Wild mushrooms

The wild mushrooms made me do it.

Have you noticed that one thing often leads to another?
Well, that's what happened.  I finished one library book (The Odessa file by Frederick Forsyth) and asked the helpful staff to recommend a good next book.  What they gave me was The Mushroom hunters: on the trail of an underground America by Langdon Cook. It's about (you'll never guess) mushroom hunters. And the mushrooms you hunt are wild ones. The tame ones don't need hunting, don't you know.

Oh. I see. You thought something else about wild mushrooms.  For shame!  It's almost always about a book here - unless it's about Manchester United or Depeche Mode.

Mr. Cook has a long-standing interest in foraging (and outdoorsy things in general), and hunting for your very own mushrooms is very forage-y. He made it sound so enticing - how the flavour compared to store-bought button 'shrooms is incomparable, and the varieties are vast.  How could I resist?  I became interested in foraging too.

The art of foraging is becoming mainstream, with even top restaurants getting in on the game. I'm already keen on local and 'real' food, so this seems like a natural next step.  Except.

Except that while I enjoy the out of doors, I don't know much about them.  Setting me loose to hunt and gather for supper would probably be futile - or dangerous. So back I went to the library to ask for a book on foraging in Ontario.  It has to be borrowed from another library, so while I eagerly await it, I decided I could practice foraging in my own freezer and pantry.  There's even a name for it: cooking the pantry, or, pantry cooking.  My sister partakes of this game, but she is an accomplished cook (having to feed six men on what is often a limited budget will do that.  I, however, am not an accomplished cook, as my pie disaster and stove-on-fire stories here will prove.

My usual habit is to shop for 'staples' on Friday or Saturday, which results in me having no idea what to cook during the week. So I'll often stop for specific ingredients to make the thing I'm craving that day.  Not efficient.  Plus, because I sometimes put leftovers in the freezer, as well as never get around to using the fish fillets I bought 'for quick, healthy meals' or the cans of chick peas 'to whizz up my own humus' , my shelves are full.

Cooking the pantry involves making do with what is in the house until there really is nothing left. (Well, within reason, I hope. Surely it's ok to shop before you're down to just olive oil and sea salt) Anyway. I'm not very good at keeping tabs of just what I have got, and what I could make of it.  It's good stewardship to be a responsible cook, as well as good discipline to not give in to every whim of convenience or taste, so I'm going to give this a go for two weeks.

The first step was to inventory my stores.  I now have a list on my fridge of everything in the bins in my freezer, and the main food stuffs in the fridge (not including condiments, etc.) and the larder. I will allow myself to restock the absolute essentials such as milk, but no augmenting ingredients. The game began when I didn't do my usual marketing run this weekend, and discovered a chocolate croissant in the back of the fridge I'd meant to have for Easter breakfast but forgot about.  I had that yesterday morning at 3:00 while waiting for the Canonization Mass to begin.

Day One.
I grabbed one of the freezer bags of... something to let it thaw in the fridge today, and came home expecting to find what I was sure was roasted vegetables but turned out to be chicken bits - the remnants of a roast chicken from ages ago I probably stuck in the freezer, meaning to put it out on garbage day but forgot.  I wish I was better about labelling the freezer bags!
Nevermind.  I managed to pull a few slivers of meat off the bones, fried it up with onion with a wee bit of broth, and added sour cream and herbs.  I boiled up some elbows of macaroni and peas, stirred it all together with grated cheese, put it in a casserole to bake.  Before it went in the oven I noticed a few of those little toasts left over from Friday's work lunch on the table, so I pulverized them, lightly seasoned them then sprinkled that over top.  With more cheese.  Oh, and I had a rind of double smoked bacon in the fridge, so I chopped that up fine and added it to the main part of the dish.  It baked up nicely golden, and actually tasted pretty good.  Yay me!  That will also be tomorrow and Wednesday's lunch (phew!  I like not having to think about lunches) meaning tomorrow's supper can be a quick and easy one-off like a fried egg or a tin of soup.

