable, but that didn't matter. I needed Bubba like food. As a teenager, I grew to such a likeness of my father, Bubba would cry every time she saw me. He died at the age of 33. Having his ghost around must have been bitter for her. Maybe I looked like him as a child too. Now I think that I look a cross between Bubba and dad.
The picture above was taken of the same bush, last year. I loved the two different colors, like some optical test. I can't say for sure that the plants at Bubba's were hydrangeas. Just too much little kid memory to be trusted. I remember a darker blue with white accents, large complicated balls. Doesn't matter much, the details of the door that you step through, does it?
Thanks to a cheery analysis by the New York Times, everyone now knows that the Cleve claims the longest civic losing streak any city with three major league teams. (Listen New York, your city hasn't done much better recently and the Yankee's yearly salary is the same size as Ohio's annual budget.)
On the bright side, I'll be able to blame any personal malaise on the magnificent futility of our sports teams. Why not? We've nearly exhausted the cool titling possibilities for how our teams have lost: The Drive, The Shot, The Interception, The Fold, The 12-Gauge, The Space Tentacle, The Cheesy Poof. These things trickle down is what I'm saying.
I accept that LeBron is the man and that I am a witness. However, I don't think what I saw in the NBA finals was what Nike had in mind.
Before and after pictures are usually entertaining or horrifying. Here I give you both. The falls at the head of Denny Creek are a lot of fun. You can walk right up to them, feel a gentle mist, take a rainbow pic if the sun is shining. Aw!
But take the picture early in the snow melt year (today), you'd be in a far more tumultuous scene: no walking path, just a crush of falls and noise. Some blind madman appears in this photo so it's not quite an ideal image. What are you gonna do?
The entire creek bed was hopped up on melt but not deep enough to obscure the crazy Henry Moore boulders downstream. Dig it!
The best thing about the outing: the tendrils of cloud that kept shredding onto the tree covered mountains. I could not get anything like a good picture of that. Where's Ansel Adams when you need him?
Rarely do I feel I have news worthy of posting. I don't today either but I'm coming closer.
This past Sunday, June 3, Janeen and I drove up Mt. Walker, which is left of Nowhere on the Washington Peninsula. (That might not be accurate, but I think that when you say peninsula, you sound intelligent.) First, we drove to it and that was insect encounter #1.
Janeen was driving along at her normal 80 mph clip and something flew into my eye. It felt bug-like. Then I saw the dazed giant bee that I had just collided with. Jesus! It was one of those giant furry bastards with the maneuverability of a flying battleship. At that speed, it could have been driven into my brain, stinging my gray matter mercilessly. No harm, no foul, just a bit of swelling. I shook this off and we figured out where the damn mountain was. It wasn't easy to find because of the stream of consciousness style of the guide book. The authors did not distinguish between getting there in a car and hiking with your legs. But on the plus side, the book is small enough to haul with you once you figure out when to ditch the car.
Before you abrade us for not walking up Mt. Walker, the guide book told us not to. According to Great Walks Near Nowhere In Particular, the "three mile ascent would wither the nuts and berries of the most hardy hikerman." Reason enough for me. So we drove to the top and figured that we could catch a trail up higher. After all, Mt. Walker was geared toward not hiking pleasure, but automotive panorama pleasure with one of the tinier hiking loops I've experienced outside of my studio apartment. Great views of Seattle, Mt. Rainier.
While we were gazing, this guy flew onto my pants! The picture does not do it justice. We would have needed a magic camera (really, just a decent one) to capture the gaudy, yet subtle, iridescence. I moved der bug onto my hand and walked it around to the others on the hill. Everyone was blown away; nobody expected to see something like this outside of Costa Rica. I considered taking my new friend "Weevil" home but it flew away. It was a brief, satisfying affair.
Since the mountain was frugal with its trails, we took in the scene and decided to head toward barbecue (that was my hope, at least). The car wouldn't start. Classic. In a bad way, with wisps of electrical smoke escaping from the steering column. It was like we were witnessing the soul exiting the body. You can read Janeen's account but let me review a few salient points.
First, a wasp tried to land on my previously accosted right eye while we were deciding what to do. Thankfully, my mighty right eye deflected him away. A stung eyeball was the last thing we needed. It would have made an awesome portrait though.
Second, people were awfully quick to advise "just let the car coast down the mountain." Me, I don't know shit about cars. But I do know that they weigh a lot of pounds and some of their parts need gas, some need electricity. Beyond putting the "fillerup" nozzle into the gashole, I just couldn't tell you which needs which. I can tell you that guiding the powerless car down the very wind-y mostly one-land dirt road inspired strong visualizations of a car plunging to its metal death. Probably no fireball without the electrical though.
Third, it's fun to learn things! The guy who arced the starter gap (that's car lingo babies) and made the car go was our hero! Not only for getting us all the way home, but for teaching us something. I felt a mystic bond with all of those duffers of old, cranking their car's front end, churning it to life.
So three insect encounters, automotive troubleshooting atop a mountain, no towing charges and no blood spilled! That, my friends, is a Sunday.
Another lovely ferry ride to visit Janeen in Port Townsend.
I loves me a ferry, the sheer tonnage hurtling on top of the water. When I ride, I routinely buy a handful of candy from the candy store. Runts, I've found, are best for water travel. Today I found a near fatal flaw when I came a micro-second from eating one of my ipod headphones. Closer than it should have been.
In a similar vein, I laughed my ass off watching a sea gull try to land on the rather fat ship railing like his colleague. The landed bird approached perpendicular to the rail so his two feet fit neatly onto the rail. The other gull approached as if the rail were a landing strip. This meant that his feet were far wider than the rail. He kept trying to land and he'd bump his bird crotch (hey, I'm no ornothologist) onto the rail and rising back into the air and reattempting with results beyond clumsy. Honestly seemed embarrassed. Very slapstick.
Hanging out and watching Seattle get small, I find very relaxing. Once the gulls figure out that I'm not food and leave me alone, it's like being on a mini-vacation and no one has to ask if we're there yet.
