Black and White

 

Healthy or Healthful?

Dinner last night was a skillet of hamburger, onion, sweet potatoes, and collard greens--quick, easy, and reasonably healthful.

(Long years as a student and teacher of English have made of me a word snob. Healthful, to my old ears, means promoting good health; while healthy describes someone or something that is in good health.

However--online dictionaries tell me that while my usage is the more correct, the use of healthy to mean good for you is so popular that it is accepted.

But I digress . . .)

            

Here's the how-to of this healthful meal.

2 sweet potatoes, chopped into cubes

2 onions, chopped

3 cups chopped kale or collards

2 TB olive oil

salt, Berbere seasoning

1 cup water

Saute beef and onions in olive oil till beef is no longer pink (this actually would work as vegan by leaving out the beef.)

Add the sweet potatoes and water, salt and berbere; cover and swimmer about 10 minutes till potatoes are soft.

Add greens, cover and simmer briefly till greens are wilted. Remove cover, turn up heat, and saute till water is evaporated.

Notes: some Berbere seasoning is hotter than others. I used a scant teaspoon. Also, in my opinion, the best greens for this dish are the Tuscan kale (lacinato) as it's especially tender. But ordinary kale or collards work just fine.

I served with tomato and blue cheese in a vinaigrette.

 

Green Magic

I just don't feel right without some growing things around--especially edible things. My days of a big garden with produce to can and freeze are gone, alas.

But I get a lot of pleasure from sprouting garlic cloves and snipping the green blades to add to eggs. And when a volunteer basil seedling  popped up, I was thrilled and started a second garlic pot to give the basil wiggle room.

In the greenhouse, one worn out dill still waved a few feathery fronds.

Next to it, in the pot with the stump of a defunct dill, tiny little self-sown dill seedlings were emerging.

The best kind of magic!

 

Amory and the Wild Girl--a Miss Birdie repost

                                                              

 Now Amory was the last of his family and lived up 'Simmon Cove, in the old house where he was born. One by one his sisters had married and his brothers had gone off to Detroit, leaving Amory to care for his mama -- his daddy had died right young. And his mama was a sour sort, dragged down by the hard times she'd seen but when she took sick and couldn't hardly go, Amory cared for her better'n any daughter might have. It was one of those wasting sicknesses and she lingered on for several years, getting littler and meaner every day till she plumb swivvled up to just a little piece of hatefulness. 

Neighbors come by to try to lend a hand but she run 'em off one by one, saying Amory could do for her. And Amory would just shake his head and say she weren't no trouble and he didn't mind.

Finally the old woman passed away and all the neighbors began to hope that Amory, who weren't yet forty, might have a chance to make him some kind of a life. He was a fine-looking feller and more than one young woman made sure to take a pie or some such up to him, by way of being neighborly after his mama passed. 

But seemed like Amory weren't looking to make a match with no one. Oh, he ate them pies and the girls would find the pie tins in their mailboxes, washed clean. Some of 'em kept trying but when they got no more encouragement than a clean pie tin, at last they give it up, figgering he just weren't the marrying kind. 

 Now it fell out that a fox or some varmint was particular bold that fall after Amory's mama passed and was about to eat up every chicken in the holler. Amory had lost several young hens -- taken right from the chicken house -- and he determined to set a trap and make an end of the slaughter. "Or I'll have no eggs for breakfast nor fried chicken on Sundays," said he.

So he set him a trap right where the varmint had broke in before.  And come morning, when he hurried out to see had he done any good, he'd caught something, all right -- he could see the red fox color there against the fallen leaves. But  as he got closer, lo and behold, it weren't no fox, but a young woman, her tangled red hair blazing in the rising sun.

She was skinny and ragged and scared to death. The trap had closed on her ankle and she hadn't been able to work it loose though her white skin was bloody with the struggle.

Now this was back in the Thirties when there was all manner of tramps and hobos and wanderers -- folks whose farms had been foreclosed on and who'd taken to the road in search of someway to make a living. Amory figgered she was likely one of these and, tender-hearted as he was, he set down beside her, talking gentle as he eased the trap from her slender ankle.

