Salt Flats Quotes

I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care, I am me. My name is Valerie, I don't think I'll live much longer and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography ill ever write, and god, I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985, I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tuttlebrook, and she use to tell me that god was in the rain. I passed my 11th lesson into girl's grammar; it was at school that I met my first girlfriend, her name was Sara. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that is was an adolescent phase people outgrew. Sara did, I didn't. In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me, he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I had only told them the truth, was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I starred in my first film, "The Salt Flats". It was the most important role of my life, not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew Scarlet Carsons for me in our window box, and our place always smelled of roses. Those were there best years of my life. But America's war grew worse, and worse. And eventually came to London. After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone. I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like collateral and rendition became frightening. While things like Norse Fire and The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how different became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I've never cried so hard in my life. It wasn't long till they came for me.It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses, and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie

What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

...each of us from the seance stood alone. Like so many pillars of salt, we had tried to look back and failed. And in the eyes of the others who shared the pale, flat sky with us, there was sometimes suspicion, sometimes a little fear.

She had thought the open sea would be flat, like a mirror or a coin. But it had colors and shapes, turning green or black under approaching storm. Sometimes it was red and purple and silver and white gold. It had sharp hedges. It had its tempers, its blue spells, its fits of laughter

They fell to, on the ground. You’ve seen a baker rolling dough. He kneads it gently at first, then more roughly. He pounds it on the board. It softly groans under his palms. Now he spreads it out and rolls it flat. Then he bunches it, and rolls it all the way out again, thin. Now he adds water and mixes it well. Now salt, and a little more salt. Now he shapes itdelicately to its final shape and slides itinto the oven, which is already hot. You remember breadmaking! This is how your desire tangles with a desired one. And it’s not justa metaphor for a man and a woman making love. Warriors in battle do this too. A great mutual embrace is always happening between the eternal and what dies, between essence and accident.

Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true." I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation. Modern man may assert that he can dispose with them, and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. Or he may even regret the loss of his convictions. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should nonetheless profit from its use. We might argue that the use of salt is a mere illusion of taste or a superstition; but it would still contribute to our well-being. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give a meaning to our existence? And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions. What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief. We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision. There is, however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot." It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.

A Faint Music by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing

The problem is most of the time when God’s supposed to be the hero, he comes across as the villain. I mean, look at what he did to Lot’s wife. What kind of divine being turns a man’s wife into a pillar of salt? What was her crime? Turning her head? You have to admit this is a God hopelessly locked in time, not free of it; otherwise he might have confounded the ancients by turning her into a flat-screen television or at least a pillar of Velcro.

Once they got there, it wasn’t a pretty landing. With the oars damaged and the foresail torn, Leo could barely manage a controlled descent. The others strapped themselves in below—except for Coach Hedge, who insisted on clinging to the forward rail, yelling, “YEAH! Bring it on, lake!” Leo stood astern, alone at the helm, and aimed as best he could. Festus creaked and whirred warning signals, which were relayed through the intercom to the quarterdeck. “I know, I know,” Leo said, gritting his teeth. He didn’t have much time to take in the scenery. To the southeast, a city was nestled in the foothills of a mountain range, blue and purple in the afternoon shadows. A flat desert landscape spread to the south. Directly beneath them the Great Salt Lake glittered like aluminum foil, the shoreline etched with white salt marshes that reminded Leo of aerial photos of Mars. “Hang on, Coach!” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.” “I was born for hurt!

THE SHACK SAT BACK from the palmettos, which sprawled across sand flats to a necklace of green lagoons and, in the distance, all the marsh beyond. Miles of blade-grass so tough it grew in salt water, interrupted only by trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind.

They decided now, talking it over in their tight little two-and-quarter room flat, that most people who call themselves 'truth seekers' - persons who scurry about chattering of Truth as though it were a tangible seperable thing, like houses or salt or bread - did not so much desire to find Truth as to cure their mental itch. In novels, these truth-seekers quested the 'secret of life' in laboratories which did not seem to be provided wtih Bunsen flames or reagents; or they went, at great expense and much discomfort from hot trains and undesirable snakes, to Himalayan monasteries, to learn from unaseptic sages that the Mind can do all sorts of edifying things if one will but spend thirty or forty years in eating rice and gazing on one's navel. To these high matters Martin responded, 'Rot!' He insisted that there is no Truth but only many truths; that Truth is not a colored bird to be chased among the rocks and captured by its tail, but a skeptical attitude toward life. (260)

To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Uncommon Prostitues I have nothing to say about prostitues (other than you'd make a terrible prostitute,the profession is much too unclean), I only wanted to type that. Isn't it odd we both have to spend Christmas with our fathers? Speaking of unpleasant matters,have you spoken with Bridge yet? I'm taking the bus to the hospital now.I expect a full breakdown of your Christmas dinner when I return. So far today,I've had a bowl of muesli. How does Mum eat that rubbish? I feel as if I've been gnawing on lumber. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: Christmas Dinner MUESLY? It's Christmas,and you're eating CEREAL?? I'm mentally sending you a plate from my house. The turkey is in the oven,the gravy's on the stovetop,and the mashed potatoes and casseroles are being prepared as I type this. Wait. I bet you eat bread pudding and mince pies or something,don't you? Well, I'm mentally sending you bread pudding. Whatever that is. No, I haven't talked to Bridgette.Mom keeps bugging me to answer her calls,but winter break sucks enough already. (WHY is my dad here? SERIOUSLY. MAKE HIM LEAVE. He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater,and he looks like a pompous snowman,and he keeps rearranging the stuff on our kitchen cabinets. Mom is about to kill him. WHICH IS WHY SHE SHOULDN'T INVITE HIM OVER FOR HOLIDAYS). Anyway.I'd rather not add to the drama. P.S. I hope your mom is doing better. I'm so sorry you have to spend today in a hospital. I really do wish I could send you both a plate of turkey. To: Anna Oliphant From: Etienne St. Clair Subject: Re: Christmas Dinner YOU feel sorry for ME? I am not the one who has never tasted bread pudding. The hospital was the same. I won't bore you with the details. Though I had to wait an hour to catch the bus back,and it started raining.Now that I'm at the flat, my father has left for the hospital. We're each making stellar work of pretending the other doesn't exist. P.S. Mum says to tell you "Merry Christmas." So Merry Christmas from my mum, but Happy Christmas from me. To: Etienne St. Clair From: Anna Oliphant Subject: SAVE ME Worst.Dinner.Ever.It took less than five minutes for things to explode. My dad tried to force Seany to eat the green bean casserole, and when he wouldn't, Dad accused Mom of not feeding my brother enough vegetables. So she threw down her fork,and said that Dad had no right to tell her how to raise her children. And then he brought out the "I'm their father" crap, and she brought out the "You abandoned them" crap,and meanwhile, the WHOLE TIME my half-dead Nanna is shouting, "WHERE'S THE SALT! I CAN'T TASTE THE CASSEROLE! PASS THE SALT!" And then Granddad complained that Mom's turkey was "a wee dry," and she lost it. I mean,Mom just started screaming. And it freaked Seany out,and he ran to his room crying, and when I checked on him, he was UNWRAPPING A CANDY CANE!! I have no idea where it came from. He knows he can't eat Red Dye #40! So I grabbed it from him,and he cried harder, and Mom ran in and yelled at ME, like I'd given him the stupid thing. Not, "Thank you for saving my only son's life,Anna." And then Dad came in and the fighting resumed,and they didn't even notice that Seany was still sobbing. So I took him outside and fed him cookies,and now he's running aruond in circles,and my grandparents are still at the table, as if we're all going to sit back down and finish our meal. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FAMILY? And now Dad is knocking on my door. Great. Can this stupid holiday get any worse??

Astragalomancy was a method of divining the future or learning hidden knowledge by rolling dice. A ceromancer dropped melted wax into cold water and interpreted the figures thus produced. Halomancy required the reading of the shapes made by casting a handful of salt on a flat surface. A necromancer sought answers by communicating with the dead.

The maltster, after having lain down in his clothes for a few hours, was now sitting beside a three-legged table, breakfasting off bread and bacon. This was eaten on the plateless system, which is performed by placing a slice of bread upon the table, the meat flat upon the bread, a mustard plaster upon the meat, and a pinch of salt upon the whole, then cutting them vertically downwards with a large pocket-knife till wood is reached, when the severed lump is impaled on the knife, elevated, and sent the proper way of food.

The night is wide, uncurving, like the earth might be flat and walkable from end to distant end.

So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand like that. Just the flu. I'd like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU.

So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons, or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand like that. Just the flu. I'd like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU

The area was like a gigantic moonscape of bleached sand, salt flats, and mountain ranges inhabited by small bands no larger than extended families. Early travelers to the West did not hide their contempt for these "digger Indians", who lacked both horses and weapons. These vulnerable Paiutes, as they were known, had become easy prey for other, mounted Indians.

