Every Day Bonding

While at Elliza and Daniel and Elliot's home, the elder members of the triumvirate prepared a particularly fine meal for all of us who had come to greet Elliot. It was a Mark Bittman recipe for "West African Peanut Soup with Chicken". I found the recipe on-line, and have the link here:

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012581-west-african-peanut-soup-with-chicken

The color is mainly provided by the sweet potatoes or yams and the peanuts and peanut butter, I think, together with the tomatoes and greens. It smells, and tastes, delicious! It is the kind of recipe that invites you to modify it as you will. Mark Bittman usually nudges over toward the vegetable side of life, but my guess is that both ingredients and amounts can be adjusted. I intend, for instance, to make it spicier, and to try various greens. I do wonder whether I would like sweet potatoes or yams better. Grocers sometimes add to the confusion by labeling sweet potatoes as yams. No matter!

What was even more satisfying is the deep-down fact that, not just eating together, but eating together around a single pot of food resonates to the bone! Food is almost always pleasurable, but eating together is adhesive. I am thinking about it every day.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

Best Not Noticed Among Friends

"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times: don't exaggerate!" That isn't what this post is about, except that is has to do with the way we use language, or how language reveals how we think. What has been intriguing me lately is the growing habit of saying everything twice, or repeating the same idea with different words. For example: "When the barrage comes, it comes in bunches." I rather imagine. A barrage of one is such a lonely thing, by itself. Here is a list of recent examples: "for each respective team" "both teams have only one timeout, each" "there is this sort of, like. . ." "retweet it out" "but lying about the same, exact. . ." "then elevate up" "He's very good at parceing these arguments apart" "and lied, over and over and over again" And then there are just curiosities: "A man who, everything he touches, turns to g...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog