Write at the Merge: week 20 gave us the word Orphan and this image
Deliberate Steps
I had not remembered until I went up to clean out my mamma’s attic. A few discarded thoughts were piled up in a shadowy corner. I dusted off some memories. I remember the keys of the piano jumping up and down in a frenetic exercise. The gentle sound of a melody soothing the tense air. I remember his long, thick fingers ravaging the ivory. His broad shoulders shifting side to side. The back of his head bobbing up and down. His long arms held strong in front of his torso. I remember being taken away by the music. I would stand near the door jamb holding my hands at the small of my back. My eyes closed, I’d lift my head and sway. Gradually, I’d become weightless and float above supported by the notes. His long, thick fingers would play my body. I always wondered how he was able to touch me without ever touching me. Afterwards, I would feel ashamed of myself. Ashamed for feeling that way. I would try so hard to restrain myself, but always at the holidays when he was at the house, I’d beg him to play. Just one song – for me! He would smile and walk over to the piano with deliberate steps. He would hold his hands above the keys for just a moment as he gave me a secret wink. After this, he would become all serious as he played. Again, I would be taken away. After he was gone for a while, some men came and took the piano away. Today, all that remains of him are a few photos in a cardboard box in the attic along with a sketch I drew of him one short, hot summer long ago.
The cats were meowing. It was time to start dinner. I really wasn’t in the mood. What else is new, right?
So, I decided I would just throw some leftovers in the toaster oven to broil and put some rice in the rice cooker. We had gone out to an old, traditional Greek restaurant for Pascha (greek easter) the night before. We had ordered a fish, roasted lamb, liver and onions, Horta and humus for my humus-loving, picky-eater boy. After abstaining from meat for so many weeks we shoveled it in our mouths by the forkfuls without even breathing. It was an ecstatic experience, until about 2:30 am when I woke up dying for a glass of water. I had an alka-seltzer for breakfast. Still, I didn’t want to cook and you just can’t let good food you paid for go to waste.
The rice cooker is on and I’ll just make a can of Trader Joe’s Lentil soup
Leftover liver and onions from the greek restaurant
I was one of those weird kids that liked liver as a kid. I would ask my mom to make it for dinner. My older sister and brother would punch me in the arm and say I was crazy. Hey, you put a little ketchup on it and smother it with onions – and call me crazy, but it’s good!
So, I had got the rice on and not much else when my husband got home. I poured him and myself some tea to ease the bloating from the Easter dinner.
Aren’t these cups so cute? I found them on the internet and being a displaced New Yorker, I couldn’t resist. They are my favorite cups to drink tea from. You could drink coffee out of them, but I don’t drink coffee.
So, after drinking my tea I changed my mind about dinner. I decided I would pour the lentil soup out as a sauce over the rice with the liver and onions. I opened it and dumped it into a pan to cook, and then had an inspiration. Frittata! I was just recently reading from the Bartolini kitchens blog where he discussed making frittate. I know of frittate, but had never put pasta in mine before. You know what? There was some leftover pasta in my fridge that would have to be thrown out if no one ate it. Into the frittata it will go. Are you still following along with my ADD brain. I keep switching up the dinner menu, my brain must be fried from all that EASTER meat gorging.
scramble me up a frittata
I dumped the liver and onions from the broiler pan I had already put it in into a frying pan. I sautéed it a bit and then added the leftover pasta. I found some mushrooms in the fridge and threw those in too. I scrambled up two eggs and poured this over the mixture in the pan. I let this all cook up in the frying pan. For the finale, I placed the frying pan under the oven’s broiler for 3 minutes. I used the timer and the oven light to make sure it didn’t burn.
I can’t believe it didn’t burn and turned out all right. All except my shirt, which is what I get for being too lazy to change out of a white shirt and not putting on an apron in the first place!
I divided the frittata into fourths. I placed one section on the plate, scooped a ladle full of the lentil soup over it, dumped some salad from a bag next to it and served with yogurt. Dinner from leftovers! Of course, my son didn’t eat it. He asked who made it and then ate his yogurt and some bread. The boy just refuses to eat anything I cook.
The next day, my husband and I had the leftover frittata for breakfast and for dinner I made a soup, in the crock pot, out of the leftover roasted lamb and green beans from Sunday’s night Pascha dinner.
Come, my love, sit with me on the blanket under the sakura tree. It’s pink tendrils unravelling in the humid air landing on our hair. Such a lovely veil of nature you wear upon your delicate head. Shed your cap, scarf and mittens and slip your feet into the dewy grass. You giggle as it tickles your naked toes. You stir me up, baby, like Nescafe. Let’s leave the soup cans stocked in the cupboard and open the picnic basket. We will dine on white wine and cheese with crusty bread.