That the desert was, in its own way, very much alive: a gargantuan sentient being whose shifting colours – one minute soft yellow, the next livid red, here blinding white, there sombre black – were curiously suggestive of changing moods and thought patterns. Its varied shapes and textures – dunes slumping into gravel flats, salt pans rearing into rock hills – likewise gave the unnerving impression that the landscape was moving, bunching and stretching itself, flexing its muscles

No one can say what the inner life is, but poetry tries to, and no one can say what poetry is, but let's be bold and claim that there are two major streamings in consciousness, particularly in the ecstatic life, and in Rumi's poetry: call them fana and baqa, Arabic words that refer to the play and intersection of human with divine. Rumi's poetry occurs in that opening, a dervish doorway these energies move through in either direction. A movement out, a movement in. Fana is the streaming that moves from the human out into mystery-the annihilation, the orgasmic expansion, the dissolving swoon into the all. The gnat becomes buttermilk; a chickpea disappears into the flavor of the soup; a dead mule decays into salt flat; the infant turns to the breast. These wild and boundaryless absorptions are the images and the kind of poem Rumi is most well known for, a drunken clairvoyant tavern voice that announces, "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

But when you’re extra scared or fatigued or discomfortable, some other bad thing is bound to happen. The past two days confirm this theory: a flat tire, a stickup, and a bad fall. The Morton Salt girl had it right. When it rains, it damn well pours.

For most of a day we walked through alkali flats, the white crust like a frosted layer of salt that rose in a powder when your boots punched through. We wore the chalk on us everywhere—up to our knees, in the creases of our fingers clenching the rifle strap, down in the cavity between my breasts, and in my mouth, too. I couldn’t keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn’t keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go.

Buy the best you can afford • Extra-virgin Olive Oil, pressed in the last calendar year • Whole chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy • Chocolate and Cocoa Powder Buy whole and prepare yourself • Pick and chop fresh herbs (and always use Italian or flat-leaf parsley). • Juice lemons and limes • Peel, chop, and pound garlic • Grind spices • Soak, rinse, filet, and chop salt-packed anchovies • Make chicken stock when you can (see for a recipe). Or buy fresh or frozen stock from your butcher, rather than the boxed or canned stuff

Peter lifted his head. Hook's hair was tangled around his face like a lion's mane and his eyes were painfully clear, all teasing and mirth gone from his mouth. He took Peter's chin in his hand, his fingers calloused but gentle, and kissed him. Everything in the world grew quiet and Peter's body grew loud. The caress of Hook's fingertips under his chin made his pulse catch, his throat flushing, shoulders tightening. He could only seem to breathe in, breathe Hook in deeper. Hook's lips were dry, and he tasted like salt and sweet wine. He smelled like gunpowder and the sea and he was everywhere, shifting closer across the leaves, his other arm snaking around Peter's waist, the iron claw pressed flat between his shoulder blades. Peter dug his fingers into fistfuls of earth, trying to ground himself as Hook pulled them together, tipping Peter's head back with the gentle thrust of his kiss, a momentum that threatened to tilt them both to the ground. Peter was impossibly hot, hot to his fingertips and toes and his skin was crawling with the need to be touched, the shock of that need. Sweat caught at the back of his shirt. His skin was stark canvas begging for ink, and Hook's touch was going to stain him forever. It was too much, too sudden. Peter recoiled, yanking a knife from his boot and holding it between them. He didn't mean it as a threat, just a way to make distance where none had been.

Forgive me if my eyes see no more clearly than sea foam, please forgive that my form grows outward without license and never stops: monotonous is my song, my word is a shadow bird, fauna of stone and sea, the grief of a winter planet, Incorruptible. Forgive me this sequence of water, of rock, of foam, of the tide’s delirium: this is my loneliness: salt in sudden leaps against the walls of my secret being, in such a way that I am a part of winter, of the same flat expanse that repeats from bell to bell, in wave after wave, and from a silence like a woman’s hair, a silence of seaweed, a sunken song.

It was a dead swan. Its body lay contorted on the beach like an abandoned lover. I looked at the bird for a long time. There was no blood on its feathers, no sight of gunshot. Most likely, a late migrant from the north slapped silly by a ravenous Great Salt Lake. The swan may have drowned. I knelt beside the bird, took off my deerskin gloves, and began smoothing feathers. Its body was still limp—the swan had not been dead long. I lifted both wings out from under its belly and spread them on the sand. Untangling the long neck which was wrapped around itself was more difficult, but finally I was able to straighten it, resting the swan’s chin flat against the shore. The small dark eyes had sunk behind the yellow lores. It was a whistling swan. I looked for two black stones, found them, and placed them over the eyes like coins. They held. And, using my own saliva as my mother and grandmother had done to wash my face, I washed the swan’s black bill and feet until they shone like patent leather. I have no idea of the amount of time that passed in the preparation of the swan. What I remember most is lying next to its body and imagining the great white bird in flight. I imagined the great heart that propelled the bird forward day after day, night after night. Imagined the deep breaths taken as it lifted from the arctic tundra, the camaraderie within the flock. I imagined the stars seen and recognized on clear autumn nights as they navigated south. Imagined their silhouettes passing in front of the full face of the harvest moon. And I imagined the shimmering Great Salt Lake calling the swans down like a mother, the suddenness of the storm, the anguish of its separation. And I tried to listen to the stillness of its body. At dusk, I left the swan like a crucifix on the sand. I did not look back.

No silver seagrass or salt pans, no soldier crabs or sea tides to read, no seaweed necklaces to wear, and no skies filled with ghostly wisps of virga, warning of storms out at sea. On either side of the flat highway the land was thirsty, dry as a cracked tongue. Somehow, though, the strange landscape teemed with life. It hummed in Alice's ears, the clicking buzz of cicadas, the occasional wild cackle of kookaburras. There was the occasional blur of color where wildflowers grew at the base of gum trees. Some had trunks as white as fairytale snow while others we're an ochre color, as glossy as if covered in a slick of wet paint.

Plants like beer! Don’t just dump beer left in bottles after a party. Once it becomes flat—after a day or two—add the beer to your SFG bucket of sun-warmed water. The nutrients and salts in the beer will give your plants an added boost. Of course, if the dog seems a little dopey for no apparent reason, you’ll know you need to put a cover on that bucket!

When we go to the beach and bare our skin, we’re not there to be visually appealing to others. We’re there to feel the sand, hear the waves, smell the salt, take in the view. We’re there to make memories. The dimples on our thighs or whether another beachgoer disapproves of our size is irrelevant. It’s not why we’re there. Being aesthetically pleasing is not the purpose of our existence.

[..] as midnight inevitably came and went without the horsemen of the apocalypse making an appearance, Clara surprised herself by falling into a melancholy. For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling sea-water to retrieve the salt something is gained but something is lost. Though her friends Merlin, Wan-Si, et al. clapped her on the back and congratulated her for exorcizing those fervid dreams of perdition and redemption, Clara quietly mourned the warmer touch she had waited for these nineteen years, the all-enveloping bear hug of the Saviour, the One who was Alpha and Omega, both the beginning and the end; the man who was meant to take her away from all this, from the listless reality of life in a ground-floor flat in Lambeth. What now for Clara? Ryan would find another fad; Darcus need only turn to the other channel; for Hortense another date would of course materialize, along with more leaflets, ever more faith. But Clara was not like Hortense. Yet a residue, left over from the evaporation of Clara's faith, remained. She still wished for a saviour. She still wished for a man to whisk her away, to choose her above others so that she might Walk in white with Him: for [she] was worthy. Revelation 3:4.

Grief is a liar and an ocean. Just when you think you’ve reached the shore, it rises up again and swallows you whole. Weeks can go by without any tears at all, and then an unexpected card stuck in a book can knock you flat on your face sure as any tsunami. And your throat burns and sputters and chokes, drowning in a torrent of salt-stung water, as you gasp for air and try so desperately to wake up from this dream.

One even regrets the loss of such convictions. Since it is a matter of invisible and unknowable things (God is beyond human understanding, and immortality cannot be proved), why should we bother about evidence or truth? Suppose we did not know and understand the need for salt in our food, we would nevertheless profit from its use. Even if we should assume that salt is an illusion of our taste-buds, or a superstition, it would still contribute to our wellbeing. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that prove helpful in crises and give a meaning to our existence? And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are illusions. What they fail to realize is that this denial amounts to a “belief” and is just as impossible to prove as a religious assertion

People think Baja California is the desert, and the desert is one single, flat, lonely space. Baja California is mountain ridges, clouds of fog spreading over the land, the salt fields, the shocking sight of a valley shaded by date palms, the orchards where olives grow, the stone missions with sun-dried adobe bricks left to crumble into dust, ancient caves decorated with two-headed serpents, —and yes, the desert dotted with cacti.

THE SHACK SAT BACK from the palmettos, which sprawled across sand flats to a necklace of green lagoons and, in the distance, all the marsh beyond. Miles of blade-grass so tough it grew in salt water, interrupted only by trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind. Oak forests bunched around the other sides of the shack and sheltered the closest lagoon, its surface so rich in life it churned. Salt air and gull-song drifted through the trees from the sea.

They steered south. Gordita Beach emerged from the haze, gently flaking away in the salt breezes, the ramshackle town in a spill of weather-beaten colors, like paint chips at some out-of-the-way hardware store, and the hillside up to Dunecrest, which Doc had always thought of, especially after nights of excess, as steep, a grade everybody sooner or later wiped their clutch trying to get up and out of town on, looking from out here strangely flat, hardly there at all.

That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character. All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. It was as though the cathedral demanded, and received, a perpetual, living sacrifice. It towered over the town, more like an affliction than a blessing, and made everything seem, by comparison with itself, wretched and makeshift indeed. The houses in which the people lived did not suggest shelter, or safety. The great shadow which lay over them revealed them as mere doomed bits of wood and mineral, set down in the path of a hurricane which, presently, would blow them into eternity. And this shadow lay heavy on the people, too. They seemed stunted and misshapen; the only color in their faces suggested too much bad wine and too little sun; even the children seemed to have been hatched in a cellar. It was a town like some towns in the American South, frozen in its history as Lot's wife was trapped in salt, and doomed, therefore, as its history, that overwhelming, omnipresent gift of God, could not be questioned, to be the property of the gray, unquestioning mediocre.

