from A YEAR WITH HAFIZ by Daniel Landinsky
I had every intention of making dairy-free alfajores and dairy-free dulce de leche last night, but was too tired after another 13-hour day. So, I will make those on Saturday.
Today, I used the last of my Stone-Baked Whole Wheat Bread to make French Toast for a special birthday breakfast! Yum! Enjoy 🙂
The makings for my Birthday Breakfast
French Toast using Homemade Whole Wheat Bread with Maple Syrup and Pears
Spring 2011 on the Tabeguache Trail
From A YEAR WITH HAFIZ by Daniel Ladinsky
I thought this was a powerful piece – gave me the goal to see that beauty all week long. I hope you have a great week! 🙂
And that’s how quickly it passes – a year ago today I set out to write a blog every day for 365 days (366 – it’s a leap year). So far, 31 days and 31 postings down (actually a few more than that, but I’m a bit of an overachiever!). Only 334 days to go; a twelfth of the way to victory.
I’m also halfway through my month of clean eating and Weight Watchers Points Plus plan eating – so far so good on both accounts. I’ve eaten out more than I had originally set out to, but I have done so successfully to plan so far. I’ve also been sticking to the restrictions my nutritionist gave to me (no garlic, no oats, no bananas, no dairy, no chocolate) for a month; I have grown a bit hodge podge with my supplements and need to adjust that today.
All together it’s been a perfectly lovely month, and I thank you all for sharing it with me.
Last night was a double-header for me. Not only did I get to make one of my newest favorite recipes (click here after Noon today), but I also had the chance to talk with my dear, beautiful, funny friend – Miguel – in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Miguel and I met several years ago; and though I’ve known him only briefly, I highly treasure the rare opportunities we get to visit. We share many commonalities, but one of the foremost is a mutual passion for amazing food. During our conversation tonight, I was reminded of a favorite dessert from Argentina:
Alfajores - Sweet Buttery Biscuits with Dulce De Leche between covered in Chocolate.
Alfajores after hours of traveling from Lima to Grand Junction.
Miguel first told me about alfajores as he gobbled them up in front of me during a skype call. Later, I stumbled across them in a shop at the airport in Lima, Peru and brought several home with me. Ever since, I have been longing to taste the delightful dessert again; but when I researched buying them on-line and having them shipped in, it cost $52 for 12! Worth it, but a bit more than I’m ready to spend on it. Miguel suggested I should make them myself and post them on the blog. So, of course, I am!
In the meantime, having had a beautiful talk with my friend about the great things happening in both our lives, I turned to the February 1st entry in A Year With Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky and this timely comment was a glaring reminder to keep living in the present and manifesting the world I want through my actions and my thoughts. Enjoy 🙂
February 1 from A YEAR WITH HAFIZ by Daniel Ladinsky
…he was exhausted but thrilled.
I love the magic when a great “song & dance” number starts to come together – when you start to see the glimmer of what it will be and the excitement that it will infuse.
I read this in A Year With Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky today:
That is all; goodnight. 🙂
Writing through Lunch - Fortunately, I always keep some carrot/ginger soup in stock; I whipped up a quick two cheese quesadilla on 96%-fat-free whole wheat tortillas. Yum!
Today was a lovely day spent writing and reading and listening. I sketched the intro for movement III of my new seven movement adaptation, having completed sketches for the introductions of I & II yesterday. I read about Quetzalcoatl, Ashoka, symbolism in gravestone carvings, and counterpoint theory. I listened to Corigliano’s Symphony #1 “Of Rage and Remembrance” from beginning to end. I watched a delightful documentary on AETN about my wonderful former professor Dr. Francis McBeth who passed away on Friday.
I’ve been so fortunate to be in a great mental place lately making it easy to write. While I know that it is brought on partly by the leisure time that Winter Break has allowed me, I actually think it has more to due with two other factors – blogging and painting.
Over dinner tonight, I was telling my friend Kathleen (El Tapatio, her first time; awesome meal, great discussion!) that I feel like blogging allows me to “brain dump”. It accomplishes for me the same as “Morning Pages” from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. The blog allows me to get all the loose thoughts in my head organized and OUT so that I can get to the creative materials. Painting helps me find artistic freedom. I didn’t even know that I didn’t have artistic freedom before I started painting last summer. But when I put forth my creativity in a medium that held know gravity for me – pure child’s play – I saw the absurdity behind worrying about final product before even starting the process.
And for the past six months I have continually asked, “What does this mean for my composing?”
I think it means everything to composing. And acting. And singing. And pottery. And dance. And pet portraiture. At the base of all these “art forms” is “child play” – the essence of creativity. And like a child, I have to be able to enter into art fearless of the outcome and uncertain of praise. I have to simply paint, sing, write to get it out.
