Coruscate

kor-uh-skayt
verb

Photo courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle.
2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.

Sam plays catch with a coruscating ball and temporarily transforms into an elf.

Soup in a boot

"Boots" courtesy of saracino.

Reno was once a cowboy's town where even the lawyers wore boots. Where the brush was once so thick a rabbit had to climb a tree to look out, now stand rows of houses, and this month's cattle drive through town was made up of a bunch of buckaroos who probably wouldn't have enough trail sense to spit downwind. Most of them paid $1,600 to participate in the Reno Rodeo's annual publicity stunt. I hope they heard some colorful cowboy talk and ate a tasty stew.

"Cowboy Slang"
By Edgar R. Potter

Hard up: His boots were so frazzled he couldn't scratch a match without burnin' his feet.

Crazy: As crazy as popcorn on a hot skillet.

Fast gal: Must think her butt is a gold mine since everybody's a diggin' at it.

Lazy: Quit spittin' on the handle an' get to work.

Hot: Hot 'nough to sunburn a horned toad.

Talking: His tongue would get a real frolicsome.

Coward: All gurgle an' no guts.

Braggart: Had callouses from pattin' his own back.

Women: I don't like to have my haunches spurred by no drip-nose of a gal.

Grub: To make a sonofabitch stew yuh throw everything in the pot but the hide, horns an' beller.

In the bowl:

Boeuf bourguignon

Beef stew with red wine
Adapted from Barefoot in Paris by Ina Garten

Serves 6 to 8

1 tablespoon olive oil
8 ounces bacon, chopped
2 1/2 pounds beef chuck, cubed
salt
pepper
1 pound carrots, sliced into 1-inch chunks
2 onions, sliced
2 teaspoons garlic, minced or pressed
1/2 cup Cognac or brandy
1 bottle red wine (I used a Malbec)
2 to 2 1/2 cups beef broth
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
4 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 pound frozen pearl onions
1 pound mushrooms, stemmed and thickly sliced

Preheat oven to 250 degrees

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven. Add bacon and cook until browned. Remove. Salt and pepper beef and toss it into the bacon fat. In batches, sear the beef. Remove to the same plate holding the bacon.

Throw the carrots, onions, 1 tablespoon salt and 2 teaspoons pepper into the pan and cook for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Add the Cognac, stand back, and ignite with a match to burn off the alcohol. Put the meat back in the pot. Add the wine and enough broth to almost cover the meat. Add the tomato paste and thyme. Bring the pot to a boil, cover it and put it in the oven for about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours or until meat and veggies are tender. Remove from oven and place on the stove.

Combine 2 tablespoons of butter and flour and stir into the stew. Add onions. Saute mushrooms and add to the stew. Bring to a boil, then lower flame to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Spoon into bowls and sprinkle chopped parsley on top.

A launch

"The storm sail" courtesy of Today is a good day.

One Thousand Words is a new series at The Slow-Cooked Sentence. It'll spotlight an unpronounceable word illustrated with a photograph snapped by a someone in my family, and will include a sentence that connects the photo to the word. The series will run until one thousand words have been cataloged.

"How long will that take me if I featured a word a week?"

"Twenty years," replied my math man.

"Twenty years! Oh, wow. I didn't think it'd take that long."

"Yeah. Twenty years. Divide one thousand by 52 and you get about twenty years," he explained.

"That's crazy! Why would I make that kinda commitment? I just thought it'd be fun, playing off the whole picture-worth-a-thousand-words-thing. But I wanna do it. Is that crazy?"

"Yeah. Chaja might have kids by the time you're done, but do it anyway."

Bon Voyage!

Xanthous

\ZAN-thuhs\
adjective

Photo courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

Yellow; yellowish

My sack of sugar nearly sits on the Basket of Gold's xanthous blossoms.

And you can call me ...

"She actually does write with that thing" courtesy of incendiarymind.

Writer. That's what I put in the little box under "employer," and then handed in the medical update form.

"Writer?" the receptionist asked. "That means your self-employed."

"Yeaaah.

I smiled weakly because honestly I can't remember the last time I pulled in a paycheck for my words. No, take that back, I can remember. It was an advertorial for a group of surgeons opening their own clinic, a blow-job that left me feeling icky. Rather than be a word whore I quit.