He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3

There is a visitor, Countess.” “A visitor?” Mother looks toward the rain-drenched windows. “Who would be out in this mess? Has their car given out?” “No, My Lady. The young woman says her name is Nancy Herald. She apologized for not making an appointment and provided her card. It seems to be a business proposition.” My mother makes a sweeping motion with the back of her hand. “I have no interest or time for business propositions. Send her on her way, please.” Stanhope places a business card on the table, bows, and leaves the room. Penny picks it up as she sips her drink, looks it over—and then spits her brandy all over the carpet. “Penelope!” mother yells. My sister stands up, waving the card over her head like Veruca Salt after she got her hands on the golden ticket to the chocolate factory. “Stanhope!” she screams. “Don’t let her leave! She a television producer!” Penny turns to me and in a quieter but urgent voice says, “She’s a television producer.” As if I didn’t hear her the first time. Then she sprints from the room. Or . . . tries to. Halfway to the door, her heel catches on the carpet and she falls flat on her face with an “Ooof.” “Are you all right, Pen?” She pulls herself up, waving her hands. “I’m fine! Or I will be, as long as she doesn’t leave!” The second try’s the charm, and Penelope scurries out of the room as fast as her four-inch heels will take her. My mother shakes her head at my sister’s retreating form. “Too much sugar, that one.” Then she drains her glass.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt—something is gained but something is lost. Though her friends—Merlin, Wan-Si, et al.—clapped her on the back and congratulated her for exorcising those fervid dreams of perdition and redemption, Clara quietly mourned the warmer touch she had waited for these nineteen years, the all-enveloping bear hug of the Savior, the One who was Alpha and Omega, both the beginning and the end; the man who was meant to take her away from all this, from the listless reality of life in a ground-floor flat in Lambeth. What now for Clara?

Sirine learned about food from her parents. Even though her mother was American, her father always said his wife thought about food like an Arab. Sirine's mother strained the salted yogurt through cheesecloth to make creamy labneh, stirred the onion and lentils together in a heavy iron pan to make mjeddrah, and studded joints of lamb with fat cloves of garlic to make roasted kharuf. Sirine's earliest memory was of sitting on a phone book on a kitchen chair, the sour-tart smell of pickled grape leaves in the air. Her mother spread the leaves flat on the table like little floating hands, placed the spoonful of rice and meat at the center of each one, and Sirine with her tiny fingers rolled the leaves up tighter and neater than anyone else could- tender, garlicky, meaty packages that burst in the mouth.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Snacks at sleepovers are a must. Try this one next time your parents forget to stock the snack cupboard. Supplies: brown paper lunch bag stapler measuring cup microwave Ingredients: ¼ cup popcorn kernels 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp chocolate chips 2 tbsp butter or margarine pinch of salt Pour the popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag then fold the top of the bag ¼ of an inch, twice. Secure two staples (trust me, I Googled it!) at the folded part to seal the bag shut. Lay the bag flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for about 1:45 (one minute and forty-five seconds, people!). Each microwave is different, though, so you may need to adjust the time. Meanwhile, add the brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter/margarine and salt to a microwave-safe measuring cup. Cook on HIGH for about 15 seconds or until the gooey buttery-chocolaty mixture is melted. Mix well with a fork then pour it over the popcorn.

BACKYARD GARDEN SALAD In wartime, patriotic families cultivated “Victory Gardens” to promote self-sufficiency and help the war effort. 4 cups mixed greens 1/4 cup fresh sprigs of dill 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves 4 large basil leaves, rolled up and thinly sliced crosswise 1 large lemon, halved 1/4 cup fruity olive oil pinch of salt fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 cup toasted walnuts 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese 1 cup fresh edible flowers; choose from bachelor’s buttons, borage, calendulas, carnations, herb flowers (basil, chives, rosemary, thyme), nasturtiums, violas, including pansies and Johnny-jump-ups, stock Toss salad greens and herbs in a large bowl. Squeeze lemon juice (without the seeds) over the greens and season with olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss again. Add walnuts and feta and toss well. Divide salad and pansies among four serving plates and serve. (Source: Adapted from California Bountiful)

The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight at Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn—a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up the Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Frisco romances—a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, “Mama when do we get home to Truckee?” And Truckee itself, homey Truckee, and then down the hill to the flats of Sacramento. I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air—air you can kiss—and palms. Along the storied Sacramento River on a superhighway; into the hills again; up, down; and suddenly the vast expanse of a bay (it was just before dawn) with the sleepy lights of Frisco festooned across.

The smooth, flat rocks were exactly the same, the sea pounded down on them in the same way, and also the landscape under the water, with its small valleys and bays and steep chasms and slopes, strewn with starfish and sea urchins, crabs and fish, was the same. You could still buy Slazenger tennis rackets, Tretorn balls, and Rossignol skis, Tyrolia bindings and Koflach boots. The houses where we lived were still standing, all of them. The sole difference, which is the difference between a child’s reality and an adult’s, was that they were no longer laden with meaning. A pair of Le Coq soccer boots was just a pair of soccer boots. If I felt anything when I held a pair in my hands now it was only a hangover from my childhood, nothing else, nothing in itself. The same with the sea, the same with the rocks, the same with the taste of salt that could fill your summer days to saturation, now it was just salt, end of story. The world was the same, yet it wasn’t, for its meaning had been displaced, and was still being displaced, approaching closer and closer to meaninglessness.

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of humming birds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smoky and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in silence. All night the eyes of deer shine for an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway, All the tracks will point down to the lower canyon. “Thus,” says Tyndall, “the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth’s axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men.

This was the gastronomic heartland of Italy, where every inch of the fertile soil was cultivated. In Parma he visited shops festooned with hams, each one postmarked with the stamps of a dozen different inspectors---the regions of Italy are fiercely protective of their produce, and only a handful of towns between the Enza and Stirone Rivers are allowed to designate themselves as true producers of prosciutto di Parma. Because the huge lofts in which the hams are aged are always left open to the wind, the villages of the Enza valley seemed scented with the aromatic sweetness of the meat as he drove through them. In the valley to the north of Parma, he sampled culatello di zibello, perhaps the greatest of all Parma's pork products and for that reason almost never exported, even to other parts of Italy: a pig's rump, marinated in salt and spices, then sewn inside a pig's bladder and aged for eighteen months in the humid air of the flat river basin, a process so delicate that almost half the hams are spoiled before they are ready, but which leaves the rest incomparably delicious.

But what’s worth more than gold?’ ‘Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?’ Sacharissa looked momentarily flustered, to Moist’s glee. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking—’ ‘The only manner of speaking worth talking about,’ said Moist flatly. ‘The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where’s the sense in that? What are we, magpies? Is it all about the gleam? Good heavens, potatoes are worth more than gold!’ ‘Surely not!’ ‘If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?’ ‘Yes, but a desert island isn’t Ankh-Morpork!’ ‘And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It’s just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, anywhere. Bury gold in the ground and you’ll be worrying about thieves for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand per cent.

1 tablespoon flaked sea salt, like Maldon 2 pieces of salmon fillet with skin on, ⅓ pound each Olive oil Freshly ground black pepper and lemon wedges, for serving Scatter the salt evenly over a dry, well-seasoned 10-inch cast-iron pan. A stainless steel pan will also work. If you’re using a stainless steel pan instead of cast iron, brush the pan lightly with oil before adding the salt. Place the pan over medium-high heat for 3 minutes. While the pan heats, dry the fish fillets well with paper towels and lay them flat on a large plate. Brush with olive oil on both sides. Place the fish into the hot pan, skin side down. Turn the heat down slightly if the crackle sounds too loud and sputtery. Cover with a lid. If you don’t have a lid that fits your pan, a metal baking sheet will do the job. Cook without moving the fillets for 3 to 5 minutes, until the skin is brown and crisp, and releases easily from the pan. Flip the fillets and cook them uncovered for another 2 to 4 minutes, depending on their thickness. The fish is done when the flesh deep inside is still faintly translucent and the internal temperature reads 125 degrees. Serve with freshly ground black pepper and lemon wedges. Serves 2.

All you ever have is lard on bread,” said Valentine. Patrice shut her mouth. Nobody said anything. Valentine was trying to say that was poor people food. But everybody ate lard on bread with salt and pepper. “That sounds good. Anybody have a piece?” said Doris. “Break me off some.” “Here,” said Curly Jay, who got her name for her hair when she was little. The name stuck even though her hair was now stick-straight. Everybody looked at Doris as she tried the lard on bread. “Not half bad,” she pronounced. Patrice looked pityingly at Valentine. Or was it Pixie who did that? Anyway, lunchtime was over and now her stomach wouldn’t growl all afternoon. She said thank you, loudly, to the whole table, and went into the bathroom. There were two stalls. Valentine was the only other woman in the bathroom. Patrice recognized her brown shoes with the scuffs painted over. They were both on their times. “Oh no,” said Valentine through the partition. “Oh, it’s bad.” Patrice opened her purse, struggled with her thoughts, then handed one of her folded rags beneath the wooden divider. It was clean, white, bleached. Valentine took it out of her hand. “Thanks.” “Thanks who?” A pause. “Thank you damn well much. Patrice.” Then a laugh. “You saved my ass.” “Saved your flat ass.” Another laugh. “Your ass is flatter.

