Getting the Hang of It

For my second (the first is here) celebration of simple, steady joy, I choose biscuits.

{Moment of rapturous silence}

I know that they're not health food; we certainly don't live on them.  But bless me this time, I've made some moving biscuits recently.  I think I'm really getting the hang of them.  No, I mean really getting it.  I can remember at least three separate occasions lately when I have said "These may be the best biscuits of my life!"

Please take that bit of bragging as the first grade variety.  I'm so habitually expectant of failure and so notoriously (to me) uneven, that consistent success thrills me.

Biscuits are, again, a simple thing to make.  But they are tricky.  Once you know the tricks, it's no big deal.  Allow me to share some of the ones I know.

• Go all butter.  Shortening is easier but more deadly, and you can't beat the richness of butter.  Just keep it in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it, and all will be well.
• Use a soft flour like White Lily if you can.  This trick is not absolutely necessary, but it helps with tenderness.
• Use buttermilk.  The acidity aids the leavening.  I discovered a couple of weeks ago that you can also use whey leftover from cheese making in place of the buttermilk.  It works fabulously.  (Yes, I've been holding back some of my kitchen deeds.  I'll try to catch up one day.)
• Include a tablespoon of sugar to balance the bitterness of the baking powder.
• Leave some of the butter in pieces at least the size of peas.  Their melting creates  steam, which makes more layers.
• Cut straight down with your cutter.  Twisting will prevent your biscuits from popping impressively straight up. 
• If you really want to pump up the pouf, pat out the dough into a rectangle, fold it in thirds, and repeat that process another couple of times.  You're now starting to act as if you're making super-flaky puff pastry, and your biscuits will act a bit like it, too.

Another wonderful thing to know about biscuits is that they aren't just for southern down home breakfasts. Your scratch biscuits will put those little yellow cakes from the supermarket to sniveling shame as a base for strawberry short cake made in the original--I mean colonial original--style.

The slight savoriness and buttery richness of the biscuit combined with sugar softened berries and lightly sweetened whipped cream are quite the treat.  Add blueberries, and it's the perfect dessert for the holiday at hand--historical and delicious.


Biscuits
Makes 7-8

2 cups White Lily or all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. 

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

Cut in the cold butter with your fingers, a pastry blender, or even two knives.  Stop when there are still some butter pieces the size of peas.

Stir in the buttermilk only until moistened.  Turn out onto a floured counter and pat out into a 3/4 inch high rectangle.  If you want impressive rise and layers, fold your rectangle in thirds, envelope style.  Repeat the patting out and folding two more times.

Cut biscuits out using a 2 1/2 inch round biscuit cutter, re-rolling and cutting the scraps.  Or you may cut the final rectangle into even squares if you're feeling particularly...efficient.

Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes, until tops and bottoms are golden brown.  Serve warm, or cool and use for dessert!

Return to Normalcy

 

All storms (Umm, the internal ones)  have passed for the time being, and I'm awfully glad.  I can get back to writing out of the positive overflow of my restored heart and record a couple of very simple things that are much more fun.

Firstly, today, that fabulous salad up there.  Actually, calling it a salad is a stretch. I know you were already thinking it. It's more accurate to call it simply dressed arugula.

Yes, that's it.  But it's really so much more than that.  The particular combination of basic components is so made for each other that it's more enjoyable than expected--the old sum greater than parts deal. Perhaps you've heard of it?

Take a generous handful per person of average grocery-store arugula out of its plastic tomb, drizzle it with good extra virgin olive oil and fresh-squeezed lemon juice, sprinkle it with coarse salt, and grind some pepper over it.  That's the recipe in a sentence.

We were surprised, too!  I know that simple things can be wonderful--I'm in favor of them most of the time--but I was still startled.  And impressed enough that we've eaten these simple dressed greens three times in the last week--the last time so I could photograph them as well as I am able and get this down before it gets away from me.

The best explanation I can find for the inordinate satisfaction given by those anointed leaves is the chemistry between the elements--like the energy in that small but compatible group of true friends that makes for a great party, even when everyone else couldn't show.  The peppery bitterness of the greens gets brightened by the lemon juice, their oppositional balance is rounded by the olive oil, and the salt and pepper do their usual two step on top. What an act!

I did use my good olive oil, sourced and bottled by a local gentleman, bless him.  That could have contributed.  And I do think using coarse kosher salt helped, too--adding crunchy texture as well as its usual flavor save.  There is that old wisdom that when the ingredients are good not much else is needed. This dish may be proof of it. Regardless, it's worth remembering for those times when I need something green and easy on the plate that won't be underwhelming.