You're probably looking at the list of ingredients and thinking to yourself, "Well, Tess, what else would you make with that?  That's a no brainer, and in fact what we have at least once a week."  I agree.  That one was easy - once I'd shifted gears from roasted vegetables to chicken carcass.   We'll see how things go as the obvious dwindles to the 'oh no, it's down to the chick peas', a tablespoon of couscous and a tin of cranberries.

Do you cook the pantry?  Do you know exactly what is in your freezer?  Do you cook to a plan, or do you wing it day by day?

Very

This is a Very day.

Some days are like that.  Some emotions are like that.

Very.

No further adjectives, no exclamatory punctuation, no suggestive ellipses.

Very. Full stop.

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday.  It is day eight of the Octave of Easter (the Church sees the Octave as being, essentially, one - as if we woke up eight times on Easter Sunday.)

What lifts a very nice day, a very special day to a Very day, is that today were two men dearly loved by the Church raised to the altar of Saints.  Today, Pope Francis proclaimed Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II to be Saints.  To make the Very even sweeter, our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was present among the hundreds of Cardinals, and it was beautiful to see the joy with which he was greeted by his brothers, including Francis, and the multitude present in the square.

The Church really shines in moments like this, because she understands the need of the human heart for solemnity and ceremony. It is right and just that we celebrate with dignity and reverence, and certainly it is fitting that we present our very best to give honour to God.  But another factor is that as human beings, our experience comes through our bodies - through eyes and ears and mind and heart.  To see the beautiful vestments and flowers and altar, to hear the gorgeous sacred music, the solemn words of canonization, the ancient formula of the Mass, is to remind us of the import, of the magnitude, of what is happening, and of who God is to us.  We do not process our Bishops and Cardinals in all their splendour to please ourselves or to honour them, but because we recognize the things of God are higher, bigger, deeper, more mysterious, than us.

Our imagination, when it comes to God, is like the incense we see reaching for heaven but straining into wisps before giving up altogether not even getting close. And so we have the Saints, those men and women who reveal something of God to us in their lives, their teachings. They have forged a path before us, to show us the way to His heart, and invite us to follow them in the journey.

Saint John XXIII, Saint John Paul II, pray for us!

Very.

U know what this is about

I wasn't going to do this.  I promise you I wasn't.  I know - believe me I know - how uninteresting this topic is to, well, I'm sure all of you. So I wasn't going to write about it.  To be frank, I haven't been able to write about it for the past 9 months or so because it has been far too painful.
But there has been a change, which caused a change of mood, a change of heart, a return of hope.
You know what U is for, don't you?

At the end of last season, Sir Alex Ferguson retired as manager of Manchester United. Many-time winners of the title, a massive draw to English football all across this great football-loving planet of ours, Manchester were at the top.  Whoever took over from SAF has mighty big football boots to fill. The task fell to while not a minor name, certainly not one of the giants we all speculated would get the call.  Sadly, for him, the team, and for United supporters, the season has not gone well.  This shows clear as anything that while the same group of 11 men will perform very differently under a different boss.

Naturally (I think we can all agree on that) became disgruntled. It's not like we're talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs here, who despite their glorious past are accustomed to losing game after game every season.  So they did what football fans are wont to do. They began to make up songs about the underperforming new boss.

Last week he was dismissed.  Two weeks remain in the season. Four matches. And who do you suppose stepped in?  Ryan Giggs!  My favourite player! The cool thing is, he's still a Manchester United player. He's forty years old, has been with the club for 24 years, still going strong and now interim manager.  This hit the news last week which somehow I managed to miss (my job keeps me brain dead, it seems, between Monday morning and Friday afternoon)  I happened to be scrolling around on that social networking site yesterday where Giggsy's name leapt out at me from the news section of my feed.  I kid you not, I squealed. Like a little girl who actually got the pony for Christmas, I squealed.

They won their match yesterday, by a decisive 4-0.

I can't help but think (says the girl who used to listen to Coast to Coast to go to sleep) that it may have all been the plan from the beginning. They needed someone to be the "after Ferguson guy".  And during this season Giggsy has completed his manager course (while still playing). Perhaps they're using this two week period to let him get his feet wet, inflame the fans' support, and prepare everyone for a more positive showing next season.

