Simpler is Better Still

Every so often we do taco night. It's something I've done since the kids were little and everyone likes it for the most part. Thinking about painting and staging and photographing the food makes it at lot less simple and pleasurable than it used to be. Apparently the photjournaling of food is part of a growing trend. (See link-today's NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html?emc=eta1) The difference for me is that interpreting the meal is also part of an intentional structure I've designed for myself to insure that I am writing a little bit and doing a little bit of art every day.

Part of it is looking at what I'm actually eating. Some of the people in the Times story photograph every morsel, including a solitary bite of shredded wheat. As with anything: weddings, spiritual disciplines, hand-washing...anything can become obsessive if we lose sight of what the point is. And just as I got to thinking about simplifying the wedding last night, tonight I got to thinking in terms of simplifying the art, as well.

So instead of last night's rather fussy interpretation of a kitchen still life tonight I saw 2 tacos on a plate. Simple is good. Simpler is better.

Simple is Better

After a quick supper of pork loin stir-fry, Dan and Sean and I ruminated a little bit about our upcoming wedding, which will take place on June 12th. Sean and Dan began the conversation by brainstorming what they might think about wearing, and I got the opportunity for input because, geez, I'm the bride.

I like that we can feel comfortable saying what we really want to have happening at this event. I like having the freedom to tell the guys how the dress I really wanted to wear is out of stock and none of the other dresses I like would work. Then their eyeballs rolled back into their heads and they both began to look like the melting wax models in the first Indiana Jones movie. They had obviously stopped listening several sequins previously.

Something I do really like is that these terrific male persons who share my life are very willing to open up to my being as as inscrutably female and flower-bedecked as needs be for this wedding to take place on June 12th. They are willing to embark on this no matter how complicated the cake, the flowers, their clothing, the invitations, or the logistics need to be. It is good, however, that none of these things needs to particularly complicated. Like a good stir-fry, when it's brought to the table, it can be served up in one elegant bowl with a savory sauce and enjoyed by all. I find grace in the fact that Sean would wear a tuxedo if I demanded it, which, incidentally, won't be the case.

I find grace that I could wear a cotton eyelet dress and carry daisies and my dear Dan would find it satisfactory, if we could only wrestle the logistics into submission. Before all of our planning is finished, we may find that this IS the case.

I ask for grace from my lovely friends and family who may think I'm dithering about making arrangements. I assure you this is not the case. As we continue to make plans for our reception, it may intrigue folks to know that we are plotting a wonderful time in the country for our celebration together! (Hint: Got a GPS?)

I give thanks for my friends, for love, for the simplicity of fresh food, and the time to enjoy it.

Monday Blahs: Dinner, Day 5

Any dinner that features reheated frozen broccoli and cauliflower deserves to be called "blah". Not even the leftover roast lamb from Easter dinner was enough to save the day. One day's passover is the next day's barely passable. Surprisingly the best part of the meal was the simple salad of greens, tomatoes, and fresh buttermilk dressing. No company, no gathered family, and no sugary Peeps or starchy potatoes.

Is dining alone more palatable when the food is more interesting, or is it that it's easier to take shortcuts in the preparation when there is no family to care for and no guests to cater to? I know single women who scrounge the fridge every night for leftovers, sometimes satisfied to stand over the sink with a days-old chicken leg and a pudding cup and call it dinner. I used to belong to that tribe. Or some nights I'd open a bottle of wine and forget to eat entirely, content with a book and network TV.

When I remember all the subsequent suppers of kid food that later took the place of over-the-sink leftovers or dinner in a bottle, I'm pretty grateful. That I had fish sticks, mac-and-cheese, and hot dogs meant I was sharing them with two of the most wonderful little boys a mother could ask for. It meant I was spending time at the table getting to share who those little people were turning into.

