The best bit from today's phone call with Sprint...

Me: So you're telling me I have to pay for a service I can't access, don't need, & don't want?
Him: Yes, unfortunately that's accurate, Ma'am.

At least he was honest?

#SprintSucks #Sprint #customerservicefail #customerservice

Last week I was walking home from BART & I heard a chicken. Up high. When I looked I saw one of the weirdest chickens I've ever seen. It was sitting in something I will call a tree, although tree butchers have tried their best to make it a dead shrub instead of a live tree.

When I crossed the street to take a picture of the chicken on the other side the chicken decided it didn't like my looks & hopped down from its tree. So all I managed was a picture of a chicken butt.



After I sent Jingwei the picture he responded with a wikipedia link to the correct type of chicken. The chicken I saw was almost certainly a Sultan chicken. Who identifies a chicken from a picture of its butt? How does he know these things? I don't know. It is one of many wonderful things about him.

So while walking home I saw a Sultan chicken in a tree. What odd thing have you seen lately?

Green Figs

I want to live like that little fig tree
     that sprouted up at the beach last spring
         and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit
     (tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)
         ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good
     and Evil was a fig tree, or so it is said,
         but this wild figure was a wanton stray.

I need to live like that crooked tree—
     solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free—
         that knelt down in the hardest winds

but could not be blasted away.
     It kept its eye on the far horizon
         and brought honey out of the rock.



"Green Figs"
by Edward Hirsch
Excerpt from The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems
Copyright ©2010 by Edward Hirsch

A Rune, Interminable

Low above the moss
a sprig of scarlet berries
soon eaten or blackened
tells time.

          Go to a wedding
          as to a funeral:
          bury the loss.

          Go to a funeral
          as to a wedding:
          marry the loss.

          Go to a coming
          as to a going:
          unhurrying.

          Time is winter-green.
          Seeds keep time.
          Time, so kept, carries us
          across to no-time where

          no time is lost.



"A Rune, Interminable"
by Marie Ponsot
from Easy
Copyright ©2009 by Marie Ponsot

Tree

All day I waited to be blown;
then someone cut me down.

I have, instead of thoughts,
uses; uses instead of feelings.

One day I'll feel the wind again.
A moment later I'll be gone.



"Tree" (excerpt from "Swifts")
from Where's the Moon, There's the Moon
by Dan Chiasson
Copyright ©2010 by Dan Chiasson

Happy Autumn! Happy Spring! Since I'm on the side of the globe that is turning into spring, I'm going with that for my selection of poems.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

~from "Atalanta in Calydon"
by Algernon Charles Swinburne



Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places,
The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green,
And boys moon at girls with last year's fatuous faces,
I never am bored, however familiar the scene.

When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter, -
Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between, -
Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter:
I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.

~"Vernal Sentiment" by Theodore Roethke
from Words for the Wind

Every block of stone has a statue inside it
and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
~Michelangelo

I've been reading some of Joshua & Ryan's essays on Minimalism & two things came to mind.

1) Michelangelo's quote.

2) The notion that Minimalism could also be called Essentialism. Because in order to minimize the clutter in your life, whether that clutter is objects, people, or activities, it greatly helps to have some sense of what it is you must keep. What is essential to you? What do you want? What pathways lead you to joy? What doorways invite in peace?

If you are like me those can be very hard questions to answer. I often don't know the answers to them. Some of my ignorance is because I've learned that what I think is essential can change -and change a lot- depending on my circumstances. Some of it is years of practice in not wanting things. And some of it is knowing that very often there is no one right answer.

But I like the concept that if I want to minimize any aspects of my life it helps to know what I find essential. There will be lots of places where I can test those boundaries, but having a sense of where the boundaries are gives me a way to start paring down. Am I certain enough of the "sculpture" of my life to be to remove broad sweeps of things in one go? Or do I need to very carefully chisel away a little bit at a time?

Last weekend I witnessed happy people celebrating their birthdays. The Munchkin turned 3 today. I'm not sure how it's been that long, but I've been taking care of her since she was an infant. And while I've never fallen out of love with her, every week I fall a little bit more in love with her. One of her many current things is to attempt to utterly manipulate me by using her polite words. "More bread please yes please yes please!" I, however, am immune! (*falls over laughing*) Ok, I'm immune/practical enough to barter small bites of whatever treats I have brought for her eating the dinner her mom provided for her, & not just the treats I brought.