"If you're hungry," says he, "come up to the house and share my breakfast, Eggs is better cooked with streaky meat and I've got cornbread a-bakin'."

She looked up at him for the longest time with her strange pale yellow-brown eyes and at last she nodded. And when he got the jaws of the trap loose and helped her to stand, she followed him like a puppy to the house. At first she balked at entering the door but Amory left it wide as he went to fixing some breakfast and by and by, in she crept. And when he set two plates on the table and took his seat, by golly, down she sat in the other chair and lit into that food like she was a starving thing.

 She was still eating while he filled a zinc washtub with water he'd heated on the stove, laid out soap and towels along with some of his mama's clean clothes, and went out to do his chores, leaving the wild girl mopping the egg yolks from her plate with a piece of corn bread.

"You'd feel better, was you clean," says he and off he went with never a thought for his few valuables. And when he come back, there she sat on her chair, scrubbed clean, hair shining like a sunrise, and wearing a pale green dress that his mama had sewed before she got so sick. And then the girl smiled at him.

Amory's heart turned over in his bosom. But he knew he must go easy and slow and he asked her did she want to stay on a while and help with the farm. "I can give you my mama's room and plenty to eat but cash is scarce just now," says he. And her eyes got wide and she looked toward the open door but then she looked back at him and smiled that smile again.

From what I heard, Amory treated her like a wild thing he was trying to gentle -- fed her and talked soft to her, and left the door half open so's she could leave ever when she wanted. 

Word got round that Amory had a woman living there with him. Of course, all them pie makers got their noses out of joint and had to traipse up there to see who it was had won over the bachelor they'd all tried for.

"They's something uncanny about her," said one, after trying to talk Amory and the wild girl into coming to church. "She don't say a word, just sets there squnched up close to Amory and him stroking that ugly red hair of hern like she was a cat. He says her name is Ruby but he don't appear to have no notion of what her last name is nor where she come from."

"I don't believe she does a lick of work around the place," said another. "Did you ever see such pale skin? And those eyes. They just ain't natural."

Well, the tale of Amory's wild girl was a nine day's wonder but by and by folks stopped talking about her. Times was hard and everyone had to tend to getting their own living without worrying about this stranger up 'Simmon Cove. And Amory had always been a solitary somebody anyway.

It weren't till sometime the next summer that Amory appeared at Granny Cutshall's house, wild-eyed and weeping. "Come quick," says he. "I believe Ruby's near her time."

Granny packed her midwife's bag and got up on the mule behind Amory and they set off at a pace she said like to have been the end of her. As they drew near the cabin, a vixen with something in her mouth dashed under the mule's nose and up into the woods but Amory didn't pay it no mind, just hauled Granny Cutshall offen that mule and towed her into the house.

The bed in Ruby's room was empty but the covers was thrown back and the sheets was all streaked with blood. Amory stood gaping then let out a cry and ran out of the cabin, calling for Ruby.

Him and Granny Cutshall searched and searched but not a sign of the wild girl did they find. Granny managed to make Amory understand that the stains on the linens was just what come with birthing -- and that sometimes women got took quare after childbirth.

"Women," says Amory. "Women sometimes do." 

And he cast a terrible look all around the slopes of 'Simmon Cove afore putting Granny back on the mule and carrying her back home.

He never was the same after that. Let the house fall down around him and let his garden grow up. He tended a big patch of field corn though to feed the mule and the great flock of chickens that he kept. Folks said that every night he'd let one of those chickens loose and set there near the edge of the woods, waiting to see did a fox come for it.

It was a few years later, folks begun to fear something had happened to Amory for his mule had come down the road, without its halter on. A few men went up to check on him but he weren't in the cabin nor the barn. 

What few chickens was left was all up in the trees, like something was after them and the men began to study the ground, looking for tracks.

"Over here," says one. "There's boot prints leading off into the woods. Maybe he's gone after whatever has the chickens so stirred up.

