Not really about food (much)

Except for the recipe for sweet potato pancakes, which the Tall Guy wondered to me why I didn't post here.  Since I didn't have a good reason at the time for not posting it, three weeks later I have gotten around to it. Anyway, the Tall Guy and I get to spatially intersect this week. And I expect to feed him dinner tomorrow. (Early forecasts are smoked salmon with a chance of pizza, with scattered bacon wrapped dates clearing off before the entree. If what I am thinking of really works, I am going to be blogging the meal in gratuitous detail.) So I really had better post the recipe. 

A few weeks ago I had leftover mashed sweet potatoes to contend with. I now know what to do with leftover mashed sweet potatoes.  This is not a normal problem, leftover sweet potatoes.  They pretty generally get eaten up with enthusiasm around here, but the other day I made a bunch, and there was a giant salad, and hamburgers, so I ended up with sweet potatoes.

I made pancakes.

Sweet Potato Pancakes
Call it a cup and a half of mashed sweet potatoes (mine had butter, garlic, and too much nutmeg* in them), 2 eggs, 1/3 cup flour,1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder. Fry at a lower temp than you otherwise might do pancakes, because they come out kind of thick. Maple syrup and butter are just dandy on them, but I couldn't help wishing for something a bit sharper like plain yogurt or chevre.

So my informal recipe for sweet potato pancakes is now revealed.  However the real reason for this post is that JVW and I were emailing each other one night recently and for reasons that I attribute to the lateness of the hour and the general ambient silliness of the people involved in the correspondence, we began writing parodies of Romantic verse with fruit bats inserted willy-nilly.  JVW has asked me to post them here.  I suspect that this is a ploy to get me blogging more regularly again.  For reasons that I find utterly obscure, she thinks my recipes are funny.

In this outbreak of pastiche, Byron and Shelley were probably the most deeply wronged, and you are about to see. (If one clicks on the titles, one will be whisked to the original poems.)

It Flaps in Beauty

 It flies in beauty like the night
Of muggy climes and buggy skies
And only stops to take a bite
As past the mango tree it flies
Though you may wish it on a plate
Upon a bun and edged with fries
One wing the more, one wing the less?
Deeply impair'd the nameless grace
Which soars on tropic ev'ning breeze,
  Or, clumsy, crashes into place
among the dense papaya trees.
  How pure, how dear its little face!

That furry cheek, and markéd brow,
  So soft, so calm, yet eloquent;
The the feet that grip, that cunning toe, 
  that tells of days unconscious spent;
A mind at peace with all below,
  A heart whose love is innocent!

That was a joint effort.  What follows is definitive proof that JVW is not only sillier than I am, but she is also better at formal verse.


The Destruction of the Orchards

The fruit bats came down like a wolf on the trees

And their membranous wings sang their song on the breeze

The sheen of their claws was like sun on a pond

And their fur was bright auburn or brownish or blond

Like the locusts of Joel of each separate kind

The fruit bats flew down for the fruit they might find

Their goal was to gorge on those mangos so sweet

Then roost in the trees, hanging on by their feet

But behold! for the villagers had quite enough

They wanted to keep their papayas and stuff

Their nets were in place in the branches aloft

To catch all the fruit bats, so darling and soft

And then one by one all the fruit bats were caught

The cleverer primates had captured the lot

The fruit bats did tremble, their eyes got as big

As the eyes of the Chinese Prohibitous Pig

And some of the people said, “Stir-fry the bats!”

And some said, “Slow-cook them in monstrous great vats!”

And some said, “Fillet them and put them to freeze

And then we can eat them whenever we please!”

And while they were arguing, the fruit bats broke free

And on the night wind far away did they flee

They swore they would no more rob orchards of men

At least not until they got hungry again

The following can also be squarely blamed on JVW.  Well JVW and Percy Shelley.  (Shelley makes me want to smack him on grounds of both verse and biography, so this effusion particularly pleased me.)

Batymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said, “Two vast and trunkless wings of stone

Flop in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered muzzle lies, whose crown

And outsize ears, and look of silliness

Tell that its sculptor knew with fear and dread

The hunger for papayas and the stress

Of having such a great big furry head.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Batymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my fruit, but don’t you even dare

To steal a mango.’  There is nothing more:

Behold the ruined giant frugivore.”

