Hobbits In Rivendell

Gray Day…./Everything is gray./I watch./But nothing moves today.

While this picture is charming and actually shows white snow, GRAY is the predominant color of a Glaswegian winter. Gray, and black, with speckles of grungy white, which is itself a shade of dingy gray. These are the colors of old snow, filthy sidewalks, and much of the wardrobe of this city. Lacking the blessing of light, most people revert to a spectrum they can actually see, which is black, white, and gray.

But when my days/Are Happy Pink/It’s great to jump/ And just not think.

It’s enough to drive a body ’round the twist. We LOVE color. We adore color. We buy strange shades of bedding (it’s what goes on sale first – people like “normal” colors, so we take the weird ones) and drench our sheets in dye color. T., when doing dye loads, usually tosses in some t-shirts and underclothes for a little livening. It’s hard to be unhappy wearing green tie-dyed underpants. At the very least, it’s hard to not feel the urge to wear neon shades, the more blacks and gray people wear.

On Bright Red Days/ how good it feels/to be a horse/and kick my heels!

Of course, sometimes even our color cheerleading fails. This winter has so far been filled with emotional upsets — we’ve grieved through classmates’ suicides, cancers, car crash fatalities, and seen the marriages of two very dear friends begin to dissolve. Sometimes, it all seems a bit much, and the dank winter gray seeps in. We had to fall down for awhile last week, and just lay where we’d landed. Sometimes… sometimes, acknowledging the ick just seems to be a necessity.

However, even in the midst of our grim days, we are inadvertently adding color to our internal landscapes, at least — without much effort or conscious thought. In the quest to be healthy, we are eating really colorful foods.

Green Days/Deep deep in the sea./Cool and quiet fish/That’s me.

Red lentil curry with chunks of “chicken,” chopped ginger, fragrant coconut milk, and a fiery array of jalapeño chiles. It’s lovely and bright and D. served it in his small bread boules. Tasty. Wilted greens, steamed broccoli, carrot discs and bright red bell pepper confetti brightened a bed of rice noodles and spicy “beef” strips.

Then comes a Yellow Day and Wheeee! I am a busy, buzzy bee.

In honor of our color quest, T. whipped up another batch of sugar cookies to pass along (and eat herself) and colored the glaze with saffron and boiling water. Beautifully golden fish with silver eyes — and the last sugar cookies she’ll be making for some time, for though she thought she hated sugar cookies, she has modified an already excellent recipe and now these things are Becoming A Problem. But never mind – they’re colorful and bright and pretty, and the perfect thing to pass to friends to liven up their gray days.

Especially to those of you who are also stumbling a bit in your walk through the world: May an epiphany of color and light brighten your days; may you find light in the dark, and joy in the common, every day things.

Dr. Seuss wrote My Many Colored Days in 1973 and it was published posthumously in 1996. He wasn’t finished with it yet, so you can see it lacks his usual talent, but it was nice to get one more book of his anyway.

T’s mother used to make greens every New Year’s day. Occasionally she even made black-eyed peas. These were the foods she’d eaten every New Year’s Day as a child, because her mother followed that strangest of Southern traditions, and made her children something called “hoppin’ john.” Southerners eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day to attract luck, and they eat greens, so that money will come in the New Year.

Obviously, this worked for T’s family. That — or continuing to go to work — ensured that they have never yet gone bankrupt and become destitute and homeless.

T., however, is not a huge proponent of the New Year’s Day scenario. First, she knows that D. really hates cooked veg, especially greens — and while she loves them, a.) most of them don’t love her, seeing as they’re high in oxalic acid, and b.) there’s not much point cooking anything for one person that the other won’t eat. Another reason for avoidance is, if T. stays up ’til midnight, her body figures it’s time to eat again — and she’s just not eating greens at midnight, no matter how tasty they might be. A New Year’s Day celebration meal that comes in the middle of the night calls for pancakes. Silver dollar pancakes, to be sure — for the money attractant aspect of things. And syrup — a lovely bitter orange syrup made of the leftover simple syrup from candying oranges — makes the perfect representative food of love.

So, we expect love and money in the New Year. And, you know, to still be trying to be healthy, since that’s obviously what the puddle of earnest and healthful margarine represents. (It’d be a whole ‘nother story if that were butter.)

But what, you ask, about the black-eyed peas?

Welllll, D. kind of hates those, too. Or, rather, he did. And actually, T. wasn’t so fond of the dried kind — until she remembered — or misremembered? — a dish of them she enjoyed in childhood, made by some Jamaican friends. T. did a little experimenting, and came up with a good first try at the dish, and we both actually enjoyed it — which is a good thing. Black-eyed peas are cheap (thus explaining the frugal Southerners serving them), and fiber-full, which is probably a good thing the usual meal of four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a neighborhood of gingerbread houses that most people eat for Christmas dinner, and continue to snack on throughout the week between the 25th and New Year’s Day. Not to mention the fudge…

This is a rough guess at what we did to make this dish — and keep in mind, it’s a work in progress!

