It doesn't seem to matter what I give the Earth - discarded knobs and knuckles of bone from our table, cucumber peels, broken eggshells, or used coffee grounds that look and feel like the black sand of Kailua-Kona, even invisible and toxic things, such as fears that swirl through my brain synapses - whatever little deaths I dump into Her lap, She absorbs them.
Some days, understandably, She explodes in a torrent of wind or water, or fire borrowed from the Sun. But reguarly what She returns is purified, through some filigree filter (think mycelium and earthworms) that cleans up what I give thoughtlessly. She gives back another day of Life.
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Postscript: To answer Ann, we have a hard time letting our tomatoes ripen, because we pick them green and Don fries them. Mmm, fried green tomatoes - a little tart, very savory, crisp outside and tender inside.
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Chef Don's Recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes (for Judy and y'all):
Slice green tomatoes about 3/8" thick. Pour some milk in a shallow dish. Place flour in a bag (some use cornmeal, or breadcrumbs; we prefer flour).
Cover the bottom of a fry skillet with olive oil and heat over med-high (on the low side of med-high) heat. Add 1 T. butter.
Dip tomato slices in milk, then dredge in flour and place in hot oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. If heat is too high, tomatoes will brown but the center will be raw. Tomatoes should cook 5-7 minutes per side. When you see oil bubbling through holes near the edges of the tomatoes, lift the slice to see if it is brown. Flip when brown on first side and brown the second side. Enjoy, my friends, enjoy.
- - -- Finally, after years of intending to make a home cleaner from natural stuff, I did it. None of the recipes had allured enough to push me past lethargy until Design Sponge shared this one (I've posted my version below). Read here some of the disturbing reasons you should consider it too, such as the fact that 17,000 petrochemicals have been approved for home use, but only 30% of those have been tested for impact on humans, and that the average American home has 10 gallons of harmful chemicals hiding in cabinets and drawers.
There are many things to like about this recipe, but the best for me is adding my favorite scents with essential oils.
Homemade All-Purpose Spray
Ingredients (I bought them all at a health food store, except the empty spray bottle, which I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond):
30-45 drops Essential Oil of choice - I used 15 rosemary drops and 15 spearmint, then I added 15 drops of lavender to rise above the smell of the vinegar (other choices include lemongrass, lemon verbena, clove, cinnamon, anise, sage, grapefruit, lemon, and lime)
Mixing:
Place all ingredients into the spray bottle using a funnel or measuring cup with a spout.
Add water until contents reach top of bottle.
Shake vigorously and clean with pleasure!
I can still smell the tea tree oil on my fingers (I had to be sure it was coming out of the dropper). Tea tree oil is also known as melaleuca oil, something that was in Australian soldiers' first aid kids in WWI for its natural antiseptic properties.
With an initial investment of over $30 in the various bottles of stuff, I thought this homemade cleaner might be more costly than a ready bottle of GreenWorks natural all purpose cleaner, but I was willing to pay extra. When Don and I calculated the cost (by the way, apparently there are 600 "drops" in one fluid ounce), we discovered it was only $2.13 total for 32 ounces. (Compare: GreenWorks $3.39/32 oz.)
Squeaky, streakless. I've just increased my chances of becoming a clean freak.
*Castile soap alone is a profound discovery for its simplicity and pure, gentle cleaning qualities.
I haven't seen "Julie & Julia" yet - the new movie about chef Julia Child and Julie Powell - and I think I need to, but I was thinking about two other movie women recently: Juliette & Julia.
Don and I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" a couple weeks past, and we were sure the daughter of Cate Blanchett's character was played by Juliette Binoche, which just shows that even an earnest fan like me can mix these two up. It was in fact Julia Ormond who played Caroline in Benjamin Button, of course. Well, can you blame me for mixing up two brunettes with chiseled cheekbones, dark eyes and names that sound similar? I mean, they were even born less than a year apart - Juliette in 1964 (March 9) and Julia in 1965 (January 4).
