lemon meringue pie

"There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath
the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation
when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it." 

                                                              ~ from The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950 - 1962

wild Ophelia's triple berry pie

"When I start to think, I freeze. And when I freeze I write like a lady who came from a clean, honorable, intelligent and quiet home. And what sort of writing is that?" 
                                                                                             ~ Martha Gellhorn, from Selected Letters

I've spent too many costly sympathies on an ill fated Ophelia and spun too many broken, unfulfilled yearnings into The Lady of Shalott's loom. For once, I would like to live, to write...to be uninhibited. Mornings & spring are heavy with promise, and something far more dangerous, hope. There's a fleeting, blissful moment when I first wake up; the tree outside my window is lush with foliage, the sun is bathing my no-longer-flannel sheets and, best of all, the worries & burdens & what ifs have not yet burst through the confines of my tranquil mind. If only I could hold onto that serenity and wear it like a bee-sting necklace, infusing frozen, distraught veins with a doses of halcyon weather, as needed.

This post & its photos have been waiting for me to (re)find myself; my own authenticity. I'm too easily disappointed. When lofty plans & far-fetched wishes tumble to the ground, I tend to retreat inward and wallow a bit too long in a state of melancholy. This blog is not immune to my occasional bouts of despondency. But that part of me IS a part of me. After 30 + years, I'm beginning to accept that I'll always be 'sometimes' moody, but maybe I can tap into the depths and turn a sorrow that's sprung from lost grasps at imagined perfections, into an untamed savage beauty. (My mother is half Irish, after all.)  I'm still organically lost and hunting through the overgrown moss-green forest of my (as of late) unkempt mind, but I this site is my child and it's been neglected far too long. And however fanciful, I'm still holding a candle for Tom Hiddleston (even through choppy, rumor-filled waters). There are perks to the idiosyncrasies of being a practical idealist.

Prospero's raspberry + ale pie; an arbitrary farewell to summer

"Now my charms are all o'erthrown
and what strength I have's mine own,
which is most faint: now 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
or sent to Naples. Let me not,
since I have my dukedom got
and pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
in this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands
with the help of your good hands:
gentle breath of yours my sails
must fill, or else my project fails,
which was to please. Now I want
spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
and my ending is despair,
unless I be relieved by prayer,
which pierces so that it assults
mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
let your indulgence set me free." 

                                          ~  William Shakespeare (The Tempest, act 5, epilogue.)

 I fell in love with The Tempest my freshmen year of high school, during a performance at a local theater. The play was ethereal; ambient mist, primal music, sylvan costumes and lush acting...I'm convinced there was a metallic taste of magic in the air each time Ariel took the stage. I was so enamored, I accidentally dropped a box of lemon heads. The cacophony made by each tiny candy striking an unbearably hard wood floor was deafening (I was mortified!). Thankfully the resulting frigid glares were fleeting, and confused...my eyes made a subtle glance towards the person sitting next to me. The play continued and I imagined myself in the role of Miranda, or Ariel. As Prospero was delivering his infamous epilogue, I was smitten, completely, especially knowing that the speech may have been Shakespeare's adieu. 

Initially I was only going to include a few lines from Prospero's speech, but it's so lovely in its entirety - chopping his farewell into pieces would be barbaric. I'd like to think that summer, if she could speak, would deliver an equally robust swan song before handing the zephyrs to autumn.

Blueberry White Chocolate + Thyme Scones

Summer held its breath until the 13th hour. Finally, upon exhalation, the weather is sticky, languid as molasses...deliciously perfect. I'm odd to relish humidity and that spot on the small of the back which never completely dries during (and after) meandering through a non-air conditioned farm house. But I am in love with summer, even especially during her passionate fits of temper. Yesterday was particularly ethereal + lush; a spirited mix of hazy sunlight and distant reverberating thunder. My red entry door, now flushed and expanded with heat, brushes fiercely against the sisal rug. I find wicked amusement in hearing people huff and occasionally curse when, upon swift entry, they're met by an immobile rug + a pregnant door. It's also proving to be an excellent alarm system and gives me ample time to hide baked goods from prying hands. Sometimes the most exhausting element of food blogging is simply keeping people (and photobombing cats) away long enough to snap pictures.
    
My next recipe, if I can stop eating the star player, will be a raspberry something. For now, as you can see, I'm still riding the sanguine blueberry wave. Scones don't require too much baking sorcery but they are difficult to photograph. No worries, I will not bore you with more photography angst, but I hope it's okay to experiment with both light & dark backgrounds/moods. My cheeky heart inadvertently strays to the dark side, but I'm attempting to build bridges with the bright and airy.

