BORSCHT!

 

I cut vegetables, however I wanted. Carrots, Celery, Onion, Garlic, Orange Bell Pepper, Potato.

 

With the scraps from the vegetables, I made broth, later scooping out all the solids with a sieve.

 

Beets.

 

Lots of onion cooked up with Kerrygold Irish Butter, then adding all the other vegetables excepting the potato, which just went into the hot broth. After sauteing these veggies, I added some of the broth, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, some beer that happened to be in my hand and lots of dill.

 

Everything was then amassed together and set to simmer. This happened until the potato was soft. I then added the remainder of my homemade sauerkraut including all the juices.

 

Next up, the immersion blender took everything to pieces, nice and consistent.

 

No more chunks here. 

Then cream was added.

And it was good.

 

Supplemented here with a baguette of fine sourdough.

Delicious.

Two Giants Fallen

This is to commemorate two great men: Howard Zinn, the historian of the people, and J.D. Salinger, hermit novelist extraordinaire.  Zinn (author of A People's History of the United States among many, many others), a well-spoken, intelligent and unabashed liberal, gave the people a voice in a world stricken with the history of the conquerors. Salinger, author of Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories and most famously, Catcher in the Rye, also gave voice to the discontent and lived his life in extreme obscurity from that world from which Holden Caulfield was surely escaping. There is only one known recording of his voice, which he had not allowed to be aired since. There is much more to say, but I won't.

 

J.D. Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010)

 

Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

Affectionate Portraits of Houseplants

Now that we have gotten to know each other, who ever you are reading this right now, I can expose my inner world to you. Inner as related to inside of my apartment, and outside of my kitchen. Over the last two and a half years I have hosted various potted lifeforms, some going by the way side (Scott, the spiky devil has been relinquished, only to possibly haunt our nightmares from the beyond the dumpster) and some becoming bonafide characters of the household. Although the following cast may not all become these iron-clad members of my abode, they all have a portrait as realized by my new camera (which I may or may not be using overzealously). So, either pass by this post with haste if it is that the simple idolization of various plants isn't your "thing" or enjoy the small glimpse into my living room. Without further ado:

 

Motley Crew.

 

Gentle Loner.

 

Mother-In-Law's Tongue and Wine.

 

Awkward Pariah.

More after the jump~

Poems of Prosaic Proportions

I will today share a couple of poems I wrote while taking a Prose Poetry course at the Richard Hugo House here in Seattle. The course was taught by a very talented prose poet, Andrew Michael Roberts, whose efforts have been rewarded by publication in various journals such as The Seattle Review, The Iowa Review, 42opus, Cue, and Sentence among others and the reception of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Here are a couple links to his work:

http://www.versedaily.org/2007/aboutandrewmichaelrobertsbr.shtml

and

http://www.bigtoereview.com/id16.html


And, here is my own:

That Smell

I sat on the windowsill to get a whiff of the neighbor’s papayas that were sleeping in their backyard pastures. The scent was intoxicating. I drowned for a moment in silent reverie, stared at the digital clock, it was sitting where the end table used to be, and wailed outward, toward window or floor I can’t be sure. But now the end table is gone and so is she, that wardrobe full of so much fine scented clothing, which I didn’t really smell until now, until the moment the papayas took hold, like last year, this time, a pale amber stole the room, female adornment all around. Still, the papayas make it better.

Thoughts While Rocking Back and Forth and Staring at the Sky

Place of sky, blue, and building, gray architectures of windows and steel howling at the moon from the diaphragm of their furnaces, those swollen fiery bellies of industry. The tips of the treetops, barely visible, but reaching, are competing … with this world of man, this world of progress, this world we left on the burner too long … competing with these stony, steely, glass and blood fixtures of springtime in civilization, stacked upon so rudely. The tides are turning ever more mechanical, rolling in with words and digits and dot coms galore – and this where the leaves fall on asphalt, on concrete, and cannot find a place wherein to plant a tree, a flower, a thought, a fancy, a romance, cannot build a monument to sun, cannot see past the smog flowering from rooftops for a glance to the mother, the father, those archaic old balloons, cannot. The halo has no face. Leave it be. The moon is no jellyfish. It’s not a squirrel. It’s a mirror for the earth, not you. How vain we are to look starward as looking into a pool of still water.

Have a wonderful day!

Maybe the Most Romantic Film I Have Ever Seen

Bar none.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c

At least it isn't ants.

OK, so I love ants. What of it?

So again I give you ants. Leafcutter ants this time. And yeah, maybe there is some fungus in there too. Both very cool creatures. Watch for a minute and you will have to watch the whole thing.



I told you it was cool.

Scenes of Seattle Winter

 

 Oh Seattle, you shouldn't have.

Went to See Art

As the title suggests, I went to see art. It is also a careful nudge toward a blog that I also write on: GO SEE ART. Check it out. Now, the art show that I found myself attending lately I heard of through my girlfriend, the illustrious, beautiful and extremely talented artist, Anne Petty. It was her show. Here is her website: Anne Petty Dot Net. It was also the show of Hugo Shi.

Pictures after the jump~

From Russia, With Love

Pirozhki! The Russians may be unfortunately endowed with an 11 time-zone hunk of cold and lonely landmass, but their food is excellent. And they drink much vodka. That helps, I am sure. These amazing little pastries are filled with a variety of different hunger-sating items, from the sweet to the savory. I tend to lean to the savory side. Luckily, that is the side of much multiplicity. You may even make up your own, if you were so bold. I made three. One which I enjoyed very greatly, and which was very simple, was sauerkraut sauteed with onion and garlic, with a little bit of nutmeg. This nutmeg twist really makes it. Also, It was the homemade sauerkraut that I just previously posted about. Perfect pirozhki! My second favorite was a stinky one. Think of the most umami egg salad you can imagine. It was mushrooms (fresh buttons and mixed dried) sauteed with garlic and onion, and mixed with hard-boiled eggs and dried dill. Tremendously tasty. If only we would have included the cottage cheese. The third was a little blander, but not bad anyway. It was potato and spinach with onion, garlic, thyme and dill. All of these fillings were carefully deposited into folds of dough and baked on my baking stone at somewhere like 425 degrees. To accompany these little buns, I baked some beets, beautiful red things they are. All in all, a very visually stunning and sumptuous meal. Take a look.