AfricanKelli

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NPR’s All things Considered has been featuring recipes this week that will feed a family of 4 for $10 or less. Each day’s recipe is created by some famous chef and I’ve been listening with great interest. When I want to make something inexpensive, beans, pasta or grain come to mind. Bread, really, is the easiest and cheapest thing to make to feed the masses. (The wine and fishes tend to be a bit more expensive these days.) I have eaten more bean and rice dishes living in Mexico and Africa than I care to remember. While I like the occasional pasta or potato dish, if I am going to indulge in carbs, bring on the bread.

Last night I made bbq chicken pizza — in part to encourage Matty’s many “birdies” in his golf tournament today — and used the leftover dough to make calzones. Next time, I’ll brush these with egg whites and a dash of garlic salt. Regardless, the whole wheat dough worked well and soon, the pizza performed a disappearing act.

(Nothing says classy entertaining like having guests eating next to your open compost bin. Oy vey. Martha would not be proud.)

I make up songs when I’m in the kitchen, especially when cooking Italian. In my very best soprano, I sent Matt and Eliza running into the garden with my rendition of “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…” They may not have liked the tunes, but appropriately, they loved the pizza.

~K

The African roommate and I joined a group of friends last night to watch the Diamondbacks get slaughtered by the Cubbies. The adventure started on a great note with frozen yogurt in Tempe and my first ride on the light rail. Come to find out, I’d find the train ride far more entertaining.

We went with a large group and ended up squished at one end of the row. It was hard to socialize and let’s be honest, I don’t go to baseball games to watch the game. It’s about spending time with friends, people watching, making fun of the women wearing heels at a ball park and guessing what the vendors will be selling next, as they bark their way up and down the aisle. Matt had many questions about baseball and unfortunately was sitting next to me.  I was far more interested in talking to my girlfriends than explaining why foul balls are strikes only to a point.

Plus, I’m not so sports smart. I get the basics, but don’t ask me why pitchers in one league have to bat and not in the other. I don’t get it either.

What I do get is the condiment race, where kids dressed like hot dogs race and the entire stadium cheers, “Ketchup!” “Mustard!” “Relish!!” Seeing those little ones in their little buns running as quickly as they can is worth the ticket price alone. Again, how to explain this cultural hiccup? We are a culture in love with food? That’s not news. Better yet –  they are kids. They are dressed like hot dogs. That should be funny in any culture.

Ultimately I decided I’d explain American baseball with the best of my eloquence, arrogance and patriotism: it’s like cricket, but better.

~K

I’ve been reading, “A Natural History of the Senses” and have blushed more than once by this nonfiction account. Without a doubt, this is the sexiest science I’ve read and it has left me with a handful of the oddest observations too:

-Polar bear fur is translucent. They are white because the color of the snow and atmosphere gives the ivory perception.

-Benjamin Franklin loved to write in the nude.

-While two colors cannot occupy the same space without combining, two musical notes can.

I told you — a very bizarre assortment of fact — but entertaining and fascinating too. Diane Ackerman’s woven prose thoughtfully ties together the senses in ways I’d never before considered.

In “hearing,” regarding drums and flutes being primitive instruments of most cultures:

“Something about the idea of breath or wind entering a piece of wood and filling it roundly with a vital cry — a sound– has captivated us for millennia. It’s like the spirit of life playing through the whole length of a person’s body. It’s as if we could reach into the trees and make them speak. We hold a branch in our hands, blow into it, and it groans, it sings.”

In “vision,” regarding our lack of sufficient adjectives to describe the complexity of colors:

“The color language of English truly stumbles when it comes to life’s processes. We need to follow the example of the Maori of New Zealand, who have many words for red — all the reds that surge and pale as fruits and flowers develop, as blood flows and dries. We need to boost our range of greens to describe the almost squash-yellow green of late winter grass, the achingly fluorescent green of the leaves of high summer, and all the whims of chlorophyll in between. We need words for the many colors of clouds, surging from pearly pink during a calm sunset over the ocean to the electric gray-green of tornadoes. We need to rejuvenate our brown words for all the complexions of bark. And we need cooperative words to help refine colors, which change when they’re hit by glare, rinsed with artificial light, saturated with pure pigment, or gently bathed in moonlight.”

In “touch,” describing the evolution of the kiss:

“It’s as if, in the complex language of love, there were a word that could only be spoken by lips when lips touch, a silent contract sealed with a kiss. One style of sex can be bare bones, fundamental and unromantic, but a kiss is the height of voluptuousness, an expense of time and an expanse of spirit in the sweet toil of romance, when one’s bones quiver, anticipation rockets, but gratification is kept at bay on purpose, in exquisite torment, to build to a succulent crescendo of emotion and passion.”

And if I haven’t sold you on the beauty of this book quite yet, another favorite line:

“Great artists feel at home in the luminous spill of sensation, to which they add their own complex sensory Niagara.”

~K

{The ice cream sandwiches:  Smelled like cinnamon, dark chocolate, brown sugar. Tasted salty and sweet, with crunchy oats and soft dough. Felt warm and cold, as the vanilla ice cream dribbled between my fingers. Looked fabulous but fleetingly so; they disappeared quickly.

Culinary simplicity, redefined.

~K

What’s that hiding among all the green tomatoes?

DOODE!

A tomato grows in Tempe! (And a red one at that.) This weekend I listened to a great podcast discussing the Easter season and gardening — how spiritually clearing the earth and watching it bloom again coincides with the high holiday in the northern hemisphere. Regardless of your spiritual leanings, pretty sure leaving for work on a Monday morning only to find your first ripe tomato ready for the picking is a sign of many good things to come. Now, if only the birds won’t notice the harvest is ready…

~K