Instant Terror

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Kathy

Feeling like some savory fall recipes already, even though the temps here today are mid-70s. The curry recipe below sounds satisfying, but I neglected to start it six hours ago; we had no cauliflower on hand this morning. Now, after a trip to the store, the ingredients await, but time is short, so I’ve decided to prepare Slow Cooker Vegetarian Curry in the Instant Pot instead. I know, it’s the exact opposite device, but I’m nothing if not adventurous in the kitchen. I will dare to use the Instant Pot, but one obstacle stands in my way.

Roxie feeling safe.

My dog.

Little Roxie hates the Instant Pot. Flies in the house, moths, vacuums, thunder and lightning (as in, last night)—all these terrify her. The random signals of the Instant Pot send her under the couch, trembling. I feel guilty every time I try to cook Instant-ly.

Here’s my plan. I will thoroughly set up the mise en place, vegetables chopped and spices at the ready. This is not my usual habit. Ordinarily, I’m chopping the celery as the onions are already browning. But today, I hope to have everything ready in a bowl to dump into the dreaded Instant Pot. I’m tying Roxie outside before I turn on the machine and letting her back in when the beeping has subsided. Maybe she’ll never be the wiser.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Are your dogs or cats subject to irrational fears?

Maybe not so irrational, in this case. Maybe unbeknownst to me Roxie read the appliance guide’s dire warnings: don’t open the lid while the float valve is popped up, don’t lean over the steam release valve, and check for deformations in the sealing valve.

Failure to follow these instructions may cause food to discharge, which may lead to personal injury or property damage! No wonder a little dog hides behind the piano.

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Curry from allrecipes

1 head chopped cauliflower
1 ½ cups green peas (I’m adding after cooking so that they don’t get mushy)
3 chopped potatoes
1 cup water
1 ½ teaspoon ground cumin    1 teaspoon curry powder        
¾ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon chili powder
Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cook on low or until vegetables are tender, 5-6 hours

I’m planning on 5 minutes or so in the Instant Pot and a slow release.             

Posted in Monday Meals, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Buzz on Vergil

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Kathy

(for Trevor Thoms)

I can’t close out our week of bees without sharing what is possibly my favorite poem, The Georgics, by the Roman poet Vergil. I know, this might strike you as a stodgy and obscure choice, but believe me when I tell you The Georgics is beautiful and uplifting (mostly) and delightful. Translator David Ferry asserts, “The poem is one of the great songs, maybe the greatest we have, of human accomplishment in the difficult circumstances of the way things are.” It’s about life. Amid the lyrical delight, in other words, it has something to say. “The Georgics,” Ferry says, “is the fundamental poem.”

I speak specifically about the last section of the work, Book 4, which concerns beekeeping. Vergil was born near Mantua, Italy, in 70 B.C.E., the son of a landowner, and probably grew up in the countryside. He knew about bees, and, more importantly, he loved them, as he loved nature itself. Here’s a sample:

When the golden sun has driven winter back down
Under the earth and opened up the sky
With the radiance of summer, then the bees
Fly everywhere through all the groves and glades,
Gathering from the beautiful flowers and lightly
Imbibing from the surface of the streams.
It’s thus that, motivated by some joy
I know not how to name, they go about
The caring for their offspring and their nests; . . .
And so when you look up and see the swarm,
Emancipated from the hive and floating
Up to the starry sky through the summer air, . . .
Take heed, for there they are, on the hunt for leafy
Shelter near sweet water.

The poet then instructs the reader/farmer to scatter fragrant, healing herbs to attract the bees to a shelter designed for them.

The bees will settle, of themselves, upon
The scented settling places you’ve prepared
And of themselves will hide themselves within
The inner recesses of their cradling home.

I have to restrain myself from quoting further.

I can’t remember when I first encountered The Georgics. I took a Vergil course at Kent State, but I remember only The Aeneid, Vergil’s massive epic about the founding of Rome, which I also read in a high-school Latin class. My fondness for The Georgics derives mostly from teaching sections of it at Cleveland State. One particular class seemed to be as moved and delighted by the bees as I was, hence the dedication above to Trevor, one of those students, who sadly passed away last year.

The “uplifting (mostly)” in the first paragraph above alludes to a horrific passage in Book 4 about creating a new swarm of bees if yours has died by ritualistically beating to death a young bullock; ancients believed that new life literally grew out of the old, and that a swarm of bees would arise from bull’s carcass. I can’t stand to read that section and can’t square it with the sweetness of the Vergil I love. But I had to warn you about it in case you pick up the poem. I recommend, as you can tell, David Ferry’s translation (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). It features the Latin original on the left side of every page, so you can exercise your possibly atrophied Latin muscles by following along.

