Freshness, umami, sourdough
Spring changes nature. What about you?
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Here’s a word that defines spring: Energy
All winter, Earth’s energy has been in abeyance, held captive in the bonds of cold and dormancy.
But with spring’s lengthening days, energy can be contained no longer. It splits the ground, bursts the bud and fills the flower. Yesterday, I saw a tulip tree* in full flower. How had that happened so suddenly?
Secret bulbs and earthworms All things of the world— Burst out now, push upward The fern’s fiddle unfurled.
Plugging in
How is your energy level? Does spring energize you? Perhaps you are renewing yourself, your environment, doing a spot of spring cleaning, taking longer walks on sunny days.
What does it take to keep your energy level high? It could be the ongoing joy of discovering new things growing, new scents, songs from birds who had been chastened by winter and are now free—to nest, to mate, to sing their hearts out.
But consider: Maybe high energy isn’t the best goal. Perhaps a mellow medium is a saner way to be in the world.
*What I had always thought of as a tulip tree is actually commonly known as a saucer magnolia, Magnolia x soulangiana.
Fresh
Let’s think about “fresh,” maybe as a writing prompt.
This word speaks of spring, energy, newness.
Fresh, as in
Bakery smells
Sea breezes
Fish bought at the dock
Produce warm from the garden
Spring grass
Green wood, wet with sap
Newborn lambs
New beginnings, new lives, mornings in our soul
Birth the day
Let’s greet each moment as it passes, slippery as a fresh-caught fish. We are clear-eyed and purposeful, full of energy, alive.
If only it were so easy
We want fresh and new, but we let our lives get stale. Sometimes we backslide
One more Cheez-it
One more binge TV episode
One more tired argument
One more beer
One more road not taken
One more book we never get around to reading
One phone call we keep putting off, even as we love the person we’re avoiding
Reset and renew
But, no regrets. It’s spring, dear reader. Time to stride into the day with energy, forgiving ourselves for . . . well, everything. Out with the old, the outworn! In with freshness, sweetness and light.
Shake out the dusty rug of your imagination. Let your writing sparkle with fresh images, clear words, lucid connections.
. . . Um, you are writing, aren’t you? If not, I suggest you try it on and say hello to the new you.
Umami
There is a fifth flavor, besides the well-known sweet, sour, bitter and salty. It is umami, the dark flavor that lurks in red meat, tomatoes, aged cheese, mushrooms and anchovies. Some say green tea, although I don’t understand that.
Umami is the taste of the amino acid glutamate, which is why monosodium glutamate makes food taste better, even while it gives us hot flashes.
Umami, the poem
I ate a peach last summer. Or was it the one before? Carefully peeled; I don’t like fuzz. I cannot describe the delight— No, wait, poems are supposed to do that, Pin down the diaphanous. So, say the peach tasted of earth, Of summer, juicy. Sometimes, words do fail. Yet in school, I always found science So much less specific Than the words of English. So . . . we all know peaches. My peach was special. Dates in the Passover tzimmes. Surprise umami. Hidden, dark, complex. Pleasure at the bottom, of the dregs. Miso and butter on toast, Labne* with olive oil, The sauerkraut I make With cranberries and daikon. Furtive flavors, Distinct, full, Complex. And then bland tastes take over. I crave cake and ice cream, Juvenile delights. I eat like a little bear, Heedless, ravenous, my snout in honey.
*Labne is Lebanese kefir cheese, yogurt double strained so it is rich, thick, sour like sour cream. The texture is between Greek yogurt and cream cheese. It’s worth seeking out; often you can find it in a Middle Eastern or “international” grocery.
Synchronicities all around
I haven’t been writing about synchronicities lately. It’s mostly because there are so many of them, not too few. They crowd together like beads on a string.
Sometimes several erupt in a single day.
And some never show up at all.
I recently encountered a reference to “The Waters of Babylon,” in a novel by Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities. I was not aware of this fine piece of music, which is often sung as a canon, or round.
For Penny, the connotation is grim; a mass murderer hums it as he works. But I love the A minor key and the harmony created by the round. My husband, wise in music, is surprised I didn’t know it; it’s a traditional melody.
I was certain that a second synchronistic reference to “The Waters of Babylon,” which is a reference to Psalm 137, would appear. But the only references to the song are those I created myself. Of the various YouTube renditions, this one has the “right” words (like “remember thee” instead of “remember me”) and the requisite simplicity.
