Author: Karen

I went into a cooking frenzy last night and made both pasta with fresh tomato sauce and ratatouille, in the process setting a new record for dishes dirty at one time. (Bear in mind, the kitchen at I Street is the size of an average home’s hallway.) The finished ratatouille is hiding behind the almomst-finished bottle of wine.

I blame M.F.K. Fisher (also on the table) for all of this. I’ve been reading How to Cook a Wolf for the last few days, and it’s delightful. Take a paragraph like this, for example, about shrimp pate:

“Such a [pate]can be kept for weeks or months, or perhaps even for years, if it contains enough spoices and alcohol, is correctly sealed into its mold with coagulated fat, and is kept reasonably cold. Given these three prime benefits, it can be produced when you will, like a mad maiden aunt, or a first edition (in Russian, naturally) of Crime and Punishment.“

Another favorite, preceding a recipe:
“It is called Date Delight, through no fault of mine.”

I’ll put more of her up this week. There’s a passage about cheese that I love, too. Here’s Tuesday’s bonus photo: “Still Life with Zinnias, Nasturtiums, and Saint Candles On My Dresser.”

So no one is disappointed, here is a kitten picture:

And here is me talking about my weekend:
I ate a lot of apples(sliced in a salad, with cheese, plain, and baked). That reminded me of the phrase “the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun,” from a poem by Yeats, which I found this morning. It’s called “The Song of the Wandering Aegnus”

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by me name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

In other news, a visit to the fair is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday. And here’s today’s Blue Moon Ranch picture: Meadow and Laurelin eating willow leaves.

1. Did I mention I will be volunteering at Blue Moon Ranch’s Open Farm Day September 30th? I will be WORKING WITH ALPCAS, folks. I just didn’t want this to get overlooked.

2. Did I mention I entered a sewing project and a knitting project in the Utah State Fair, which is now going on? I may have won a blue ribbon (worth $7), a red ribbon (worth $5) or even a grand prize trophy (worth $20!). I’ll let you know.

3. And allow me to mention my feelings about Blueprint Magazine: I thought the first issue was pretty caught up its own pretension but am a sucker for craft projects (could you tell?), so bought the second issue yesterday. They actually used the phrase, “artisanal cupcakes” in it. Now, there are many things that are called “artisanal” in this day and age (bread, cheese, whatever) but CUPCAKES SHOULD NOT ONE OF THEM. They are cake. And frosting. There are no cupckae artisans.

Enjoy the weekend!

It might be a week of fiber-bearing animal pictures: Here’s a picture of Navajo Churro sheep. (Speaking of the world of sheep, look them up sometime on Wikipedia. There are breeds from Africa to Iceland, some look like goats, and there’s even a variety called the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep, bred in–yes–Barbados.)

In other fiber news, I will be helping out at Open Barn Day at Blue Moon Ranch on September 30th. Mark your calendars!

caprine (adjective; KAP-rin): of, relating to, or resembling goats.

Caprine shares the same root as “caper” (to prance about, frisk, gambol) which is Latin for, of course, goat. “Capricorn” gets in on the etymological action, too.

These are angora goat kids, from a delightful website: Crookabeck Farms. They’re a farm in the English Lake District–Beatrix Potter country–that raises exotic fiber animals, apparently.

Don’t they look speedy? Maybe I’ll have to investigate breeding a new strain of racing alpacas…

1. The Soldier Hollow Classic (I’m going Sunday), which consists of sheepdog trials and a fiber arts fair. Of course.

2. The Utah State Fair (their website will astound you, but probably not in a good way), in which I’m entering two projects today.

3. This quote from the Jorie Graham poem yesterday:

“An origin is not an action though it occurs at the very start

Desire goes travelling into the total dark of another’s soul
looking for where it breaks off

I was a hard thing to undo.”

4. The latest from Blue Moon Ranch (this is Annie).

So a pattern book for Rowan yarn came in the mail Tuesday, and it sparked a discussion with my dad as to where he’d been reading about rowans. Since I’m steeped in Druidic lore, I volunteered it was one of the five sacred trees of the Druids (along with oak, ash, alder, and yew) and that here in the West, it’s called a mountain ash.

Oaks then reminded me of this Jorie Graham poem, called Le Manteau de Pascal which uses excerpts from Gerard Manley Hopkins‘ journal entry about oak trees. (Hopkins, of course, was a Victorian poet who converted to Catholicism and wrote a lot of excellent sonnets.) The title, Le Manteau de Pascal, refers to the story about Blaise Pascal, who sewed into the lining of his coat (his manteau) either irrefutable proof of the existence of God or (depending on the version of the story you go with) written confirmation of his conversion.

In any case, it’s a dense poem and deals with doubt and trees and anxiety. And stuff. (Just look where knitting will get you–paganism and post-modern poems!)

So Monday night I was looking for something delicious at the liquor store. I remembered Mike at work recommending port, so I bought that, and now I know why Kerouac drank himself to death on it. (Well, he drank himself to death because he was sad, but I understand why he chose port as his drink of choice.) It’s mighty tasty!

We’re working this week on getting all the content dropped in to our big website re-do (I’ll link to it when it’s finished; it will be cool) so I’ve revisited all the quotes. (Remember the massive quote project?) Here’s one from Eudora Welty, who is not only perceptive but has a really good author’s name.

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.” (from One Writer’s Beginnings, 1984)