The Georgics is too little known and studied these days. Unfortunately, Cleveland State University has eliminated Latin classes as of this year, and had done away with advanced Latin courses a few years ago. CSU no longer gives students the chance to read one of the great works in its original language. John Dryden’s assessment is certainly a Western-centric exaggeration, but when he finished his own translation of The Georgics around 1697, he called it “the best poem by the best poet.” Pick up The Georgics of Vergil translated by David Ferry and decide for yourself.

Favorite poems? Let us know!

Posted in Books, Teaching, Weekend Editions | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Bee Lines

Posted on September 14, 2022 by Kathy

A beekeeper can also be called an apiarist. These two words demonstrate how the English language developed on different tracks.

Photo by Trollinho on Unsplash

Bee derives from the Germanic roots of English, related to Dutch bij and German Beie. The api- words derive from the Romans’ word for bees, apis, including apiary, apiologist, apitherapy, apiarian, apiarist, apimania, and other words.

Note that bee is a short, simple word, while the bee-related words that start with “a” tend to be longer. That’s the pattern. Good old Anglo-Saxon words are often short and sweet (like good, old, short, and sweet), while Latinate words tend to be sustained and elongated, not to say complicated and protracted. Compare dish and container, house and domicile, mouth and orifice, bug and insect, and you see the pattern. Our thesauri are filled with such synonyms partly because we have both old English words and fancy Latinate words that mean pretty much the same thing.

To simplify a complex history, Latin-derived words flooded English following the 1066 Norman Invasion of England. Native English folk were communicating just fine with their mostly Germanic words until those French people moved in and took control, bringing their Romance (i.e., Roman) language with them. This history partly explains why English has so many words.

Anyway, bee is an appropriately little word for a little creature. Ant (although shortened from its Old English root) is also tiny, in contrast to its Latin equivalent formica (pronounced for-mee-cah), which gave birth to many interesting words that most of us don’t know. Formication – pronounce it carefully! – denotes itchiness that feels like ants crawling on the skin. The adjective formicant describes someone crawling around like an ant. Formic acid, as in formaldehyde, was distilled from red ants by a German chemist in 1749.

Interestingly, formic acid is found in bee stings, bringing us full circle back to the apimaniacal blog topic of the week, i.e., bees.  

Posted in Wednesday Word | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Honey of a Post

Posted on September 12, 2022 by Kathy

Did you know that honey bees have little baskets on their legs to collect pollen and nectar? Reading the novel Grey Bees, about a Ukrainian bee keeper, has piqued my interest in bees. I’ve been reading about how worker bees kick the drones out of the hive when they’ve mated with the queen, and about the little dance the bees do to tell their hive mates where the flowers are, and about those little baskets, which are called “corbiculae,” or little baskets, in Latin. There’s no end to fascinating info about bees.

Regarding our worries about colony collapse and the bee apocalypse, 60% of human foods, including plantains, squash, tomatoes, and peppers, do not depend on the honey bee. The honey bee was brought to the Americas by colonists, and our native plants have their own native pollinators. These native species, such as bumblebees, are the ones in trouble, because their foreign-born cousins are invasive. Honey bee numbers, according to the Washington Post, are at historic highs and are rising. “There are more honey bees on the planet today than at any time in history,” according to Scott Black, who directs the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

We can stop worrying about honey bees and start worrying about all the others.  

Honey bees are like cows, a domesticated animal which produces a product — honey. I’ve used honey most recently in iced tea, which I experimented with making all summer. My favorite recipe comes from a website called Venison for Dinner, where a doughty homesteader named Kate demonstrates how to milk cows and goats, make cheese, and sew stuff, all while raising five children. She mixes two bags of Peach Passion Celestial Seasonings tea and one of black tea (like Lipton) in two liters (she’s Canadian) of water, with one-fourth cup of honey (I use less), a splash or two of lemon juice, and two pinches of salt. The last three ingredients make the tea more thirst-quenching than water, she maintains, because the non-tea ingredients replace nutrients and electrolytes that we lose in hot weather. You can use hot water and pop your pitcher into the refrigerator to chill. I use room-temperature water and let it sit out all night. The next day I enjoy a big glass with lots of ice.


Five pounds of honey. Someone went to Costco.

Today, I had hoped to cook something with honey to write about, but the day got away from me. You know how it is. I planned to prepare these simple Honey Roasted Carrots. We can all try it sometime soon. Report back if you make it.

