Our Many-Colored Days (With a nod to Dr. Seuss)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Love and Money (& Really Good Legumes)

Silver-Dollar Pancakes

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.

Some Like it Hotter

We’re lousy food-bloggers. Why? Because we don’t use the blog to store basic recipes, which means that when we crave something like a batch of Pinto beans … well, we’re left guessing how much hot pepper to put in, and can’t remember what we did in the last batch. Beginning to combat that evil, here is today’s Pinto recipe, which is still not fiery enough:

  • 4 cups dry Pintos, picked free of stones and broken beans, and washed free of dust
  • 10 cups (or so – 12 would be safer, if you’re leaving them cooking and going somewhere) of boiling water
  • 3 medium, white onions
  • 1 tsp chili flakes
  • 1 tsp cayenne powder
  • 1 tsp chipotle powder
  • 1 Tbsp sweet paprika
  1. Chop your onions,
  2. Add everything to your slow-cooker and let the smell drive you mad for at least 8 hours, topping up with hot water as needed to just cover the beans,
  3. Serve over a handful of tortilla chips and some cheese, topped with lowfat Greek yogurt (and an avocado, if you have a ripe one handy).

Next batch, we’ll know: that is simply nowhere near enough pepper! The sweet paprika is an awesome touch, but adds no heat. The chipotle adds a bit of smoke, which is also nice. But: next batch, probably 3 tsp of cayenne powder, and maybe an extra tsp of chili flakes. That should just get them to where they could be described as spicy, to us. (Note: Mr. B? Omit the cayenne powder and you’ll have something which might be described as, “hurts good,” in the world of the gringo.)

-D&T

Reflections

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Not much to photograph here in gray Glasgow, just the heel-end of the year, with short, dark days, brief, public spats from the packs of feral children roaming the neighborhood who have been out of school for far too long, and finally, at long last, the end of the ice.

…let the people rejoice.


Not the type of folk who make resolutions spanning more than a single day, we nonetheless are looking behind, to the past few years in Glasgow, and looking ahead, knowing that our time here is ticking down. T. has finished reading for her award and is in the process of clearing the living room of an excess of several hundred books, so that we have fewer to pack when we go. The question of “where to next” is a pulsing throb in our bloodstreams, as D. prepares to buckle down for that last dissertation (or, thesis, if you’re British) push, and then the mind-boggling task of networking, interviewing, and hoping to find degree-related employment. (There are no guarantees on this.) We are relishing these last days of laziness before we straighten up and get serious again.


‘Tis the season… and we kind of hate to turn on the TV or the computer, there are so many ads this time of year for …regret. Regret about what we’ve eaten during the holidays, what we’ve purchased, or where we’ve gone or what we’ve done. (They’re called something else – fitness center ads and all kinds of sales, generally.) It’s strange to be part of a society so highly motivated by guilt and regret. This time of year especially, it’s easy to get wrapped up with what went wrong in the last twelve months — and God knows, there was a lot — but one of the nicest things about us leaving our safety net back home and moving is that, whatever else goes wrong, we know we at least took a chance… took a leap, and did entirely what we wanted to do. So, in the name of getting a fresh start in a new year, we wish you hope and courage for new beginnings. We hope you claim the promise of the unspoiled shine of a brand new year — and do something with it. Take a chance. Take a step.

Onward.

Happy New Year.

Links

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Another batch of links for you all. The WikiLeaks thing keeps on showing up, but it appears that the furor has died down quite a bit. I’m glad about that, but can’t say that I’m pleased to note the trend out there towards preemptively censoring things.

Have a look at Are We Too Dumb for Democracy? The Logic Behind Self-Delusion. It’s quite an interesting article, addressing how, when confronted with facts which contradict our beliefs, we tend to discard the fact, rather than the belief. Not a good thought, really.

In any event, here they are, the links of the past few weeks. Enjoy!
Continue reading “Links”

In the NOT Midwinter…

WINTER CLOTHES

by Karla Kushkin

Under my hood I have a hat
And under that
My hair is flat.
     Under my coat
My sweater’s blue,
My sweater’s red.
I’m wearing two.
     My muffler muffles to my chin
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And then tucks in.
     My gloves were knitted
By my aunts.
I’ve mittens too
And pants
And pants
And boots
And shoes
With socks inside.
     The boots are rubber, red and wide.
And when I walk
I must not fall
Because I can’t get up at all.