If you're feeling all fancy, shave--don't grate, but shave with the vegetable peeler--some real Parmigiano-Reggiano into your little black dress of a salad. Of course you could add all manner of other delights: toasted nuts, dried fruits, other cheeses, roasted vegetables.  Your hardly-blank green canvas can go in many directions if you wish.  But thanks be, it doesn't have to.

Dressed arugula can also serve as an underpinning for the French version of a one bowl meal of lentils and fried egg, which is how the leaves made their most recent appearance here. Since you don't need a recipe for the greens, I've included the directions for the lentils.

Super easy or supper.  Your choice.  I love versatility.

Tomorrow, more simple goodness.

Dressed Arugula Recipe

See paragraph four above.  Done.


Warm Lentil Salad with Fried Egg
Adapted from Epicurious 
Serves 4

3/4 cup lentils (preferably French green lentils)
4 oz thick-cut bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick strips
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 celery ribs, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped

1 teaspoon dried tarragon
2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar, or to taste

Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 large eggs
Dressed Arugula (see above) or baby spinach

Cover lentils with cold water by 2 inches in a saucepan, then simmer, uncovered, until just tender, about 20 minutes. 

 

While lentils are simmering, cook bacon in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until crisp, then transfer with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain, leaving fat in skillet. Add leeks, celery, carrot, and tarragon to skillet and cook, stirring, until just tender. Add vinegar and boil until most of liquid is evaporated. Remove skillet from heat and stir in half of bacon, and salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a bowl and keep warm, covered, reserving skillet. 

Drain lentils well in a large sieve. Stir into vegetable mixture and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm, covered. 

Wipe skillet with paper towels, then add oil and heat over moderate heat until hot but not smoking. Fry eggs in batches until whites are just set but yolks are still runny and season with salt and pepper. 

Divide lentil salad among 4 plates atop Dressed Arugula or spinach. Top with eggs and remaining bacon.

Who And Why?

 
Yesterday in my reading I came across some advice to writers that encouraged knowing your audience.  It occurred to me belatedly that I might want to think about that idea. Time to put the cart after the horse I suppose.

Of course, at this point I have no real audience, because I've never actively sought to build one.  I have resistances to sort out.

One is that I'm made distinctly uncomfortable by self promotion and hucksterism.  Part of my distaste for the necessary job of marketing comes from a shame issue that may be pretty obvious to any readers I do have by now.  The other part is a simple preference for subtlety and....

Who am I kidding?  It's mostly about the shame.  The thought of trying to convince anyone that I can do great things is....well, it just isn't done.  I want to lower my head when the subject comes up, not lift it and hawk my wares.  I am STILL waiting to be told at any time that I am a loser, a lame-o, a failure.  I'm still expecting to find what I worked so hard and happily on judged sorely against the other competitors, like the banana bread I made for a class competition in 5th grade.  I thought it was good and dreamed of winning--until I realized that the under flavored, badly colored one on our anonymous sample board was actually mine.  I knew I was a loser then.  I hoped no one but me knew which one was mine.

I just judged an ice cream cake contest on Monday.  I hope none of the not-winners felt that way, especially if I had anything to do with it.

Anyway, I have no skill or appetite for self-promotion, and I've never given any thought to who my audience might be, even if only in my imagination.  But it's a good question.  My shame may make me want to avoid the question of audience (read: potential judges), but writing does kind of presume readers, doesn't it?  Who would I want them to be?  Or, to put it in a less self-centered way, who would benefit from reading about my journey through life?  I squirm at the question of what I have to offer anyone, especially when I'm in the trough, but what do I have to give here?

One thing could be comfort.  Yesterday I also read an account of one woman's near paralyzing anxiety before a public speaking event and appreciated it immensely.   That may not be my trigger, but I know the fear.  I bless her for helping me feel...entribed, to make up a word.  (Hey! Making up words is fun).  She's a bright, talented lady who can be honest about some of her trials and still be taken seriously when she writes about happy, "normal" stuff, too.  As if difficulties aren't normal.

So one value in writing about my real inner life could be that it helps someone else who wants to find her people, who needs to know that she isn't alone in her navel gazing, anxious-yet-joyous, always-asking-the-deep-questions ways. She may be encouraged in the same way I was encouraged when I read about that other woman's anxiety.

If I do try to picture my people, they're, well, a lot like me--sensitive, searching, educated, artsy, wounded but walking, dedicated to learning and growing, even when that means dealing with fearful things.  Maybe they're also souls who know much darkness, even as they love and seek the light, and would like to be honest about that without being deemed a flake.  My top aim in life, and the focus of this blog, is to always seek to make life fine and beautiful.  Honesty is part of that.  I try to name and know the bad well, so it won't swallow me.  Then I can appreciate the good even more.