8 medium carrots, peeled and trimmed to about the same size

3 tablespoons olive oil

¼ cup honey

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place whole carrots in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and mix until the carrots are covered. Drizzle with honey. Mix with salt and pepper until evenly coated. Bake about 30 minutes.

Posted in Books, Monday Meals | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Apitherapy

Posted on September 10, 2022 by Kathy

Artists ever since Homer, and probably before, have created anti-war art. You may know Picasso’s painting Guernica, Jean Renoir’s great film Grand Illusion, novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. Even the supposedly macho Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms, set in World War I (emphasis on the “farewell”). His main character, Frederic Henry, serving as an ambulance driver during World War I (as did Hemingway), deserts after a chaotic and violent retreat. He is arrested, and, blamed for Italy’s defeat in battle, is about to be shot. The Italian officers, Frederic says, “(S)o far had shot every one they had questioned. The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.” Frederic escapes and seeks out his true love, Elizabeth Barkley.

Hemingway and the other artists do not preach. They don’t need to. They place their characters in the midst of war and reveal the immoral destruction of lives, minds, values, and property. Andrey Kurkov, reputedly Ukraine’s greatest living novelist, is another of these artists.

Grey Bees, published in 2018, precedes Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, but it reveals the endless state of war that Ukraine (like other nations) has endured. In 2014, Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea. The novel’s main character lives in what’s called the “grey zone,” an area lying between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists. Almost everyone has fled the grey zone in order to avoid constant shelling and random acts of violence. A beekeeper, Sergey Sergeyich, and his longtime frenemy, Pashka, remain in their grey-zone village alone.

Photo by Meggyn Pomerleau on Unsplash

The war has killed their neighbors, destroyed homes, and deprived the town of electricity. Sergey survives by selling his bees’ honey and bartering and salvaging in neighboring towns. Kurkov doesn’t dwell on atrocities, though they lurk in the background. Sergey’s lonely, hardscrabble life tells the story. 

At the same time, Kurkov gently satirizes village life. His mostly gentle story is often funny. As in all wars, bad things happen to good people, but nature occasionally serves as a tonic. One evening, Sergey hears an unfamiliar bird call. Kurkov writes, “The cry had awakened the beekeeper’s curiosity, reviving his mind; he tuned his ears to the colourful, sonorous silence of the world around him, the now silent flying-crying creature suddenly forgotten. Into this silence were woven the whisper of foliage, the breeze’s breath, the buzzing of bees—all the tiny sounds that constitute the peaceful silence of summer.” Kurkov’s lovely prose, translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk, echoes the evening sounds that comfort Sergey.

Though there are no battles and only intermittent violence, this is a war novel. Russian-born and a native Russian speaker, Kurkov still lives in Ukraine. A recent New York Times article about him says, “Kurkov has dedicated himself to chronicling and contextualizing the war for foreign audiences, a task he has performed with prodigious zeal. Hardly a day goes by now without a new article, radio broadcast, television appearance or public lecture.”

I have about sixty pages of Grey Bees left to read and am portioning it out slowly to delay the end. Have you done that with a book you’re loving? What’s on your bedside table right now?

Posted in Books, Weekend Editions | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

A Not Terrible* Word

Posted on September 7, 2022 by Kathy

Terrazzo flooring is a composite mixing flecks of quartz, marble, glass, or other substances with a base such as cement, or, in recent times, a polymer. It’s like a mosaic, except the little pieces are scattered randomly and do not form a pattern. The tiles you’ve seen on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are terrazzo. Terrazzo is a common option for kitchen floors and walkways and frequently shows up on design shows these days.

Photo by Martin Kleppe on Unsplash

Terrazzo is originally an Italian word, derived from the Latin root terra, meaning “earth” or “land.” Friend of our youth E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, was born outside of (extra) the earth.

Terrarium and terrain are two other common derivatives. Terrapin, however, is a fooler; this turtle’s name comes from Algonquin words for, you guessed it, “turtle.” Terraqueous is an oxymoronic combination of land and water, kind of like your child’s bath water after she’s played in the mud.

Linguistically speaking, the English equivalent of terrazzo is terrace, a balcony or porch, originally a platform built on a mound of earth (terra). When you build your new terrace, you could install terrazzo flooring and explain to all your guests the etymological connection.

*Not the same root. Terrible comes from terrere, to scare.

Posted in Wednesday Word | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Birthday Quiche +

Posted on September 5, 2022 by Kathy

Thinking up meal ideas definitely gets old, and cleaning up can be debilitating, but, by and large, cooking is probably my least onerous household task. I usually enjoy it. And I enjoy baking too much for my own good.

