Scenic Lake Michigan | Close to the Ground: Living Inductively

Right now here in Arlington, VA, Accuweather claims it is 34 degrees (feeling like 22) with maybe some flurries in a bit. It’s windy, too and I don’t think I will make it outside today. Still, that’s nothing like the Polar Vortex millions are experiencing in the Midwest and Great Lakes states.

I am thinking of my dear ones in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I wish I could make them soup and bread and send them flowers. Please stay warm and safe.

Soup I have loved making soup ever since I learned to make my mother’s vegetable beef soup many decades ago. Then came the back-of-the-bag split pea soup, Julia Child’s French onion soup (back when I could get cheap beef bones for stock), chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles, spicy lentil soup, and many more. One of our favorite soups is Diana Kennedy’s recipe for sopa de albondigas (meatball soup). This recipe comes from Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados (Bantam Books, 1989). This soup is fragrant, flavorful, and somehow light and hearty at the same time. I looked online and saw several adaptations of this recipe. I prefer the original recipe for the directions on making the soup broth, but I think the online recipes should also be okay. Bon appetit.

sopa de albondigas (Mexican Meatball Soup)

The Art of Mexican Cooking

Bread I have always loved making bread. I think bread making was part of my brief attempt to be an earth mother. I never really fit that description, but I have made dozens of kinds of bread. Earth mother style, I guess, because I never use the stand mixer or a bread machine. I like to knead by hand. Many loaves have been successful, some have not. My current favorite bread recipe is entire whole wheat bread from the 1984 edition of The Fannie Farmer Baking Book by (the nonpareil baker) Marion Cunningham. This bread takes some time, but, if one follows the directions, the bread is delicious and cuts well. Again, except in a used book store, I think it might be a challenge to find this vintage recipe, However, there are many similar Fannie Farmer wheat bread recipes online. Note: I made this bread a couple of hours ago. I am promising myself a piece of toast and butter when I finish this post!

whole wheat bread

Fannie Farmer Baking Book

Flowers The flurries have started outside. With all the wind, the snow is flying almost horizontally: a tiny taste of what those in the northland are experiencing. The flowers below are to remind you of the spring and summer to come. Love, Lynda

water lily, Scenic Lake, Michigan

butterfly with black-eyed and verbena bonariensis

coleus and ivy-leaved geranium

Pontederia cordata (pickerelweed)

tulips near the Netherlands Carillon

butterfly and coneflowers

lilacs, Denver Botanic Gardens

I want to go on record that I don’t think April is the cruelest month. How could I believe that when my youngest child and my father were born one day (and about 70 years) apart in early April? I just like T.S. Eliot and so I usually remember these words about this time of year:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

From “The Waste Land,” by T.S. Eliot, 1922

I have also been thinking about Earth Day/old days. In 1970, I went to the Teach-In on the Environment at the University of Michigan. We were big on teach-ins back there in Ann Arbor. 1970 was also the first summer I went west and thereby became even more taken with nature than I was growing up on a lake in Michigan. In Ann Arbor, I was a minor functionary in ENACT (Environmental Action for Survival). In fact, in 1971, I submitted testimony for ENACT related the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to Congress. My own comments related to possible drawbacks of the pipeline for native peoples were included along with other, more academically expert, testimony. Since I am bringing up this tiny historical footnote, you probably notice that it was a big deal for me. I think we all stopped the pipeline for a few minutes or something.

Not only was I not very successful as an environmentalist, I didn’t even make it as an Earth Mother, and that designation didn’t seem to require any coursework. I sort of went back to the land to the extent that I have been an (mostly) organic gardener for forty years. I do recycle (some), I do clean with vinegar and other non-toxic materials, and I think our children feel a connection with and a responsibility to the natural world.

The Part about Agnosticism: Actually, I am a flaming agnostic (some might say waffler, know-nothing, etc.). I don’t claim to know anything about god or the meaning of the universe–and I have a hard time figuring out how one would claim to know such information–and I don’t have much use for or patience with organized religion. The thing is, because of my broken wrist (see, Scat Happens), I have had call to stretch my hands like this:

hands

This exercise has made me think about prayer. I am still a flaming agnostic and proud of it, but I am still reverent and hopeful within the natural world. So, below are a few of the photos I’ve taken on our travels. Happy Birthday Bill and Dad. Happy April. Happy Earth Day/Week/Month.