I love a good recipe, especially one I’ve committed to memory. I’m busy, like most people, and a lazy cook at the end of the day. Skipping the part where I hunt through a tiny-fonted index and instead beeline for the bottom crisper drawer with a single mind (lentil soup) satisfies me in a way that’s so fundamental, I can’t name it.
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This week my friend Pat sent me a birthday gift (I love it when my birthday goes on and on like that). The box was stout and heavy and wrapped in black and red paper. Inside I found a real mortar and pestle, a set like Pat’s that I’ve been eyeing for several years. With his, he grinds salt into powder in a way I can’t manage with my trusty miniature one.
I haven’t used it yet because it’s new and there’s something about receiving a beautiful thing that makes me delay gratification. I look at the creamy bowl every day (mine doesn’t yet have a home on a high shelf like Jane Kramer’s does) and think about how much I’d like to make pesto in it by hand. It’s part planning and part anticipation, sure, but I’m also intentionally waiting so I can enjoy its presence as a new presence for a little longer. Once I crush the first clove of garlic or pulverize some peppercorns in it, my relationship with this object will change.
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Last night I was sitting on a concrete floor, getting a kiss from a big sweetie of a dog.
My husband called the pup over while I sat in the chair, listening to a shelter volunteer read bits of the dog’s history from a thick folder in front of her. Then he’d ask a question and I’d sink to the floor again, call to the dog and try to persuade her to give up her stuffed toy. By the end of the evening, she’d abandon it readily and wait for me to play with her.
After our visit I’m trying to figure out if the big dog I’m imagining is this dog.
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Summer has decided we need less fruit landing on the pavement in an end-of-season downpour and more blue-stained cuticles and lips. My son and I acquiesced and set out for some blackberry bushes that are a few blocks from our house. It was a surprise: my husband got home a little early, my daughter decided to stay home.
The two of us made our way along the sidewalk in our short-sleeved shirts, bypassed the wooden stairs that lead down to the trail that runs through a park in our neighborhood. The berries, bordering the backside of the park, grow on unruly plants that have been chopped back to hedge-like proportions along the edge of someone’s front lawn. Our plastic containers and shopping bag on the ground, we hovered at its edge, surprised there were still some to be had.
