one of those nights

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Today was one of those days.  Just an hour to two too long.  You really need some good food to get your groove back, but there’s not much at home, and being 830pm and living in a “trendy” part of town–you probably shouldn’t be biking about alone (it’s not quite to super-bike-friendly territory here yet).  So you go home.  and there are plenty of trashy tv shows on DVR.  but you really need something delicious for your belly.

so you pull out peanut soup.  which starts with onions and butter (nothing smells better.  nothing).

Peanut Soup (based on, or stolen from, Colonial Williamsburg’s King’s Arms Tavern)

¼ c butter

1 finely chopped onion

2 ribs celery, finely chopped

2 T flour

8 c chicken stock

2 c peanut butter

1 ¾ c cream

peanuts

In a large saucepan or soup pot over medium heat, melt ¼ c butter.  Add 1 finely chopped medium onion and two ribs of celery, finely chopped.  Cook, stirring often, 3-5 minutes, stir in 2 T flour, cook 2 minutes, pour into 8 c chicken stock, bring to boil.  Reduce to medium and stir often till thickened and reduced, about 15 minutes.  Blend with immersion blender.  Whisk in 2 c peanut butter and 1 ¾ c cream.  Cook 5 minutes, do not boil.  Serve warm, garnished with peanuts.

 

I only had a splash of cream, but to me, it was just as good, if a bit less-thick.

NYC adventure

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high-stress situations test your mettle.  a trip to NYC with 10 kids is a big gulp.  my high-assessment orientation loves to test out my cajones and quick-thinking on the subway and throughout the city by myself (playing to my total aversion to being a “tourist”).  there’s no mistaking tourist-ness by dragging almost a dozen middle schoolers throughout Manhattan.  We worked at a local settlement house (on the Lower East Side, where we slept in a church’s basement), toured the Tenement Museum, and, as much as is possible with a 15-person group, wandered the city.

 

the experience afforded this view, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with our troupe.

 

Leaving Manhattan (well, coming in too, for that matter), we traveled by train up the Hudson, enjoying calming views for the two-hour commute.  I was thinking that I could get used to such travel.  Husband and I wonder where our next stage of life will take us.

 

Today’s the last day at work in Cooperstown, headed back to Durham tomorrow.  Playing Will Hoge on repeat.

 

 

 

in my bedside table, 8/9

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Some people keep whiskey in their bedside table, some keep the Bible–I have passed through both of those phases, and may very well pass through each again, but right now, there is something else that I need to have within arm’s reach.  Chocolate.  Not even the really good stuff (because, for some reason, when i need chocolate, the artisan offerings seem too pure, too sophisticated–too much of an adventure, and that is not why one keeps chocolate in a bedside table).  The combination of chocolate and caramel speaks loudly to me these days, and Cadbury’s humble version, available at CVS, is like the warm, familiar, comfortable hershey’s, with a little extra ooze.

sketching light

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i always had trouble with sketching in art class.  I was obsessed with lines.  lines connected things and outlined them and told me exactly where the boundaries of each and every thing was.  organization, separation, individuality.  this is how the world worked, right?  so, if this was how things were, why did my pictures look so dead?  i gave up on sketching.  i turned van gogh on my art-skill’s bum.  that is to say–i couldn’t quite get why my sketching of what i saw was so not what i saw, and so i stopped trying to see.

i tried again last week, i tried to sketch.  i remembered to really try to see just what was there.  only what met my eyes.  after a long, long year of patience and pain and growth, i was ready to sketch again–the only thing i saw was light.  more light, less light, brighter and darker and light-parts crossing dark-parts–i realized when i was sitting in the park yesterday that everything we see is all about light.  remember in biology class how we learned about those “cones” in your retina?  how they sensed color by the specific frequency of the light waves?  or something like that…  the point, of course, is that what we see is completely dependent on varying frequencies and amounts of light.

and then it dawned on me that God is described as “light” in certain places–or at least is described as the source of all light and the ultimate light.  So everything in the world depends on God for its existence, for us to see it (not to say that only those things which we see are in existence).