I love the poetry of it: a player who has always loved his team, and despite the current practise of club-hopping, has stayed with them through the whole course of his career - even into retirement as a player, to become their manager.

I think Fergie would approve.

Of symbols and substance

Salt

Light

Bread

Wine

 

Those are four significant Christian symbols, once recognized - and their meanings - universally understood. They were a shorthand, as all symbols are. Say the word and the subtext is filled in by the listener or reader.  “Be like salt of the earth and a light to the world.”  Salt gives seasoning to food, and was also the most common method of food preservation. Salt was a good thing, needed for survival.  The good news of our salvation is a light in the darkness. We know we are to be a light in the world, sharing our hope and joy in that salvation.  It used to be that light was treasured, because there were dangers in the dark. Once the sun went down, we hunkered down, too.  Bread was the mainstay.  Wine wasn’t for the elite talking about bouquets  and bottom notes, it was the drink. Bread and wine sustained life.

Now salt is bad for the heart. Light can be had with the flick of a switch so we need never have full dark – and the sun causes cancer. Bread is full of evil carbs and gluten, while wine leads to drunk driving and alcoholism.

I’m not suggesting there is a conspiracy to undermine our Christian symbols (maybe there is?) but I know for sure their impact has been weakened, their meaning diluted because they have to be explained as once relevant in days of yore.  How does that effect how we hear the words? Do the parables have the same depth of meaning?  How about the truths of our faith? When we're told that Christ is the Light of the world , or when we're enjoined to be like salt, how do we hear it? What does it mean to us to hear of the first public miracle when Jesus changed water to wine?

I don't have any answers or deep insights.  This is just something that has been niggling away in the back of my mind for a while.

 

Tid bits

... in which I offer trivial bits of nonsense.

So, I have this purple shirt. I didn't used to wear purple - or pink for that matter - but now when I look in my closet, there is an entire pink/purple section. Apparently what 'they' say is true, in that the right shade of pink warms the tone of your skin and is very flattering.  Give it a try.
But back to this purple shirt. It's a gym shirt, nothing special. It's my favourite to wear when I get home from work because it fits just right, you know? And I feel pretty in pink. Here's the thing. Not five minutes after I put it on, a stain appears on it, anything from ink to engine oil to egg yolk. On goes the stain treatment and I set it aside to soak, feeling blah in black instead.

There are any number of committees at my new (temporary) place of work. Among them is The Wellness Committee.  They send emails encouraging us to go for walks, and once provided a snack of yoghurt with nuts and berries. Today they laid on tea and cookies. The email they sent around to let us know alerted us to the many health benefits of green tea (and black tea, but that list was much, much shorter. I think they just didn't want black tea to feel left out). Lest  you imagine a spread with fine china and elegant hand crafted nibblies on tiered plates, it was instead boxes of green (and black) tea on a table in the lunch room, with cookies pre-sorted in sandwich baggies - two to a bag. As I looked over the goodies deciding which to bring back to my desk, I kept reminding myself, "Self, remember you don't like green tea.  You don't like it at all. " (I think it's the broccoli principle: a thing is supposed to be good for you, so it tastes yucky) (come to think of it, both are green.  Hmmmm...) Can you guess which kind of tea I chose?
Yop.
Green tea.
I didn't like it at all.

One of the side benefits of working in libraries – or working with books – is gleaning interesting little factoids.  For example:

There are a few German terms used in cataloguing.  Festschrift, and Bildungsroman are two.

 

While cataloguing a book about container shipping, I learned the biggest ships hold upwards of 18,000 containers. That class of ship is Post Panamax, because they are too large to go through the Panama Canal (the canal is too shallow, but is in the process of being expanded. Many ports are dredging deeper to be able to keep up with the behemoths lugging our goods around the seas.)

 

Elsewhere I learned that the Netherlands has 18 million people in a space not quite twice the size of New Jersey. It is the third highest agricultural exporter.

 

There are professional bees. They are kept by the millions in thousands of hives and trucked across country, season by season to [pollinate?] fruit and nut orchards.

 

Dario Cecchini of Tuscany is the world’s best butcher.