The question for me has always been how honest to be here. Let me be clear:  I DO NOT want to carry on like a Jerry Springer guest, or the customer who once told me way more than I needed to know during the purchase of a cookie.  Revelation has its limits.  There are parts of myself and my life that I will always keep private.  I weigh the potential consequences of lifting my veil often and say nothing here that I wouldn't say to a friend or acquaintance, if it seemed pertinent or helpful.  I may not be a person who needs many secrets, but I do have a sense of decorum.  Deciding to write only about the positive, which I've tried, just causes blockage.  As I said, I'm transparent.  A wee-little all or nothing, maybe.

But despite my desire to be open, the truth is that after pushing the publish button on the Flat Line post, I was even more anxious.  In my morning journaling I found that I was scared because of it, afraid that I'd seem like a tortured, flaky whiner.  The inner toddler was feeling extremely vulnerable.  I seriously thought of deleting it or abandoning writing altogether (again!?).  All the better to stay safe, my dears.

Then I went on to work (People--the extrovert's cure!), where no one emailed me to say that obviously I am not up the this job if I'm going to bare my pathetic soul on the internet, pretending to be seeking enlightenment.  The anxiety storm blew by, and I'm here again. 

As I have come closer to whole in my journey, I have consciously wanted to be the one who could hear people when they needed to share their darkness.  Like the friend with the baby she adored but also the guilt complex for not loving every minute of it because she was up ended and sleep deprived. I don't mind sitting with tears, fears, doubts, and painful stories.  I know how much good it does to let those feelings out with someone who can hear them without fixing or judging. I hope that being the listener makes them feel less alone.  There's nothing like the feeling you get when you know that someone else KNOWS, too--has been there, gets you--and also accepts you even when you bawl piteously and blow your nose.

Whether we're listening or telling, our stories help each other.  I tell mine here and listen to others when I'm needed because I believe that to be true.  We're here to help each other.  I hope that whatever wants to be written through me, as Julia Cameron would put it, contributes even if I don't know how.

And I don't know.  But sometimes that works for me.  We didn't know why we wanted so suddenly and giddily to buy this barn, but it's worked.  I didn't know why I wanted to go to culinary school, but that's paying off for me wonderfully.  I've learned to trust my gut.  She's not so stupid.

I've not always felt that way about myself.  When the anxiety attacks, I still don't, mostly because somewhere back there I was taught by crazy makers (that's a clinical term, by the way) not to listen to my own instincts and judgments.  I could be controlled better that way.  Self doubt and shame hold a person down quite tightly.

And there's one reason to continue.  When I probe my reactions to writing about anything unseemly, like my difficult times, or even thinking about an audience, I feel that 5th-grade-banana-bread shame all over again. The danger is that showing the world anything but the good stuff, or maybe even displaying what I think is good, will reveal me as pathetic, that I'll be rejected when people know how I really am.  I will do whatever I have to do to get past that fear, to shed that shame which seems to be the kernel of my resistance to writing.  I may struggle, but I won't let it stop me from doing what I feel I must do.  It's risky, but it's the only way to grow and be better for others, too.

Contributing to others does matter to me.  I want to be clear about that, as well.  I may write about myself, but it's not because I over-value me.  If anything I do battle with the opposite tendency.  I'm confessional and personal because that's all I've got, and because I find the process of simply trying to be a healthy, full human being fascinating in its illogical difficulty.  I'm not gifted with imaginary worlds and characters like my husband.  Real life is what speaks to me, with its good and its bad, its fabulous dinners and pains that heal.

Well, after all that, I still don't know who my right audience is, but I can live with the question and see what answer arises.  I suspect that breaking through the shame barrier will make it easier to answer it.  I'll write until I know.  

And It Only Took a Year

The supplies I bought last week became, over the weekend, another project done.  Yay!

Dave had noticed at some point that we had thirteen steps in our stair.  The man loves all things classically spooky, so he had the idea to highlight that fact by numbering the risers.  Originally we thought they would be done with paint.  Then I saw a magazine picture of the same idea executed with nail-up house numbers.  Brilliant!  Way less work and still quite affordable:  the whole passel of numbers set us back less than 24 dollars.

Installing them took about half an hour--of Dave's labor, let's be clear.  Because he can do mathematical centering and it involved tools.  It's a man thing.  I do the estimating and shopping.  We both use our best skills that way, and everybody wins.

