Agora

My folks came to visit this weekend. A quick visit. Just one full day. So, we spent yesterday in misty Grant Park walking about and checking out a few exhibits in the Field Museum.

We started in Magdalena Abakanowicz's Agora at the south end of the park.




We took pictures like we were bona fide tourists. . . I guess Mom and Dad actually were.

Hand Modeling

When I was little, it seemed like there was far more hand modeling than there is today. All of those ladies on the Price is Right swooping their hands and slender arms over and around and in the general vicinity of all of the amazing prizes in the showcases. A full living room suite [*hand flourish* at corner of showcase, then limbs skimming like agitated birds over coffee table top, the edge of a television set entrapped inside of a giant piece of furniture, alighting for just a moment on the back of the easy chair, then tripping along the back of a couch until the hostess perched cheerfully on the arm rest looking anything but right at home.]

Plus, disembodied hands showed up a lot more in commercials for jewelry, for Neet, for moisturizers, cars and on and on. Something about a long slender hand--the kind you imagine might be attached to someone who looks like Betty Draper--that made products fly out of the stores in the 70's and early 80's. Not so much now. Maybe because we're allowed to show so much more now on TV, the staid hand couldn't hope to pique anyone's interest in the way it used to.

But my childhood was filled with my brother and I mimicking those hand and arm movements. My parents bought a new VW bus, my brother swoops into the picture brushing his arm the length of the racing stripe down the side and finishing with a hand framing flourish around the VW insignia at the front of the van to family applause. We finally, at long last, years after all of our friends have gotten one, get a color TV, which I do a short spinning dance in front of and then lunge to the side with my arms lagging behind, framing the 16" TV screen with happy little jazz hands. It could be joyful. It could be sarcastic. It could be mean. But those movements we learned from glamorous, besequined women were a meaningful part of the anatomy of hand motions in my household growing up.

My mom was here visiting this last week while I recovered from surgery. But for one walk a day, I wasn't allowed to leave the house. So, we read and watched movies and talked and cooked, and I asked her to be my model for a load of mitts I have made to sell on Etsy. Bona fide hand modeling. . . and in the midst of it, she brought out some of the old moves we used when I was a kid.

It was one of the many reasons it was nice to have her here this last week and I miss her still.

Is that a mug?!?
That's a great mug!

Holy Cow! Frank Lloyd Wright was really talented!!

Flowers are so pretty! Oh man, did you see how pretty those were?

Nicely done, Mom. Nicely done.

Pesto Day

We usually have a pesto making day a few times a summer. Early July, late August, and, if we're lucky, late September--however long it takes the basil plants to grow back every time we snip them down to their lowest few branches.

Mama--my nursemaid and companion after surgery--was nice enough to harvest the basil today, while I prepped everything inside for pesto making.

There's a recipe below, but I don't truly believe in pesto recipes. They're only ever there to give you a sense of what goes into a good pesto in general proportions. Because a pesto's ingredients are so few, how each ingredient tastes (and how those tastes vary widely between kinds of basil or garlic or types of olive oil or parmesan cheese) can change the pesto's final flavor drastically.

So, the recipe below is the basic, no fail recipe that will get you to a good balanced flavor, but then you should expect to add ingredients in small amounts to get to the flavor that you most prefer.

The two most important ingredients are basil (as fresh as humanly possible--right from the garden is best. Once basil leaves have been off the plant for more than 2-3 days, the flavor diminishes significantly and they should be discarded.)


And garlic. The garlic should be as fresh as possible as well. Older garlic tends to mellow, and since pesto is made to go on hot pasta, the heat of its final destination will mellow the garlic flavor a little. And I like my pesto to have some bite. Mama brought me fresh dug garlic from the farm in Cincinnati. . . lucky me.


And the garlic was soooooo pretty. I loved the purple inner papers.


Summer Pesto Recipe (makes 5 1/2-cup servings of pesto--or enough pesto for five pesto dinners for four people per dinner):

1 c. parmesan cheese (roughly chopped from a big block. get good cheese. it makes a difference.)
1 c. pinenuts
7 garlic cloves (or a whole medium sized head of garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat of your chef's knife)
8 c. basil leaves (preferrably sweet Italian basil)
3/4 c. + 1 T. olive oil (some people really care about the kind they use, but whatever flavor it could impart is pretty overwhelmed by the garlic and basil)
1/2 t. salt
5 turns of pepper grinder
1 t. honey (optional)

I suggest tasting as you go, so that you can get a sense of how each ingredient affects the flavor. But I usually put it together in this order: In a large food processor, pulse together the pine nuts, parmesan, and garlic until they look like cheaper parmesan shake-cheese you can still get at the grocery.

Then add basil with olive oil--you may have to do this addition in a few batches because the flat leaves take up a bunch of space. . . but hardly any once pulsed. So add a handful of leaves and some of the olive oil, pulse, repeat.

Definitely taste it at this point. If there's no bite from the garlic, you need to add more. If there's no nutty flavor, you will need to add more pinenuts. Then add the salt, pepper, and honey.

