 “You can still live with grace and wisdom, thanks partly to…your own innate sense of what you must do with the resources you have, to keep the wolf from snuffing too hungrily through the keyhole.” This week, a bunch of parsley root (Hamburg Root Parsley) at my local market was the starting point for soup. It looks like a parsnip but tastes less pungent, milder, and sweeter like celeriac. They’re sold with a shaggy head of greenery, maybe to distinguish the two roots. At the Polish deli, I bought a piece of smoked pork trim, and poking around in the back, I found a bag of white beans called Piekny Jas -- handsome johnny beans — and was seduced by the name. Besides the parsley root, pork, and beans, I added onion, carrot, celery, a heap of garlic, smoked paprika, canned tomatoes, bay leaf, and a bundle of herbs tied with string. When the beans were creamy-tender and savoury, I added half a bunch of Lacinato Kale cut in a chiffonade and a small handful of flat greens beans. I like to cut the vegetables into smaller pieces. When I taught young cooks, I told them the goal was to get a mixture of ingredients in every spoon. The golden ratio for a soup like this is mostly vegetables and a little meat. I served it with sour cream leftover from baking. Happiness is a few containers in the freezer. *** After posting “today” in the early hours of Sunday morning to catch readers waking up in Europe and the night owls in Canada, I sit for a bit with the real-time view open in analytics. Blue dots appear on a map and grow in size according to the number of people who open it in places like Toronto or Washington. I try to imagine who is up at 1 a.m. near Golden Lake, Ontario, or in Ashburn, Virginia. Last week, a point lit up in the far north in a place I’d never heard of, and at the same time, someone was reading it in Ireland. I’m a woman at a keyboard practicing. Connection is a gift I never expected. *** M.F.K. Fisher sitting in a chair that’s been attacked by her Siamese cats and living like the rest of us. Deb Freeman and friends cook and pay tribute to the American chef Edna Lewis. Another reason to visit Chicago. “Being urban is a participatory sport.” Yes to all of this by Rebecca Solnit. *** Sweet songs of love by women are a prescription for the insanity of this week. I’ve been gorging on If I Told You for a few days. Roberta Flack singing a song from the Bee Gees — the organ trails her voice like a velvet ribbon. 201820201971Comments are closed.
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