FOOD Adobo (uh-doh-boh)--- Considered the Philippines' national dish, it's any food cooked with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black peppercorns (though there are many regional and personal variations) Bibingka (bih-bing-kah)--- Lightly sweetened rice cake, commonly consumed around Christmas. There are many varieties, but the most common is baked or grilled in a banana leaf-lined mold and topped with sliced duck eggs, butter, sugar, and/or coconut. Buko (boo-koh)--- Young coconut Champorado (chahm-puh-rah-doh)--- Sweet chocolate rice porridge Lambanog (lahm-bah-nohg)--- Filipino coconut liquor Lumpia (loom-pyah)--- Filipino spring rolls (many variations) Matamis na bao (mah-tah-mees nah bah-oh)--- Coconut jam (also known as minatamis na bao) Pandan (pahn-dahn)--- Tropical plant whose fragrant leaves are commonly used as a flavoring in Southeast Asia. Often described as a grassy vanilla flavor with a hint of coconut. Pandesal (pahn deh sahl)--- Lightly sweetened Filipino rolls topped with breadcrumbs (also written pan de sal) Patis (pah-tees)--- Fish sauce Pinipig (pih-nee-pig)--- Young glutinous rice that's been pounded flat, then toasted. Looks similar to Rice Krispies. Salabat (sah-lah-baht)--- Filipino ginger tea Tuyo (too-yoh)--- Dried, salted fish (usually herring) Ube (oo-beh)--- Purple yam

WHEN YOU CROW UP IN KANSAS WEARING VERY LARGE SHORTS, thinking not very much of yourself, thinking mainly of your knees, looking mainly at your knees, your face a frisbee that cant fly, your teeth buck, your eyebrows rectangles, your forehead more than half of your face, your shirts shapeless, your shape shapeless, your Kansas shapeless, your lust absent, your legs bowed, your arches flat, your chest flat, your ears your only curves, your ears never pierced, your denim never dazzled, your sneakers white, your socks white, your teeth turquoise with rubber bands, your cheese orange, your milk whole, your bread wonder, your luxury a tuna casserole, your pale a neon pale, your fantasy to race a Mario Kart over the desert and into the final oasis, your earthly oasis a salted pretzel, your solitude total, your urges not even visible to you on the clearest days at the farthest horizons, your blank magnificent, your inertia wild and authentic, your nothing your preference, and then into it somebody walks, a Joan, this sudden hero can really take control. You’re susceptible first to idolatry, then to study, to apprenticeship, and finally to a kind of patient love that makes fun of itself and believes in itself without limit. Imagine being a pudding cup of a person and encountering a confident, elegant, powerful scholar who knows what to do with her shoulders. Imagine encountering you.

A moment ago, when he entered this human aviary, the pictures, modestly enclosed in four wooden mouldings, remained flat and silent before him; in order to wrest their secret from them, he must believe in them. He wanted to believe in them. He stood in front of one of the canvases. Between the two walls, drenched in sunlight, a single hoop rolled towards that point where the parallels meet in infinity. Little by little, as he looked at it, the picture came alive. What it was saying he could not be translated into words; it was said in painting and no other language could have expressed its meaning; but it spoke. He advanced a few paces. Under his attentive gaze, all the pictures came alive; they awoke memories more ancient than the beginning of the world; they evoked the unpredictable face of the earth far beyond the revolutions to come; they exposed the secrets of a jagged coastline, of a dessert sprinkled with shells, as they remained solitary within themselves, protected from any conscience. Statues without faces, men turned to pillars of salt, landscapes scorched by the flames of death, oceans frozen into immobility of the absolute instant: these were the thousand shapes of absence. And while he looked at this universe devoid of onlookers, it seemed as if he were absent from himself, and that he remained, outside his own personal history, in an empty white eternity. And yet that dream of purity and absence only existed because I was there to lend it the strength of my life.

The cuisine of Northern Iran, overlooked and underrated, is unlike most Persian food in that it's unfussy and lighthearted as the people from that region. The fertile seaside villages of Mazandaran and Rasht, where Soli grew up before moving to the congested capital, were lush with orchards and rice fields. His father had cultivated citrus trees and the family was raised on the fruits and grains they harvested. Alone in the kitchen, without Zod's supervision, he found himself turning to the wholesome food of his childhood, not only for the comfort the simple compositions offered, but because it was what he knew so well as he set about preparing a homecoming feast for Zod's only son. He pulled two kilos of fava beans from the freezer. Gathered last May, shucked and peeled on a quiet afternoon, they defrosted in a colander for a layered frittata his mother used to make with fistfuls of dill and sprinkled with sea salt. One flat of pale green figs and a bushel of new harvest walnuts were tied to the back of his scooter, along with two crates of pomegranates- half to squeeze for fresh morning juice and the other to split and seed for rice-and-meatball soup. Three fat chickens pecked in the yard, unaware of their destiny as he sharpened his cleaver. Tomorrow they would braise in a rich, tangy stew with sour red plums, their hearts and livers skewered and grilled, then wrapped in sheets of lavash with bouquets of tarragon and mint. Basmati rice soaked in salted water to be steamed with green garlic and mounds of finely chopped parsley and cilantro, then served with a whole roasted, eight kilo white fish stuffed with barberries, pistachios, and lime. On the farthest burner, whole bitter oranges bobbed in blossom syrup, to accompany rice pudding, next to a simmering pot of figs studded with cardamom pods for preserves.

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong's fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer's time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true." I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation. Modern man may assert that he can dispose with them, and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. Or he may even regret the loss of his convictions. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should nonetheless profit from its use. We might argue that the use of salt is a mere illusion of taste or a superstition; but it would still contribute to our well-being. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give a meaning to our existence? And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions. What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief. We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision. There is, however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot." It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.

He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans on how we might live till a ship called by. Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvelous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cozy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was." "You loved him," her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him- a damned sight more than this woman could ever know. "He loved me like his own breath," she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. "He said he thanked God for the day he met me." Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Mrs. Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul. "I see past your always acting the tough girl," he insisted with boyish stubbornness. "I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled." And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe- love has found you out, and here you are. Mrs. Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. "When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God- and that's the truth." She faced out Mrs. Croxon with a bold stare. "You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish," Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, "a foolish wish it were- that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

As the highway threads these miles of salt flats, red-winged blackbirds flock in sheets that billow luminous curves across the gathering darkness, and the moon posts itself in the turning sky while Bailey crosses the last of the marshlands and drives onward into the now forested twilight.

In the Indus Valley, the Nile Valley, and Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, barley-wheat cuisine supported small cities by 3000 B.C.E., as millet cuisine supported them in the Yellow River Valley.19 The cuisine of Mesopotamia is the best known of the barley-wheat cuisines, already thousands of years old in 1000 B.C.E. It was prepared in cities and villages on the flat plain, hot and parched much of the year, partly marshy and covered with reeds, the home of fish and waterfowl, featureless except for the channels bringing water to irrigate the fields and the date palms lining the pathways between the fields. The abundance of rich soil and water for growing barley and wheat outweighed the lack of timber, building stone, and other resources. The poor, including foot soldiers, prisoners, construction workers, and servants, survived almost exclusively on barley dishes, receiving roughly made conical pottery bowls containing about two liters (a little over eight cups) of barley grains, porridge, or bread daily. They ate these with a little salt and dried fish. Their diet was so meager that a popular saying went: “When a poor man has died, do not try to revive him. When he had bread, he had no salt; when he had salt, he had no bread.”20

He dusted the dough with cumin and coriander and salt before he slid the loaves into the oven on flat wooden boards. Perhaps most important,

Ann put the oven to heat. She washed the lamb under the tap, turning it around to clean the entire leg. Then it was dried with a paper towel, stretched out on the cutting board to be hammered flat, and rubbed with salt and rosemary she took from the kitchen window. She waited for the oven to reach two hundred. The cleaned scent of the meat and the clatter of the water in the skink, the branches of rosemary, the dogs finding each other’s ears in the evening, the children being called indoors, servants standing on the road for the Indian bus, and the rising heat of the oven against the remaining heat of the day made her aware of her own happiness. This happiness was like the sea wind when the temperature of the water and the land reversed and everything was free in new darkness.

She described tirelessly to me how effective the flat roof was, and how it was useful. I found that the stoch was also used as a place to dry food, such as tomatoes. They used to put the tomatoes on the stoch, when they were cut, crushed, and soaked in large bowls. Soaking them on the roof would cause the fluid content to vaporize. What remained of the fruit was preserved in jars for regular use over time. To the tomatoes, which turned  very thick, we used to add a little salt, and it was enough to preserve them for a long time. They layed it out on the stoch and that was it. I laughed when she added a story from her childhood as well, when she used go up on the stoch with her friends and throw pottery off of it, throwing it down to shatter as a mark of the end of summer.