And every word of this poem is true. Except the part about the aunts. Neither of us have knitting aunts.

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Glasgow is still bound up in a misery of ice and rain. We have new spikes for our boots, since D. managed to actually stomp the ones on his heels flat, which tells us a few things about the way he walks(!). While we wait for the plumber people to take apart the bathroom (and listen to the truly horrific waterfall running in our neighbor’s house – the firemen only turned off ONE valve; the flat is ruined), we are running the heat and doing laundry in hopes that things will actually DRY at some point – the rugs so far have not.

It’s hard to believe that already we’re deep into it messy winter, and officially, it only started on Solstice, which was a little over a week ago! But, no matter. We still have nice memories from our time away to think on, which will keep us going.


Unlike in the U.S., where Christmas Eve affords many a half-day off, and workers are often back to the office the day following, in Iceland, that’s not the case. Every year, Iceland has jólabókaflóðið, or “the Christmas book flood,” which is the frantic flooding of the market with book releases just before the holiday. Books are the Numero Uno gift to give and receive on Christmas, as Iceland sells the greatest number of books per capita of any nation in the world. (Yeah. T. was struck speechless by the awesomeness of that for several long seconds.) Books are talked about on the news, and the awards buzz — and the “this book is going to flop” buzz — is huge. Thus, while Christmas Eve is the time to open those books, Christmas Day and the day following? Are for reading those books, preferably in bed, while eating filled chocolates. At all the parties in the days following, books are the primary topic of conversation – what everyone got, if they’re any good, etc. etc. etc.

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This is no guidebook exaggeration. Many people mentioned to us what they’d be doing on Christmas. Aside from attending a church service, most of the weekend was for reading. (Awesome, huh?)

So, the city was empty and quiet, with a light rain misting down. We had a lovely time window-shopping, walking from the old city to the downtown area, and winding through the streets. Reykjavik is a strangely artsy city, so there was a lot to look at.

On Christmas Day we attended a church service at Hallgrímskirkja, which was amusing – since it was an Anglican service given in a Lutheran Church in English by an Icelandic reverend. Contradictions abounded! As did tourists – it never ceases to amaze us how people visiting churches feel they can simply stride into a church mid-service, stand in a pew, take pictures of themselves and their surroundings, and walk out again. We were worried that the people were Americans. Fortunately, they were German, and we could hold our fellow countrymen innocent of that particular obnoxiousness, at least.

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It’s easy to dissect the name – it’s Hallgrím’s kirkja — Hallgrím’s church. It’s named after Hallgrímur Pétursson, who is apparently a really famous Icelandic poet. He wrote a series of fifty Easter poems, one of which is read aloud per day on Icelandic public radio, beginning ten days before Lent. They’re very well-loved, our tour guide told us, but it’s a rare person outside of Iceland who has ever heard of him. (Rejoice: you have now ascended the ranks of rare persons!)

We were two of about eighteen people at church on Christmas. While we felt a little silly at such a sparsely attended service (the person who led the carols beamed and nodded at us after the service – apparently we were the only ones singing, and she could hear us allll the way in the front. Yikes.), we were glad to finally make a visit to Hallgrímskirkja – the inside of the church is just gorgeous. We’d heard from various tour guides about the state architect of the last thirty-some years, Guðjón Samúelsson, and how it took them about thirty-eight years to actually finish the structure (1945-1986). He did an amazing job of making the church interior look like … an ice cave. No, really, that’s what it’s supposed to look like.

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What was more intriguing to us was the organ. It looked innocuous enough, just sitting on the floor in the back of the sanctuary, but it has a whopping 5,275 pipes. (And 72 stops, but we don’t know if that’s particularly impressive, since we don’t play.) It has a massive, blow-out-the-ceiling sound, but they don’t play it all the time, because it can be heard from outside the church, across the road, and inside of hotel rooms. Yes. We heard it play all Christmas Eve, just lightly on the air, through a single opened window, but it was audible. Thus, they play an electric organ for carols, so they don’t drown out the singers.