 

Enthusiast clubs exist for every hobby, no doubt. One such revolves around long distance motorcycling, called The Iron Butt Association.  By long distance, they mean 1,000 miles in a 24 hour period, and the fun goes on from there, such as 10 consecutive 1,000 mile days. The thought makes me want to cry.

 

Evolving church architecture led to evolving church music (and sermon-giving) as sound fade and echo changed with the interiors.

 

The great vowel shift in the English language took place over the span of roughly 300 years, around the time of the invention of the printing press. Until mass printing was possible, English spelling was fluid. Some believe the standardization contributed to the shift, as did the broader acceptance of English as their everyday language by the upper classes (who previously preferred French), as well as population migration resulting from the plague. As the name suggests, vowels before and after the process of shifting were different, both in sound and formation – ie. where they were formed in the mouth. And because of The Great Vowel Shift, we now have words that don’t match in sound and spelling. Isn’t that right, neighbour?

 

An octopus has three hearts.

We only have one, and life is pretty good.

Rewarded

Ok, that was a stretch, but award doesn't start with R, so I fudged a wee little bit.

One of my favourite writers - and the author of three of my favourite blogs - Nancy, has nominated The Lighthouse for a Liebster Award. I was stunned but excited (extunned? stunited?) to see my name in her list of nominees, but rather than go all Sally Field about it, I'll do as my mother taught me, and say Thank you very much, Nancy!  It means a lot, coming from you, so I am honoured to accept.

Thankfully, instead of a skill-testing question involving numbers requiring more fingers and toes in my possession, in order to receive the award, I must use words to answer 11 questions devised by Nancy. I will then nominate my own Liebster Awardees, and bestow 11 questions of my own upon them.

Here we go:

1.    What is your favorite Bible verse, or book of the Bible?

Isaiah 61 (The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me...).  Favourite books are Isaiah.  And Jeremiah.  And Habakkuk. The prophetic, poetic books.

2.   If you could re-live one year of your life, what year would that be?

There was a year in my mid 20s that seemed absolutely perfect. I knew it at the time, was aware of it as I lived it so I have no regrets about missed moments or anything like that. It was a golden time, and it was good.

3.   If you could live in any period of time besides this one, when would it be?

I love this question!  It’s also a difficult question to give one answer for.  I’m drawn to the late 17- to early 1900’s (A happy blend of yore and plumbing). I’d also like to be in Vienna during the time of philosophical and musical flourishing – or Oxford during the Oxford movement or later for the Inklings.

4.   What is your favorite colour?

Tiffany blue.  Or that exact shade of orange.  Or green.

5.   What's your favorite song or piece of music?

My favourite song is What is this love by Blue Rodeo and Sarah McLachlan. And Brothers in arms by Dire Straits.  Also The Love you save by The Trews (an excellent Canadian band – check them out!) My favourite piece of music is the Adagio in G minor by Albinoni. (Disclaimer, these answers suppose that unwritten in the question was “Aside from Depeche Mode...”)

6.   What are your three favorite books?

Ack!  The others will feel snubbed when I don’t mention them!  But ok, I’ll give it a try:  Jane Eyre, Brideshead Revisited, Anne of Green Gables.  Unless it’s Persuasion, Fr. Elijah, The Little Princess.  And some days it’s The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, Outlander, and Abandonment to divine providence…

7.   What was your best and/or favorite subject in grade (primary) school? 

Language Arts was my best, and social studies was my favourite.

8.   Favorite subject in high school? (for Australians, that's ages 14 to 18 or thereabouts - I don't think you call it high school there?).

The same two, only in high school we called them English and History.

9.   If you could return to or go to University today, what would your major be?

For my own interest, I’d major in history. I’d like to study the cultural life of different time periods in Europe. If I went in order to change field of work, I’d like to study disaster management.

10. Make up a question you'd like someone to ask you.  Then ask you.  And remember to answer you.

Question: Is it true you know everything?

Answer: No. I only like to pretend I do.

11. Tell us one random thing about yourself.

I was born without wisdom teeth.  That explains a lot.

 

I don’t read many blogs – not regularly, anyway.  The ones I do keep tabs on, quite naturally enough, I believe are terrific, and am more than happy to nominate them for a Liebster Award.