Even so, it’s such a treat to have other people do the cooking, and that helped make my birthday fun yesterday. My son-in-law, who’s quite the culinarian, prepared quiches for brunch, packed with excellent vegetables, including artichokes, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, tomatoes, and spinach (not all in the same quiche). One would not have believed it was his inaugural quiche-making. My daughter, with the help of her visiting friends, prepared a perfect fruit salad, which I enjoyed to the same degree as my toddler grandchildren, which is to say a lot. We also had bagels and cream cheese and a home-baked chocolate cake, donated by a friend. My daughter’s guests did much of the cleanup.

And I forgot to mention mimosas.

If you don’t think this was fun, you’re probably not a wife/mother of forty or so years.

Because quiche is one of my go-tos, I thought I would share with you my recipe. It’s adapted from the Swiss Cheese and Mushroom Quiche recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook. My well-loved edition is from 1977, as you can guess from the photo below, but the same recipe appears in newer editions. Here’s my version, with Moosewood suggestions appended.

  1. Prepare a single 9-inch pie crust, or use a store-bought crust. (If you’d like to see my pie crust recipe, let me know.)
  2. Cover the bottom of the crust with about 1 ½ cups of grated cheese. I usually use cheddar, or a mix of cheddar and mozzarella. (Moosewood uses Swiss.)
  3. Cover cheese with about ¾-1 cup sauteed onion, broccoli, and/or cauliflower. (Moosewood says onions and mushrooms, sauteed with thyme.)
  4. Cover vegetables with a custard:

–Beat 4 eggs, 1 ½ cups milk, 3 tbsp. flour, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon mustard (Moosewood says ¼ tsp. dry mustard) in the blender or with an immersion blender.

5. Sprinkle with paprika. Bake at 375 for 40-45 minutes or until there’s only the slightest jiggle in the center. The top usually gets a little brown.

Sometimes there’s extra custard, which I usually bake in a little tart pan for lunch. Almost any vegetable works in this recipe. Tomato slices are good, especially this time of year. Also chopped scallions, which Moosewood suggests.

This is a convenient dish to take to picnics or as a gift to new moms or people just home from the hospital. You can use a disposable pie plate, or one purchased at a thrift store, so that no one has to return anything to you.

Any other suggestions for quiches? Favorite recipes? Favorite birthdays? Please share!

Posted in Monday Meals | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Weekend Editions

Posted on September 3, 2022 by Kathy

Thousands of books are published each year that none of us ever hear of. Many of these books are very good, and some of them are great. Agents, publicity, luck, money—all of these factors help determine whether we hear about a book, and sometimes even whether we think it’s a good book. We trust certain media sources to tell us what to read (or what movies to see) and thereby miss out on many good things. And writers miss out on gaining an audience.

I don’t remember why, in 1991, I read Louis Edwards’ first novel, Ten Seconds. I may have reviewed it for the old Cleveland Edition or the Plain Dealer. I know I selected it for my book group to read, because one member memorably remarked, “You like gimmicky books, Kathy.” The gimmick is that the story’s time frame is the ten seconds of a hundred-yard dash, and the novel consists of the thoughts and memories of a spectator as he watches the race. Each chapter consists of one second of the contest.

I liked the book and have remembered it all these years later. When I saw, somewhere, that Louis Edwards had written another novel, called Ramadan Ramsey, I picked it up to read. (Despite the Ten Seconds’ good reviews, Edwards’ two intervening novels, N: A Romantic Mystery and Oscar Wilde Discovers America, didn’t make much of a splash, and I was unaware of them until now.) I loved Ramadan so much I chose it for both of my book groups to read in August, where the readers, with only a few exceptions, enjoyed it too.

Ramadan Ramsey is a coming-of-age story about a black boy, the title character, growing up in New Orleans with a beloved grandmother. I don’t want to spoil anything about the plot’s many twists. Maurice Carlos Ruffin in the New York Times calls it “a warm, hopeful novel” and an “antidote to the darkness” that sometimes seems to be closing in around us. I know, a review in the Times is not exactly falling under the radar, but I have yet to meet anyone who has heard of Ramadan Ramsey. Let this be my recommendation to you. Pick it up. Give it a try.

Do you have a little-known favorite book? Have you had any luck sharing it with others? Comment below.

While you’re at it, check out this list of famous writers’ recommendations of little-known books. By the way, I second Jonathan Franzen’s endorsement of The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead.  

https://www.gq.com/story/21-brilliant-books-youve-never-heard-of
Posted in Books, Weekend Editions | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Wednesday Word

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Kathy

A certain redacted affidavit has been in the news. As far as I know, reporters have not yet explicated the all-important Latin derivation of these newsworthy words. Today’s post remedies the oversight.

