Of jigsaws, completion and honoring

Yesterday saw the completion of the current jigsaw puzzle

I wonder if one of the pleasures of things like craft projects and jigsaw puzzles is that unlike a lot of things in life, you can reach completion. 

The process is fun, and you can move on after it's done. Likewise the mending I mentioned the other day, now done and clothes now back in rotation.

Yesterday I made the chickpea stew, using the very good stock which accidentally simmered all night (!) and remembered yet again that the recipe uses saffron.

I never have saffron, too expensive, and after I had finished cooking the stew, which was good again anyway, it finally dawned on me to find out if there is a substitute.

Some people recommend turmeric because of the color, but you don't use saffron just for the color, lovely as it is. Then I found a good idea which uses turmeric for the color and the combo of turmeric and paprika, itself a combo, for a near relative of the flavor.

No sooner said than done. I had to spill the spices onto a white surface to just enjoy those wonderful colors

Then I mixed them, half and half, in a new container, for the next time a recipe specifies saffron.

I notice that when I'm reading, I use Google a lot to see what the food mentioned is about. Also music where it accompanies the action. Food is an insight into characters, so when the Provincial Lady mentions the luxury of poire Helene, I had to find out.

I knew it would be pear-involved, turns out it involves poached pear, chocolate sauce and ice cream. Oh. 

Donna Leon is a demon for food references and I like to find out just what Italian favorite the detective's family's enjoying this time. 

Then there's Pym and  the hopeless "shapes" and mousses and chicken in white sauce , beloved of her characters, where flights into gourmet tastes are scorned  

The picky single man wants to cook a plover when he's alone, the sensible single woman just finishing up the bread and cheese. 

Pym herself in real life was a good cook, but a realist in her fiction about the tables of  her clerical characters. 

One excellent cook, Wilf Bason, was hired to work in a rectory and seen with great suspicion when he made wonderful fish dishes in Lent. You weren't supposed to actually enjoy Lenten food!

Chris's comment about being the last sibling got me thinking. I have only the most general notion of the dates of death of any relative, with a couple of stark exceptions. But I know all the birthdays and think of them on their days.

So I think I'll start to do a little thing to honor each on their birthday, that would echo something about who they were.

Starting today, the birthday of Rita, long gone, who was a talented artist and who taught me quite a bit about houseplants.

She had a wonderful touch, could grow anything anywhere, it seemed, and I'll do some much needed houseplant care today in her honor.

November has a couple of other significant dates, so I think it will be helpful to me as well as respectful to them, to find interesting ways to honor their interests on their days.

Happy day everyone,  action is prayer, and it's okay to enjoy it, too.

 

Food and musings thereon

A couple of friends have commented recently on the food posts I do in here, among all the other kinds of  thoughts, which they follow with interest but not always to the extent of doing likewise, though they think about it.

It made me realize a couple of things. One is that cooking nowadays is such a pleasure, because so little pressure is involved in it now.  Compare this to the years of cooking from scratch because of health issues of both family members, one of them very serious, urgent need to avoid additives or any unknown ingredient.  And of the many years of cooking for a partner whose sense of taste and smell had been destroyed by a medical decision, and whose paralyzed hands were less and less able to manage table implements.

I was then challenged, to put it mildly, to make interesting meals which could be handled without a knife, which didn't look like baby food, and which had texture to make up for the absence of most ability to taste.  That's when I started doing the crouton sizzle -- hot soup ready on the table, croutons of homemade bread red-hot in the pan, toss them into the soup, and the sizzle made Handsome Partner interested in the food.  Hard to maintain appetite without taste, but sound effects help.  

And I would use as much color on the plate as possible, for the same reason.  And vary textures where I could.  This in fact makes for interesting food anyway, when you think about it, but most of us have the additional pleasure of taste, and the smell of the food cooking.  And then as HP moved into total paralysis, cooking was fitted into a final three years of hectic days, of invalid care running from 7 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., bracketed by medications, aide visits, doctor calls and emails, and endless phone arrangements, and various procedures to keep HP as happy as we could manage. And making art, always making art.

This is not a complaint or a petition for a halo, just a recital of facts to show why today's cooking is so much more play and less of a work event.

Anyway, all this makes today's sort of prep so easy by comparison. And I made a good soup today -- no pix, not appetizing-looking, though it tasted great -- corn, pumpkin, dried seaweed, cannellini beans.  Flavored with oregano pesto, salt, pepper, cumin, curry leaves.  I blended it after the other vegetables were tender, and before I added in the beans, to make an interesting texture, and added in a couple of ounces of lemon juice to brighten it all up.  And that with caraway seed crackers was pretty good on a bitter day with a wind that keeps the house from getting very cosy.

Dessert was fresh (not dried, I mean) dates, split and spread with yogurt cheese.  Lovely tangy combo of the yogurt cheese with the sweetness of the date.  

This went over well with my guest yesterday, as she buttered her Mother of Invention tart with the yc.

If you are not familiar with yc, it's very simple:  regular, not Greek, yogurt, plain, which you strain through a cheesecloth or linen napkin-lined strainer, balanced on a bowl to catch the whey.  After a few hours, the curds  can be rolled off the cloth, and the whey goes into soup.  The cheese works like cream cheese only better, because tangy, and very easy to make and have around for a spread.

And the addition of lemon juice to the soup was a trick I learned from my Indian vegetarian cook friend, as well as using curry leaves in soup for better flavor.

About writing -- the response I get from the food posts is great, too, always a big incentive to the lone blogger!  particularly when people give me more tips and ideas, or try out what I've been writing about. Food unites!  So please keep reading and commenting and generally taking part.