Mora Take a step off of that silver bird from your planet And you brought a little bit of that cold with you Now wring me out like you would your bastarding father And you're so quick to stick to that scum Hungry like a piranha Swallow a little of that sea Now taste a little bit of the salt in me Throw up a little bit of it on your knees Now doesn't that bring you back to the beginning? Before you poured your elements away Now sink back to the bottom of it all Seal your lips with the black stitch of a secret Parade with that speechless dryness of the desert air Lay flat under the lime light you feed off all the fiction Cold callus and boiled between the bleak deep of your dirty hands Kiss your son now kiss your bible And you know I never wanted to see your face I just wont believe it Swallow a little of that sea Now taste a little bit of the salt in me Rub a little of it on your knees Now doesn't that bring you back to the beginning? Before you poured your elements away Now sink back to the bottom of it all Swallow a little of that sea Now taste a little bit of the salt in me Throw up a little bit of it on your knees Now doesn't that bring you back to the beginning? Before you poured your elements away Now sink back to the bottom of it all

4/20, CANNABIS DAY, APRIL 20 420 FARMERS’ MARKET RISOTTO Recipe from Chef Herb Celebrate the bounty of a new growing season with a dish that’s perfectly in season on April 20. Better known as 4/20, the once unremarkable date has slowly evolved into a new high holiday, set aside by stoners of all stripes to celebrate the herb among like-minded friends. The celebration’s origins are humble in nature: It was simply the time of day when four friends (dubbed “The Waldos”) met to share a joint each day in San Rafael, California. Little did they know that they were beginning a new ceremony that would unite potheads worldwide! Every day at 4:20 p.m., you can light up a joint in solidarity with other pot-lovers in your time zone. It’s a tradition that has caught on, and today, there are huge 4/20 parties and festivals in many cities, including famous gatherings of students in Boulder and Santa Cruz. An Italian rice stew, risotto is dense, rich, and intensely satisfying—perfect cannabis comfort cuisine. This risotto uses the freshest spring ingredients for a variation in texture and bright colors that stimulate the senses. Visit your local farmers’ market around April 20, when the bounty of tender new vegetables is beginning to be harvested after the long, dreary winter. As for tracking down the secret ingredient, you’ll have to find another kind of farmer entirely. STONES 4 4 tablespoons THC olive oil (see recipe) 1 medium leek, white part only, cleaned and finely chopped ½ cup sliced mushrooms 1 small carrot, grated ½ cup sugar snap peas, ends trimmed ½ cup asparagus spears, woody ends removed, cut into 1-inch-long pieces Freshly ground pepper 3½ cups low-sodium chicken broth ¼ cup California dry white wine Olive oil cooking spray 1 cup arborio rice 1 tablespoon minced fresh flat-leaf parsley ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese Salt 1. In a nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the THC olive oil over medium-low heat. Add leek and sauté until wilted, about 5 minutes. Stir in mushrooms and continue to cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add carrot, sugar snap peas, and asparagus. Continue to cook, stirring, for another minute. Remove from heat, season with pepper, and set aside. 2. In a medium saucepan over high heat, bring broth and wine to a boil. Reduce heat and keep broth mixture at a slow simmer. 3. In a large pot that has been lightly coated with cooking spray, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons THC olive oil over medium heat. Add rice and stir well until all the grains of rice are coated. Pour in ½ cup of the hot broth and stir, using a wooden spoon, until all liquid is absorbed. Continue adding the broth ½ cup at a time, making sure the rice has absorbed the broth before adding more, reserving ¼ cup of broth for the vegetables. 4. Combine ¼ cup of the broth with the reserved vegetables. Once all broth has been added to the risotto and absorbed, add the vegetable mixture and continue to cook over low heat for 2 minutes. Rice should have a very creamy consistency. Remove from heat and stir in parsley, Parmesan, and salt to taste. Stir well to combine.

SIMPLE BOLOGNESE When we were kids, this was our favorite sauce, hands down. I used to love it on everything—pasta, rice, bread, potatoes, and polenta—you name it, I covered it in bolognese. We went through a lot of it in my household. So my parents had to figure out a way to make it that was quicker than the traditional recipe, and here it is. It’s just as rich and mouthwatering as the more time-consuming traditional recipe; I promise you won’t know the difference. Now that I’m all grown up, I try not to use bolognese for everything, but it’s tempting because it’s perfect as a sauce for any type of pasta shape. MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART; SERVES 4 OVER A POUND OF PASTA AS A MAIN COURSE ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1 medium onion, minced 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 celery stalk, minced 1 carrot, peeled and minced 1 pound ground beef chuck 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 8 fresh basil leaves, chopped ½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste ¼ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese In a Large Skillet, heat the oil over a medium flame. When almost smoking, add the onion and garlic and sauté until the onion is very tender, about 8 minutes. Add the celery and carrot and sauté for 5 minutes. Increase the heat to high, add the ground beef, and sauté until the meat is no longer pink, breaking up any large lumps, about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, parsley, basil, and ½ teaspoon each of salt and pepper, and cook over medium-low heat until the sauce thickens, about 30 minutes. Stir in the cheese, then season with more salt and pepper to taste. (The sauce can be made 1 day ahead. Cool, then cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over medium heat before using.)  

Take me home. But this was home, Jace’s arms surrounding her, the cold wind of Alicante in their clothes, her fingers digging into the back of his neck, the place where his hair curled softly against the skin. His palms were still flat against the stone behind her, but he moved his body against hers, gently pressing her up against the wall; she could hear the harsh undertone of his breathing. He wouldn’t touch her with his hands, but she could touch him, and she let her hands go freely, over the swell of his arms, down to his chest, tracing the ridges of muscle, pressing outward to grip his sides until his T-shirt was rucking up under her fingers. Her fingertips touched bare skin, and then she was sliding her hands up under his shirt, and she hadn’t touched him like this in so long, had nearly forgotten how his skin was soft where it wasn’t scarred, how the muscles in his back jumped under her touch. He gasped into her mouth; he tasted like tea and chocolate and salt. She had taken control of the kiss. Now she felt him tense as he took it back, biting at her lower lip until she shuddered, nipping at the corner of her mouth, kissing along her jawbone to suck at the pulse point at her throat, swallowing her racing heartbeat. His skin burned under her hands, burned—

Stretching his legs toward the fire, Ranulf massaged his aching knee and watched the children as they ate their fill, probably for the first time in their lives. IT was Wednesday fast day, but he'd made a conscious decision to violate the prohibition against eating flesh; he could always do penance once he got back to his own world. Now it seemed more important to feed Simon and Jennet the best meal he could, and the innkeeper had served up heaping portions of salted pork, a thick pottage of peas and beans, and hot, flat cakes of newly baked bread, marked with Christ's Cross. To Ranulf, it was poor fare, and he ended up sharing most of it with Loth. But Simon and Jennet savored every mouthful, scorning spoons and scooping the food up with their fingers, as if expecting to have their trenchers snatched away at any moment. And Ranulf learned more than night about hunger and need than in all of his twenty-five years. What would become of them? How could they hope to reach Cantebrigge? And if by God's Grace, they somehow did, what if this uncle of their was not there? They'd never seen the man, knew only what their father had told them, that soon after Simon's birth, a peddler had brought them a message from Jonas, saying he'd settled in Cantebrigge. That confirmed Ranulf's suspicions: two brothers fleeing serfdom, one hiding out in the Fens, the other taking the bolder way, for an escaped villein could claim his freedom if he lived in a chartered borough for a year and a day. It was a pitiful family history, an unwanted glimpse into a world almost as alien to Ranulf as Cathay. But like it or not, he was caught up now in this hopeless odyssey of Abel the eelman's children. In an unusually morose and pessimistic mood, he wondered how many Simons and Jennets would be lost to the furies unleashed by Geoffrey the Mandeville's rebellion.

Phillipa and I had just returned to the kitchen with a full basket of these beautiful mushrooms. I held a dirt-encrusted one up to my nose, breathing in its earthy aromas, happy to have all of my senses back. "What do you want to do with these?" asked Phillipa. "Something traditional and simple so the flavor of the mushrooms isn't lost," I said. "Poêlée de cèpes à la bordelaise?" "Perfectly delicious," said Phillipa. "I'll scrub the beauties down and then grab the ingredients." "You remember what they are?" "Of course. Olive oil, butter, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, flat parsley, salt, and pepper," she said. "And I'm already drooling.

The name Erdosain gave to this mood of dreams and disquiet that led him to roam like a sleepwalker through the days was “the anguish zone”. He imagined this zone floating above cities, about two metres in the air, and pictured it graphically like an area of salt flats or deserts that are shown on maps by tiny dots, as dense as herring roe. This anguish zone was the product of mankind’s suffering. It slid from one place to the next like a cloud of poison gas, seeping through walls, passing straight through buildings, without ever losing its flat horizontal shape; a two-dimensional anguish that left an after-taste of tears in throats it sliced like a guillotine.

Now a strange mood took hold of me, as I walked silent and alone through the last of the pines and the cypress knees that seemed to float in the black water, the gray moss that coated everything. It was as if I traveled through the landscape with the sound of an expressive and intense aria playing in my ears. Everything was imbued with emotion, awash in it, and I was no longer a biologist but somehow the crest of a wave building and building but never crashing to shore. I saw with such new eyes the subtleties of the transition to the marsh, the salt flats. As the trail became a raised berm, dull, algae-choked lakes spread out to the right and a canal flanked it to the left. Rough channels of water meandered out in a maze through a forest of reeds on the canal side, and islands, oases of wind-contorted trees, appeared in the distance like sudden revelations. The stooped and blackened appearance of these trees was shocking against the vast and shimmering gold-brown of the reeds. The strange quality of the light upon this habitat, the stillness of it all, the sense of waiting, brought me halfway to a kind of ecstasy.