For the longest time I didn't do anything but write for myself, filling notebook after notebook with rants against my husband (which I won't share here) and sweet bits of conversation with my children like this:

October 5, 2006 -- The little neighbor girl came over in her cheerleading outfit and played. Later Max asked why she was dressed up like a "chili pon-pon." Chaja has a rash that keeps flaring up. She's had it for about a week and I'm beginning to think it may be bed bugs. God help me. I don't need bed bugs on top of all the other crap I'm dealing with. Speaking of bed ... here's a great Italian proverb: "Bed is the poor man's opera."

December 13, 2006 -- Kyna (one of my sisters) asked Max to tell her the names of his kindergarten classmates because she's trying to figure out a name for her baby.

"Jasmine, Jade, Andrew, Logan, Hot Guy," he said.

"Hot Guy?"

"Yeah, Hot Guy."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, even the teachers call him Hot Guy."

Later, after Max is asleep, Kyna's telling me the story and I say, "Hot Guy? Hot Guy? Ooooh, Hawkeye!"

I was writing, but without an editor, without an audience, I never felt compelled to go any further with the ideas so they just sat on the pages until the life drained out of them.

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out," author Ray Bradbury said.

For me, the trick has been this blog, which forces me to write an idea to its end and put the finished piece of work out there to be read, if only by fifteen readers (but, oh, how I love you, my fifteen loyal readers!). Why do other writers write? After a lot of asking, author Judy Reeves compiled many of the reasons in "A Writer's Book of Days":

• for the feeling that I entertained the reader, made people laugh, touched someone
• for the feeling of being creative, "in the groove," being an artist
• to tell a story, creating characters, plots
• to play with words, using language
• to have an audience
• to express myself
• to produce something
• to finish
• to leave a legacy, make a mark on the world
• to become a more discerning reader
• to find out I'm good, that there is promise
• for surprises, to find out what happens.
  

This week I'm asking five children why they write. They're coming to my house to participate in a writing camp -- a skill swap between me and my friend Shannon at Arthouse Easel. Every other week for most of the summer our kids will wade into watercolors or scribble stories for a few hours. I've never tried to teach another person to write, let alone five kids. Heck, I've only now started to publicly call myself a writer and doing so at the doctor's office makes me feel like a poseur. But I'm gonna snatch that title and run, despite the government classifying me as a dependent, the lack of dimes, and that three of my five students will be calling me "Mom."

Report card

A fellow writer from Yes, Honey Chyle asked if I'd comment on "The Good Wife's Guide," which allegedly appeared in the May 1955 edition of Housekeeping Monthly, and its endorsement by The Southern Housewife. So let's take a few of the Guide's suggestions and see how I stacked up:

"1950s Suburban Glam Grandma" courtesy of watchumean.

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

Went on a cooking strike this week, leaving my husband to scrounge around in the fridge. He couldn't find anything because I haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks, so he picked up pizza the first night and Taco Bell the second.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

Our youngest is sick. Having been puked on for the umpteenth time, I had given up changing into clean clothes by the time he walked through the door.

Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet. Be happy to see him.

Kids bicker. Washing machine chugs. NPR's on in the kitchen and Hannah Montana blares from the living room. But as I shove a whining toddler into his arms I tell him, "Thank God you're home."

Some fabulously old quotes

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of our founding feminists.

"Four things necessary in a house are a chimney, a cat, a hen, and a good wife."
-- John Florio (1553-1625) royal language tutor.

"No sooner are (American women) married than they begin to lead a life of comparative seclusion and, once mothers, they are actually buried to the world." -- Francis Joseph Grund (1805-1863), author.

"While I am about the house, surrounded by my children, washing dishes, baking, sewing, etc., I can think up many points, but I cannot search books. ... I seldom have one hour undisturbed in which to sit down and write."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), women's rights advocate.

A brief history lesson

Excerpted from Ann Crittenden's "The Price of Motherhood:"

At the turn of the twentieth century, the women's movement contained two contradictory strands: one that denigrated women's role within the family, and one that demanded recognition and remuneration for it. The first argued that only one road could lead to female emancipation, and it pointed straight out of the house toward the world of paid work. The second sought equality for women within the family as well and challenged the idea that a wife and mother was inevitably an economic "dependent" of her husband.