Here it is, now, the day after Easter and it's easy to sink into the Monday blahs if we think about it. The family has dispersed, the guests have gone home, and the plate is full of leftovers. On a spiritual note, the church choirs and musicians gave it all their best yesterday, with jazz bands and brass, organ music played too loudly, and children's processionals. A lot of clergy spent this day at home, relaxing and thanking God another Easter is in the can.

There will be a huge drop in church attendance next Sunday. There always is. No one wants a plate of leftovers, and church attenders know from experience that the sermon may be tepid, the music overdone, and their fellow congregants are taking the weekend off after the Lent season of faithful attendance.

I take this as a look-me-in-the-eye spiritual challenge. Not a challenge to the preachers to make the sermon more interesting or to the musicians to entertain us all the more. Rather, I take it as a look-me-in-the-eye and face the amazing nature of resurrection. The nature of resurrection demands that we confront the possibility of living new and fresh on the day after Easter, because the whole point of doing Easter was to give us a starting point for renewal.

If I could only get that part right, I'd be satisfied with a week-old chicken leg and a pudding cup over the sink, because the true feast remains.

Even the Peeps are Rising!

Here we are with dinner of roast herb-encrusted leg of lamb, new potatoes, and petite peas. Out whimsical dessert was Easter baskets with the ubiquitous Peeps in my good crystal sherbet goblets and, since there's such an emphasis on free range poultry here in Davis, I couldn't resist making this free-range Peep in colored pencil. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday. He is risen!

Today's Pic: Chicken & Rice w/ Fennel & Shallots

Holy Saturday, Batman!

Holy Saturday, Batman!

Today is Holy Saturday. I can't help but notice that Holy Saturday has four more letters in it than my favorite expletive, which is "holy s&@t", usually followed by the word "Batman". This is something I never, er, usually don't say in church and also not typically on Holy Saturday. Today, however, was remarkable for a couple of reasons having nothing whatever to do with the Great Vigil of Easter and rather more to do with the recurring theme of combining households with the love of my life and preparing to spend the rest of our time and space together.

 

We had the fifth of five and, hopefully, the last of our consolidation sales. Our first was held in the dark days of early January at my old house in my living room due to the nasty cold and rainy weather. We did two more in the same manner on consecutive weekends after that because it was really gratifying on any number of levels. We both enjoyed meeting a great many international students and others associated with UC Davis, who felt free to hang out and visit while browsing through books and other collectibles of five decades' gathering. Coming into the house also added an air of collegiality when we explained that we were combining two households and that the object of the game was to fit us and our stuff into one place. It was as if the folks answering the "Moving Sale" ad on Craigslist became team mates with us to work toward a common goal of dispersing stuff.

 

We had some fun with it, even brainstorming a fantasy story that we were selling everything we owned so we could run away to Brazil and grow soybeans! Perhaps the idea of two middle-aged people doing something as silly as getting married and intending to live happily e'fter (my new contraction for ever
after) was too unbelievable or too mundane or a bit of both. But with every passing sale as we got rid more and more of the big, obtrusive things I felt as if we were closing in on our real fantasy, that of putting our past selves, replete with past stuff, into the real past as we opened ever more willingly and fearlessly into the future possibilities of unimagined future stuff.

 

Some of the most successful couples I have ever met are those who live in the reality of the present, surrounded by the stuff that sits on their present coffee tables and bookshelves, happy with what was on those shelves yesterday but not burdened by them. As for the future, they seem to be able to welcome whatever stuff comes to delight them and let it occupy those same tabletops and shelves for a while, then move on.

 

As I watched a woman walk away with an elegant raku vase given by a former boyfriend, it felt so liberating. I felt new breath entering and new shapes shaping and blood pumping more warmly than previously. Now trying yet another new recipe (chicken, shallots, asparagus-what could go wrong? )

 

I think of all of our future shapings, and stuff, and bookshelfdwellers. It's a great time for Easter, and a great time for resurrection to begin.

 

With all of Christendom, watch. Watch and see.