Grumpy Cutter’s Flaky Square Buttermilk Biscuits 3 cups of all-purpose flour 2 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp salt 4 tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda 2 sticks of butter, frozen (16 Tbsps) 1½ cups of buttermilk Preheat oven to 400°F. Prepare a baking sheet with a light spray of oil or cover with parchment. In a bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda. Grate the two sticks of butter and add to the dry ingredient mixture. Gently combine until the butter particles are coated. Next add the buttermilk and briefly fold it in. Transfer this dough to a floured spot for rolling and folding. Shape the dough into a square; then roll it out into a larger rectangle. Fold by hand into thirds using a bench scraper. Press the dough to seal it. Use the bench scraper to help shape the dough into flat edges. Turn it 90 degrees and repeat the process of rolling it out to a bigger rectangle and shaping it again. Repeat this process for a total of five times. The dough will become smoother as you go. After the last fold, and if time allows, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Otherwise, cut the remaining dough into squares and place 1 inch apart on the baking sheet. Brush the tops with melted butter. Bake at 400°F for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool on a rack before serving—if you can wait that long. Tips to remember: • A buttermilk substitute can be made by adding one teaspoon vinegar to one and a half cups regular milk and letting it stand for a few minutes. • Handle the dough lightly—don’t overwork it. • Freeze the butter. It makes it easier to grate and distribute it throughout the dough. • For the very best results, your bowl and other utensils should be cold. • Rolling and folding the dough 5 times produces the flaky layers—again, don’t get too heavy handed. • Shaping the dough into a square and cutting it into squares avoids waste and rerolling (and overworking) the scraps. • If time allows, let the dough rest for 30 minutes wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge before you cut into squares. This helps them rise tall in the oven without slumping or sliding. Makes about a dozen biscuits.

Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

Her two long braids hung over her shoulders as black as ink, and her face was as flat as a dish and almost perfectly round. Pearl-faced, they call it where she came from, but piggish is what they called it here.

All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone Take my bones, I don’t need none Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on Suck all day on a cherry stone Dig a little hole not three inches round Spit your pit in a hole in the ground Weep upon the spot for the starving of me ‘Til up grows a fine young cherry tree When the bough breaks what’ll you make for me A little willow cabin to rest on your knee What’ll I do with a trinket such as this? Think of your woman who’s gone to the west But I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed Then I’ll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head Come across the desert with no shoes on I love you truly or I love no one

These long flat marshes have nothing beautiful in them. The sea is not here what it is on other coasts, foaming, colour-shifting like a peacock's neck; here it is of one tone and grey, and never tosses in waves, but creeps in like a thief over the shallow mud-flat, and babbles like a dotard over the mean shells and clots of weed on our strand. There is nothing worth seeing here.

TOPPING 1 cup (lightly packed) fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves 2 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely crushed 2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced 4 slices good white bread (4 ounces) 2 tablespoons good olive oil About ⅓ cup water Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Rub the leg of lamb with the butter, and sprinkle it with the salt and pepper. Place in a roasting pan top side up, and bake for 20 minutes. FOR THE TOPPING: Meanwhile, put the parsley, garlic, shallots, and bread into a food processor, and process just enough to finely chop all the ingredients, or chop them by hand. Transfer to a bowl, and mix in the olive oil, gently tossing it with the other topping ingredients until the bread mixture is coated. (This will help hold the topping together on the roast, and the oil makes the bread crumbs brown beautifully.) After the lamb has baked for 20 minutes, tilt the pan, and use the fat that collects on one side to baste the lamb. Pat the crumb mixture gently but firmly over the top and sides of the lamb to make it adhere. Return the lamb to the oven, and reduce the heat to 400 degrees. Cook for another 30 minutes or so, or until the internal temperature registers 125 to 130 degrees for medium-rare meat. Transfer the lamb to an ovenproof platter, and keep it warm in a 150-degree oven. It should rest for 15 to 20 minutes before carving. Meanwhile, pour the water into the pan, and stir well with a wooden spatula to melt the solidified juices and mix the water with the drippings. Slice the lamb and serve it with these natural juices.

Try to fancy poor Jesus, for example, coming to life again (actually, not doctrinally), and learning that he was the founder, the teacher, the exemplar, the very God of Christendom; fancy him searching for some trait of his own life and ruling principles in the lives and ruling principles of the millions who call themselves Christians; fancy him in spiritual communion with the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops (though their lackeys would never admit him to the presence of any of these), the most prominent ministers of the various Christian sects. He would find himself an outcast in his nominal kingdom, denounced and reviled as a madman, an idiot, an impostor; the moral and intellectual life of Christendom would be as alien and bewildering to him as its steamboats and railways and telegraphs. Paul and the other early apostles, the ancient heathenisms of Greece and Rome, of the East and the West, old philosophies and older superstitions, national characteristics, physical and other circumstances, the growth of science, the ever-varying conditions of life and modes of thought; everything, in brief, affecting the character of the converts, has affected the religion. By the time a doctrine gets embodied in a Church or other institution, its original spirit has nearly vanished. Its progress may be well compared to the course of a great river, rivers being remarkably convenient things for all such analogies. Some remotest mountain–rill or rocky well–spring has the honour of being termed its source; and the name of this tiny trickling is borne triumphant down a thousand broadening leagues to the sea. The rill is soon joined by others, each very like itself. As it flows onward, ever descending (for this is the universal law), it is joined by streamlets and rivers more and more unlike itself, they having flowed through unlike soils and regions; and more than one may be greater than itself, as the Missouri is greater than the Mississippi; and its own original waters are more and more modified by the new and various districts they traverse. As it proceeds, growing deeper and wider, villages and towns arise on its banks, and it receives copious tribute not merely of natural streams, but likewise of sewage and the pestilent refuse abominations of manifold factories and wharves. When it is become a mighty river, crowded with ships and bordered by some wealthy and populous capital, it may be a mere open cloaca maxima; and at any rate it must be as dissimilar in the quality of its waters as in their quantity and surroundings from the pure rill of the mountain solitudes, from the pure brook of the woodland shadows and pastoral peace. The waters actually from the fountain-head are but an insignificant drop in the vast and composite volumes of the thick bronze or yellow flood which finally disembogues through fat flat lowlands, in several devious channels with broad stretches of marsh and lagoon, into the immense purifying laboratory of the untainted salt sea. The remote rill-source is Christ or Mohammed, the mighty river is the Christian or Mohammedan Church; the sea in all cases is the encompassing ocean of death and oblivion, which makes life possible by preserving the earth from putrefaction.

1930s Functionalism/Modernism Exterior •Facade: Cube shapes and light-color plaster facades, or thin, standing wood panels. •Roof: Flat roof, sometimes clad in copper or sheet metal. •Windows: Long horizontal window bands often with narrow—or no—architraves; large panes of glass without mullions or transoms. Emphasis on the horizontal rather than on the vertical. Windows run around corners to allow more light and to demonstrate the new possibilities of construction and materials. •Outside door: Wooden door with circular glass window. •Typical period details: Houses positioned on plots to allow maximum access to daylight. Curving balconies, often running around the corner; corrugated-iron balcony frontage. Balcony flooring and fixings left visible. The lines of the building are emphasized. Interior •Floors: Parquet flooring in various patterns, tongue-and-groove floorboards, or linoleum. •Interior doors: Sliding doors and flush doors of lamella construction (vaulted, with a crisscross pattern). Masonite had a breakthrough. •Door handles: Black Bakelite, wood, or chrome. •Fireplaces: Slightly curved, brick/stone built. Light-color cement. •Wallpaper/walls: Smooth internal walls and light wallpapers, or mural wallpaper that from a distance resembled a rough, plastered wall. Internal wall and woodwork were light in color but rarely completely white—often muted pastel shades. •Furniture: Functionalism, Bauhaus, and International style influences. Tubular metal furniture, linear forms. Bakelite, chrome, stainless steel, colored glass. •Bathroom: Bathrooms were simple and had most of today’s features. External pipework. Usually smooth white tiles on the walls or painted plywood. Black-and-white chessboard floor. Lavatories with low cisterns were introduced. •Kitchen: Flush cupboard doors with a slightly rounded profile. The doors were partial insets so that only about a third of the thickness was visible on the outside—this gave them a light look and feel. Metal-sprung door latches, simple knobs, metal cup handles on drawers. Wall cabinets went to ceiling height but had a bottom section with smaller or sliding doors. Storage racks with glass containers for dry goods such as salt and flour became popular. Air vents were provided to deal with cooking smells.

LaForche for his standing, understood Christina’s seditious intents, and for that, he monitored and hated the rude Vixen of Woe. Innumerable times they had quarresquabbled, sometimes very loudly, both during and after class. Christina’s wit, as fast as her blade, for the most part won the scathingly bitter, single-edged dialogues, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of LaForche. It was no big secret that trying to deal with his Anti-Mr. Spock logic was like trying to cross a baking salt-flat desert mid-summer with nothing to drink or eat except stale crackers and a big jar of out-dated defunct Peter Pan peanut butter, its original “crunch” now being only pasty sand mouth goo. She often asked herself how could you argue against no mind. It was an unassuming study in stupility to say the least. —Christina Brickley, The Lady and the Samurai

INGREDIENTS 2½ cups stone ground whole wheat flour 1½ cups white flour (some bakers use whole wheat again) ½ cup rolled oats 1½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1¾ cups buttermilk 2 Tablespoons molasses or treacle (optional, but Siobhán uses it) Siobhán even splashes in some Guinness for luck. In a large bowl, combine all flour, oats, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and molasses. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the buttermilk mixture. (Add a drop of Guinness for good luck.) Stir with a fork or spatula until combined. Cover your hands with flour and knead the dough into a ball. Place the dough ball on a lined baking sheet and press it flat, a few inches thick. With a knife, make a cross on top of the loaf. Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes. Then reduce to 400°F and bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes, until the bottom of the bread sounds hollow when tapped. Note: I once asked an Irish woman for her brown bread recipe. She let me know that recipes are handed down, not out. So I pushed my luck and asked how hers was so soft. She relented on this and suggested longer baking times at lower heat, that is, 180 degrees for one hour.

