Creativity comes in many forms. My primary—and professional—medium is words. But food is a close second that brings me a lot of pleasure.
I haven’t had much time to cook while sheltering at home, mostly because I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and my job is one whose demands have ramped up significantly in the pandemic. But occasionally I get a cooking urge when I actually have time to explore it.
Yesterday was one of those days. So I looked in the freezer, found some ground turkey that needed to be used, and went recipe hunting. The result: turkey meatballs seasoned with cardamom and orange, served over a bed of cabbage and brown rice, with grape tomatoes on the side.
My first pie ever with a butter crust
I started with this recipe and played with the seasonings a bit, substituting a smaller quantity of mace for the nutmeg in the meatballs and adding turmeric and ancho peppers. I also added turmeric and ancho to the sauce, along with a lemon-garlic seasoning that gets a lot of use in my kitchen. I didn’t alter the cabbage at all, except to skip the salt and use a slightly citrusy pepper blend instead of plain pepper.
It was tasty, and the cabbage is an absolute keeper, especially mixed with rice as in this recipe.
Dessert was peach pie I made the night before, and the weather cooperated so we could eat outside. Heaven.
Most people I know are having mood swings in this pandemic. On top of feeling isolated and penned in, there’s much to fear—for ourselves, our loved ones, our nations, and for humanity.
Reading poetry can help me when I’m in a funk, as can sunlight and the outdoors. I don’t think I can write my way out of a funk, but sometimes I’m able to put pen to page despite low spirits. There’s a chicken-egg conundrum to this; I’m not clear what comes first—whether writing helps me get away from the gloom, or I’m already on my way out and that allows me to give voice to my feelings. But they do often seem to go hand in hand.
Today, a poem I wrote near the darkest point of my recent funk—during a two- to three-day period starting on Holy Thursday of Easter week—made its way into the wide universe. “What I Fear Most” is published now on Headline Poetry and Press, and the editor who accepted it made my day by telling me it had struck home personally with them, voicing what they considered a common experience.
It’s gratifying and comforting to know that something positive can come from sadness. I’d rather not have gone through (or put my husband through) that 1 1/2-week funk. But having done so, I’m glad to think I might help someone else muddle through as well.
I intended this blog to serve as something of a social distancing diary when I started writing daily posts with the institution of shelter-in-place orders. Clearly that plan has crumbled, given the nearly two-week gap. But sometimes it’s hard to write, and hard to share. I’m forgiving myself.
Photos of the day
I used most of yesterday’s good photos in yesterday’s blog post. Here are a couple taken while the sun was out one day during my funk. Dogs on the deck—a recipe for contentedness.
Last time I was here was almost two all weeks ago, and I see that I was in a funk. There’s a surprise, eh?
Life is all ups and downs these days. Only two things surprise me about finding that I was blue the last time I wrote here:
That I managed to write at all while in a funk
How long the funk lasted (well over a week)
In any case, I’m back, and in a better mood. I think we’re all having ups and downs, better times and worse. Here in the Midwest, the weather matches the mood. It was clearly spring a week ago, sunny and warm. Now it has snowed three of the last four days. Not snow that sticks, thankfully, but snow. I actually woke this morning to news of a multi-car pile-up on one of the local expressways. It felt like I was in a time warp.
Today’s snow was thick and heavy and fluffy, very pretty and perfect for building snowmen though it didn’t stick around. It was nearly gone by early afternoon. Yesterday’s was light but hung around a little longer, though it never accumulated on streets. Different days, different snow, different moods.
Today’s mood started out as a cooking one, and I pulled out a couple of my lesser-used cookbooks to inspire a marvelous dinner. Then I looked in the freezer to see what ingredients I could work with and found so much food, already cooked, that I’m now banned from buying anything but produce and fresh dairy products for the near future.
I did manage to turn my personal yen to cook into an assignment for my husband to bake bread. So tonight’s menu is for Finnish cardamom bread and a lovely kale and lima bean soup I made some time back. I will bake a pie, both to feed my creative cooking urge and to use peaches from the freezer.
Does anyone else’s life feel a bit random these days? I wake up wanting to cook and instead write a blog post. I plan my garden and order seeds but have only started a handful in soil since they arrived. The first craft project I planned to undertake during social distancing is still waiting for me, the supplies I thought I had on hand having actually just recently arrived.