Midnight in Paris Blueberry + Mint Pie

"A light white, a disgras, an inkspot, a rosy charm." 
     ~ Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms

August is a matchstick. It burns too fast and too hot and I'm never ready for pensive September. The lion of August has not been its usual fiery, passionate self - which only makes me more anxious. After finally falling in step with the bass rhythm of summer, I'm utterly ill-prepared for autumn. The errant back to school ads that popped up in mid-July were noxious. We're constantly thrust forward at a stomach-lurching pace while trying to heed the contrary advice of enjoying the moment we're "in." It's manic and disquieting and I wish I could wish back the month of May and to spend my re-summer in Paris. Since I'm surrendering completely to fiction, preferably 1920's Paris; surrounded by Hemingway (I know he would find my writing too floral), Eliot, Stein, and, of course, Fitzgerald (oh, if he happened to be Tom Hiddleston fulfilling a similar wish...).

Alas, it's mid August and I'm not sipping wine at a café in Montparnasse. Luckily I am surrounded by local farmer's markets, and as I nurse a too-sugary, not at all French, caramel macchiato, if I let my imagination take the reins, I can *almost* imagine I'm strolling through a cobblestone Parisian side street; surrounded by the aroma of artisan bread, fresh peaches, plums, and melons. The only missing petal is a cheesemonger.

Strawberry + Thyme Crumb Bars

"There's a soft spot in everything 
our fingers touch,
                               the one place where everything breaks
when we press just right.
The past is like that, with its arduous edges and blind sides,
the whorls of our fingertips
                              embedded along its walls
like fossils the sea has left behind."

                               ~ Charles Wright, from "Two Stories," The Other Side of the River 

I am my own worst enemy and most disparaging critic; this, I know. When it comes to my blog, everything grazes against receptive skin and can either make my day or mar an entire late-summer week. Of course, being me, I tend to roost upon the abrasive. I build a thorny nest of crooked twig-shaped (fictitious) slights and peck jagged holes through my own words and photos; especially the photos.

Tangled up in Blue, High Rise Cake

An innocent, dulcet confection; this cake is not a New Orleans-bound wayfarer, nor is it distraught enough to weave its way into a visceral novel. It is, however, a chaos of blueberries and, compared to my previous (cockeyed) layer cakes, quite lofty. My blog turned five last April, but she's reticent and surreptitious and insisted on waiting for a berry-steeped muse before marking the sylvan anniversary. This summer I have been living on berries, literally. My laurel green colander is almost always overflowing with bleeding, edible shades of blue, red, and purple.

Admittedly, I was slightly hesitant to proclaim une gamine had been spilling out recipes since 2009. After five years I feel as though I should offer lush paragraphs of things I've learned or unearth a poem or two; but lately I can't seem to say exactly what I mean. Maybe it's the warm lethargy of summer that makes my words tumble out upside-down. Speaking is easy, when it comes to writing...it's as if my mind is split in half and my fluent self hides behind the safety of metaphors and a tapestry of embroidered words. Hemingway would scoff, I'm certain. But I would offer him cake and gin and, ideally, he would advise me on how to stop thinking about how much I think about ovethinking. Yes, lots and lots of gin & cake, and, after re-reading Ann Rice's The Witching Hour, a much needed visit to the Garden District. Unlike my folksy cake, I'm a vagabond at heart; it's been far too long since I've traveled far.

Lady Macbeth Blackberry Pie

"To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't." 

                     ~ William Shakespeare (Macbeth, act 1, sc. 5,1. 63-6.)

This ferociously beguiling pie has a cunning sweetly-acerbic flavour; one berry-bleeding slice is not enough, it requires a second piece - served, preferably, with a messy scoop of semi melted vanilla bean ice cream.

Every drop of amaranth colored juice on a white napkin or meandering spoon was dramatic & stunning. Honestly, I could have spent two days taking photos of this pie under various forms of summer light and against a multitude of textures (it's intoxicating to have a subject that's camera friendly!).  The fleeting nature of seasonal blackberries made the entire affair all the more bittersweet...I'm too easily bewitched by things (circumstances) that have the fragile lifespan of a moth. 

Brown Butter Cherry Basil Bars

"...Unkempt, untidy, absent-minded,
soaked through with smell of dill and rye,
with linden-blossom, grass and beet-leaves,
the meadow-scented month, July."