Two of my all time favorite characters in the movies are Binoche's Hana in "The English Patient" and Ormond's "Sabrina" in the revisit of Audrey Hepburn's 1954 role. These two movies, like the actresses, are also one year apart - 1996 and 1995 respectively. One reason they are favorites is because I'm a Francophile, and Sabrina goes to Paris to study photography, while Binoche is just, well, French. If I were an adolescent again mimicking actresses, these are the ones I'd want to see looking back in the mirror with their eager and eternal eyes. (I didn't mean to alliterate that.)
Both films are about women growing up. Sabrina is the chauffeur's daughter in love with the prodigal prince of the estate, David. She is viewed with class prejudice by David's older and steadier brother Linus, the way Mr. Darcy and his rich aunt viewed Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice. The pain she suffers in this romantic comedy starts in unrequited love as a teenager and develops into downright rejection for her station in life even after becoming a respectable career woman. In "The English Patient," Hana is an army nurse surrounded by death and injury, including her dearest loved ones. The dying burn patient she sequesters in an abandoned convent is upper class like David and Linus, a Hungarian Count. She is the listener to the patient's stories as he flashes back to before his accident. He educates her:
PATIENT: Heroditus is the father of history, did you know that? HANA: I don't know anything. (She says this as she is peeling a plum to feed him, like a mother bird.)
It is an old fashioned theme - the feminine innocent being taught and shaped by wiser, more powerful male players, either in the male stratosphere of high finance in "Sabrina" or in the bloody fields of men's war in "The English Patient." Sabrina and Hana are written and played by Ormond and Binoche as modern women who make their own choices within the limits and flaws of a world that has been conceived for millennia by men. And more than that, just like Florence Nightingale who scrapped a life of wealth and ease to nurse the poor and helpless, there is a sense that these two want to transform the damage they find with their simple touch.
When Linus asks Sabrina where she got her name, she tells him her father found it in a poem:
"Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, in twisted braids of lilies knitting the loose train of thy amber-dropping hair."
Linus asks, "So, your little poem...what does it mean?"
Sabrina replies, "It's the story of a watersprite who saves a virgin from a fate worse than death."
Linus: "And Sabrina is the virgin?"
Sabrina: "Sabrina is the saviour."
Here is a music video of Sting singing "Moonlight" from "Sabrina."
- - Oh I loved my birthday weekend, thank you so much for the wishes you sent, which started it off very happily. I meant to write in that last post that the mercies around me are as plentiful as acorns, but it came off sounding as if I love acorns. Ha, well among other things I do love them . . .
It is also a terrific pleasure when three people can talk and laugh and there is still a balance, like when you step into a boat that sits so gently and alone on calm water but you are certain when you get in it will not let you remain standing long enough to sit properly, but it does. Then when three of you manage to get in, stay in the boat, stay afloat and even skim across the water, there is an ease that surrounds you.
I didn't know I would need this time away with friends before embarking on a new fall semester of university activity. But I did, and the post-wedding restlessness I felt has settled. I am ready for a new school year. (Please remind me of this in a few weeks.) I feel a sense of composure returning, as if there are forty feet of cool, still, fresh water under me the way there are in our pretty lake. - -
Friends, forgive a slight delay responding to your gracious comments and reading your newest posts. I will be romping in the oak trees at the lake cottage for a few days with friends, very nice friends who are driving hours and hours to be together. It happens to be my birthday weekend (which you might guess from my URL), and I am taking stock of the many mercies around me like acorns. - -
The light red ones are tart and mouthwatering with sugar in pie. The dark ones are sweet - a delectable snack. A lock box waits for payment in the honor system. We drove up North for the day Sunday, looking for good things.
Michigan produces 80% of the world's tart cherries. That little finger (Mission Peninsula) in the yellow circle is where we spent the day Sunday after a three hour drive north from the farm.