Julia Cameron said it best (and I say it ad nauseum to my own students):
“Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one….Creativity is an act of faith, and we must be faithful to that faith, willing to share it to help others, and to be helped in return.”
Thank for participating in my daily “brain dump”. I’m so glad that y’all are enjoying it; I certainly am!
from A Year with Hafiz by Daniel Landinsky
I love waking up on a sunny Sunday morning and just laying in the beams of sunlight flooding through my bedroom window onto my bed. I love it even more when the only reason to break through and leave the comfort of those beams is to cook breakfast!
Over the summer, whenever strawberries or blueberries would go on sale, I would buy several packages of each. When I got them home, I would quickly wash them off, and then divide them into freezer bags to enjoy during the Winter. Well, while making scones yesterday morning I remembered that I have pounds of both fruits sitting in the freezer waiting to be enjoyed. So last night I removed a cup of blueberries and placed them in the refrigerator to thaw before morning. They weren’t quite thawed when I bounced down the stairs to whip up some Blueberry Scones, so I took them out of the refrigerator and ran some slightly warm water into their bowl.
Flax, Blueberries, and Sucanat
Part of the reason that I enjoy playing around with recipes and creating my own is because I love math. No seriously, I do – I love math. While sitting at a discussion group in an objective-building workshop this past week, I contested a math-based objective as unnecessarily verbose and unclear (not to mention frightening) with it’s run-on structure and use of words like “algorithmic”. One of my colleagues from a less “abstract” department on campus looked at me as if to say, “Of course the theatre professor doesn’t like the math objective.” Recognizing his thought, I quickly rebutted with “And I love Math; I mean, really. I LOVE MATH!” I think he thought I protested too much.
But its true, I am one those crazy artistic creative types that actually looks at math and recognizes the art within. I may not always understand it, but I recognize its function in my life as being essential. No, I don’t look at equations everyday (or any day, for that matter), but learning about equations taught me how to problem solve. Ultimately, algebra taught me how to cook!
For instance, yesterday morning when I woke up wanting healthy scones with ingredients that I already had in the house, I couldn’t just look at one recipe. Instead, I searched sites and found five or six recipes. Then I compared the techniques being used across the recipes (what do they do the same? what is different? why is it different? what proportions are similar throughout?) and found the aspects of each that I liked (whole-wheat in one, ground flax seed in another, alternative sugar source in another, etc). From there, I created my base recipe and experimented from there.
They aren’t perfect yet, so I should say “will continue to experiment from there”. Yesterday’s batch came out more dense and scone-like; today’s were more cookie-like. The difference between the two was that I tried to incorporate ground flax seed for flavor and good stuff while substituting out more of the all-purpose flour. The result was stickier dough and more cookie-like results. I believe this happened because of the finer nature of the wheat flour so next time if I use flax seed I will substitute it out of the whole wheat rather than the all-purpose.
Its true: I’m an interdisciplinary geek!
Despite its cookie-like texture, it was very tasty – but not as good as the Cranberry Scones yesterday (click here for recipe).
Blueberry Scones
I did a lot of writing today using a similar technique that I use when I am painting – whether its “good” or “bad” or “right” or “final”, just get it down on paper; at least then you have something to fix! I am finally getting through that wall of hesitance, of not wanting to write until it’s perfect. I have finally come to terms that I am not Mozart; what a relief!
Here are the results; I’m pleased.
The Last Matinee 1
The Last Matinee 2
Mom and Me (Nov. 2011)
And finally – today was my Mom’s birthday. I ran across this great picture of us from last Thanksgiving; what a wonderful day that was! I laugh at this picture because it is a great example of how neither my Mom nor I have eyes in pictures when we smile. They simply disappear behind our jolly cheeks. My Grandma Ballard was the same way, and this picture made me think of her, too. It reminded me of stories that she would tell about people throughout the 1940’s being rude to her because they thought she was of Japanese decent (which she was not). I remember as a kid hearing those stories that I thought that was ridiculous – she didn’t look Japanese. But then I saw some pictures from when she was younger, and you could see why people thought that she might have been. Still, its rather difficult to imagine the mindset of that time period. Oddly enough, her birthday was December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day).
Anyway…Best Wishes to my Mama who instilled in me a great love for enjoying great food with your friends. I send out Happy Birthday wishes today with this great poem I read in A Year with Hafiz (Hafiz was a 14th Century Persian poet) marked January 8th. Enjoy 🙂
{and please press “Like” if you did – thank you} 🙂
from A Year With Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky
The Alchemist's Kitchen 