What is a commonplace book? For me, this is a space where I post interesting links, reflections on what I’m reading, and the newest recipes I’ve been trying out — a collection of miscellaneous micro-posts.
What I’m fixing:
- One-Pot Asian Meatballs with Bok Choy. We are doing our first CSA since I got pregnant with Pippin, and it’s already stretching us in all kinds of culinary ways — I think the last time I fixed bok choy was the last time I had a farm share!
- Very ugly very tasty hot dog buns
What I’m reading:
- “The Awkwardness of Mass“: on receiving on the tongue, which we’ve discussed before here:
It’s fairly unusual to allow yourself to be fed. My guess is that the only experience of ever seeing this this [sic] is when a bride and groom celebrate their nuptials by shoving a piece of cake shoved into each other’s faces. I don’t get it. But everyone does it, so there must be some basic, human instinct for this practice that has escaped me. There’s the laughter, everyone smiles. It’s a good photo op. And cake does taste good. Mostly, though, the ceremonial feeding is a sign of love and trust, a way of declaring, “I don’t mind being vulnerable with this person.”
- Wildflower Hill. It’s blurbed by and compared to Kate Morton, who I adore, and was available free through Scribd but I feel like I should have known:
- So then I switched to a real Kate Morton I hadn’t read before for a palate cleanser. And it’s so good! Here’s a bit of The Distant Hours:
Listen! The trees of the deep, dark wood, shivering and jittering their leaves like papery hulls of beaten silver; the sly wind, snaking through their tops, whispering that soon it will begin.
The trees know, for they are old and they have seen it all before
Shivery and moody and so good, right? But it turns out I had read it before after all. Boo. On to the next thing.
- I borrowed a copy of Roots & Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons by Christie Purifoy and just savored it. Here’s a passage I particularly enjoyed:
“In our age, remaining attuned to the distinction between one place and another, between one day and another, seems to require an act of ferocious strength.”
So appropriate for a season of travel. It reminds me of Wendell Berry’s insistence on affection for a particular place one knows intimately, on the church’s insistence on feasts and fasts, holy days and ordinary time.
Leave in the Leaf 