weekend update, December 23, 2012

Memory and Hope have one daughter,
and her name is Art.

w.b. yeats.

No, not this Hope-

THIS Hope-

not this Memory-

THIS Memory-

And if Memory and Hope had gone on to give Art a sibling, her name would've been Christmas.
There's no other season, is there, that can match its blend of longing and light.

Longing and light, memory and hope. All present at a funeral I attended this week- the sort of funeral that memorializes a life so beautiful that the loss of it dims the entire community in which it was lived. A life that packed into it's 4 score and 7 years so much hope and so many memories that the whole packed room was filled with love, and chuckles, and enough tissues to have felled a grove of trees.

This little card was the tangible memory of that occasion, given to everyone who was there:

  the front                                                                                   the back

 Remarkable, isn't it? I've been wondering ever since- what are the things that we give to this world or the things that we are known to love doing, that could be captured with a pocket sized memento? A piece of music maybe? A pen? A golf tee? A flash drive?  

 And yes, I've tried them. The peanut butter balls. Err..am trying them. There's a batch of naked peanut butter balls in the freezer now and tomorrow I'll put their little chocolate robes on and tell you all about them. I can let you know though that one taste of the unchocolated peanut butter centers caused me to say to the dog,

 "Josie, it is my fond hope that my memory will be associated with something this yummy"

Josie thinks that if I don't act quickly, I may be
remembered as that woman who thought it a
good idea to humiliate her dog with a
Christmas Sweater.

 The department of interesting facts of no particular profundity brings you a few memories of the food week past:

The Roast Chicken recipe just keeps proving itself a winner, I used a whole chicken this time and butterflied it. (butterflyed?butterflew? how does one verbify this word?) It roasted on top of some sweet potatoes, carrots and cauliflower and did just fine.

I'd been afraid that roasting the chicken on something not potatoes would create alot of smoke, but it didn't. The Lasagna, however, dripped some errant cheese on the oven floor and smoked up the Living room, and the TV room, the breakfast table thingy.........

 Ah well. Where there's smoke....there's often dinner.

I tried recreating the Broccoli cheese soup that we had at Sweet Marley's  and was a little concerned at one point that it was turning into the sort of  gluey gray mess that reminds me of Calvin Trillan's opinion of English food....

"even today, well-brought-up English girls
are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for
at least a month and a half, just in case one of the
dinner guests shows up without his teeth."

A little cheese, a spin in the blender and some bacon to the rescue:



Pretty good, but I think a little half & half
or milk would make it better.

Well look, it's Christmas Eve.
And before I hang the stockings by the chimney with care, I want you to know that I hope...
I hope your memories of the year past are happy ones that fill you with gratitude and wonder.
 And if they don't, if memories of the year past are filled with darkness, I hope that you will find somewhere in that darkness a memory of love, of beauty,of life lived artfully.
And that you'll gather those memories together, watch them spark into hope and pass that hope to those around you.

like this.



Weekend update, December 10, 2012

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

and who would know better than an Irish poet what magic is, and where it may be waiting? Hmm... I wonder what  magic his dreamy-sharp Celtic soul would find in the craziness of  Christmas.
Because, ready or not....
And. I really do wonder what people mean when they ask, on the 9th of December, "Are you ready for Christmas?"
"Define", I mentally reply, "ready".
(To answer with actual words would be quite pointless, because no matter what the definition of ready is, I am pretty sure that I am not ever, on the 9th of December, that.)
This morning, (thanks Steve) I heard the next two weeks brilliantly described as a luge ride-
you know, this thing-

a bone rattling, teeth shattering hurtle
toward the finish line.
Kinda crazy. Kinda terrifying. Kinda fun.
It's a mental image that'll keep me grinning til
Christmas eve. 

And this year, we have friends along for the ride! Southern Hemisphere friends, who've travelled from afar to experience the wonders of a Northern Hemisphere Christmas.
And wonders, as they often do, abound.
So far, we've introduced them to the American Christmas wonders of Walmart and Costco and Hobby Lobby, and a few of these

and today, this:

Northpark at Christmas.
Former Dallasites, I'll hand you a tissue
while you grieve your loss.

If you let your senses grow sharper, just a little, and look again at that crowd, you may see a bit of magic.
Has it ever occurred to you, as you stood in the middle of a Christmas crowd, that nearly everyone there would rather not be there? They, like you, would rather be....oh, I don't know, laying on a beach, walking in the mountains, snoozing in a chair in front of the TV....
 Except they're not. And you're not.
And do you know why?
Because everyone there loves somebody very much and wants very much to please them.
Take that lens with you to the mall, and look at the crowd through it. See if it works the same magic for you that it does for me.
As  far as the week's food, I can offer you the following updateyness.
We'll start with the very least magical, which ironically involves the first entry in the holy grail of chili recipes search-off.
The Southwestern Meatball Chili. As it turns out, adding a tablespoon of chili powder to meatball soup does NOT turn it into chili, no matter HOW much kitchen magic one may possess. Fortunately, our Antipodean travelers had not yet arrived-  how I'd have cringed/laughed/apologized had this little pot of disappointment been anyone's first meal in America! The two of us put on our game faces, and ate a bowlful, but I knew no one would go for seconds, and the leftovers would languish. This is the only picture I took:



right after I tipped it into the bin.

The chicken lasagna was tasty, though it's not a very healthy thing- it's loaded with cheese and cream. But then, I thought it'd be a safe bet for a group of unfamiliar appetites because, you know, it's loaded with cheese and cream.
With cooked chicken, it prepped in less than half an hour, but took about an hour to bake.
And tonight, with a bit of magic that's an awful lot of fun for me to practice, this

turned (shazam!!) into this:

We put the soup together with some sliced barbeque brisket and the whole meal was together in half an hour.
I wonder what's up for tomorrow?!

And you know.....
Sometimes I read that Yeats quote, and I wonder. If the world is full magic that waits for us unnoticed (and I've never known Yeats to not tell the truth)  what is it, I wonder, that dulls us.
Maybe  sometimes it's all the things that rush at us. All the demands and expectations and appointments and disappointments. Maybe the harder they bump into us, the duller we become.
It's a crazy time to wish this, but I hope that this week, against all odds, it's not that way for you.
I hope with all my too often unsharp heart that this week love and hope sharpen your senses until you feel yourself alert and alive to the wonder that surrounds you. The wonder of loving, and of being loved.
because I'm pretty sure that whatever magic it is that waits for us,
it's love that's casting the spell.