Misremembered Peas & Rice

• 2 c. black-eyed peas – sorted and soaked
• About 8 C. water
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 spring onions, bruised and 2 Tbsp. onion powder
• 1 tsp. salt, and of freshly ground black pepper
• 2 fresh sprigs of thyme, bruised, or 2 tsp. dried
• 1/4 tsp. paprika, and ginger
• 1 C. rice
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 whole hot pepper, like Scotch Bonnet or a Thai chile, optional

First, sort your beans — this is imperative. This time of year, the only black-eyed peas you’ll find are dried and harvested peas, and the harvesting process inevitably brings along little rocks. Measure out your two cups, pour them a bit at a time on a flat surface, and pick through them. It’s a chore myriad Southern children spent many an evening doing…
Soak your beans in water in a covered pot overnight. For some people, black-eyed peas cause more gastrointestinal distress than other beans, and soaking them overnight and tossing out the water helps with that. If you haven’t time for a whole overnight thing, pour your beans into boiling water, boil for two minutes, and then allow to sit for one hour. Discard the water, and Bob’s your uncle. And Bob might not have a gassy stomach, which would benefit your familial relationship greatly.

Next, smash your garlic cloves with the flat of your knife, into a paste, and add to the 8 cups of boiling water. Add the drained beans and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how old your beans were to begin with, and how high of an altitude you’re at — beans can be tricky, but most of them give up the ghost after an hour. Simply do a “squish test” against the lid of the pot. You want your black-eyed peas to have give, but not be completely mush, so do check on that simmer at the hour mark!
Then, add your coconut milk, rice, salt, black pepper, onion powder, paprika, ginger, and spring onions (or scallions) and thyme to the mix. Please note that the aromatics are beaten and bruised with the flat of your knife, not chopped, according to the visual of the finished dish that T. retains from when her friends made it. (Mind you, T. never lets anything like the way one is supposed to do things stop her, and she chopped a plain old onion into hers, but she practically made a paste of it, and sweated it before she added it to the beans, so it was invisible — but then, she has a THING about adding onions to savory foods. Ignore her. Carry on.) At this time, if you’d like your dish to be slightly spicy, toss in your whole hot pepper – don’t chop it! Simply boiling it in the coconut milk and the juices from the beans will impart a “glow” to the dish that non-pepper lovers will even enjoy.

The rice should be cooked through in forty minutes — keep an eye on the dish at this stage, and don’t hesitate to add a teensy bit more water (no more than a quarter cup), if your bean juice is quite thick and you feel there’s not enough liquid to adequately cook the rice. Remove your bedraggled veg matter – pepper, thyme and onions — and serve with a dusting of thyme and pepper to taste.

The reason this is called Misremembered Peas & Rice — is because the dish actually calls for kidney beans! T. swears she had it with black-eyed peas, but she may have recalled one of her mother’s experiments and not Mrs. Shand’s dish. Either way – it’s a creamy, tasty, yummy dish, with just a hint of coconut scent, and a subtle fire — and a good way to get down those black-eyed peas, even if you’re not fond of them.

And why should you be trying so hard to eat them? Because 1 cup (172g) plain cooked black-eyed peas is only 199 calories, 35g of carbohydrate (11% of the American recommended daily allowance), 11g of fiber (44% RDA) and 13g of protein, which is rare in beans (And ½ cup of cooked black-eyed peas counts as 1 oz. of lean meat from the Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, And Nuts Group of the Food Guide Pyramid.). Plus, they’re pretty tasty. Even if they’re not the bean you were supposed to use.

…you drive up to your house and see a fire truck,

…your neighbors are standing around in freezing temps in their shirtsleeves, looking unhappy,

…and, the firemen are turning off the water to the high-pressure fire sprinklers in the ceiling of all the flats.

Welcome home! Your flat has flooded. Again.

This time it’s not our fault – it appears that we should have coordinated being away with the neighbors. We all left for at least three consecutive days. Big mistake. Even leaving a trickle of water running didn’t work – the pipes have frozen, and we all have a room flooded – Lesley’s kitchen lights are out and they’re filled with water, Steven downstairs has water seeping through the ceiling and the sprinklers in his flat burst, and we haven’t heard from upstairs yet.

We have sopping wet bathroom rugs. Oh. And the $@%$*%&!# mushroom is growing under the toilet again in a big nest of mold.

Don’t laugh. (Jama-J, I’m looking at you.) The mushroom is dead, and there will be no pictures. And THIS TIME at least we know that it grew because of water seeping through the sandstone, carrying with it whatever little nasties from outside. It has nothing to do with our housekeeping, or lack of it. …despite what we’re tempted to think as we’re down there sluicing the floor with boiling water and bleach…

::sigh:: Welcome home, indeed. Still, we are grateful to have had a great flight (even with the fifty minute stop in Manchester) and a restful time, and will have energy to deal with this next mess…eh, maybe tomorrow.