And look, at the bottom of the basket – a Milky Way bar!
Let’s eat it before it melts. No matter if we haven’t yet supped. Let’s ruin our appetites and relish this delight. This nectar of the ancients transformed into a sweet confectionary. It will comfort our ravenous souls. In that land of the Maya and the Aztecs, the cacao beans are being harvested by tender, loving hands. The beans are grounded into rich chocolate. Rich chocolate is mixed into a thick, stringy substance. Whipped nougat is pressed into the chocolate. The heated caramel flows to spread on top and then slowly is drenched with sweet milky chocolate. Mmmmmmm-
I will break it in half for you and me. Go on take a luscious bite. But not so fast, savor it slowly as the creamy caramel flows from the bar to your lips. Chew tenderly the smooth nougat center. Let me lick where the chocolate has hidden itself in the crevices of your voluptuous mouth. Lay down with me, my love, on the blanket under the sakura tree. Let my blood mix with your blood. Together, we will make a new blood. All the while pink snowflakes cascade down on us. The wind blows them away across the horizon like falling stars in reverse. Quick, make a wish. Make a thousand wishes, my love. I have only one and oh, the places we will go!
Write at the Merge week 19 gave us these lines from
REM’s The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight:
Baby, instant soup doesn’t really grab me today. Today I need something more substantial: a can of beans or black eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice, a candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Dr. Seuss.
And this image,
And the Trifecta Writing Challenge week 76 was the third definition of
It was the summer of ’77. Spike Lee made a movie about it. I was 8 and remember it well. It was one of the scariest times in my life and one of the happiest. Somehow, my young mind split the two events and doesn’t realize they occurred at the same time.
The happiest time of my life was the big Blackout in NYC. It was so much fun! Everyone came home and hung out on their stoops.We listened to the news on the transistor radio. My brother and his friend were at a Mets game.The game was cancelled and they got a ride home from a neighbor. My mom came back home from work. It was July and it was hot. Someone turned on the fire hydrant sprinkler. My friends and I laughed with glee as we ran through the cool water in the dark. We got to stay up late. People began setting off roman candles and bottle rockets leftover from the fourth of July. We were blissfully ignorant of the looting going on in other places around us. My mostly residential middle-working class block had one big block party. The power was restored after a day and there was a brown out for the next 2 days. We made the best of it and no one ever thought of suing Con Ed. It was good times.
It was also the summer of the Son of Sam. The crazy SOB whose neighbor’s dog told him to go out and kill young girls. It was all over the news and everyone feared for their daughters. My best friend and I worried about our older sisters going out. They both cut their long brown hair short. The news said it seemed he was going after young girls with long brown hair. We sat on my friends stoop and talked about what they should do when they caught him. Put him in a room full of snakes, was one suggestion. We couldn’t come up with anything to equal the terror he had put into the hearts of everyone around us. Everyone was so relieved when they finally caught David Berkowitz, better known as the Son of Sam. That was the first news story I remember and the first really scary time in my young life.
linking up with Mama Kat’s, go visit her site for other awesome entries.
This weekend was the annual neighborhood Yard Sale. My son wanted to do a lemonade stand and sell chocolate chip cookies.
He made this sign for his stand with my help
I was happy to see him show some initiative. Being a weight watchers member I had some Crystal Light sitting in the cupboard ready to add water. The cookies were the problem. It’s been a long time since we made cookies. My son loves to bake, but he doesn’t like to eat. So who ends up eating 23 cookies? Yep, that’s right me. A whole lot of points and not a good thing. I also decided since we would be selling these cookies to the general public (i.e. not my kid) I would make good old-fashioned cookies and not my usual healthy alternatives with organic oatmeal flour, chia seeds and brown rice syrup. Ah, now you know why my kid doesn’t eat my cookies! That required a trip to the supermarket to get eggs and butter, which we don’t have in my house right now since it’s the Lenten season.
I had said good old-fashioned cookies, which to me means Tollhouse, but I had these in the back of the cupboard.
I just used the recipe on the back of the bag.
My son creamed together the sugar (1 cup white, 1 cup brown), 2 sticks of butter and 2 eggs
We slowly integrated the dry ingredients with the wet
Stirred in the chips, which by this time had been greatly reduced from snacking on them
While the cookies baked for 10-11 minutes, I had my son and the neighbor kid wash the dishes. Be sure to keep a mop handy for this step!