                           ~ Boris Pasternak, July

My garden is candidly uncivilized this year; an Edwardian girl arriving late to dinner with pollen in her hair, torn stockings, one missing shoe, and a flask. I'm perfectly content with nature flourishing its way through sidewalk cracks and thrusting added greenery between the lilies & coral bells. After last winter's brutality, wildlife has every right to be ferociously wild & disruptive. I had a difficult time locating my basil; it was hidden by what can only be described as tiny twiggy trees and errant plant life that didn't exist a year ago. I foraged long enough to locate the lemon basil needed for this recipe, but when it came time for snapping photos, I had to improvise...I'm not sure what I plucked for the sake of photography-story telling, but I wanted you to know that I know, it's not lemon basil. ;-)

Raspberry Pecan Linzer Torte

"We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are."
     ~ Maya Angelou

My once-everlasting writing flask has been bone dry for almost a month. I'm thirsty. I feel the need to express myself pulsating beneath a well that's succumbed (overnight!) to choking tendrils of kudzu & dilapidated terracotta bricks. How do writers & poets recapture a muse when it drifts through keyholes at night or suddenly takes refuge in some distant boreal forest on a random Wednesday afternoon? I wish I knew. I wish the longings and feelings and repressed emotions would simply fall through my fingertips like tumbling blueberries. Maybe someday I'll shake off the repressive, invisible blanket...for as much as I relish writing these posts, I'm holding back an avalanche of me.

Sometimes all I think I need is an accented muse & a strong, velvet-gloved hand to rub my calla lily shoulders. A slivered slice (or two) of linzer torte is also quite enchanting.

Blueberry Orange Scones

Nighttime dreams are fragile. If we allow our minds to revisit them too often, or cling too tightly to their ambiance - they eventually disintegrate like ancient papyrus. Sometimes, if we're lucky, a few are potent enough to leave a soft aura that follows us around all day - a warm, cosy memory that we can run to when reality becomes messy and the afternoon feels uneven.

I had the best dream last night. I hope its nourishing milky images will last throughout the evening. I won't go into intricate detail - as with most dreams it was deeply personal and it would not make sense to anyone outside my silly head. It involved the one who got away. The blue eyes from that day, a little over 10 years ago now, were present. He and I were so happy. Silently happy in a noisy room full of strangers, and so at ease in our silence, as though we had known each other in several lifetimes. And for once...for once I was not afraid of happiness. I didn't feel that anxious bird flying around my rib cage, and the cadet-grey sadness, the one that's almost always in my peripheral vision, was nonexistent. If only reality, with its sharp edges and garish light, could retain such a soft cadence. For a moment, which seemed like a dazzling mere three minutes, the universe itself was purring.

This morning I cocooned myself inside the smoky remnants of my dream and savoured as much hazy bliss as possible. My early companions, aside from Niles (the portly cat), were a strong cup of creamy coffee and a tender scone. With an early chill in the air, I spent the better half of the morning reliving something I'd never actually live through with someone I'd never officially met (yet?). It was lovely.

Blueberry, Lime, and Mint Pop Tarts

"I already loved you in some vague wherever, and my nostalgia for that love makes everything in my present life a tedium. Perhaps you are just my nostalgia for something, and embodiment of some absence, the presence of some Distance..."

~ Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet (translated by Robert Zenith)

Brown Butter Peach Crumb Bars

Two spoonfuls of sugar + a healthy spatter of lemon juice. Prepping tea is almost as natural and automatic as breathing. Once the euphoria of morning coffee has dwindled down to a few wispy puffs of smoke, I turn to my beloved Lemon Zinger tea for rejuvenation. It has been my tea of choice since I was little - of course I no longer douse it with half & half and a pound of sugar (maybe someday I can shrink two spoonfuls down to one?).

Currently I'm basking in just such a cup of happiness while listening to Franciso Tárrega's "Recuerdos de la Alhambra." I'm over the moon because this gorge piece of music is playing on the iPad I just won from the amazing folks at Foodie by Glam! I can't quite believe it's mine - it feels foreign and temporary, as though I'll have to give it back to someone at any given moment. The last photo in this post was taken with the Snapseed app. Obviously I need a lot more practice but maybe I can give my p & s camera some time off, occasionally. :)

I'm also savouring forkfuls of a peach bar - *contemplating* going back for a second.

Blueberry Goat Cheese & Rosemary Hand Pies

Hot summer has exhausted her intent
To the last rose and roundelay and seed.
No leaf has changed, and yet these leaves now read
Like a love-letter that's no longer meant.

~ Richard Wilbur, from section I of "Two Quatrains for First Frost," in New and Collected Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988)

Blueberry-Strawberry Pie

It's Friday night. I'm enjoying refreshing spoonfuls of a still-too-frozen margarita - which in turn is making me take notice of things that normally elude my tequila free mind: The sound of my cats eating their canned salmon dinner in the next room sounds like a sloppy rainfall, or something being consumed by creatures in a B horror film - if I did not know what was making that sound, I don't think I'd want to find out. Also new-to-me, an appreciation for Daft Punk. Despite my best efforts to remain contrary, "Get Lucky" is quite fabulous. I know this because I've just listened to it five times in a row. What's more, I wish roller skates would make a comeback. Did anyone watch Tuesday night's "The Colbert Report?" Brill!

I'm also starving. Luckily I have a slice of this berry pie leftover. I have made several pies this summer - they make me chirpy...chirpier than a layer cake (unless it's my birthday and coconut is involved).

