Monthly Archives: February 2014

Cabbage and Parsley Salad

You probably didn’t know this about me, but I’m somewhat of a salad genius. I know it’s not that unique a thing — I can name at least two OTHER geniuses off the top of my head, without even thinking that hard. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to start sharing some of these combos. Today seemed like a good day to start, if for no other reason than I am craving the color green (need I write? it’s snowing again . . .)
Cabbage and Parsley Salad
Serves four as a side; two as a main course
I like to use parsley as a green in the winter. In addition to being a good source of Vitamin C, it’s pretty. Cabbage adds a tangy contrast to the lettuce and if you use a mandolin to slice it, you’ll get an especially thin ribbon. Most of my celery tops go straight into the freezer for eventual use in stock production, but here they are chopped in with the parsley.

Bowlful of iceberg lettuce
Handful of grape tomatoes, sliced in half
Handful of black olives
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped parsley and celery tops, mixed
Wedge of cabbage, sliced thin

Vinaigrette (1/4 c olive oil; 1/4 c white vinegar; 1 T mustard, chopped garlic and salt and pepper)
Celery tops add a refreshing piquancy.
When paired with red quinoa and a batch of sauteed peppers, onions, and zucchini — a very satisfying winter meal!

more snow

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For the first winter that I can EVER remember, New Englanders are uniformly complaining about the weather. The more usual head-shaking about changeability of the sky or stoic shrugs have given way to groaning.

Snow has relentlessly fallen every few days – or at least it feels that way. With each accumulation comes heavy lifting, re-arranged schedules, worry about roads and rooves. I have been living on my heating pad.
A friend of my brother-in-law died of a heart attack shoveling. Last night, there was news about two calamitous building collapses. Up in Salem, my sister’s building keeps producing lethal icicles, four feet long, two stories up, directly above her walkway.
This week found both K and me out on the roof, chipping, sweeping, scraping, and chiseling. The guy at the hardware store joked about using an acetylene blow torch. I laughed, but kind of wondered whether it might work — water was coming in through our kitchen ceiling, and nothing to that point had yet stopped it. Thankfully, the ice melt that I bought worked. I flung an entire box up into the valley where two parts of our house meet. Within hours, I could put away the pots that had been on the floor catching water.
I took comfort in knowing that were the ceiling to cave in, it would invariably happen when my husband was in Korea or Russia, and he was home (though he was NOT here when that awful slush and frozen rock-like stuff had to be moved around).

And, now it is supposed to rain and I find myself wondering, “What will THAT do?!” I am driving to Maine today to help celebrate a friend’s birthday. Wish me luck!! I hope the freezing rain has come, melted, and gone. In the meantime, I am loving the squirrels who visit our deck.

heritage

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This page* asked, “Will you celebrate your heritage?”

I’ve been thinking about ancestors lately, and the things they do or do not leave behind. The eighteenth anniversary of my mother’s death just came and went.

The ship shown above the rooflines above is a photo of the very vessel that transported my mother’s father, Albert Victor Jacques, from Hartlepool to New York. It arrived in this country on November 1, 1923, and he was 25 years old.

I am also wondering about how to collect these small shards of history and their images, if any, to pass them along. Here? In a private blog? On a thumb drive, and if so, what format? Anyone else tackling this?

Oh. And, it’s snowing again.

* Another two pages from Sketchbook Project, “It’s Not About Me – Questions for a Nineteen Year Old.” The entire book is pictured in the Arthouse Coop Digital Library, here.

Young grasshopper

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Given how enthusiastically I embrace TV nowadays, it sometimes amazes me to look back and recall how little I watched growing up, or in college. But one show I enjoyed was “Kung Fu”. When I added the silk image of a young person doing T’ai Chi to this cloth, the piece’s title suddenly and irrevocably became: Young Grasshopper.
The scan of the boy came from a collage, which eventually became a SoulCollage card. I just checked my Flickr set and it isn’t there — another reminder of the stack of cards waiting to be photographed.

I am on the verge of deciding to make my own Tarot deck — I have wanted to for years, and so what stops? I think it helped to read about Mo‘s philosophy — that is, of enjoying (instead of avoiding!) the idea of shouldering a task which may extend beyond her born days. Definitely not an attitude I would normally cotton to.

More snow. And pounding rain last night. Some of the heaviest slush I have ever lifted (heating pad, here we come!) Because it was slush below and frozen on top, I had to chop it first with the half-moon edge-trimming tool. The good news? No water coming into the house ANYWHERE.