GrongarBlog – Page 22

52 Photos ~ Where people gather

I think we can all agree that this winter has been long by any measure.

Even this week, when the days are noticeably elongated by extra minutes of daylight, the overnight temperatures keep plunging down below -10º F. The alternating daytime sunshine followed by nighttime freezes has glazed the snow with a sparkling layer that fractures with each step. It makes for beautiful but tiring walking.

Because I work at home, I spend too many hours alone in this house and on the trails and hills surrounding it. It’s beautiful. I love this place. But after a winter like we’ve all had, I’m antsy. I need to see people and buildings. I need to eat food that I didn’t cook. I need to buy things that I don’t really need. I need a different view out the window. I need not to see the piles of books and waiting projects.

Long days. Cabin fever days. Seen-enough-of-the-shovel-and-the-wood-pile days.

Probably not coincidentally, New England schools take a one-week break in February. M had to work, but H and I skeddadled to Boston, where my sister took us in and offered us her city.

We went to the most touristy of Boston spots, Quincy Market, where we grazed up and down the central hall of the food building and reminisced about our school days when we’d be set free early once a month from classes and we’d take the bus into town with our friends and gorge on pizza and french fries and then go window shopping at the most ridiculous single-themed tiny shops (one that sold nothing but things with hearts, another that sold only purple objects).

These days, Quincy Market is rather more like a mall, populated with larger chain stores (thankfully, the pizza place is still there). Even so, we enjoyed our hours among the school groups and the tourists, and the cute couple with matching stocking caps, and the new parents pushing baby carriages, and the teenagers giggling next to the candy shop, and the guy playing piano in the central atrium for an hour without stopping.

Our first night in town, we went to play pool. The music was loud, the food was mediocre, but we were there for the pool and the tables were clean and smooth. None of our group is any good at all, but oh did we have fun. We took turns walking around the table, lining up our shots, sinking some, but missing more often, trying out ridiculous angles, and laughing a lot. We got better as the night wore on, and then we got worse as we got tired.

I didn’t think about snow or ice or firewood or the oil tank once.

We’re home again and it’s as bitter as ever. I swear if it’s like this in April I’ll buy a plane ticket to Mexico. You’ll find me there with a pile of books, a plate of tacos, a tall cool drink, and no memory of winter.

Today when I went out the snow was so white, the sky so blue, the sunlight so bright that it was blinding (you know that kind of day when you come back inside and everything looks pink? that kind of day). The river was still frozen over. The dog skittered out onto the ice; he’s either braver than I am or just clueless.

I imagined a giant cue stick in my hand, my bending low over the table of ice, shooting my right arm forward with force, the slam of spring against winter, breaking it, scattering it, and sinking it into the corner pocket.

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This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ Mint

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This photo is in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ Hearts

Did I have a song in my head this week? Of course, I did…

http://youtu.be/1NIz0IrpmX4

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These photos and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

52 Photos ~ Crooked line

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

–The Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”

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After this, I’ll be quiet about Antarctica for awhile

They did it.

They walked 1800 miles in 105 days, following Scott’s footsteps, and made it back to safety at Scott Base, Antarctica. And made history.

The band of armchair explorers followed on the blog, Google Earth, and Twitter yesterday evening as Ben and Tarka walked the final miles. The online community was buzzing. I can only imagine what the reception was like at Scott Base. And their relief. And how overwhelming people and buildings and furniture and everything else must have seemed.

There’s a webcam at Scott Base, with a bleak view of some storage containers, vans, and the choppy ocean. Last night, some online followers were begging the expedition support team to ask Ben and Tarka to step out in front of the camera.

At one point after their arrival, briefly, someone (or two) stepped into the lower right corner of the frame, and I took a screen capture. Was it B&T? I’ve no clue. But let’s just say it was.

I don’t know exactly why I’m so obsessed with Scott’s story, but I just plain am. And thank you for bearing with me.

I’ll wrap this all up by leaving you in the words of others: of the Irish poet Derek Mahon, who writes about the terrible last words and moments of Captain Lawrence Oates, who walked out into the white and never returned; of Herbert Ponting, expedition photographer, who survived; and of Edward Wilson, some say Scott’s closest friend, who perished with him in the tent, 11 miles short of One Ton depot.

Antarctica

‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
The others nod, pretending not to know.
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
He leaves them reading and begins to climb,
Goading his ghost into the howling snow;
He is just going outside and may be some time.
The tent recedes beneath its crust of rime
And frostbite is replaced by vertigo:
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
Need we consider it some sort of crime,
This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,
He is just going outside and may be some time
In fact, for ever. Solitary enzyme,
Though the night yield no glimmer there will glow,
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
He takes leave of the earthly pantomime
Quietly, knowing it is time to go.
‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

–Derek Mahon, Gallery Press, 1985

The Sleeping Bag

On the outside grows the furside. On the inside grows the skinside.
So the furside is the outside and the skinside is the inside.
As the skinside is the inside (and the furside is the outside)
One ‘side’ likes the skinside inside and the furside on the outside.
Others like the skinside outside and the furside on the inside
As the skinside is the hard side and the furside is the soft side.
If you turn the skinside outside, thinking you will side with that ‘side’,
Then the soft side furside’s inside, which some argue is the wrong side.
If you turn the furside outside – as you say, it grows on that side,
Then your outside’s next the skinside, which for comfort’s not the right side.
For the skinside is the cold side and your outside’s not your warm side
And the two cold sides coming side-by-side are not the right sides one ‘side’ decides.
If you decide to side with that ‘side’, turn the outside furside inside
Then the hard side, cold side, skinside’s, beyond all question, inside outside.