Cherry Clafoutis

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in turning. The weeks that came before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring afternoons, and sunsets smeared with too much color."

~ Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

fresh blueberry crumb bars with lemon-rosemary crust

I grew up listening to my mom's old records (and cassette tapes) of Jacques Brel, The Mamas & The Papas, Françoise Hardy and Simon & Garfunkel - maybe a little Neil Diamond, too. Each song felt like a secret treasure to my young, eager ears. At the wise age of six I was utterly mesmerized by Françoise's clear, sometimes melancholy, voice and lush lyrics. "Dream a Little Dream of Me," as sung by Mama Cass, was pure perfection. Oh, how I wanted to know what it felt like to be so much in love that I'd ask someone to keep me in their dreams (and what do birds sound like when they sing in sycamore trees?). "Ne Me Quitte Pas" was deliciously heart wrenching (although the more recent version by Emilíana Torrini is equally haunting).

My favourite songs were, and always will be, anything by Simon & Garfunkel.  "Scarborough Fair," in particular, conjured up beautifully wistful images in my overactive imagination. Even now, "Scarborough Fair" makes me think of a blustery day (maybe in early autumn?). It's a surreal, strange weather kind of late afternoon; heavy clouds can be seen racing across the ground, outlined by a reticent sun. Someone somewhere is trying to remember something on the grounds of an abandoned carnival set just outside a thick forest of trees...not the shady kind of carnival; an old-school carnival with elaborate carousel horses + rusted swans and vendors wearing tweed vests would handing out cigars and women holding parasols. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - I love each and every one. Not only for their ability to heighten the flavour of food, but for the unexpected beauty their presence brings to a rich, tapestry-like song.

Rosemary is a beloved herb, so I was overjoyed when this recipe turned out to be even better than I'd anticipated!

Cherry Slab Pie

July

Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees

of summer -
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace

where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand

~ Linda Pastan, from "The Months"

Key Lime Pie with Cornmeal-Cocoa Graham Crust

Yesterday, as I was about to commence the pre-weekend vacuum cleaner run, I heard a dusty, gritty, thump on the chimney flue - followed by another...and another. My cats, of course, were oblivious. I quickly herded the clueless "mouse hunters" out of the living room - which only required saying *voom* *voom* nonchalantly (they have an understandable dislike of the prehistoric "retro" vacuum cleaner).

I cleared most of the furniture away from the fireplace, except for the stupid lamp that will stop working if you just look at it funny, and I opened the patio door (luckily it's in the same room!). I grabbed the swiffer sweeper broom, removed the sweeper head, and, standing as far away as possible, tried using the headless end to pull down the flue opener. This seemingly-clever method did not work. The end of the broom was not strong enough to pull down the heavy, iron 'O.'  So I had to resort to plan B, the Hand-Pull & Flee technique. In keeping with the streak of cleverness, I placed a towel-lined basket under the flue, hoping the mysterious creature would fall in and allow me to calmly walk it outside. I pulled open the flue, made a stuntman-like dive over the back of the sofa, and peeked over the top. After only three seconds an adorbs little red squirrel came tumbling out. Naturally it landed far away from the waiting basket (apparently my flue is wider than an 8-inch Pier 1 wicker basket). It scurried around the chimney a bit and then, almost instinctively, made it's way outside via the open patio door - leaving only a trail of tiny paw prints.

The little squirrel immediately made his way up a nearby tree and onto a branch, where he proceeded to obsessively groom himself and chirp at me - I'm quite certain he's ok.

*phew*

Aside from the realization that I need to do a better job of dusting the fireplace when it's not in use (I don't want to think about the spider webs), everything ended well. My reward was a slice of key lime pie - which I was going to have anyway, but it felt more 'rewarding.'

Stone Fruit Pie

Last night my mind refused to shift gears and go into serene mode. I tried the usual harbingers of sleep - reading, my 'sounds of the forest' app, ice cream & honey...nothing worked. Finally I just stared at the ceiling until a slow moving universe of dust and particles began making their way across my field of vision. This, in conjunction with the wistful soundtrack of loons and owls playing in the background and the soft hum of honey still in my throat, made me feel too existential - and miles away from calm.

So, onto movie watching. Immortal Beloved: Gary Oldman + Isabella Rossellini  x gorgeous music and a tragic love story. It doesn't get much better. I could watch this movie over and over and over...And after a slice of pie, which I'd previously forgotten about, everything was symmetrical. Theories of the cosmos, the "why am I here(s)?" and worries of an encroaching Andromeda galaxy, were put on the back burner of my mind's rusted crimson stove.

Pies are kind of a happy homestead - I don't think anyone can eat a slice of made-from-scratch pie and not feel idle and content - if only for a short time.