Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Chop wood, carry water

Before and after enlightenment, this is evidently the order of the day.

Cleaners' day today, so I got out for a couple of hours to leave them to work in peace, took a large batch of items to the thrift store as a donation, from various sources including my own shelves, and found a beautiful pale pink cotton turtleneck heavy knit sweater, the universe's thank you for the donation, I expect.

Then since today is farmshare day, came the scheduled  afternoon of hard labor in the kitchen, planning recipes, washing produce, whipping about like a maniac to preserve the lovely freshness of this stuff.  One big knife for all purposes.

So this afternoon, no time for pix, no time for anything but topping and tailing and snapping green beans, stripping and slicing corn off its cob to make pancakes, cubing canteloupe for several bowls of dessert (shake of ground ginger on, perfect), slicing grape tomatoes for adding to the salad made from today's red potato, steamed and dressed with mint sauce and a dash of horseradish dressing,   then I planted the end of the red potato, for a future harvest on the patio, then decided the squash and red bell pepper and cucumber could wait till tomorrow, they being less time sensitive.

And collapsed into the chair near the window with one cup of Earl Grey tea, two little tea cookies from that ancient recipe I mentioned earlier,  two cats and a wonderful new novel from Anne Tyler, Beginner's Goodbye.  I couldn't have read this a while back -- it's about a man recovering from the sudden death of his wife, with all Tyler's unerring eye and her sense of humor -- but now I can.  This is probably meaningful.

6 comments:

  1. That all sounds delicious and the frantic activity certainly deserved a good read afterwards.

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  2. Mint and horseradish??? Yes, I can smell it as I imagine it, perfect combo I hadn't thought of before - brilliant! I know what you mean you couldn't have read that book before as Heather gave me a collection of books I'd once read and enjoyed years ago, when the kids were little. When I began reading the gift books a few years back, I remembered some of the story lines, unfortunately, along with the plots came recall of the kids and what they were doing at the time of the original reading, having fun, playing outdoors, swimming, etc. It was too much recollection what with the current situation with our son. But, that was a few years ago, and while time heals nothing, time allows us to work on the healing process, hard work, but worth the effort. I am about to begin reading those books in the next few weeks. Here's wishing you many more good reads, plenty of farm produce, peace....J in Cowtown

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  3. You sound like you really earned your tea and biscuits! Hope you enjoyed the book.

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  4. You didn't say what you plan to do with the found sweater? Is it to be worn or is it fodder for creativity??

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  5. The sweater is made for wearing! as soon as the weather gets down to something allowing for sweaters.

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