For the rest of the twentieth century, the women's movement followed the first path, and that led to innumerable great victories. But in choosing that path, many women's advocates accepted the continued devaluation of motherhood, thereby guaranteeing that feminism would not resonate with millions of wives and mothers.

Oatmeal in the crosshairs

Oatmeal brulee 3 courtesy of chotda.

My first 10 years as an adult I walked the path of a feminist: put myself through college, earned my bachelor's, landed a job in newspapers and loved it. Along the way I fell in love and married, the personal and the professional paths running side-by-side. When I gave birth to my first child the distance between the two courses widened, and yet I managed to straddle them for a while as a freelance writer. When I discovered I was pregnant with twins, the paths split and I made the decision to stop earning a wage and follow the course that the founding feminists had abandoned: Demanding equality within the family.

"Something about a baby encourages the resurgence of traditional gender roles," Crittenden wrote. "With the arrival of a child, a mother's definition of accomplishment becomes more complex, her work load goes up, and her income and independence go down."

For the last 10 years, I've followed the less trodden path, and this week it led me into the bathroom where I stood, hair dripping, wearing only a towel. My husband entered, smiled, kissed me, and left a cup of coffee on the counter and a dirty diaper on the floor. I took a swig of hot coffee, rinsed the diaper and, still following that trail, walked to the desk and began to write as my husband cooked oatmeal.

Then I sat down at in the intersection of these two paths and ate breakfast.

Git along, lil' kitties!

Image courtesy of DrBacchus.

Alone with our children, one on one, we have a chance to see and hear and accept them as they really are, right now, in this moment. We see them not in relation to their siblings, friends, or peers, or as a piece of the larger family puzzle -- but as unique individuals, each with a particular destiny to fulfill on this earth. Such recognition is a basic human need.

-- Katrina Kenison
"Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry"

This is hard for me to do. I try to steal moments -- Cub Scouts offers an evening walk with one son, a half-hour later bedtime allows for one-on-one with my daughter -- but being a time thief is a challenge. On most days I feel as if I'm herding cats.

The walrus and the carpenter

One young oyster ...

"The time has come," the husband said,
"To talk of many things
Of water-guns and woolen socks
And other summer flings,
And whether we shall all survive
My mother visiting.

"But wait a bit," the woman cried,
"Before we have our chat
For I'm out of breath from cleaning
And haven't even sat.
"No hurry," said the husband.
She thanked him much for that.

"Bottles of wine," the husband said,
"Is what she'll chiefly need.
Nesquik and Lays potato chips
Are very good indeed.
Be prepared, my darling dear,
For she's coming in great speed."

"Two weeks!" the woman cried,
Turning a little blue,
"We'll be so busy thinking
Of things for her to do."
"It may rain," the husband said.
"Look at those storm clouds brew."

"It was kind of you to come!
Your stay will be anything but dull,
For we've soccer, skating, swimming
And, of course, shopping at the mall."
The mother-in-law took a drag on her smoke
And said, "I'm ready for it all."

Four young children hurried up
Eager for their treat.
Their hair was brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat.
The mother-in-law reached into her bag
And pulled out Twinkies to eat.

Roller rinks, soccer games,
Shopping 'til they dropped.
Mining tour, squirt-gun fights,
Then up again they'd pop.
And every day the sun would hide,
And never the rain did stop.

"It seems a shame," the mother-in-law said.
"But it's time to say goodbye."
So she stuffed her suitcase, kissed the children,
And dabbed at her streaming eyes,
Then spent the next 14 hours
Sleeping in the sky.

"Oh, darling," said the husband,
"We've had a pleasant run.
My mother's heading home again."
But answer came there none.
And this was scarcely odd because
All were exhausted from the fun.

A story shard

"Fragments" courtesy of erix!

It was dark when the birds woke her, but instead of trying to go back to sleep she got up and walked into the kitchen. In the shadows, she made a pot of coffee and carried a cup to the rocking chair near the window. She sat quietly, drinking the hot, bitter coffee, watching the charcoal outline of the neighborhood emerge. She didn't notice the tree until the sun had climbed high enough to pour warm, yellow light across the lawns and climb up the sides of houses. When the sun touched the tree, it split into a million bits of light.

