Category Archives: Living Well

Shoefly Scones

Posted on by

I could just break down and call this really large molasses cookies, but I think of them as scones. This is a reprint with a few corrections of a recipe I published last June.Shoo Fly Scone 4 I needed something new and fast for breakfasts this week, and thought I would make these again.
I also left some for my dear friend Mel and her family, since today is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Mel!
By the way, I did some field-work since last year, and the pronunciation of Scone become more like “scon” the further north you get.

Ingredients:

  • 2 ½ cups flour (Whole wheat, white, both, as you wish) and ¼ more for the topping
  • Optional: add ¼ cup of gluten and ¼ cup of brewers yeast for extra protein, and to make the scones firmer.
  • ¼ cup of sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 3 Tbsp cold butter
  • ¾ cup plain yoghurt
  • ½ cup molasses (or dark corn syrup, or a mixture)
  • 1 egg

Step 1, Prepare Ye the way: Preheat the oven to 400°, assemble all the ingredients, run to the store because you are out of molasses, and grease a baking sheet.

Step 2, sifting the dry ingredients: In one bowl sift (mix if you don’t have a sifter) the flour, sugar, baking powder, yeast & gluten, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Mix thoroughly.

Step 3, pastry cutting: Cut in the ice cold sliced butter, using either a pastry cutter or a knife. I suppose some processer thingy can do this, too, but I don’t own one. The result should be crumbly.

Step 3, pastry cutting addendum: Take a quarter cup of flour, mix it with a few tablespoons of sugar and some cinnamon, cut in a tablespoon or more of butter, and set it aside for the crumble topping.

Step 4, mixing the wet ingredients: In another bowl, mix the yoghurt, the molasses and the egg.

Step 4, combining the big mess: Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix well. THe results might be a bit gloppy. Try not to overwork the dough.

Step 5, baking: Flouring your hands, form little scone sized patties out of the dough (should be 6 to 8, depending on your size preference) and put them on the greased baking sheet.  Grab some of the crumble topping and top the dough with it liberally. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. See how they look. Stick a toothpick in one and see if it comes out battery.

Final Step, share and enjoy They do make a handy breakfast, which is much easier to eat in the car than the pie. To your left, they are pictured with my Rhubarb-Almond Scones. They are perfect for sharing over breakfast, or in the afternoon over tea, or for dropping by and giving to friends.

Sideroxylon

Posted on by

Why the long shorts?

When the Bistro was on the road recently, I happened upon a copy of USA Today (June whiteredseersucker12, 2014), that printed thing whose lack of journalism is compensated for by colour. In it, an etiquette and style writer criticized how short men’s shorts were becoming. After all, she wrote, who wants to see a man’s thighs?
The photo that accompanied it showed this mid-thigh pair of men’s shorts.

 

Seriously, USA Today?
He is wearing a pair of pink seersucker shorts, for crying out loud!
Your problem is its length?

At athletic events, of course, the longer shorts of the time are coupled with high athletic socks, giving us a look like this:Lionel Messi (L), Bruno Alves (R)

Which is not too different from this:victorian bathingsuit

bruce_jenner_wheaties_boxI certainly am not an advocate of short shorts.
Somehow, Bruce Jenner came back, but we certainly don’t need his  I’m not really that big of an advocate of shorts in general. They are comfortable in warm weather, but not very high on the fashion totem.
But this: mid-thigh being considered “too long?”
or even long? Not exposing anything but the knee?

This is a little crazy— especially when we think about the standards for women’s shorts.

Among the ancient Greeks, the male body was a symbol of Netuno19bpower—virility and action rather than a passive, vulnerable object—and therefore depicting it nude was a symbol of power.
By contrast, in our culture, clothes are power, so the more power a man wishes to project, the more he puts on—business suits, hunting cammo, or Teflon armour.
So maybe length does matter.
Of course, the gaze we fix upon women’s clothes is much more sordid.

We have always been ludicrous when it came to women’s bodies, but here in the 21st century, when we should have been getting away from our hang-ups and cultural expectations are we going to start worrying about not exposing men’s thighs?

Our Nation’s founders all had bodies, but two centuries later, American’s are as obsessed and repulsed by them as ever.

Men’s thighs— OY!
Have a bialy— it’ll do ya’ good.

1024 signature

 


 

 

Travel

Posted on by

Sustained by bouncing
between one sensation sight smell taste sound song and another,

I ride on the spirit of the end of a world cup soccer match.