I absolutely love it when something new happens on our house!  I want a prettified home like I want food.  In order to feed that part of me more regularly, I've decided to identify, each Sunday during quiet, relaxed thinking time, a step I can take in the coming week to move a project along.  I'm trying to prevent the aforementioned lag time between idea and execution, because execution brings the satisfaction.  This particular idea arose over a year ago, if we even remember now.  Definitely room for improvement.

Only eight months elapsed between my curtain tieback inspiration and whipping them out, which took all of twenty minutes, but there's still a seriously skewed ratio there, too.  I want to shift it toward enjoyment and satisfaction instead!

I've waited and worked a long time to feel like doing, so I celebrate every short equation, every home improvement, every task checked off a lingering list. I celebrate even when I can't feel the celebration.  It's my own kind of spiritual defiance sometimes. 


Also, I can't always control how I feel, but I can choose what to believe.  And I believe that those letters are a fun addition to the barn.  That will do for now.

Flat Line

Here's something very true about me:  I may have a lot of failings, but being fake is not one of them.   No, I am a genuine article.  With me, most of the time what you see is what you get, because what I've got is what you see.  I'm transparent that way, not very good at smiling outside when I feel like crying inside.  I'm not sure if the internet is the best place to be so, but that's how I am.

Why did I ever write (semi) publicly that I had been happy for so long?  Yesterday, I read someone else's good news and instantly fell into an emotional hole that I've not entirely climbed out of.  Well, I've climbed out, but I'm still tender and wary.  The instant depression is still with me like a bad taste in my mouth that won't go away.

It's hard to explain how people like me--at least my family members, I've seen them do it--can drop instantly into an alternate interpretation of the world that darkens their eyes and hardens their hearts and curls their lips.  And I should stop using the plural pronoun now, because it's all me this time.

Years ago, I tried to write the experience into a poem (never finished).  I called it Avalanching because that's what the momentum is like.  One small thought starts rolling and gathers feelings like dirty snow with frightening speed until I'm buried in them.  I can dig out intellectually these days, but the feeling lingers on.  I know that the negative spin on the universe is not true, BUT THAT DOES NOT CHANGE THE WAY I FEEL.  The whole experience is exceedingly mystifying and unnecessary, but absolutely real--and terribly stubborn.

So that's where I am on the landscape, a barren flat place with a memory of the sunny hilltop I inhabited just yesterday morning, just 30 seconds before the bottom fell out. I know that it will pass eventually.  I'm still hoping for a new rule, still praying that this is now the exception.

I don't feed this wolf any more.  Surely he'll tire soon. What I felt like doing yesterday was sitting and staring with a mouth like a flat line.  Instead, I painted a little something in the house, did a good deed for someone else, worked on a project for the job I feel lucky to have, and cooked a good dinner (Indian food, yum).  I don't know what else to do but accept that I don't get to feel happy right now, and believe that I will again soon.  Especially when I'm around other people again.  That always helps.  I suspect that people think I am a happy person because of their own buoying effect on me.

When this happens, I don't know what else to do but go forward doing what needs to be done and what seems wise to do.  Forward is the only way to go, the only way worth going.

Life is good.  I will be so glad to feel it fully again. Until then, I wrote the next post anyway.

Frankly, My Dears, I Love You Now

I realized after writing these two posts that one of the reasons I love writing is the clarity it provides.  I learn while I'm writing; I see things I didn't see before.  Thoughts and realizations emerge that I didn't have before dipping into the word well.  For instance, after carrying on instinctively about my feet and skin, and what's wrong or problematic about them, I was struck by a new perspective.

I saw that in telling the stories of these parts of myself, I was revealing how I've defined myself--as a person of lack and extremity, an oddball.  I distinctly remember feeling that way in the awkwardness of adolescence (Who hasn't then?), but it apparently continues now, even though I've worked very had to become my own friend.  I still carry a remnant of self image based on what separates me from others, what sets me apart in uncomfortable ways, rather than on any commonalities--and there are many.  We're all human, after all.

Frankly, I don't care that I'm pale (mostly), and my feet are the only ones I've got.  Neither quality is hurting me in any way.  The earth has not tilted off its axis because my shoes flop around a little or my veins make a visibly branching pattern on my chest.  Why then am I allowing these traits, or my attitude toward them,  to affect my picture of myself?  These "problems" are outdated. They no longer fit the new, real me. Even the painful incidences I mentioned were A LONG TIME AGO.  Everybody's pretty much over it (Other than a few tactless souls), and so could I be.