They found him, dead as a hammer, and curled up by a big old rock, the size of a Chevrolet truck, Gid said. Something had dug out a den under that rock -- foxes, by the rank smell of it, they said. 

There weren't a mark on Amory -- he looked to have died peaceful and happy. There was a kind of a smile on his face and wrapped around his hand was a long hank of the purtiest bright red hair you ever saw.

First Snow

Monday morning . . .

The traditional barefoot walk to ensure good health for the year.

Which always make me wonder--would a broken bone count as ill health?  

I choose to think not.

 

This Place . . .

                                             ... has gone to the dogs!

62 Years--So Far, So Good

 Another anniversary rolls around. We have been so fortunate in our life together.

Josie's Art

 

Mellow Daze

 

But Which Leaf?

After mentioning in a previous post a character in a novel whose hair color was described as feuille morte (dead leaf), I began to wonder just which dead leaf. They do come in a variety of shades. 

 Further online investigation led me to a definition of brownish-orange or yellowish -brown. Or ochre

or sienna.

Then I remembered another novel and another odd French name for a color--a woman was describing a silk ball gown in a killing merde d'oie. Aka goose shit green--a brownish-green. 

I thought that sounded fairly unattractive, but then I stumbled on a shade called caca de dauphin. Those French! The (probably apocryphal) story behind this name is that Marie Antoinette was holding the baby prince when he pooped all over her. Rather than being disgusted, the queen marveled at the color --yellow, as is common in young breast-fed babies--and ordered a dress of that exact color--which color, of course, became popular in court circles.

Until the Revolution.

 

Moonrise

 

Feuilles-Mortes

                                                                     

 

Brown is probably my least favorite color, closely followed by grey. I know there are countless beautiful shades of each but still, like James Taylor, deep greens and blues are the colors I (mostly) choose. 

But the shapes of these dead leaves enthrall me and present a challenge to capture them. So I find myself exploring the browns and enjoying it. Though I've taken some liberties . . .

Now I understand why the beautiful Irene of Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga was described as having hair the color of feuille morte--dead leaf. It puzzled me when I first read it sixty years ago, but now I think I understand.

In checking my facts, I was delighted to discover that the Saga is online free. Check it out HERE 

Into November

 

Dear Sir

                                                 

 Dear "Representative" Edwards,

Are you enjoying your paid vacation? Living it up while many of your constituents go without pay or food assistance and with the threat of prohibitively priced health insurance?

Are you comforted by the news of a shiny marble bathroom in the White House? Did you thrill to the sight of POTUS at his lavish Gatsby party, celebrating conspicuous consumption while denying SNAP funding?

Is your mind at rest during your paid vacation because you know your Dear Leader is in charge and the House is powerless to resist him? 

You and your party disgust me.

An unrepresented constituent

Living in Middle Earth

                                              Looking at the beauty surrounding us, I sometimes feel like the astronauts who looked back at the beautiful blue ball of Earth and wondered how something so lovely could contain so much suffering and hatred.

Rabbit Rabbit

 

The Magus by John Fowles

After reading Fowles's French Lieutenant's Woman, I decided to revisit his The Magus, last read probably thirty or forty years ago. It had left an indelible impression on me as a work of marvelous descriptions and intriguing characters, plus a twisting plot with more questions than answers.

I sought out an unabridged audio version and was not disappointed--the narrator Nicolas Boulton does an excellent job with the diverse characters and accents. It's a feast of over 26 hoursa of listening.

The surprise for me was how much I grew to dislike the main character--who is pretty much an anti-hero--and how disappointed I was at the ambiguous ending, despite a earlier warning from the author. (This novel, like The French Lieutenant's Woman, is metafiction in which the author occasionally addresses the reader, reminding them of the essential fiction of the telling.)

I very much enjoyed the hours of listening--even as I grew increasingly annoyed with the protagonist--something I don't remember from previous readings. 

I wonder if it's my age or the times in which we live that changed my attitude.

Not Entirely Faded