The mountains are frozen in their dance, dipping down into the cottony mist just to rise again dark and blue and green as my car floats around them.

I give a dollar to the harmonica player hunched like a question mark upon the mosaic of the front of a closed store. I strike a match for Gypsy when she asks and squat to meet her dog Shakey; Gypsy is wrapped in a dress as motley as Tibetan prayer flags, and she lights the second half of her roll-your-own.
I hold that spent match in the corner of my mouth like a blessing, like a kiss, as I walk on.

Like a skipping stone, I skim along between sensations and ideas,
sustained by each image or laugh, every word and rhythm, each sight and color, every sound and song, each taste and smell, and every person—

every person as grimy as a tin can, brilliant as a star.

Bird in his place

Posted on by

As I sat at a table behind the empty Sunday-morning café, a bird flew and perched up on a street light. It is fascinating how each type of bird, and each bird itself, can have such individual personality. A beautiful light gray mockingbird, he was slender, but cocky, prince of his little realm, throwing his head back to sing, and then looking down at his kingdom—and then he flew away.

I looked around, and there was not a another bird in sight

I am alone, I thought, not another living being.

But the maples down by the creek, and the other trees, they are living beings…so was the roll of grass between us, and the Virginia creeper climbing up the trees, and the scrub and weeds and bushes on the bank behind the trees.

And the cars buzzing past beyond—in each of them a living being: every one, all of them with their own destination, their own fears, their own joys, their own desires, their own cares, their own jokes.

The crazy little mockingbird comes back and looks at his little realm.

Oxford

Posted on by

I am tempted to say that the whole European travel last summer was magical, but that is not the best term. It was so very real. The most wonderful places amazed us by just being themselves–so very themselves.

Oxford SquareOxford is Oxford.

Although Cambridge has been the British University for philosophers, I adore Oxford.
Every moment the town is alive and vibrant, yet mellow and thoughtful. Most of the stones have been there since the Tudors and Stewarts, yet each year a new wash of young students pour over them.

I fell in love with Oxford as a young boy.
As I have mentioned before, we were living in Germany, and my parents were sometimes afraid we would forget the English language, so we would go to England once a year. They would take me to Blackwell’s, a very fine, very old bookstore on Oxford ElephantBroad Street. It seemed like the biggest bookstore I would ever see, which meant it was the best possible place in the entire universe to be.

The Bistro is currently located in a town with a university, but this is not really a university town. Other than a disproportional number of places one can get drunk, there is very little to indicate that there is a university here.
Oxford, by contrast, is a university town (as, by the way, was my home, Tubingen). Being a university town means being aware of a lot of students, but also being aware of the place as a place where people come to learn and to think. There is no reason to pretend that you are not Oxford since Oxford is the place to be.Oxford Mansfield College Cat
Oxford is a university, but that university also consists of a federation of 38 quasi-independent colleges, such as Trinity College, Merton College, Balliol, etc. One of our nights there, we had the good fortune to sleep in Mansfield College.
The Porters’ cat is named Erasmus.
Oxford Mansfield College breakfastThe breakfast was amazing.

I have already told the Oxford story involving the surrealism of the marching band playing YMCA, but the walk that more than anything told me what was possible in Oxford was a few nights later. We had eaten supper and The Eagle and Child–hangout of the Inklings–had walked across and behind St Giles to cut down Keble Road and east.Oxford Gargoyles
Keble College amused my daughter no end–and she would still laugh about it for days. A guide book I had read described Keble and having “Brick like an ugly Christmas sweater,” and that may be an apt description. In general, the gargoyles of Oxford are droll and funny–the stone masons clearly had a sense of humour and several pints Oxford's Best Gargoyleinside them–but Keble has the funniest. The expressions of these fantastical stone creatures had us laughing out loud until we reached Parks Road.
We spent some time in the park–Oxford has huge amounts of green space. Like any good University town, there were plenty of students making the best of the last of the day’s sunshine.
As we walked back on Parks Road, we passed a huge beautifully made iron gate–the Parks Road Gate of Trinity College, leading into “The Lawns.”. On the other side were lawns and  gardens, and a company performing Pride and Prejudice.

Mrs. Bennet: Have you no consideration for my poor nerves? 
Mr. Bennet: You mistake me, my dear. I have the utmost respect for your nerves. They’ve been my constant companion these twenty years. 

