Fish Heads, Fish Heads!

Dear Zoe, 

While you’re off in the seat of government perfecting strawberry cake, I’ve been at an only sort-of-grown-up version of summer camp, but with beer–finishing my big epic poem about drag queens, oceans and paradise, and being only occasionally helpful to Beck in planning this wedding. Wish you were here bigtime, and soon you will be. When you gals arrive there’s going to be some kind of explosion of birdsong and endorphins raining from the sky. Looking forward to it.

Nina

So the poets and wedding planners alike have been quitting work around eight pm and making dinner together, and being that we’re in cape cod, that the pond right outside is stocked with bass and trout, and that both Chris and I have this sort of weird kill and eat drive that makes me look askance at the little grey squirrels, fish is on the menu as often as possible. Chris, who is a poet/fiction writer/ computer whisperer/ google-obsessed info-gatherer, has memorized the best spots in the pond for depth and therefore larger fish, has perfected his night-crawler gathering and identified the ideal size of worm, has been manfully heaving the boat into the pond every evening and rowing out, and has therefore caught several fish, four of them edibly sized and all of them delicious, golden scaled bass (and a few little pumpkin seed). I, being flakey and sometimes lucky, caught a monster two-foot trout from the shore on day one and haven’t caught anything since, because I can’t be bothered to change my lure or my line length (sometimes this is a problem in poetry too — how many tens of pages of four-foot rhyming stanzas of flashy compound adjectives can the average reader really take?).

So! This is a post about self-caught fish.

Rich rich rich

Dear Nina,
I am still jealous that you get to be in New York this weekend with its spring flowers and friends and fashion while I am stuck in London, Ontario where all we have are glacial ice perimeters, drunk undergraduates, and strip malls.  That said, even though to me you are still the best thing in London, this weekend without you has been pretty delicious.  Today I went to a maple syrup farm that serves an insane $10 Sunday brunch.  Plus, I got inspired and dinner tonight was bomb.  There’s a tupperware in the fridge for you when you get home!
Love,
Bec

Caribbean Bibimbop

Today I got interested in umami, the most elusive of the five primary flavors which also include sweet, salty, sour and bitter.  These tastes are primary in the same way red, blue, and yellow are: all other flavors can be created using these five fundamental flavours.  Apparently umami is not a taste that can be achieved by combining any other flavors; what umami is, however, is not, apparently, apparent to anyone.

Pie Day, Part 2

ALL THOSE WOMEN ON FINE SEPTEMBER AFTERNOONS

When she baked a pie, my mother’s hands were blackbirds;

they flecked butter at heaps of sugared apples.

Her hands were wings around the piecrust’s edge,

and she fluted it until it swooped around

and down. Never worry your crust, she said.

You love crust like a child; roll it

and imagine it pretty and whole.

My grandmother could weigh flour

with her hands and measure vinegar with her eyes.

She rolled her crust with a rolling pin

cut by her father from a single apple limb.

My mother cut out star cookies from what was left.

I think about my mother and her mother

and every mother before they came along

on the days I roll out piecrust with the rolling pin

my grandmother gave to me: the rolling pin

that was part of a tree, swelling apples

from blossoms, apples to swell and dimple

crust.  My God, think of it, all those women

on fine September afternoons like these,

rolling piecrust and not worrying,

seeing things whole.

Katrina Vandenberg, Atlas

Originally uploaded by The People V. Picket Fence

On Ina Garten, Bourge-Me-Nots, and Squash Soup

Bourge-me-not: (n.) The condition of simultaneously wishing to be more bourgeois, and knowing you will never be bourgeois enough.

This is a rather uncomfortable feeling for one who tends to pride herself on frugality, and a sort of ‘whatever’s in the fridge/at the garage sale’ mentality.  And then, Ina says, on page eleven of barefoot contessa at home:

“I want [my husband] to feel that he’s really home. What he doesn’t realize is that what feels very casual is, in fact, quite deliberate: the music is playing, all the lights are on, there are flowers everywhere, and chicken and onions are roasting in the oven.”

Watch as my frugality leaps dramatically into the gutter.