And another friend celebrated her birthday with a picnic. It was an extraordinarily beautiful day for it. There was sun & seafood & sausages & olives & sun & the sea. Plus I tried two new things!

1) I ate my first Rambutan, which is a funny spiny fruit that looks like this.

2) I shucked my first ever oyster! I'm not particularly adept at it, but I managed to shuck & eat one, & then several more. And mygeelordy I was reminded that fresh oysters are just so very very good!

Have you tried anything new recently? How'd it go?

Happy Valentine's Day, my lovely LJ people!

You make my world a better place. Thank you for being part of my life.

love,
~plantgirl

I roasted a batch of brussels sprouts sometime this week. While I often roast veggies, it's the first time I've tried cooking brussels sprouts that way. I goofed something & the sprouts ended up somewhat mushy. :(

I think I cooked them too long at too low a heat. The recipes I found called for 400°F for some really long amount of time. I had set the oven at 375°F. Although after realizing I had set the heat too low I then turned it up for the last 15 minutes & the sprouts burned in places. :/ Anyway, they were ok, just not as good as the ones I had at a potluck last month. I will have to ping my friend & see who made the sprouts I thought were tasty.

Other random note: I tried a miso glaze on the brussels sprouts & decided that a) it either needs a much stronger miso as a base, or b) there's no point. Brussels sprouts have too much of their own flavor. Miso works really well with things like roasted/grilled asparagus, where the slightly nutty-salty-must of the miso enhances whatever flavour it is that is asparagus.

Brussels sprouts might work well with something from an entirely different flavor realm. Perhaps something based on molasses? That would add a touch of sweet to balance the pungency of the sprouts. Ristorante Avanti, a very tasty Italian restaurant in Santa Cruz, usually has some variant of brussels sprout salad on their menu. They often combine some variation of sprouts, pancetta, onion/shallot, & sweet potato/pumpkin. (Their salad is what convinced me brussels sprouts could be something very tasty, rather than the slightly pungent things my father nuked in the microwave). And since the shallot & the sweet potato both add sweetness, it's what is making me think there is room to explore that direction.

What say you?

I feel like I have not been cooking recently. This is weird, because I'm cooking all the time. Last weekend I made chili for the super bowl. That felt like cooking, but...! But...

But just because I don't want to recreate the spicy silken tofu-lentil glop that was my dinner a few nights ago (I was using up food so it wouldn't go bad & was too hungry to expand it into anything fancier), or somehow believe the omelet I made yesterday morning was not cooking, that doesn't make my perception accurate. Yesterday's omelet gave me ideas for a future omelet I'd like to try, & the spicing I used on the tofu will get expanded upon in another dish- perhaps with pork & bok choy? That sounds good.

I like that I am a practiced enough cook that I can take some fairly random ingredients & make something palatable out of them. It's a skill that has served me well many times & often leads to useful discoveries. But I think it's interesting that I also consider doing so no big deal when I know a lot of people who would look in the same refrigerator/pantry and see no options. I have strengths! I will celebrate them!

I wonder if part of the difference I make between in cooking vs. obtaining calories to keep functioning has to do with whether or not I'm letting the food tell me what it wants to be, or trying to obtain an ideal that exists in my head?

What have you made (or eaten) recently that you found interesting, whether that be in a "good" way or a "bad" way?

Last weekend I made chili. I read 7 recipes & pulled ideas from 3 or 4 of them. The end result is in the realm of both Cincinnati chili & a beef mole poblano, without being either of those things. I used a base of high-quality pre-made chili powder & then added my own selection of seasonings to adjust the flavor to what I wanted. I dry-roasted the spices before adding them, similar to Sri Lankan cooking, to give a more intense & darker flavor to the whole mess. I was pleased with the results. I want to fiddle with it some more, but I have a base chili from which to work! (That is if I am remembering my spice ratios at all correctly a week later.)

( Plantgirl's Chili con Carne )

While hunting through the dictionary last night for words about tools, I saw a word I had never seen before. Anyone who comments using it reasonably or effectively in a sentence gets a postcard!

AXUNGE (also AUXUNGE)
[from the French axunge, from the Latin axungia, f. axis axle + ung-êre to grease.]
The rich, internal fat of the kidneys, etc., especially that of geese and pigs; goose-grease, lard; also gen. fat, grease.