Oxford Radcliffe CameraA block further, we passed the courtyard of the Bodlean Library, where the Royal Shakespeare Company was performing Taming of the Shrew. Going behing the library to the Radcliffe Camera, we sat on a worn stone stair and listen to a baroque concert.

Austin, Shakespeare and Handel within a ten minute walk, one of the finest bookstores of the world, all surrounded by Oxford Teaparks and old trees, as well as beautiful old buildings–what more could one need?

Well, obviously, tea, but Oxford has that as well.

Until next time….
206signature

Signals, Self-expression, & Sharing

Posted on by

a rant turned into a meditation turned into philosophy.

seriously?!?  would it kill you to use your flogging turn-signal????

I don’t know if it is a sign of the decline of Western Civilization in general, IMG_3601or just where I live, but apparently many drivers no longer feel obligated to signal that they are going to change lanes, and quite a few feel no obligation to do so when turning.
I don’t understand this.
You can share almost anything, but this information you have to keep to yourself?

You can send selfies to the whole blasted planet, but you can’t tell me you are turning?!?

We live in a time of tremendous self-expression. Every day, folks share things online that I cannot imagine sharing with anyone, let alone with strangers; in fact, people share personal information with me in check-out lines, or as I am helping them at work, or when I just happen to sit near them. Sex lives, religious lives, prostate surgery, difficult child-birth, bowel status, getting kicked out of rehab–I have been bombarded with all this information, and yet, some how, I cannot get information that I really could use.
At work, of course, I learn something new every day, and usually it’s something that Avignon Theater Signs 6would have been much more useful earlier. The sad thing about this is that there usually is someone who could have shared it with me, but didn’t. But of all the things that could be shared, the one that frustrates me on a daily basis is when you don’t share the fact that your car will turn before it reaches me, and that I don’t need to wait for it. Or that you are about to turn into my lane directly in front of me.
See, here is the thing about turn signals, kids: it’s not about you. You don’t signal as a form of self-expression, or because it is a law (yes, it is) and you are afraid of a ticket, the signal is a sign put out there for other drivers. I recognize that there really isn’t anything in it for you–neither profit if you do nor punishment if you don’t–and this really effects your memory and concentration. However, maybe it should. It is something the other drivers who are sharing the road might want to know, and it makes their commute just a little less frustrating, so signaling shows that you are a reasonably good person, and failing to do so shows that you are an inconsiderate little Schmendrick.
Why? It is such a little thing that doesn’t make much of a difference.
That, my dears, is how worlds are lost. Besides, if you can make another human being’s day just a little bit easier with just a little flick of one finger, but you fail to do so, what kind of Schmo are you?

That little flashing light is a signal, which means it works as a sign. Avignon Bla BlaPeirce, our literary penguin, could tell you quite a bit more about signs, since he was named after one of the world’s greatest semiologists. This is a very complicated field, and both Peirces would probably disagree with me.
However, the point we need to remember is that in this case a sign communicates between us–you and me. It allows us to share something–warning, commands, information, affection; we meet in the clearing that sign creates.
We are sharing.
Although we say “thanks for sharing” facetiously when someone over-shares, really they aren’t sharing; they are blathering on. Because we value self-expression (and because dime-store freudianism somehow convinced us that talking about ourselves lead to better mental health), we do talk a lot. However, this isn’t really sharing.
Sharing involves both of us. We establish a connection; we connect. The hyper-sharing of on-line self-expression may seem intimate because one is throwing intimate information out there, but it is not intimate; intimacy involves two or more people connecting.
Without sharing and connection, self-expression is just as empty as any other form of intimacy without them (even if all these forms of false intimacy might seem or even be pleasurable).
The turn signal shows consideration and concern about others; the rest is just silly, crazy bumper stickers. One is attempting to connect; the other is just self-expression.

I could include the Bistro in this.
Now, I have rarely been accused of sharing too much personal and intimate information about myself, but my writings at the Bistro are often just talking to you as if I were just talking to myself, my dearest guests.

(of course, you could change that by writing questions to me)

In the mean time, I do hope you end your days with something warmer and more substantial.515signature

PS: You could always write. That would be a connection.


 

How to live life.

Posted on by

Ramps (5)Oh my gosh! These ramps are amazing! I wonder what I can do with them?

Scott’s strawberries are in! Will the pint even make it home? If I buy two, they will last until I whip whipped cream.