2 large chayotes 1 brown-skinned yellow onion 2 tbsp. butter 1 cup stewed tomatoes, drained ¼ tsp. Mexican oregano Pinch of ground cloves Pinch of garlic powder Salt Freshly ground black pepper ½ lb. ground beef ½ tsp. taco seasoning mix Grated Parmesan cheese Cut the chayotes in half lengthwise. Remove the thin, flat seeds and boil the halves until tender, about ½ hour. Then scoop out the pulp, leaving the shells intact for stuffing. Chop the onion and cook in 1 tablespoon butter. Add the tomatoes and sprinkle with oregano, cloves, garlic powder, salt to taste, and pepper. Stir in the chopped chayote pulp. Brown the ground beef in 1 tablespoon butter and season with a little salt, pepper, and the taco seasoning mix. Combine the beef with the vegetables and heap the shells with this mixture. Sprinkle generously with grated cheese and bake at 350° for ½ hour. Serves 4.

The whole set of stylizations that are known as 'camp' (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about 'camp' is that it has become fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, 'Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag.' Perhaps 'camp' is set in the 'twenties because after that differences between the sexes—especially visible differences—began to fade. This, of course, has never mattered to women in the least. They know they are women. To homosexuals, who must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine, it is frustrating. They look back in sorrow to that more formal era and try to re-live it. The whole structure of society was at that time much more rigid than it has ever been since, and in two main ways. The first of these was sexual. The short skirts, bobbed hair and flat chests that were in fashion were in fact symbols of immaturity. No one ever drew attention to this, presumably out of politeness. The word 'boyish' was used to describe the girls of that era. This epithet they accepted graciously. They knew that they looked nothing like boys. They also realized that it was meant to be a compliment. Manliness was all the rage. The men of the 'twenties searched themselves for vestiges of effeminacy as though for lice. They did not worry about their characters but about their hair and their clothes. Their predicament was that they must never be caught worrying about either. I once heard a slightly dandified friend of my brother say, 'People are always accusing me of taking care over my appearance.' The sexual meaning of behaviour was only sketchily understood, but the symbolism of clothes was recognized by everyone. To wear suede shoes was to be under suspicion. Anyone who had hair rather than bristle at the back of his neck was thought to be an artist, a foreigner or worse. A friend of mine who was young in the same decade as I says that, when he was introduced to an elderly gentleman as an artist, the gentleman said, 'Oh, I know this young man is an artist. The other day I saw him in the street in a brown jacket.' The other way in which society in the 'twenties was rigid was in its class distinctions. Doubtless to a sociologist there were many different strata merging here and there but, among the people that I was now getting to know, there were only two classes. They never mingled except in bed. There was 'them', who acted refined and spoke nice and whose people had pots of money, and there was 'us', who were the salt of the earth.

Tina, who clearly had it in mind to dazzle her new husband in the kitchen, wanted desperately to learn the secrets of Angelina's red gravy. So they picked a Sunday afternoon soon after New Year's and Angelina hauled out her mother's old sausage grinder and stuffer. Gia had volunteered to make the trip to the butcher's shop and brought back good hog casings, a few pounds of beautifully marbled pork butt and shoulder glistening with clean, white fat, and a four-pound beef chuck roast. It wasn't every that the grinder came out for fresh homemade sausages and meatballs, but it wasn't every day that Gia and Angelina teamed up to pass on the Mother Recipe to the next generation. Gia patiently instructed Tina on the proper technique for flushing and preparing the casings, then set them aside while Angelina showed her how to build the sauce: start with white onion, fresh flat-leaf parsley, and deep red, extra-sweet frying peppers; add copious amounts of garlic (chopped not so finely); season with sea salt, crushed red pepper, and freshly ground black pepper; simmer and sweat on a medium flame in good olive oil; generously sprinkle with dried herbs from the garden (palmfuls of oregano, rosemary, and basil); follow with a big dollop of thick, rich tomato paste; cook down some more until all of the ingredients were completely combined; pour in big cans of fresh-packed crushed tomatoes and a cup of red wine (preferably a Sangiovese or a Barolo); reseason, finish with fresh herbs; bring to a high simmer, then down to a low flame; walk away.

Snacks at sleepovers are a must. Try this one next time your parents forget to stock the snack cupboard. Supplies: brown paper lunch bag stapler measuring cup microwave Ingredients: ¼ cup popcorn kernels 2 tbsp brown sugar 2 tbsp chocolate chips 2 tbsp butter or margarine pinch of salt Pour the popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag then fold the top of the bag ¼ of an inch, twice. Secure two staples (trust me, I Googled it!) at the folded part to seal the bag shut. Lay the bag flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for about 1:45 (one minute and forty-five seconds, people!). Each microwave is different, though, so you may need to adjust the time. Meanwhile, add the brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter/margarine and salt to a microwave-safe measuring cup. Cook on HIGH for about 15 seconds or until the gooey buttery-chocolaty mixture is melted. Mix well with a fork then pour it over the popcorn. Toss like a salad and ENJOY!

LENTILS WITH SAUSAGES { LENTILLES AUX SAUCISSES } My friend Fabienne makes this dish at the drop of a hat, because it’s quick, simple, satisfying, and delicious! Traditional vegetables in a dish like this are carrots, celery, onions, and perhaps fennel, which make it so flavorful. Sometimes it’s fun to go a bit wild, though, as Fabienne says. “I use red bell pepper,” she said. “It gives the dish exciting color and flavor.” Whichever vegetables you use, be sure to dice them so they blend in nicely. This calls for a hearty red, from Cahors. NOTE: You need delicious pork for this recipe. I’ve suggested kielbasa and slab bacon; use pork belly or unsmoked bacon, salt pork that you’ve boiled in fresh water twice first, or fresh pork sausages. 1 tablespoon duck fat or extra-virgin olive oil 2 medium onions, diced 1 small red bell pepper, seeds and pith removed Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 large clove garlic, green germ removed, minced 1 cup (250g) green lentils (ideally lentilles de Puy), picked over for small stones, rinsed 1 bouquet garni 1 (8-ounce; 250g) Morteau or kielbasa, cut into ½-inch (1.2cm) rounds 2 to 3 fresh sausages (about 8 ounces; 250g total), cut into 2-inch (5cm) pieces 6 ounces (180g) lean slab bacon, cut into 1-inch (2.5cm) chunks Fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish Grainy mustard, for serving Melt the duck fat in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and bell pepper and stir. Season with salt and black pepper and cook until the onions are translucent, stirring frequently so they don’t stick, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and stir. Add the lentils, stir, and add water to cover them by 1 inch (2.5cm). Add the bouquet garni, pushing it under the water. Raise the heat to medium-high and when the water boils, reduce the heat to medium so it is simmering, partially cover, and cook until the lentils begin to soften, about 15 minutes. Add the meats, pushing them into the lentils, and additional water if necessary to make sure that the lentils are moist. Return the liquid to a boil, then reduce the heat to maintain a simmer and cook, partially covered, until the lentils are “al dente” and not too soft, 15 to 20 minutes more. Remove from the heat and ladle into four shallow soup bowls. Garnish with a generous grind of black pepper and a parsley leaf. Serve immediately with the mustard alongside. SERVES 4

8 ounces (250g) salmon fillet, bones removed 8 ounces (250g) firm white fish fillet, such as lingcod, snapper, tilapia, bones removed 8 ounces (250g) halibut or other delicate white fish, bones removed ¼ cup (about 3g) fresh tarragon leaves, minced Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 shallots, sliced paper-thin 2 medium radishes, cut into paper-thin rounds 1 generous tablespoon unsalted butter, cut in 4 equal pieces Fleur de sel, for garnish Rinse the fish and cut each piece on the bias into four even pieces so that they are flat rather than chunky. This will allow them to cook more evenly. Refrigerate. Preheat the oven to 450°F (225°C) and position a rack in the center. Cut four pieces of parchment paper that measure about 12 by 6 inches (30.5 by 15.24cm). Cut four pieces of aluminum foil that measure about 18 by 11½ inches (45.7 by 29cm). Place the parchment in the center of the foil. Arrange one piece of each fish in the center of the parchment paper, arranging them so they are touching but not overlapping, in a sort of flower pattern. Season generously with salt and pepper. Top each with equal amounts of shallots and radishes, then sprinkle with tarragon. Season again with salt and pepper, and set a piece of butter on top. Bring the foil and the parchment together above the fish and gently twist so it makes a closed packet. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. Place the packets on a baking sheet, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the fish is opaque through. (You may need to check by removing one of the packets from the oven and deftly opening it to see if the fish is cooked. If just about, but not quite, cooked, give the aluminum a twist and let the packets sit while you call everyone to the table for dinner. If not cooked at all—doubtful—return to the oven for 3 to 5 minutes.) Remove the packets from the oven, immediately remove them from the baking sheet, and open them. Assemble your plates, giving the fish a few minutes to sit, then carefully remove the fish and vegetables from the packets with a slotted spatula, and place them in the center of a warmed dinner plate. Drizzle with a bit of cooking juices, season with fleur de sel, and serve. Don’t serve the packets at the table—it ends up being complicated for the diner, because they have to figure out what to do with a pile of paper and aluminum foil on their plates. SERVES 4

she caught a glimpse of flat, tan abdomen, and suddenly she didn’t need coffee. She needed smelling salts.