Here they are straight out of the oven.
They seemed a bit small to me, but ok for a weight-watcher size cookie. So, for the next batch I used an ice-cream scoop instead of a tablespoon. They came out normal sized. I thought the Ghiradelli chips too rich and prefer the Tollhouse for cookies, but the Ghiradelli would be perfect for brownies. Yet, they were a success and a lot of people commented they were better than the competition down the block. And I have it from a reliable source they used the slice and bake ready-made dough.
Then we decided to make cake pops. I baked a Duncan Hines Red Velvet cake following the directions on the package, adding a box of chocolate instant Jell-O pudding to the Mix.
Wow look at that color! That can’t be natural.
After cooling the cake in the fridge, I crumbled it with my hands. I love this part.
Add a 1/4 cup of frosting to the crumbled cake
I had a container of cream cheese frosting in the fridge. Wait, I had a full container, now I don’t even think there’s a 1/4 cup left in there. You caught me, every late night now and then a spoon or two got dipped into that container.
Mix the crumbled cake and frosting together with your hand. I really love this part. Maybe I should take up pottery
Roll mixture into balls. This is like making the meatballs
Then let set in the fridge for about 2 hours. I did this part the night before and the candy party the next morning.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler
After dipping in the melted chocolate and sprinkles they were supposed to be pushed into some styrofoam to hold them. I found it difficult to do this part and keep an eye on the candy. Melting the chocolate is tricky because the water can neither be too hot or too cold. The pops were just dripping and wobbling and not going into the foam. So I put them down on some wax paper, which of course flattened the tops. It didn’t matter much. We didn’t finish the cake pops in time for the yard sale, so I bought them along to a barbecue I had that afternoon. The kids made them disappear in no time!
After consuming much of my profits this weekend, I was up a pound at my weigh-in this week. I just don’t understand it.
Than your mother’s love and the pitter patter of little feet
This is life, not a hallmark card or lifetime movie
Ideally, respond sensitively
- At appropriate times
Feel deeply only when is time to feel so deeply
Who judges when the time is appropriate
Or what is deserving?
–Drop the pretense, you fop
Generalities and bombast are not
True to form, just trite.
Then there are the preachers
Always trying to teach us
And not in demure, subtle ways
An inspiring lesson wrapped all prettily
Like a Tiffany box without any contents
Excellence is a matter of degree
There are no absolutes
The educated person has the ability to make informed judgements
(As long as they were informed by me)
The ignorant just doesn’t know the difference
But decide what you think
Not what someone else does
(Take it from Us)
Do not say this is this or this or that
Say this is MORE than that
Rank them from least to most
Shove them into a category
And judge them, discuss merit, explain superiority,
Why is one more interesting and meaningful than another?
Not to you, but to the educated mind
Explain using parameters
- As dictated by those above you
Decide which is more worthy of prolonged consideration
- By scholars
Because Art, like Beauty can be judged
As well as everything else,
But should it?
*During NaPoWriMo I have been consulting a book I took out of an old box and dusted off. The book is Sound and Sense, An Introduction to Poetry, 6th ed. L. Perrine (HBJ). It is intended as a manual for the student studying poetry. It explains all the forms and devices of poetry, provides examples and exercises to help you critique poems. There is actually chapters titled Good and Bad poetry and Good and Great Poetry. I take direct lines from throughout the book for this piece.
This is the problem I had being an English major and why I could never be a scholar and live in the world of Academia. Yes, art can be judged and we all have our tastes and preferences, which influence our perceptions. We bring to the table certain experiences and sensibilities which help us to appreciate a work of art or not. The book, which is falling apart page by page has gone in the trash bin. It reminded me of an episode of Murphy Brown where Elden gets a piece of his art in a museum. It is covered by a white cloth and the critics are oohing and ahhing, when the cloth falls on them they exclaim that they get it – they are the art. They did not get it at all!
Then there’s the hysterical scene in Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School where he gets Kurt Vonnegut Jr to write his report on one of the authors own books and the teacher fails him and tells him he doesn’t get Vonnegut! (clip contains adult language)
Today, I challenge you to use the wondrous powers of the Internet to help you write, and I have a particular method in mind. Think of a common proverb or phrase — something like “All that glitters is not gold,” or “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Then plug the first three words of the phrase into a search engine. Skim through the first few pages of results, collecting (rather like a poetic magpie) words and phrases that interest you. Then use those words and phrases as the inspirations (and some of the source material) for a new poem. Happy writing!