Redacted comes from a Latin verb, ago, that appears in a zillion (approximately) derivatives and Latin phrases and idioms. Its participle* is actum. As you might guess, virtually all of our English words containing ­forms of act come from this verb, such as act, action, active, react, re-enact, actual, activate, actor. You get the idea. There are a lot.

Because ago appeared in so many guises, it had many, many meanings, depending on context. This multiplicity of meanings, by the way, drives Latin students crazy. How can the same verb mean “drive,” “lead,” “do,” “act,” “pass,” “spend,” “incite,” “intend,” “perform,” “plead,” and with the noun gratias, “thank”?  The answer is context, my friend. It all depends on the idiom. For the sake of comparison, consider our verb put. I can put my coffee down on the table or I can put you down, I can put off an unpleasant duty and be put off by your attitude, I am put out when things don’t go my way, I can tell you to put a cork in it, and I can put on the dog for a night on the town. What, then, does put mean? Hmmm? So don’t blame Latin for tiny little ago and its heavy load of meaning.

Latin, like English, had many words rooted in ago and actum. Redigo and its participle redactum was one of them. See where we’re going with this?

Redigo combines re-, meaning “back” or “again,” and our new favorite Latin verb ago. (The “d” in the middle means nothing; it helps make the verb pronounceable.) A redaction is a “driving back” or  “reduction.” In its simplest sense, redacting means “editing.” As you know, its usage these days implies editing out troublesome, sensitive, or libelous material. Those long blackened lines!

Its partner in crime, affidavit, is an actual Latin verb, the third person singular perfect tense form of affidare, meaning “to swear.” Another meaning, “to promise fidelity,” reveals the inner root word fides, which means “trust” or “faith” (as in semper fidelis) and which will help you spell affidavit correctly from this day forward (i.e., no affadavit). In Latin, affidavit means “he or she has sworn.” In the law, an affidavit is a written sworn statement. In the case of the affidavit in the news, it’s a written sworn statement by an FBI special agent. He or she has sworn to tell the truth.

If you’re interested in reading the unredacted sections of the aforementioned affidavit, here it is.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119588357/trump-warrant-affidavit-mar-a-lago-search

*In case you’ve forgotten your grammar, a participle (the perfect passive participle, for our purposes) is a verb form usually used as an adjective or as part of a verb in a sentence. The participle of drive, for example, is driven. The participle of shrive is shriven. The participle of dive is (ha!) dived.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119588357/trump-warrant-affidavit-mar-a-lago-search

Questions, comments, and written sworn statements are welcome.

Posted in Wednesday Word | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Monday Meals

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Kathy

I happened on an America’s Test Kitchen video featuring the always cheerful Becky, who demonstrated how to make Chilled Soba Noodle Salad. The vegetables looked so good, and Becky made it look so easy, that I tried it myself last week. The recipe served me and my husband for two dinners, supplemented by corn on the cob and some dinner rolls. Pretty good, but it was a lot of trouble (for me, not for Becky) and probably not worth making again.

Here’s the thing, though. It involved my buying a bunch of ingredients I have never used before and may never use again. A package of soba noodles was fine; we used the whole eight-ounce bag. The leftover vegetables, including sugar snap peas, radishes, and scallions, will also soon disappear from our kitchen. A jar full of sesame seeds, however, will linger in my spice cabinet for some time.  If I try, I’ll probably eventually use up the sesame oil. My ginger root will find its way into something.

Most problematic is/are the nor, or Japanese seaweed, which comes in a package of ten sheets. The soba salad recipe required one sheet. Doing the math, I’m left with nine sheets of nor. I am unsure how to store them, let alone use them. (Don’t bother to google this for me; I will do that myself eventually.)

Preparing even my one sheet of nor was problematic. You’re supposed to crisp the sheet over a gas flame. Because I have an electric range, I toasted it as well as I could in a non-stick frying pan. Inevitably, I forgot about it for a few minutes and burned part of it, which I cut away. I’m sure nor is extremely nutritious, but the taste was a little seaweedy-y, so I’m not dying to add it to something else.

I’m usually cautious about purchasing items useful for only one recipe, but Becky is so damn charming. And by the time I wrote down the ingredients, headed to the grocery store, enlisted two employees to scour the shelves for sesame seeds, and hunted down the nor and soba noodles myself, I was in too deep. Have you ever bought one-recipe items? Do you have an ancient bottle of black seed oil hanging out in your pantry? Do you throw such things away, or leave them on the shelf for the people who will eventually buy your house? Tell us what’s on your shelves!

Posted in Monday Meals | Tagged , , | 5 Comments