1 post tagged “letters”

I am that kind of girl.  And I've noticed that I write to my friends less because I, like the rest of those chicks, are blogging instead of sending little missives of scented paper to one particular friend who gets to hear these particular outpourings that are like a poeticization of experience.  A distillation of the Best Of moments for the month.  It's cold to email with blind carbon copies of the addresses my closest friends and say, "I've just updated my blog.  Check it out if you want to know what's happening in my life."  And then they see my own email address, the dead giveaway that they aren't special enough to merit an individualized email, let alone a handpicked card or stationery to receive with a beautiful handpicked stamp (there're weird Jean Cocteau-like ones right now that are actually the King & Queen from a deck of cards and also The Simpsons [!] cartoon characters) by snail mail.

On Mother's Day, my main mum being on tour, I went to a performance held in an unusual house, the kind of house that falls under the category of "ecological architecture" or more au courant "green architecture."  This is the kind of house that doesn't destroy the environment as much as other building structures do.  In fact, it's the kind of structure that conserves resources by adapting resources we have in excess and using them to achieve common construction objectives.  Here, the exposed insulation is made of shredded blue jeans and held in place by a wire grill that looks similar to a window screen but isn't.

An entire wall had this construction similar to the Piet Mondrian "Broadway" painting series where various rectangles of different colors, opacities, and hues fit into a gridlike structure.  If you'll look closely, you'll see that there's very little glass.  Most of the rectangles are composed of that synthesized, corrugated material that often gets used for a greenhouse or garden shed.  Our landlord has left to rot in our backyard a small tool shed that has the same opaque, corrugated materials forming the walls and roof of the shed.

Since I can't picture music without stealing an image of a serious work of art or struggling over my graphite and drawing paper for hours to create something visually equivalent to what I heard at this concert of Filippino classical and folk music, I'm just showing photos of the informal venue.  Here's a spiral staircase.  Much of the house was not open to the casual visitor.  I respect this.  I have strong boundaries and I wouldn't want the host to show areas that are really quite private and not for the public consumption of someone that just walked in off the street, after receiving an invitation to what amounted to a private performance of lesser known music.

Much about plants this month.  I'd planted lots and lots of seeds in the two front yards and the back yard of our rental home.  One I hadn't planned on sprouting did.  This is a larkspur with its characteristically intense blue-purple flowers. On the left is the first sprig of blooms and on the right is the second set of blooms that sprouted.  You'll notice on closer inspection that after about 10 days, the original sprig is going to seed.  The green pod formations that look like snap peas contain the seeds for more larkspur.  I hesitate to invest too much money in a house we are renting.  It has to be livable and have a degree of beauty, yet there are so many plants that self-propagate effortlessly and require little water that I tend to cultivate those plants.  These are plants like coleus canina, geraniums, and epidendrum orchids.

These are Fuyu persimmons in my grandmother's yard with my hand showing a size comparison.  By December, they'll be full grown and ready to sit on my fruit plate until they ripen to a mushy sweetness like room temperature custard.  Fuyus can of course be eaten crispy like apples and that's their ideal consistency for salads, but, as I like the fruit by itself or at times with a decadent dollop of creme anglaise, then I wait for it to become thin skinned with a runniness within.

Also in my grandma's garden, which by the way is an excellent kitchen garden, is a lime kaffir or kefir tree.  She uses the leaves when she cooks fish to remove some of the "fishiness" of the dish.  These leaves are used A LOT in Thai and Southeast Asian cooking.  As you can see on the photo to the right, it's just a regular tree in appearance.  My grandma refuses to eat the fruit for some reason so after reading up on it in Wikipedia, I guess she was having trouble explaining to me in my toddler's understanding of Chinese that the fruit is simply to astringent to be eaten, but it can have plenty of other household uses.

T.S. Emporium is one of our favorite places to shop for Granny & I.  There're weird bargains that show up and generally I'm able to buy a lot of things cheaper here than in 99 Ranch Market.  Here's a particularly weird bargain that showed up when we were there over Memorial Day weekend:  whole chickens with the claws, the head, and the innards.

Most of my produce shopping has come from the Asian and Mexican markets lately.  The produce is usually fresher and less expensive than the fancy places like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market.  Farmer's Market carries interesting varieties, but not good staples where I can justify spending a few bucks on several pounds worth of eggplant for the week's dishes.  I can't spend all my time cooking.  I want time to dance, to knit, to sew, to write, and above all to read, workout, and just plain work.  So I cook large quantities of food that we eat throughout the week until we can't stand the dish anymore or until all the portions are gone.  Instead of tossing uneaten portions, we freeze the food, give it away, or repackage it with new seasonings and sauces, for instance.  A mostly vegetable stew can have the stock drained away, then wrapped up in a tortilla with a variety of condiments and some pan fried meat added for a fun burrito.  Today, I'm trying to make a batch of mousaka -- meatless and with meat.  If it turns out as well as our favorite local Greek deli's, we'll be unlikely to freeze it or give it away.  Picture above are our German Green tomatoes.  The fruit ripens to a yellow-green hue.  This year's crop has a less complicated, more straightforward flavor than last year's.  But last year was a crop of three tomatoes.  All the depth of the flavor was concentrated on just those three.  Because they have been appearing on the vine randomly and not particularly prolifically, we have simply been eating them raw with a simple homemade salsa, a drizzled vinaigrette, or in toasted avocado and red onion honey wheat bread sandwiches.