Whoa! Blackberries! Marvelous! I wonder how these would be in scones?

Asparagus? Sweetness! Oh, the little tender ones are the best!

Oh my goodness! Blueberries? Incredible! Ambrosia itself!

Wow! The first peas! I could just sit in the sun, shell them and eat them raw!

The first real tomato of the season. Feel the warm smooth skinTomato against your lips, the pop as your teeth break through, and then the flood of sweetness and tartness and acid and pulp that fills your mouth. I wonder if vampires feel like this?

Is there another? With some cheese, some fresh bread, some basil and some olive oil, I could live on just these for the rest of the summer and die happy!

Hot Dog! Fresh cucumbers! Amazing how they taste cool even in the sun!

Grand! Corn on the cob right off the stalk! I don’t even need butter. Oh wow.

Hmmmmmm. I had forgotten what fresh watermelon was like.

Apples! They even smell like fall! Incredible!

New wine?!? Fan-freakin’-tastic! Let’s bake an onion torte like in the old country!

Lovely! Just lovely! There really isn’t anything quite like warm apple butter on freshly baked bread and a cup of tea on a rainy day.

Pumpkin seeds! Fresh roasted pumpkin seeds! Brilliant! Better than hallowe’en Pies, Shoefly and Apple, Shoefly 6candy!

Oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh!!! Shoe fly pie?
I could live on this! Did you make me two?

Outstanding muffins, if I do say so myself! I’ll have to mail some to Josie.

I couldn’t say which was my favorite Christmas cookie; they are all so magnificent!

Ausgezeichnet! There really isn’t anything that makes me feel as good as stew with friends on a stormy January night.

What shall I bake for Valentine…. yeah. hell yeah. This will be even better Ramps (3)than last year.

Ramps! Grand! How Grand! What should I do with them?

912signature marvel

Ramp and Spinach Salad

Posted on by

Ramps (3)This is a spring salad made with ramps and spinach, and a sweet vinaigrette  
I mentioned ramps last year at this time–clearly around this time, since they are seasonal. Allium tricoccum is a wild plant of the garlic family, but I would describe it as garlic onion in flavour, strong for a leek, but not strong enough for garlic. It grows wild in the mountains of East Tennessee, and can be used as flavouring , or as a dish itself. It has wide leaves, like Lily of the Valley, so it is often stewed as a green.

Step 1, come together: assemble and wash all the ingredients–wild ramps are often found in creek areas, and the mud on the roots can retain that swampy smell.

Step 2, tear the greens: tear the spinach to a bite size and cut the leaves off the ramps, and cut into ribbons smaller than the spinach (a little goes quite a way)Apples

Step 3, all the other fruits of the garden…: slice a tart, crisp apple thinly, into bite sized slices, and drizzle with lemon juice. This will keep it from rusting. Add to greens.

Step 4, release the vinaigrette: in a large bowl, mix the vinegar, the dipping sauce & the olive oil (I used about a quarter cup of each, but you can balance it as you wish). IMG_3572Add salt to taste. Whisk to an even emulsion and drizzle on the salad.

Step 5, to table: serve, share, take to a potluck, eat lots of it and go to a sauna as a spring cleanse. You know what to do.

Alternative Popcorn

Posted on by

Ok, so this will not be complicated, but it is unusual (not to mention tasty) and if it is too easy, just come up with your own variations.

Ingredients:Alternative Popcorn (4)

  • Popcorn
  • Coconut Oil
  • Salt
  • Garam Masala spice (one of those spice combinations like curry which has hundreds of regional or individual variants, but generally roasted and ground turmeric, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, cumin seeds, and cardamom)

Step 1, well begun is half won: assemble the ingredients and get out a popcorn pan. A large pan with a lid and a handle will do, but remember you have to shake it back and forth to keep the kernels moving.

Step 2, beginning: melt the coconut oil in the pan. I used about a quarter cup, which is a lot, but gives it a faint coconut aroma.

Step 3, now you’re cooking with gas: roast the pan over medium high heat, keeping the corn moving until it is all popped.

Alternative Popcorn (17)Step 4, ’tis the season: sprinkle to taste with the spice and salt–I prefer lightly.

Step 5, enjoy & share: serve to friends for movie night, or just as a late snack, or maybe as snacks before the meal with cocktails. You can also put it in a paper bag and surprise someone with it.