It’s all topsy turvy. I’ve actually come to appreciate cold and rainy weather because it keeps more people inside. And I take my longest and most relaxing walks at night, when fewer people are out and about.
Perhaps even stranger, I’ve had trouble reading anything but poetry. This has significantly increased the amount of poetry I read, but at the cost of a certain escape that I typically find in prose. I think I found a solution, though, in young adult literature. I wrote about that over on Escape into Life, in the column I’ve started calling “Accidental Coping.”
One thing I’m grateful for everyday, though, is the extra time I have with Old Dog, the 14-year-old cardiac patient who spends nearly every waking moment wherever I am. She sleeps behind me while I work, paws at me to join her when her day’s rest is over and she wants a walk, and lies at my feet when I’m on Zoom or FaceTime calls with loved ones. I don’t know how much time she has left, and I’m happy for every minute of it.
My forsythia is in bloom, along with one daffodil, and the four yellow crocus that got moved from my back garden to the front parkway and somehow haven’t yet wilted. Today’s garden is all yellow.
I can’t extract any hidden meaning from that, just a coincidence. And while I try to plan variety into my garden, it’s just a fact that an abundance of spring blooms are yellow. “Why that is” is a rabbit hole I might slide down in a minute or two, but for now I’m content to enjoy these scattered bits of color and the insistent calling of a robin to my left and a cardinal to my right as I sit on my front porch.
It’s only about 40 degrees F, and there’s not much world passing by right now—an occasional walker or bicyclist, sometimes a car at the intersection a block away. The neighborhood isn’t just social distancing today; it’s mostly huddled inside trying to stay warm. I did that this morning and found myself headed toward a blue funk, so we grabbed the dog leashes and got outside. Pups exhausted, we now sit quietly on the porch, reviving our spirits and lungs with fresh air.
Yesterday was warm enough (low 60s?) to open up the windows and let fresh air into the house, which is a spring treat. I often crack open a bedroom window at night even in early and late winter, but being able to open the windows wide and let in a breeze is a blessing after a long winter—perhaps even more so now that I’m working from home and don’t get as much fresh air in the morning and afternoon.
These are all small condolences, of course, and I would trade them all—the enjoyment of them, anyway—to have this horrible disease go away and know that my loved ones and I and total strangers the world over could feel safe. I’m seeking out this calm moment because inside I’m a roiling mess of anxiety, and I know that I’m one of the lucky ones. Able to work from home, with the company and care of a spouse I love, I owe my comfort and safety to those who’re going out into the world and facing this menace on my behalf. They include family, friends, and strangers, and I worry for them and am angry at a government that has done little to protect them.
Hug the ones you love. Pray for everyone. Try to stay safe.
I believe I might have entered the baking stage of coping. When I made my Pi Day pie back on my first day of social distancing, I was carrying out an annual tradition unrelated to our current situation. I would have made that pie in normal times. Granted, my husband and I might not have eaten it all by ourselves, but…
A week or so ago, when I made chicken pot pie for dinner, that also didn’t count. That pie was just a normal dinner. I already had the filling in the freezer, waiting for a crust.
Even when I made cookies last week, they were a treat that didn’t feel like a pattern. Now, I think they might have been the beginning of one. Yesterday I made cheese scones. And with a birthday coming up in our household—and yes, we will have a party!—when I made the grocery list that included evaporated milk and coconut for German chocolate cake frosting, I told my husband at the last minute to get extra evaporated milk so I’d have the makings for macaroons.
There are two of us in this household, and I don’t think sharing baked goods with neighbors is an approved social distancing activity (though if you know the answer and it is, please let me know). So that’s a lot of baked goods needing to be consumed. And in my mind, I’m all ready to make more cheese scones the minute the current batch runs out.
This is either stress baking or sublimating. Or are those the same?
Goal setting
I didn’t actually write down goals yesterday, but I did have them in the back of my head throughout the day. I did alright—washed a bit of laundry, made those scones, wrote part of a blog post for Escape into Life—maybe most of one, but it doesn’t feel right yet, so I’m unsure. Also I determined that we don’t seem to have fishing line, which I want for a particular creative project, so now it’s on the same shopping list with the building supplies for the new raised garden bed I’ve been planning since last fall. Today’s goals include one for the husband: order those supplies. Mine look something like this:
Dog walk
Exercise walk
Poetry or other reading
Clean towels
Stretch goal: Finish that blog post
Photo a day, of course
Photo of the day
I’m a day behind in sharing, so here’s one from each of the last two days. In the first, I was focused on the doorway, which intrigued me because of the lighting; the cat was a bonus and maybe my favorite part of the picture.