Honey is not a traditional ingredient of pesto and its purpose is not to make the pesto taste sweet. Both honey and molasses--much like salt--are excellent for making a thing taste rounder and more fully like itself. Trust me. Maybe make the pesto without honey, but then add a short drizzle to one half cup of it, mix it up and see whether you prefer it with or without.

We immediately put this pesto into small 1/2-cup tupperware containers and freeze them. I don't honestly know how long its advisable to keep them once frozen. But we have certainly thawed them out in early March the following year and found it to be just as good and tasty as it was the previous summer. And man, in the winter doldrums of early March in Chicago, nothing is better than eating food that tastes so green and homegrown to chase the blues away.

Recovery & Rehab

So, the big surgery is out of the way, and I'm now in recovery. My back hurts, but I'm meant to walk about as much as I can. These first few days, I've decided that's mostly scuffing around the house, in combination with one big walk a day(I'm only allowed to use stairs once a day, so. . . not a lot of other choices).

Mama is in town to take care of me, and so we used Freddie's ridiculously yummy ices as a draw for the walk midway point. I had lemon. She had raspberry.


And then on the walk home, we took a slow-mo gander at all of the neighborhood roses. . .







It's a little over half a mile one way. And so now, I'm bushed. But the ice was totally worth it!

Our House is Naked!!!!

At long last, our house has a face for the first time since we're owned it. As it turns out, it's a vaguely sad unkempt face that needs some painting and cosmetic attention--but how is one to know until one cuts the bangs and really takes stock?!?

Here's what the house looked like just two days ago. . .


My folks came up to visit and Dad gave Dan Tree-Cutting 101-classes in the front yard. And at long last those durn trees are gone gone gone.


(That's the house, Dan, Mom and Dad. . . Dad was being shy, though, and camouflaged himself as the old trees. See close-up below:)


I have plans for the front yard garden-wise. I won't leave it looking like that forever. There's a spirea at the corner that has to go and we have to grind down the remaining tree stumps. After that, though, I am going to plant 2-3 colonnade apple trees, a hydrangea and a big old-fashioned lilac. Whatever space is left over will get filled with some perennial herbs, irises, lamb's ears and any thing else I can think of that my mama and grandma grew when I was a kid (black-eyed susans? hollyhocks? snapdragons?)

Oh, My Aching Back

I threw my back out this past winter and it's not quite back to its former self, but that didn't stop Dan and me from launching into our three year plan to completely overhaul the outside appearance of our home. Working on a little curb appeal, if you will. And I fear that I will have the stiffness to prove all of our hard work of today. . . tomorrow morning.

So, this is what the front of our dear bungalow looks like:


I can't wait until this is the "Before" picture. You can hardly see the sweet house for all the crazy plantings. The ridiculously out-sized trees that obscure the whole front of the house. The wedding veil bush on the far side in too small a space to be able to properly waterfall to the ground. The big round, nondescript bush to the right that is only of interest in the fall when it turns a deep burning red.

Meh. It all has to go. But it will take a lot of work to get that done. . . so we're moving slowly. A three year plan. This year, the dumb bush goes and we put loveliness in its place--loads of hostas, lily of the valley, and a tree of some sort. Don't know what yet. . .

But, man! That bush did not want to get out of there. Here's Dan being tough and taking that bush to town.


We worked for hours and then finally, our across-the-street-neighbor introduced himself--and his pick axe and sledgehammer--and gave that bush the final what for. Thanks, Ruben! We owe you one!


I know it looks thin and lame right now. . . but in a few years, its going to fill in and I hope look like a mix of cottage-y and forest glen-y.

And at least the back yard is simple and awesome. Herbs galore growing back and as always the huge Rhubarb. So, tonight I made a rhubarb/strawberry crisp from a recipe my Mama sent me.



Thanks, Ma! It's delicious. . . proving again and again why Mother's Day is so well deserved by the mothers in my family. Brilliant cooks, gardeners, thinkers all.

Hi, Dad

It's maybe a little bit weird to put a picture of my Dad here. . . but it's such a handsome photo, and there's a lot of subtext here, as in any photograph, that's maybe not visible to the naked eye:

1. My mom took the photo with a small digital camera. She's not a trained photographer, though she clearly has a good eye and the day and the sky were really cooperating--because the set up of the shot and colors and the composition blow me away. So, for me, this is a photo both of my Dad and my Mom.

2. Dad is standing amongst soy beans near the end of a particularly difficult growing season in Ohio. Flooding after planting. Scrapping corn for soybeans. Then too dry conditions. It's a miracle these plants--the Plan-B plants--are there and so handsome for the shot. And a triumph for my Dad after a season of worry.

3. This photo is where I came from--people who work hard and make things with their bare hands. It's a proud start for me. It's a humbling start for me.

4. Nature's design is often the best design. . . which we all know, but sometimes, I think, forget. Especially those of us living in cities. Green and brown. Grey and green.

5. Plus, you know, subject/object, signifier/signified, Roland Barthes, yadda yadda. . .