KR Smith (A straight-up writing blog, featuring the work of KR himself.  I admire how polished, inspired, and witty his writing is – even the somewhat dark and twisty bits.)

Out of her tree (Carly writes about her family, the quirks and foibles of life, customer service, and education. She also shows off her creative side with photos of the stunning cakes she has made, her beautiful photography, and the occasional craft project. While I read her as a friend, I find the voice of the writer is so truly ‘her’ that I feel as though I’m listening to her tell me the stories in person.)

Peter’s Barque (An unstintingly honest and heartfelt blog about Catholicism and the life of a Catholic. Coming to The Barque is always a thought-provoking visit. I appreciate the conviction and thoroughness he brings to the topics he writes about, and the fact that he writes, as he has called himself, as an Ordinary Catholic, not an academic or specialist.)

 

With these three I am far short of the desired 11 nominations but I offer them with all due enthusiasm and appreciation for their fine contributions to the blogosphere.

Here are my questions for them (and you, if you like) to answer:

1.What is the clearest memory of your childhood?

2. If you could be teleported anywhere in the world, where would you go?

3.What is your favourite Christmas tradition?

4.At the end of a long day, what is your go-to meal for supper?  (Share the recipe!)

5.You’ve won the lottery!  After gifts to family, friends, and charities, what would you do for yourself?

6.Why do you write? And, if you care to share (and have the time) why do you blog?

7.Do you have a favourite word? Is there a word you overuse?

8.Whose writing do you most admire?

 

9. What skill or superpower would you most like to have - that you do not already possess.

 

10. Someone else is doing the cooking and cleanup. Invite one living and one dead (This is imaginary, so both will accept, and neither will be dead when they arrive at your door) person to dinner.

 

11.Is there a book you reread over and over again and it's always as good as the first time?

 

There you go!  If you accept the award, let me know, make your own nominees (if you'd like to) and 'Liebster it forward'.

An aside about stoves and squirrels. And fire.

I would just like to say it wasn't entirely my fault.  I was actually in the kitchen when it happened. Usually disaster simmers into a full-blown eruption when I wander away, distracted by shiny squirrels elsewhere. But I was there.

Here's the story: I have an old stove.  One of those electric coil ones with the pans you better put aluminum liners in or you'll spend all your days trying to scrub them clean.  I'm not a terribly accomplished cook, but I like to clean as I go, and am fastidious enough that I don't like to have splashes and spills flying everywhere. And yet, somehow, no matter how clean I keep the stove, something ends up in the liner, which in that exact spot happens to be close enough to the coils that the lowest heat causes a noxious haze of smoke to arise.  An additional fun little feature of this stove is that only at the highest setting will water actually boil.  The smallest movement of the dial towards less hot results in at most an enthusiastic simmer.

So. Last night I had meat doing its thing nicely in the Dutch oven on the front big burner, with the pot of water on the back big burner (oh, how I love stove design that puts a large element in the back, requiring either a back-breaking lean or an arm-burning reach) on high for the spaetzle. I began to notice an odd scorched smell, but the meat was fine, and I'd only just put the water on, so what the heck was that smell about?  Then suddenly there was a red glow all under the pot of water (water, for pity's sake!) and that turned into an actual flame!  My pot of not even simmering water was on fire!  As if that sort of thing happens to me all the time, I very calmly said out loud, "Oh."  My mind scrambled to try to remember what kind of fire you used water to put out, and what kind you used baking soda... but wait, this is an electric stove, will water cause a short, or an even bigger fire?  While my brain worked on those problems, I pulled the pot off the element , releasing the flame to climb the front panel of the stove and reach for the exhaust hood - and slammed the lid on the burner. Luckily, though the lid was too big to create a good seal, it did the trick and the fire died out. 

Once dishes were done last night, I checked the drip pan of that burner, and you know what? There must have been a crumb or two in it.  The toaster sits on top of the fridge on that side of the stove, and the last time I wiped crumbs off the fridge, they must have fallen into the liners.  That's what caused it.  So from now on I'm going to be super vigilant about keeping those things immaculately clean, and will also remain in the confines of the kitchen whenever the stove is on.

At least until the next shiny squirrel leads me away.