sitio is back from Warrior Assembly

don't take things personally (read all 3 entries…)

So, I go to put away the soy milk  — 2 years ago

and I have to give the fridge door an extra little tug, which, not thinking, I do. I’m guessing now, since I couldn’t see through the door, that a bottle got wedged under one of the shelves. In any case, the railing of one of the door shelves, the railing that keeps everything on that shelf, pops off. Without said railing that keeps everything on that door shelf being present, the everything that was formerly kept on that shelf by the railing now has no motivation for staying on the shelf. So, it all jumps off.

Here’s the part where I should mention we have hard tile floors. I think, actually, that it’s exterior tile. It’s really lovely. But, in this case, the relevant feature of this tile is its hardness.

The everything that jumps off the shelf is, to the last count, all bottles. Two break, including a full bottle of wine. The wine is nicely chilled and had a bouquet of wild strawberries, hint of field grass. A large shard of glass stuck into my finger. My blood, the wine, some shitake mushroom sauce, it mingles on the sponge and rag. Takes me a fair amount of time to clean up, and make sure all the glass is gone.

I do not believe that I was personally being punished. I don’t think it was God’s will to break my 2000 Zaca Mesa. I don’t blame the company who made the refrigerator for the really easy to pop off shelf railing. I don’t think Zaca Mesa made their bottle too thin resulting in this painful finger poke.

This was not personal. It just was.

Comments:

i love this

when i first moved to vancouver, and had begun to suspect that i had landed amongst aliens, i was working at a really fantastic bookstore where i discovered Edward Espe Brown’s book, Tomato Teachings and Radish Blessings. Brown wrote the tassajara bread book way back in the day, and had returned with 20 years more experience as both a cook and a buddhist. each chapter starts with a wonderfully heartening and charmingly self-effacing little anecdote on some aspect of personal exploration, and then finishes with a short series of recipes somehow related to whatever lesson it was that he was trying to explain. i felt like i found a friend. i took him to bed with me. my book has yellow pages from lying open to favourite passages in the sunlight amongst my covers for weeks on end.

one of the essays is called an egg conspires and relates a similar experience you outline above, and with a similar conclusion.

at the risk of sounding like i think i know all about you, i would like to venture that you would really enjoy the book—essays, and recipes.

sitio is back from Warrior Assembly

It seems very much that I would enjoy this book. I loved In Buddha’s Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, and Other Adventures in a Meditation Center by Kimberley Snow. And this one may even be better as it has recipes.

I love to cook, by the way.

So, it’s ordered. I’ll let you know what I think.

Thanks for the comment on this entry, too. I have come to very much respect your opinion.

respect my opinion??

what?? eek!!

(you may be interested to know that i’m currently fighting the urge to get up, run around, and do something respect-worthy.)

that’s exciting that you ordered the book, though. i really hope you like it. the last chapter has one of his little bits on gratitude where he mentions that thing we were chatting about a while back—that thing about how amazing it is that anyone ever figured out which mushrooms aren’t poisonous, and how our very selves and places are the product of countless unacknowledged labours stretching back to the beginning of time.

ok i just wrote this paragraph on the writings i liked the most in the book, but suddenly felt guilty so i erased it. there’s no need for you to follow my nose, here. :)

sitio is back from Warrior Assembly

Lentil Blessings

I very much enjoyed the intro and I’ll write more about that in another post. What I wanted to tell you was that I just finished dinner; I had lentils. I’ve made lentils a fair amount over the last 5 years and I have to say that they’ve never been my best dish. Not bad, but I’ve always felt like they had too much high note and not enough middle. So, Espe Brown’s recipe, which I did not follow, calls for minced lemon peel to be added near the end of cooking. I did this with my usual lentils and it was precisely what was missing all these years. It really gave it body.

This is going to be a very influential book for me, I think. I really like the voice. Thank you for the recommendation.

yay!

i’m so glad you like the book so far!

and glad you got to eat tasty lentils.

aside: i often find that a little squirt of lemon or lime, or a little pinch of sugar, seems to improve my cooking far more than it seems it ought to. it amazes me every time.


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