Round and round
I love rounds. They are an easy way to sing harmony.
The most elemental: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Three Blind Mice,” “Frère Jacques.” One that I associate with a juvenile church group called Pioneer Girls:
Make new friends But keep the old. One is silver, And the other gold.
There are several dozen rounds at bethnotesplus, including the most noble of canons, “Dona Nobis Pacem*.” It deserves to be sung more often.
*The pronunciation of “pacem” can be either “pack-em” or “patch-em.” I prefer the latter.
Sourdough
~Leaven that lasts forever~
It was easy to give up a lot of my possessions when I moved into assisted living. It was hard to give up the sourdough starter that lived in my fridge.
For many years, I made bread two or three times a week using sourdough that one of my buddies at Taborgrass, a bluegrass group that met at my church, gave me in maybe 2010. He used it to make dinner rolls, so it had milk in it, but over the years most of the milk was diluted away. I kept back half the starter each time I made bread, replenishing it with a cup of water and a cup of flour.
Toss in a little pumpernickel
I loved exploring different grains in making sourdough bread. My favorites were pumpernickel and rye. I also used whole wheat, spelt and flaked cereals such as barley* or oats. Besides pumpernickel, crunch came from 5-grain cereal or seeds like flax, caraway or sesame.
* Bob’s Red Mill in Milwaukie, Ore., stopped milling barley flakes several years ago. I suppose they didn’t sell, but I miss them.
White flour is essential to keep the bread from being too dense. About half the flour should be white. Use a high-quality, preferably organic flour like Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur or Stone-Buhr.*
* Did you know that farmers routinely spray their wheat with RoundUp just before harvest to dry the crop and make it easier to thresh? I haven’t bought conventional flour since I heard that.
I hope you will try sourdough. It is really quite easy. Sometimes, instead of mixing and kneading by hand, I would just put all the bread ingredients in the Cuisinart and spin it around to mix them. I let the bread rise in the food processor, then pulsed it again to beat it down. That’s when I dumped it on a floured board and formed a loaf. Once that loaf had risen, it was time to bake.
Artisan bread
In an article on my blog, www.frangardner.com, I explore how to make an artisan loaf with sourdough and a cast-iron pot. Not my idea, of course. It’s widely popular for very good reasons: it’s dead simple and outrageously delicious.
Need starter? Shouldn’t be hard to find in a place like Portland. Ask around. You can buy dried starter online; I don’t know how good it is.
Need more advice about baking with sourdough? Just ask. I’m not in a place where I want to make sourdough bread, but I remember how to do it.
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Morning routine
It’s hard it is for me to get a morning routine together as the tendrils of multiple sclerosis tighten round me. I still remember how, decades ago, I could put my pants on standing up! I always lifted the left leg in first. Now that the left leg is the weaker, I always start with the right. Sitting down.
I don’t like to walk without donning my AFOs (ankle-foot orthotics, usually known as braces). But before I can put my shoes on, I need to shower and weigh myself. If I’m wearing trousers, they go on first, before the braces. For that reason, I prefer skirts.
More routine: Check the blood glucose. Take the meds. Struggle to stand and balance long enough to put in earrings. By now I’m many minutes into the day.
Maybe there is stretching. Coffee. A smoothie for breakfast — kale! Invariably, I forget something in another room, and I have the steer the walker in that direction. I lumber, slowly.
It’s 30 or 45 minutes before I can write the first words of the morning, the morning exercise. One morning this week, it was a solid hour before I got to my writing space.
Sometimes, if I get up late or have a morning appointment, the writing exercise gets pushed back into the day. I’m so used to the process now that I can back into the zone easily and come up with something coherent in the allotted 20 minutes. I’ve even written at 11:30 pm, barely making that day’s quota.
My point being…
It’s less about when you write or how you write. The only thing that matters that you do write. It’s cheap therapy. It works.
—30—
Hey, Amy,
Thanks! The main topic for next week is “noticing,” which is what I did with that coffee cup. Life is so much richer when we pay attention.
You know, I’ve been thinking about an assisted living cookbook. It’s amazing what I can do in a little kitchen with no cooktop, just a microwave and a toaster oven. Add a rice cooker or an Instant Pot and I could make virtually anything. AND, it’s assisted living, so if I don’t want to cook, I don’t have to!