Thoughtful Memorial Day, first strawberry, the Calgary marathon, food capers

 Yesterday strawberries were in at the farm

And I took the first bite of the year. I learned this pleasure, like a lot of other pleasures, from Handsome Partner. He loved strawberries, and made a ritual of the pure enjoyment of that first bite each year.

His birthday was in June, so I made him strawberry shortcake each year.  We remember him on his birthday rather than the day he died, since that was on Handsome Son's birthday in August.

This morning's breakfast was pita bread stuffed with fruit as it often is. Today it's strawberries. Everything in season.

And since recent storms flattened the flowers, including the sage blossoms, I brought them in as edible cut flowers.

They'll go in the freezer once they fade, for future cooking.

Speaking of which, there's a current exhibit of paintings from the 18th century Mughal era in India, where smells and touch and taste are all part of the experience. 

It's curated by a perfumer, currently involved in creating edible perfume,  and an art curator.

Here, in the last picture, the narcissus, symbolic of desire and the evocation of scent, is in action.

Those paintings are so much more life-filled than I realized, full of sensuous experience.

Crashing back to my kitchen, I used up most of the mushroom mixture I'd made for ravioli, and the roasted vegetables you saw a while back, only I filled the last of the frozen pasty dough with them, along with hot sausage.

And made artisan all looking big pasties.

Then, since the mixtures were now thawed, I needed to use the rest of them up. 

So here goes red and brown lentil and pasta soup, using the rest of the roasted vegetables and the mushroom mix, plus that tomato water I saved from earlier. I knew those pulse foods would come in handy. Sooner than I expected.

But, best for last, my honorary grandie ran the Calgary marathon yesterday, raising a ton of money for cancer research, and a personal best! She sent me a Garmin link to follow her progress in real time

The link came complete with stats including heart rate, and like a true grandma, I checked that hers was raised but not too high!

A big yell of excitement here when she achieved her goal, well, a couple of goals. In recent years she's run marathons and shorter races, getting huge fun out of what seems to me like the impossible! 

Celebrate life with us, while remembering today the people who died in war and who enable us to celebrate life.

Thoughtful and grateful day, along with grieving. The shakuhachi effect.

Sunday morning, Memorial Day weekend

Odd that even though it's many years since I worked in jobs where Sunday was the end of the weekend, in fact more of my life, in art and the petcare business, has been seven day working weeks, I still feel sundayish. 

Yesterday I finally got around to making a date nut loaf. I've been thinking about it for years, and finally had fresh dates and walnuts, so I did it.

There's an exciting part where you boil water, dates, sugar and butter then add baking soda. The recipe says move the pan off the heat before adding the soda. You discover that it's because there's a sudden burst of foam, very dramatic, so who knows if you didn't move the pan, the foam might engulf the kitchen.

And, since there's nuts and fruit and wholewheat flour, it's breakfast.  Or, as here

a late night snack. 

Handsome Son, Gary and another friend had made short work of the banana bread, so I once again needed a little something in the house. I did put a couple of slices of this loaf in the freezer for handsome Son's next visit, as an insurance against running out.

And I did manage to knit the second lacy cuff

So I haven't lost the skill after all. And I have plans for more experiments along these lines, to keep sock knitting interesting.

I checked my library for any of Steve's summer reading list, hardly any writers I'd read, reserved a couple of Tana French, and borrowed the nearest Bragg I could, which is this, now ready on my Kindle for my outdoor reading pleasure.

It combines a recommended writer I'd never read, and home cooking as well as memoir, so I can't go far wrong.

Speaking of combining, here's a terrific artist whose paintings are executed on teabags.

This one is doubly domestic, because it's about laundry day. Definitely doubling down.

And let's leave with a bit of hope

Nature flowers even when people do terrible things to each other.  The attacks on the earth as well as the people on the battlefields of WW1 resulted in the poppy fields of Flanders.

Wise nature survives

Good to remember humbly on Memorial Day weekend. Little children in Texas, people in eastern Ukraine, died this week in different battles they never asked for. So many lives have now fallen into before and after. So much grief. Not a time for barbecues and bargains.