I also noticed the words I chose to describe myself. I used terms like bony (I narrowly missed scrawny), which sounds like a word for a crone, when I could have referred to my bodily self with terms like slender, porcelain, lithe, or...See I can't even come up with more positive descriptors!  I've got to clean up my vocabulary act.  Language has incredible power, to reveal but also to affect.

For instance, I dropped the word "should" from common usage a few years ago. Instead I try to use "could," in order to remind myself that I have choices and to weigh myself down less with guilt.  I still catch myself from time to time (like two paragraphs ago, I confess), but it works.  Words have that kind of power.  Change "overwhelmed" to "challenged," and the attitude changes, too. It's time in the struggle to like and accept myself to check my word choices because they betray my attitude.

Speaking of that, I almost changed the word struggle to something lighter, but in this case, it's accurate, so I let it stay.  It has not been easy at all for me to be kind to myself, even though I'm (mostly) kind to others.  Crazy, but true.  And I'm not the only one who labors so.  Maybe some of my sharing is for some of those people.  That part I'm not in charge of.

I could have berated myself for writing in an unnecessary, possibly narcissistic, fashion about myself.  The critic demons certainly like to point out that no one probably cares about the topics anyway.  But I find that's it's been educational.  It's helping me cast off old ideas, which are some of the worst prisons, and redefine myself.  Writing brings this kind of self discovery.  That's a good enough reason to continue and a fun one, too, since I've found a couple of millstones I can cast away.

I've been finding it ironic for a while now that I'm able to look more kindly upon my physical self even as it begins to show signs of aging.  It seems backwards, but maybe it's not.  As the body moves inexorably farther from "perfect," or even the chance to be so, I have to let go of the pursuit of it or be miserable, wearying myself by fighting what cannot be vanquished.  The decline of the body makes spirit ascend because it can still be improved and is more durable.

From now on, I will try to cease complaining about my feet or feeling self conscious about my radiant (Now there's an adjective!) legs.  I will simply accept that they are.  Slender-footed and ivory-skinned and Roman-nosed will just be descriptors of me with no more negative weight than the fact that I was born in Tennessee.  They are simply qualities of the body, which will fade away, and the body isn't the essence of me anyway.  I know that now. Spirit is the fuel of true living.

Mine for Keeps?

 
I've been very happy lately.  For six whole months now, in fact.  This run may be the longest of my life. 

When I say happy, I don't mean just the presence of a positive feeling state.  I also mean the absence of my old nemesis anxiety.  There have been what I consider normal moments of angst, nervousness, and stress, but no tightness that makes it difficult to breathe, no psychological-warfare-level Voice of Doom in my head, no constant less-than feeling.  It has been and is wonderful.  This is what it's like to be a real person, or so I have imagined it. 

But still I worry....  Well, that's a strong word.  I wonder sometimes if my happiness is borrowed.  I can't deny the coincidence that it arrived and nested after I got the job I now have.  Am I still succumbing to the fallacy of proving my worth so that I can feel I have some laurels to rest on, or have I finally, after years of counseling, reading, praying, and other retraining, finally reached the promised land of real change and new habits? 

Most days right now, I don't care.  I bless the experience with my notice and gratitude, regardless of its provenance.  I savor it mightily, but do not take it for granted.  I know that suffering will come to me again at some point.  Such is the way of life.  I'm not being gloomy, just accepting.  Understanding that bad will come--and that it's not personal--makes the good sweet indeed.  I am obligated while they are here to treasure each precious moment in which circumstances make my happiness easy. 

Many wise people say that happiness should not be dependent on circumstances.  After all, we can't control the latter, only the former.  I've tried to live that independent-joy wisdom.  I think I even learned my lesson in the fallow time before this dream job.  I certainly hope so because this happiness I want to keep--not jumping for joy, just feeling...sturdy, capable, sufficient, optimistic.  It feels like being really me.  It's perhaps pathetic to be so grateful for what should be a given, but that's what deprivation does to a body--or rather, a mind.  Actually both. That's how anxiety rolls.

But I still wonder if it isn't natural to be happier when we come closer to what we've sheepishly desired for years and years, when what was missing is finally found.  How was I supposed to be content when I hadn't made it to the life in which I could find contentment?  Of course, that may be the anxious person's logic, born of an inability to trust life and the eventual unfolding.  Anxiety is big on scarcity.

Whatever the answer to the Big Question (Is happiness dependent on circumstances?), I hope that this happiness of mine isn't borrowed.  I hope it's mine for keeps.  Well, mostly.  Nobody's the old bluebird every moment.  But I dearly hope that it can be the rule and not the exception, the heart-place to which I can return because it's home, not just a way station in the storm.