*My relationship with nutmeg is intense and complex. I can't stand the flavor, when I can taste the flavor.  When it is a faint trace, setting off all the other flavors in a dish, I adore it. When I explained to my friend JVW that I hated nutmeg,  she responded in tones of deep bemusement, "but you put it in all sorts of things." This is true.  As I said, it's a complex relationship, and the line between love and hate is very very fine indeed.

Guest Bearing Bacon

I would like to say that there is some common ground between the picture to the left and the title, but alas! there is absolutely no bacon pictured in Juan Sanchez Cotán's Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber. QCM and C was probably a study for Still Life with Game Birds -- an almost identical painting except that the large empty space to the right is crammed with dead birds rendered with almost mystic clarity. I have nothing against dead birds, I like cooking them, and I like some paintings of them*, but here I like the way the arc of fruits and vegetables defines the negative space. The sheer improbability of the hanging quince and cabbage (a common food preservation technique in 16th century Spain) against that flat blackness, invites contemplation of the transience and almost grotesque splendor of life -- these beautifully painted fruit already have beautifully painted signs of decay. Or at least it does with me, but I have taken too many art history classes to really be considered a sensible observer.

But this is not what this post is about. This post is about community, and hunger, and people bringing me bacon.

I said good-bye to my parents on Monday, and embarked on a week of banging my head on design problems that would not behave (many of these involved vegetables in clothing -- no, I don't really want to discuss it). Tuesday I called up my friend Jess hoping to gain a new perspective by hanging out at her place and doodling. I figured that it probably represented an improvement over what I was doing just then, namely walking in the cold rain in Volunteer Park. (I was taking the long way to the library.)

She was not available for hanging out and doodling because she had choir practice at 6:30, but she said, "I could come by and you could feed me." Jess knows me. Has known me for upwards of a decade and she knows that of all the things I can do that fill me was warm and bubbly personal satisfaction, feeding other people tops the list.

Not Tuesday, Tuesday I wanted to be somewhere other than my tiny apartment, where the walls -- despite some fixed staring on my part -- did not magically display The Answers. I'm sure Jess' apartment walls have The Answers at least some of the time. I was able to stifle my inward groan at the destruction of my plans for The Answer seeking, because I knew that I really do love feeding people.

I hadn't gone grocery shopping, and none of my leftovers were friendly to someone who can't do chiles. That left buckwheat pancakes, because I have buckwheat pancake mix in the house**. Jess made noises about maybe bringing some bacon and fruit. I dropped off my library books. I came home and cleared off the kitchen table, which had somehow gotten obscured again by a pile of post cards, books, and the drawing tools that seem to appear spontaneously when I'm not looking. I did the dishes. I made pancake batter. Jess meanwhile got stuck in traffic on I-5. I kept tidying and got the kitchen chairs cleared off. I worried. I tried not to grumble about inviting a guest over when I have nothing spectacular to cook and attitude problems.

Eventually traffic parted and allowed Jess to come to the hallowed corner of Cap Hill that is Chez Sarah. She admired my drawing table and the fleeting tidiness of the apartment. I made pancakes and fried bacon. People, I am here to tell you that frying bacon takes forever, especially when the recipient of the bacon is in a hurry.

We exchanged news of the small excitements of our weeks. I made tea, lapsang souchong*** to be precise. We ate pancakes with homemade raspberry jam, yogurt, and maple syrup. It was not a fancy meal. It was not expensive. But it was a kindness in the middle of a rough week.

Too soon, Jess had to run off to choir practice, and I faced the washing up with a braver heart. I had thought to write a little bit about community and the virtues of the practice of hospitality. But in this context it seems obvious, and this post has rambled on more than it probably needs to. So I leave you with this thought: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get bacon.


*I will not go so far as to say that some of my best friends are dead birds.

** When the end of the world comes I will probably greet it with buckwheat pancakes. They are infinitely comforting when all other attempts to make sense of the universe have failed.

***Redolent of pine smoke, it is the thing to drink during fall and winter, when you do not have the option of sitting in a rocking chair with your feet up on the fender of a wood stove. I do not have a wood stove. I do have a quarter pound of lapsang in my tea cupboard.