Outside, she was blinded for a moment by the sparkling tree. Tiny rainbows danced across the sidewalk, the lawn, the car, the house. Its trunk was smooth and cold, and a breeze blew through the stiff leaves and carried away the sound of tinkling glass. She snapped off a thin branch, held it up against the sun and watched as a bird flew across a green sky. She let it slip through her fingers and watched it fall to the ground where it splintered. Gingerly, she picked her way through the glass and moved to the porch.

The sun climbed. High up a branch broke, tumbled through the canopy of leaves, everything breaking, glass peppering the ground. More branches, more leaves fell until the whole tree came crashing down in one shattering roar. Then silence. She exhaled and the birds renewed their song. Where the tree once stood was a hill of broken glass, green and brown shards stabbed the dirt and littered the sidewalk. The sun climbed and she took a sip of coffee, but it was cold. So she went inside for another cup and a broom.

Mending the nets

Winslow Homer, 1882. The National Gallery of Art exhibition.

When life's
a little frayed,
I knit it together.
Tangled thoughts slip and click into
purls.

Addiction

"Knit Wit" by roctopus.

Why I'm a knitting junkie:

1. I must finish a line before I get up and do anything else.
2. I get excited over new needles.

Who's wearing my work:

1. Ivan
2. Sam
3. Chaja
4. Max

Wring me out

"Rainstorm" courtesy of Frank.lin.

Rain every afternoon.
Thunder and lightening between me and my husband.
My one-year-old learns to use a squirt gun.
A nasty bug steamrolls over one son.
My mother-in-law mops up vomit at the movies.
Then, finally, the sun shines and I make soup.

In the bowl:



Photo courtesy of Marcel Levy

Turkish yogurt soup with tiny meatballs

Turkish yogurt soup with tiny meatballs
Adapted from "The Essential Mediterranean" by Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Serves 8

1/2 to 3/4 cup finely chopped onions
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup long-grain rice (I used medium grain)
Boiling water
Sea salt
1/2 pound ground lamb
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1/4 cup minced fresh dill
2 tablespoons minced mint
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper (I used 1/8 tsp. cayenne)
1 large egg
2 to 3 tablespoons bread crumbs
5 cups chicken broth (I used 7 cups)
1 egg
4 cups whole milk yogurt
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons dried mint

Saute the onions with 2 tablespoons of oil over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes. Add the rice and 1 cup of boiling water with salt to taste. Cook for about 10 minutes or until the rice has softened and absorbed most of the liquid. Set aside.

In a bowl mix the lamb, parsley, dill and mint, lots of black pepper and the red pepper. Stir in the rice. Add the egg and enough bread crumbs to make a mixture that is moist but will stick together. Form into small meatballs, about the size of a gumball.

Combine the chicken broth with 1 cup of water and bring to a simmer. Add the meatballs in batches and let simmer until they rise to the top, indicating they're done. Remove them with a slotted spoon and set aside.

In a bowl mix the egg yolk and yogurt. Whisk in 1 cup of cold water. Measure out 1 cup of soup broth and stir it in, then pour the yogurt into the soup and stir. Simmer very, very gently for about 10 minutes. In the last few minutes add the meatballs and simmer just long enough for them to heat thoroughly.

Ladle into bowls and dribble a small amount of mint butter over the top.

Localicious

Image courtesy of Chris Silas Neal.

What's a gal to do who has sworn off store-bought tomatoes, but who's own small plants are maybe two months away from offering up their first fruit, gloriously red and warm when plucked off the vine? I count the blossoms, longingly press my nose against the fuzzy leaves and inhale their perfume.

Backyard tomatoes are as local as one can get, and the new links in the right-hand column are local, if a bit more broadly defined. I start with the image above by Chris Silas Neal, who's not a local artist but whose poster (inspired by Great Depression-era art) is free to post locally, and then I riff from there ... a song, a birth, a lemony kiss, a free wheeling moment, a backyard bird ... local links I love and local loves that are linked. Each of them a tiny yellow flower filled with juicy promise. Go ahead, take a bite.

From the brass section

Photo courtesy of spcbrass.

A tiny bit of horn tooting:

My essay "In which a heart hurts" is featured on Blogger's Best Carnival. A carnival collects links to blog articles on a particular topic, and is like a magazine with a title, a topic, editors, contributors and an audience.