Samain Bare Aspen Moon
After writing the post below, about slowing down, I realized I need a vacation. Time off. A break. A pause. I need to vacate the life I love for just a bit, to clear out the schmuz in my pistons. Confess I don’t know how to do that right now. Money. Visitors. Holidays. I’m considering how to do it.
So I’ve started cooking more. My joy in cooking is making stuff up. Last night I went through one of my favorite cook books, How the World Cooks Chicken. There were two large thawed chicken breasts in the sink.
Taking ideas from one recipe and adding them to another. I like that. So I saw quince in one, but you could substitute apples. I had apples. Parmesan cheese. Hmm. Sounds good. But, no parmesan. Well. Let’s see. There’s salmon in the freezer. Why did that come up? I like poached salmon. Wait. Why not? I could poach the chicken.
Two cups of water in the skillet. Some bullion. Paul Prudhomme poultry seasoning on the chicken breasts. Sliced up apple. Porcini and sea salt seasoning. Kate likes mushrooms. There was some Zatarain’s cilantro rice. That’ll go with the chicken. And some frozen peas. Easy peasy.
The poaching went faster than I thought so I had to toss the skillet in the upper oven, but everything got done. Not bad. Afterward I realized the chicken could get cut up, the leftover rice and peas thrown in with the chicken broth and voila! Soup. Nice. That was fun.
Anyhow that’s how I cook.
Afterward, kabbalah. Three presentations. One on the idea of the holy of holies. The temple looms large in Jewish thought, in many, many ways. One on the link between the ten sefirot and a Japanese inspired version of Chinese medicine, acupressure. One on the surprisingly pervasive influence of the kabbalists in the shabbat service. All were, in their own way, interesting. Having to come up with a presentation did cement the learning for each of us, that was clear. And, they led to interesting speculations.
The new class, ready in January, will be on the correspondence between the Hebrew letters and the 22 interconnections between the sefirot.