We prefer to be drowned out.

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After Christmas, T. was delighted to find evidence of the Yule Lads! Still no Yule Cat — apparently people are afraid of photographing the beast — but we did find all the elderly looking “lads” at their nasty little tasks in a shop window. The funniest was the ogress Grýla – with a bag of children on her back. Did we mention that in 1746 it became against Icelandic law to terrify children with these tales? Apparently Icelanders started being concerned with their children’s sanity long before it became fashionable to even think they were anything other than small adults.

The Yule lad/ogress mythology discussion brings us to the whole elf thing — or the huldufólk, as the Icelanders call their “hidden folk.” It’s astounding that so many people, when they think of Iceland — even when the talk in the news was about their bank going bankrupt — they must talk about elves. In Vanity Fair there was a huge piece about it, all serious and newsworthy and discussing the economy and mistakes and the downturn of the whole nation, and then, Hahaa, those Icelanders! 80% of them, when polled, said they believed in elves! Hahahaha!

Yeah, well. Whatever. People believe all kinds of things, and probably one of the better American strengths (at least on the West Coast) is that while we might believe all kinds of things, most people are left alone with their beliefs. Everyone we met was perfectly nice and friendly and we were happy not to ask them a thing about elves. Beliefs are personal, no matter how weird they might seem to others.

It was a good trip to a clean, well-organized city with lights everywhere to combat the late-rising (11 a.m.!) sun, and the most wonderful lava springs, hot tubs, steam baths, and swimming pools. That’s reason enough to go right there. Better reasons include nice people and interesting artwork and lots of places to walk and think and explore — read.

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You know your vacation is over when…

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…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.

Behold, the Yule Cat Cometh…

Jólakötturinn. Loathsome, mangy, evil-eyed feline, she claws to death and eats anyone who doesn’t have a new outfit for Christmas Eve.

(You knew that, right?)

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Hello, and welcome to another edition of My, Christmas Is Very Different In Other Countries.

Here, instead of the mythos of Santa, we have Grýla the hag, owner of said vicious cat, and mother of thirteen indolent and annoying boys known as the Yule Lads who may or may not put a gift in the shoe you leave on the windowsill. One of them may or may not arrive in your home from the 12th of December, in an amusing addition to the Advent calendar, and leave you something. This probably makes kids around here QUITE giddy by the time Christmas actually arrives.

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Because these lads have names like Pot-licker, Bowl-licker and the like, no one normally sees them outside of dark kitchen corners — and of course they’re only there to do mischief anyway. Grýla is there to eat bad children, her cat eats the badly dressed, and the lads pester everyone and leave potatoes in the shoes of bad children (or gifts for the good) every night for twelve nights.

And a nervous Christmas to all.

At least the bad kids still get fed. There’s a lot one can do with a potato.

(Grýla’s husband is unemployed in this scenario, apparently. Maybe he works at Easter.)


We are eating tons of rye bread, and lovely rye crackers for breakfast. Bliss.

…..
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We have discovered that all of the hot water here smells faintly of the rotten egg stench of sulfur. Our hair is …charmingly tousled, shall we say, from the minerals in the shower water. Fortunately, the cold water is stream-filtered and quite tasty. And unscented.

…..

We couldn’t quite figure out the beds at first. T. was pretty sure we were meant to sleep in the uniquely folded flat sheet which enclosed the mattress; D. was sure we were not. Each side of the bed has its own narrow stuffed duvet, which means one can burrow or kick it away at will, without inconveniencing anyone else. A marvelous idea.

…..

In this country, Christmas starts promptly at 6:00 P.M. on the evening of the 24th, when all the bells in the whole country start to ring.

We hate to see what they’ll do for the midnight service…

And to all, a good night.

Church of Christ, NASA

It was actually three degrees COLDER in Glasgow when we left, for those of you who have accused us of being gluttons for punishment. Typically, here isn’t as cold as there, as it gets the temperature off the Atlantic, and Scotland right now is getting it from the Baltic.

The Atlantic has shared a Nor’easter with us, though so we’ve learned the meaning of the word WINDCHILL. It’s not a nice word, but it’s emphatic. It means, “get the heck inside.”

Merry on.