Bread, etc.

I have been thinking about making bread ever since I got the new stove, but didn't get to it until today.  This is it right after I took it out of the oven.

Here it is a short time later, after I sampled it.  It is delicious, I must say.  This is the first total success I have had with that new stove. Up til now everything I have cooked has come out less than perfect for one reason or another.  I hope this represents a trend.








I've been neglecting my blog somewhat because of my preoccupation with my art show.  I am constantly working to get my work ready to exhibit.  The hall upstairs is full of pieces of wood, screws, hammers, drills, bottles of glue......the big pieces I am exhibiting needed to be prepared for hanging.  My makeshift carpentry is working out surprisingly well and I am almost through with that aspect of things.  The worst is yet to come.......the making of lists, cards, pricing, etc.  And then there is the actual hanging of the show. Then the opening. I have promised to do it, though, and things have gone too far for me to back out (again).  People are sure I will be glad I did it........and I actually will get a small amount of satisfaction out of it.  That corner of my psyche that is nourished by the approval of others will rise up for a rare treat.

..or I assume so.  Perhaps no one will come.  If not, I can come home and watch another episode of Criminal Minds.

Time Passes........

Despite the hard winter the plants know enough to appear as usual, at their usual time.  These little leaves, probably day lilies, are co-existing with the ice cover just inches away.The remains of last Fall's version of the same plants lay dead beside the new shoots.  It's making quite a statement about the cycle of life.

The mound of snow beside my front door has melted to a great degree.  The trees appear to have survived pretty much unscathed.  Last week I was standing on the mountain of snow shoveling out the branches that were bent under the snow.  It looks like I could have left things to nature..........statements like that flow from our lips all the time, as if we were outside of nature.....and I have now done it myself.  My shovel and I are no less natural than the sun melting the snow.  Like a lot of other species, we know how to make and use tools.  Also, like them, we use them to alter the environment to suit us better.  I was just doing what I do.

Self Comfort

I went into the cellar the other day to look for something that I can't remember now.  As I searched through the mess, I happened to look inside a wicker waste basket that was molding on the damp dirt floor.  There I saw this heap of clay heads I had stored some time ago.  I made them in a group project with some fellow artists years ago.  The therapist I had at the time (I always have a therapist) had impressed me with her description of self-comfort. A baby learns this skill early on provided its mother lets it.  I thought about it for some time, and made this visual representation of somebody trying to comfort herself......a skill I had not learned.  I am much better at it now than I used to be, though there are some circumstances that defy comforting..........by self or anybody else.  I brought these pitiful faces upstairs, more to rescue them than anything else.  I can't predict their future, but for now they are, still in the wastebasket, on the kitchen floor near my cookbooks.

I also found a small vase made out of terra cotta , on its side under the water pipes.  It still held some chopsticks, and I remember it sitting on the kitchen counter in our house on Parkview Avenue.  I cooked  Chinese food often and all four of us ate it with chopsticks.  The kids could use them as naturally as they used spoons.  I brought that upstairs, too.  Cooking was a big hobby of mine for years and I spent hours experimenting with recipes, searching for little known spices or other ingredients and creating wonderful meals.  I made everything from scratch, including bread, pasta, and complicated deserts. Now after I go to the trouble of removing a pop tart from its wrapper I don't have enough interest to bother to toast it.