This one shows Rolo’s newest habit: leaving the ball on the window ledge where she needs it in her mouth as a pacifier when she growls and shakes at other dogs. Apparently she’s grown tired of having to run through the house desperately looking for it when she sees a dog coming.
Reading is a temporal affair, isn’t it? Temporal in the sense of time, not place. The reader’s mind connects with the writer’s and, as with conversation, time matters. What I think today will be different from what I think tomorrow; what interests me changes from moment to moment, even more so from day to day or month to month. So whether a book grabs me (or a poem or essay) is as much about my own mind space while reading as it is about the quality of the writing. Nick Hornby used to make that point regularly in his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns; he wouldn’t write about books he put down or didn’t like because he knew that he was part of the reading equation and didn’t think it fair to criticize the author.
This morning I pulled two small books of William Blake poems out of my bookcase, books that I apparently picked up in a Bangor, Maine, book store on vacation years ago (maybe 10?). They must have really resonated with me at the time—I bought two, after all—but rereading Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience over my morning coffee today left me ready for something else. A couple of pieces resonated, but nothing that would have moved me to buy the book. (To be fair, I suspect it was Blake’s Selected Poems that moved me more in that Bangor bookstore. I’ll probably look through it later today to see how I respond.)
What did move me today was a piece shared on Escape into Life’s Facebook page: a therapist’s advice turned into poetry: “An Anarchist Quaker’s Prayer to Soothe Anxiety.” I’m also reading a lot of Billy Collins and Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver these days. Is anyone else having trouble settling into a novel or non-fiction book? I don’t seem to have the focus for even the best novel these days, probably a result of underlying anxiety that I’m not much noticing otherwise. Poetry generally seems to be where my head is right now.
RIP Bookmarc’s
Finding the bookmark from Maine made me look up the bookstore to see how it’s doing these days. I’m sorry to report that Bookmarc’s went out of business a couple years back when its owner (unsurprisingly named…Marc) decided to retire. Its website is gone, but the Bangor Daily News informs me that Marc was planning to set up a booth in a local antique market, so I’m hopeful his longtime patrons are still able to find him.
I’m always sad to see an independent bookstore close down. I’ve spent many joyful hours of discovery in small bookstores all over the country, and they are among my favorite places—right up there with libraries. I can peruse tables and shelves happily in any bookstore, but a shop whose owners and staff offer recommendations and favorites and mini-reviews is a special treasure. I’m pleased to report that my community has several independent bookstores, both large and small. I have a favorite, but you might find me in any of them.
On Memory Lane
That Bookmarc’s bookmark has me remembering that lovely trip to Maine—the only time I’ve been there, and believe me I want to go back. What I remember most are the lighthouses, the oddest little Airbnb we’ve ever stayed at (but absolutely enjoyed—it came with farm-fresh eggs stocked in our little refrigerator every day!), fresh air and family hikes, lobster and blueberry pie, and the discovery of blueberry beer. All happy memories, and I might be inspired to dig up some of the photos later today to share in a separate post.
First, though, my report on yesterday, with lots of photos.
Goals, photos of the day
Yesterday was almost a lost day for personal achievement. I was so very tired, worked a full day on two hours’ sleep, and probably came close to achieving none of my personal goals. I saved it, though, by deciding I needed at least a short walk before bed. Two miles later, I arrived back home after a trip through our local park that I realized I needed because it had been a couple of weeks since I was in any kind of green space. I had my camera with me, and photo-a-day turned into several shots I’m not embarrassed to share. The park was restorative, restful, beautiful, and just what I needed. My goals today:
Letter to a friend, not just a postcard
Create something
Cleaning and laundry
Photo a day
Dog walk, weather permitting
A nice dinner, ordered in, with my husband and maybe some friends (virtually, of course)
And here are those photos. It was wet in the park between rain showers, and the tree branches and buds and berries glistened in the light. I really can’t decide what shots I like best. (Bonus shot of Tank at the bottom.)