–Herbert George Ponting from South Polar Times, Vol. 1, 1911

The Barrier Silence

The silence was deep with a breathe like sleep
As our sledge runners slid on the snow,
the fate-full fall of our fur-clad feet
Struck mute like a silent blow
On a questioning “hush” as the settling crust
Shrank shivering over the floe;
And the sledge in its track sent a whisper back
Which was lost in a white fog-bow.
And this was the thought that the Silence wrought
As it scorched and froze us through,
Though secrets hidden are all forbidden
Till God means man to know,
We might be the men God meant to know
The heart of the Barrier snow,
In the heat of the sun, and the glow
And the glare from the glistening floe,
As it scorched and froze us through and through
With the bite of the drifting snow.

–Edward Adrian Wilson from South Polar Times, Vol. 3, 1911

52 Photos ~ All dressed up

I left the corporate world at the start of summer in 1992. Tossed the pantyhose (a word that makes me shudder) in the bin, donated the dressy slacks and office-appropriate tops, put on a pair of jeans, and never looked back.

As I wrote that paragraph, I thought of what happened next, the adventures we had, but that is a story for another day. A sunny summer one.

Today is a snowy day. A snow day. A stay-at-home-from school day. The dog and cats and I are clustered around the fire, and H is luxuriating in a day of no homework and no reason to get out of bed before 11 am.

I woke up at 4 this morning with snow on my mind, anxious to read the news from Antarctica (they will finish tomorrow!) and curious to see how much snow had fallen while we slept. It turns out that not much had, and I thought our hopes of a snow day were dashed. Eventually, I fell asleep again, to be woken by the phone call from school at 5.45.

The inches fell between that call and the time I trudged out to the barn, swaddled in my new down jacket (bright red so you can’t possibly lose me in a blizzard), hat with ear flaps, insulated gloves and boots.

It’s falling still. The only sounds I hear are the ticking of the stove, the dog’s content groans, and the chirping of the birds at the feeder outside the living room window.

The birds wait in the trees on the edge of the woods near our house, stacked up like circling aircraft waiting for the air traffic control tower to give them the signal to land. They’re dressed in shades of whites, browns, greys and ochres. Some wear black caps.

They perch briefly at the feeder, the swirling snow coming down so thickly between them and me and the window that they seem to me to be in a very old photograph, faded and distant, recalling a memory just on the tip of my tongue.

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Pierogi

I’m an Eastern European mutt, descended from grandparents and great grandparents who were born in the tiny, border shifting villages of Romania, Russia, and Poland. At some point, my ancestors may have been Ukranian, or Hungarian, or Bulgarian. We have no records that far back, but considering the politics and the fluid borders of that part of the world, anything’s possible.

I do know that I’m at least half Polish, by virtue of a grandmother born in Warsaw and great grandparents who emigrated from elsewhere in Poland. But, in spite of all that Polish influence, I don’t remember a single pierogi from my childhood. I somehow associate them with gentile Polish cuisine, even though they are just a whisper away from kreplach, the Jewish dumpling that so keenly resembles the periogi (or, for that matter, Asian dumplings and Italian ravioli). Or is it vice versa?

No matter. They all amount to a thin skin of dough wrapped around a precious dollop of flavor. Often a small amount of ground meat mixed with spices, but just as commonly a vegetable mixture, or fruit, or sweetened cheese.

I chose Poland as January’s destination for My Kitchen, My World because I really wanted to learn how to make (and eat) pierogi. It turns out, as with any of these dumplings, the fun (and the real work) is in the fillings. You can stick to the traditional (potato and cheese are popular), or be more exotic. Blueberries, Indian spices, sauteed tofu, spiced apples, chipotle-cheese and salsa, Thai peanut sauce with chicken are just a few of the ideas I came across when researching recipies. In the end, I chose wild mushroom, Moroccan lamb, and sweet ricotta.

Pierogi making is a multi-step process that you can spread out over a few days, or make all in one intensive session (I picture Polish grandmothers, mothers, and daughters congregated in kitchens for pierogi-making afternoons).

Once formed, however, you can defer the cooking and eating part until later by freezing the pierogi until you’re ready for them. The final thawing and cooking makes for an easy week-night dinner accompanied by some kielbasa and roasted brussels sprouts.