Variations on a Summer Day" I Say of the gulls that they are flying In light blue air over dark blue sea. II A music more than a breath, but less Than the wind, sub-music like sub-speech, A repetition of unconscious things, Letters of rock and water, words Of the visible elements and of ours. III The rocks of the cliffs are the heads of dogs That turn into fishes and leap Into the sea. IV Star over Monhegan, Atlantic star, Lantern without a bearer, you drift, You, too, are drifting, in spite of your course; Unless in the darkness, brightly-crowned You are the will, if there is a will, Or the portent of a will that was, One of the portents of the will that was. V The leaves of the sea are shaken and shaken. There was a tree that was a father. We sat beneath it and sang our songs. VI It is cold to be forever young, To come to tragic shores and flow, In sapphire, round the sun-bleached stones, Being, for old men, time of their time. VII One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guineas, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent. VIII An exercise in viewing the world. On the motive! But one looks at the sea As one improvises, on the piano. IX This cloudy world, by aid of land and sea, Night and day, wind and quiet, produces More nights, more days, more clouds, more worlds. X To change nature, not merely to change ideas, To escape from the body, so to feel Those feelings that the body balks, The feelings of the natures round us here: As a boat feels when it cuts blue water. XI Now, the timothy at Pemaquid That rolled in heat is silver-tipped And cold. The moon follows the sun like a French Translation of a Russian poet. XII Everywhere the spruce trees bury soldiers: Hugh March, a sergeant, a redcoat, killed, With his men, beyond the barbican. Everywhere spruce trees bury spruce trees. XIII Cover the sea with the sand rose. Fill The sky with the radiantiana Of spray. Let all the salt be gone. XIV Words add to the senses. The words for the dazzle Of mica, the dithering of grass, The Arachne integument of dead trees, Are the eye grown larger, more intense. XV The last island and its inhabitant, The two alike, distinguish blues, Until the difference between air And sea exists by grace alone, In objects, as white this, white that. XVI Round and round goes the bell of the water And round and round goes the water itself And that which is the pitch of its motion, The bell of its dome, the patron of sound. XVII Pass through the door and through the walls, Those bearing balsam, its field fragrance, Pine-figures bringing sleep to sleep. XVIII Low tide, flat water, sultry sun. One observes profoundest shadows rolling. Damariscotta dada doo. XIX One boy swims under a tub, one sits On top. Hurroo, the man-boat comes, In a man-makenesse, neater than Naples. XX You could almost see the brass on her gleaming, Not quite. The mist was to light what red Is to fire. And her mainmast tapered to nothing, Without teetering a millimeter's measure. The beads on her rails seemed to grasp at transparence. It was not yet the hour to be dauntlessly leaping.

CHIMICHURRI SAUCE With a knife or food processor finely chop a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, an entire head of peeled garlic, and one medium carrot. Add olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt, dried oregano, hot pepper flakes, and black pepper, and chop or pulse into a thick sauce. Best served fresh.

Schiacciata (Tuscan flat bread) This recipe will make 2-3 cookie sheets of schiacciata (skee-ah-CHA-ta). You can halve it if you would like less. But it’s so yummy, why would you want to? The dough will keep in the fridge for up 5 days, so make a full recipe and have some now and later.   1 c. Warm water 1 t. Honey 2 t. Yeast   2 c. Warm water 1 T. Salt or garlic salt (I opt for the non-traditional garlic salt.) 4 T. Extra-virgin olive oil 6-8 c. White bread flour Additional olive oil and salt for baking   Proof the yeast in the cup of warm water and honey. Mix with the rest of the ingredients, adding enough flour to make a nice bread dough (just slightly tacky). Knead for five minutes (preferably in a mixer with a dough hook, though you can obvious do this by hand). Let sit for five minutes. Knead for another five minutes until you have a smooth dough. At this point, you can proof the dough until it doubles in size. Or you can put it in the fridge overnight and let it slow proof. In either case, it will take longer than normal to rise, given the low amount of yeast in this recipe. Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down and divide it into 2 or 3 equal size balls. Coat a cookie sheet with 1-2 T. olive oil. Roll each ball out into a thin layer about 1/4” thick (if you can). This can be frustrating, because the dough will be super elastic and will resist being rolled out. I find it best to roll it out on a lightly floured surface and let the dough sit stretched-out for several minutes before transferring it to a cookie sheet for baking. Drizzle the top with another 1-2 T. olive oil. Let the dough rise until a little puffy. Taking all 10 fingers, press firmly into the top of the dough, pushing all the way down to the pan. Make finger-sized holes every inch or two over the surface. Sprinkle the top with a light dusting of salt or garlic salt (this is optional and go light on it). Bake @ 400 degrees (preferably convection bake, if you have it) for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Buon appetito!

celeriac and sausage hash prep time: 15 minutes cooking time: 20 minutes yield: 4 servings Celeriac, or celery root, is a fascinating potato substitute and works especially well in breakfast dishes. A hash is a substantial way to start off your day, and you can make it even more substantial by topping each portion with a fried egg. ingredients 1 tablespoon coconut oil or ghee 2 cups celeriac, trimmed of roots, peeled, and cubed ½ pound breakfast sausage, crumbled (see here or store-bought) ¾ cup finely diced carrots ¼ cup minced yellow onion ¾ cup finely diced zucchini ½ cup chopped cremini mushrooms 1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary ¼ teaspoon sea salt Cracked black pepper to taste method Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Place the celeriac in the skillet and cook for 5 minutes. Add the sausage, carrots, and onion. Continue cooking for 10 minutes, or until the meat is cooked through and the vegetables have softened. Add the remaining ingredients and cook for 6 to 8 minutes longer, or until the mushrooms and zucchini are tender.   tidbits: To trim and peel a celery root, first slice the bottom off so that there is a flat surface to place on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, cut the peel and roots off in strips, from top to bottom. If the celeriac is somewhat smooth, a vegetable peeler will also work.  

poultry and seafood. Juice of ½ lemon 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, or ¾ teaspoon dried 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (preferably flat-leaf) 1 clove garlic, minced ⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon any vegetable oil Salt and freshly ground pepper 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice, dill, parsley, and garlic. Whisk to mix well. Slowly add the oil while whisking, and continue whisking until the mixture is emulsified. Or combine the ingredients in a jar and blend with a hand blender. Add salt and pepper

RUSTIC TOMATO SAUCE WITHOUT ANY BITTERNESS People go to too much trouble to chop things fine. It’s also not necessary to oil the pan for fresh tomatoes. Let the food keep its own character. 6 pounds beefsteak or heirloom tomatoes 4 star anise pods 1 vanilla pod sea salt & cracked black pepper to season white sugar—a pinch, if needed 2 sprigs of fresh thyme 1–2 bay leaves Infusion fresh garlic one bunch fresh basil extra virgin olive oil Heat a heavy gauge pan. Place a heavy cast iron pan to heat up on the rangetop. Wash the tomatoes and cut into rough halves or quarters. Place into the hot pan and season with salt, pepper and a touch of sugar. Add the anise and vanilla. As the tomatoes start to cook, press them gently with a masher to release their juice. Reduce the heat to a simmer and slowly cook to a thickened paste. This should take 1–2 hours. The slow evaporation of moisture will produce a deep flavor without any bitterness. Meanwhile, prepare the infusion. Warm the olive oil in a pan. Crack the garlic with the flat of a knife and add along with the basil. Combine with the warm tomatoes and finish with a good amount of oil. Serve over pasta or bread, with a grating of cheese on top.

Momma’s Recipe Upside Down Peach Cake Ingredients 3/4 cup butter, softened 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 Fresh sliced peaches 3/4 cup white sugar 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla 1 1/4 cups flour 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup 1% milk Directions Melt 1/4 of the butter and pour into a cake pan. Sprinkle with the brown sugar and arrange peaches flat in the brown sugar. In a separate bowl, mix the white sugar and remaining butter until fluffy. Add in egg, vanilla, flour, baking powder, salt and milk. When well mixed, pour over peaches. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Let cake cool and flip in pan onto a cooling rack. Serve immediately. About the Author

225 g butter, at room temperature [16 tablespoons (2 sticks)] 250 g granulated sugar [1¼ cups] 150 g light brown sugar [¼ cup tightly packed] 1 egg 2 g vanilla extract [½ teaspoon] 240 g flour [1½ cups] 2 g baking powder [½ teaspoon] 1.5 g baking soda [¼ teaspoon] 5 g kosher salt [1¼ teaspoons] ¾ recipe Cornflake Crunch [270 g (3 cups)] 125 g mini chocolate chips [¼ cup] 65 g mini marshmallows [1¼ cups] 1. Combine the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg and vanilla, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes. (See notes on this process.) 2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. (Do not walk away from the machine during this step, or you will risk overmixing the dough.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. 3. Still on low speed, paddle in the cornflake crunch and mini chocolate chips just until they’re incorporated, no more than 30 to 45 seconds. Paddle in the mini marshmallows just until incorporated. 4. Using a 2¾-ounce ice cream scoop (or a ⅓-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature—they will not hold their shape. 5. Heat the oven to 375°F. 6. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. At the 18-minute mark, the cookies should be

The house opened up in every direction. A cream-colored, leather, sectional sofa and a flat-screened plasma TV taller than she was filled the left. To the right, a grand dining room boasted a polished oak table so long that if people sat at each end, they'd need cell phones to say, "Pass the salt.

Apparently, none of the other people on the expedition had bothered to wear proper clothing, because they knew nothing about the climate they were invading.  Tandy would have told them, but informing them that they were idiots who would soon be burning in the harsh Wasteland sun while simultaneously being frozen in the constant freezing wind, would have been seen as her flaunting her knowledge. Which wouldn’t be good. To be frank, it was simply safer for her to let them suffer. So she told them nothing. She planned to quietly blend into the background as they died from exposure on the salt flats.