I loved all of the pierogi I made, but my favorite were the ones filled with sweet ricotta cheese, and drizzled with a caramel-cabernet reduction sauce that a friend sent us for the holidays. I don’t have the recipe for that sauce yet, but maybe I can trade some pierogi for it.

Pierogi

Yield: 20-40 pierogi, depending on the size you make

Dough ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 large egg

Sweet ricotta filling
(enough to fill about 1/4 of the above dough recipe)
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract

Method

Make the fillings and allow to cool. For our pierogi, I made this wild mushroom filling, this Moroccan lamb tagine recipe (note: I used only a portion of the recipe for the pierogi; the rest we ate with rice for another meal), and a sweet ricotta filling by whipping together the second set of ingredients above.
To make the dough, put the flour and salt in a bowl and whisk to blend. Make a well in the center. In a separate bowl, beat together the water, egg, and oil with a fork, then pour into the well. Stir with a wooden spoon, gradually incorporating the flour into the liquids until all the ingredients are combined and you have a soft dough. Knead a few times, round up into a ball, put in a lightly greased bowl, and cover to rest at room temperature for an hour.
When the dough has rested and the fillings are ready, divide the dough into two pieces and, leaving one piece covered in the bowl, roll the other piece out on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 1/8 of an inch thick. Use a biscuit cutter or a glass to cut circles of the size you want. I used a small biscuit cutter to make circles about an inch-and-a-half in diameter.
Put a small amount of filling in the center of a dough circle (the amount of fillingdepends on the size of the circle, but you want to leave a nice margin around the edge for crimping), then fold the circle in half and crimp the edges to seal them.
Put the formed pierogi on a parchment lined pan to wait as you form the rest, moving on to the second piece of dough as necessary. Once they are all formed, you can either cook them immediately, or freeze them for storage (see below).
To cook the pierogi, boil a large pot of lightly salted water. Once the water is boiling, slip the pierogies into the pot. They’ll settle to the bottom at first, so give them a little stir to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pot or each other. In a few minutes, they’ll begin to float to the top. Once they are floating, boil them a further 5 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon.
You can eat the pierogi boiled, or you can finish them by pan frying them in bit of butter or oil until they are brown and a bit crispy, a few minutes per side.
To freeze uncooked pierogi for later, put the tray of pierogi in the freezer until they are completely frozen, then transfer them to plastic bags until you’re ready to use them. On the morning of cooking day, spread the frozen pierogi on trays again and leave in the refrigerator to thaw. When they are thawed follow the steps above to boil and pan fry them.

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To see the round up of the group’s Polish recipes, visit the My Kitchen My World (MKMW) site. (You can also see where the group has already traveled.) To join in, just make a dish (or more) for the month’s country, blog about it, and put a link to your post in the comments on the MKMW page.

In February, we travel to the Czech Republic.

Friday Five ~ Drawing lines, making tracks

It’s Friday again.

And here I am with a mess of thoughts, songs, images, and ideas in front of me. They all started out quite separate and distinct, but like a rope that you put away in a neat coil in the fall, they’ve somehow knotted together in the dark and are all pulling at my thoughts at once. Maybe they’ll become a poem. Or a photograph. Or just remain this list, somehow connected, but only momentarily. Eventually untangled.

Today is the Chinese New Year, and it’s the Year of the Horse. In recognition of the day, And Other Poems, a terrific poetry blog, has put together a few collections of horse poems, which you can see here, here, and here.

Suddenly I understood the sleek, inky
poem of a horse, the lines bowed
as if resisting flight.
–Nikki Magennis

Maybe you already saw the mesmerizing video of bird flight paths that was bopping around the internet last week. In case you didn’t, here’s your chance.

I drove down to Boston last weekend, and put Jake Bugg’s CD in the car’s stereo, and pretty much had it on repeat the entire trip. I just can’t get his songs out of my head. I particularly love the mournful Broken. And though I’ve never had a hankering for a cigarette, I’m addicted to the rhythm of Two Fingers.

At my blithe request, my friend Ruth drew me a picture of a manatee, in about five minutes. I completely envy that talent. I can barely draw a line.

And finally, speaking of making tracks, yesterday, Ben and Tarka broke the distance record for a human-powered (sledge-dragging) expedition. And early this morning they attained another milestone by passing the latitude and general location of Scott’s final camp. In the map below, Ben and Tarka’s location is indicated by the red map pointer (upper left). The dark blue points below that red point, along the same line, represent their southbound/pole-ward journey, which they are retracing on their way back to Scott’s Hut (lower right).

The final camp for Scott, Wilson, and Bowers is indicated by the poignant dot at the end of the purple line, just to the left of the red point.

By this evening, they should be about 150 miles from their starting point, which is also the ending point of their journey and of that story.

p.s. For those interested in reading a first-hand account, here’s Ben Saunder’s moving post about today’s milestone.

She’s flying high

H learned yesterday that she got the part she really wanted in this spring’s school musical, The Drowsy Chaperone.

Introducing….Trix the Aviatrix!

(We’ll see you all in May in Thetford for the production, yes?)