February 24, 2013 Music On the Waters

Glendale Shoals.  Down in the woods, beside the creek, musicians are strumming their guitars.  In the afternoon, it is nearly 70 degrees.  People have left their igloos and TV sets and are down on the rocks with their cameras, shooting photos.  A friend is gathering rocks with his son for a science project:  a hard one, a soft one, a smooth one and a rough one.
A man is jogging shirtless.  A woman is standing on a rock in the downstream in her Sunday dress.  No ducks today.
The pair of Flycatchers is at their nest under the eaves.  Soon there will be baby birds.
I planted a new white rose bush.

February 20, 2013 King Cake with Dinosaurs

Cold this morning. Fingers of frail clouds splayed across the pale sky.  It is so clear that you can see the mountains of the escarpment of the Blue Ridge to the North West.

After a brisk walk, I went home and baked two King Cakes, traditional Christian (especially Catholic)
cakes made originally related to Epiphany, Jan 6th, the day the ancient kings visited the new born baby Jesus.  The season can last from 12th night (Jan 5) through the lenten season and Mardi Gras.

I made a rich yeast raised dough, rolled with butter and cinnamon into a ring and iced with lemon/vanilla butter icing decorated in purple, gold and green sugars (the colors of mardi gras).  Traditionally, there is a tiny plastic baby Jesus baked in the cake or under the cake.  Whoever finds it gets a special privilege or treat.  I could not find a baby Jesus, so I used tiny plastic baby dinosaurs, which I placed under the cake or the children to find.

I found a recipe from the Ladies of the Philoptochos Society of Charleston (Popular Greek Recipes 1976) for a Vasilopeta which is a cake made for a similar celebration.  My cake comes from Southern Living magazine circa 2009.

1 16 oz container sour cream
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp salt:             Cook these four ingredients together over low heat, stirring often, until butter melts,Cool.

Stir together 2 envelps active dry yeast, 1/2 cup warm water and one Tblsp sugar in a glass measuring cup
and let sit five minutes.  Beat sour cream mixture, yeast mixtures, 2 beaten eggs and 2 cups flour until smooth.
Gradually add 4 to 4 1/2 cups flour until a soft dough forms.  Turn dough onto floured surface.  Knead about 10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turn to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about until hour until doubled.
Punch down and roll out into( 2) 22   x 12 in. rectangles. Spread 1/3 cup soft butter. Stir together 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. Sprinkle over and roll dough like a jellyroll. Form into a ring on a cookie sheet.
Let rise 20 to 30 minutes. Bake at 375 for 14 to 16 minutes. Cool. Drizzle with glaze:
3 c powdered sugar/3 Tbsp melted butter/2 Tblsp fresh lemon juice/ 1/4 tsp vanilla extract/2 to 4 Tbsp milk.
Spread over cake. Decorate with purple, gold and green sugars, the colors of mardi gras.
                 
   

February 18, 2013 Snow Spirits and Real Hot Chocolate

At last a walk after bone chilling weather. On Saturday it snowed, big fat flakes falling quickly as if pitched down from snow spirits high up in the clouds, blanketing the trees, houses and ground with 3 to 4 inches.  A beautiful sight.  I made hot chocolate.

Today there remains some snow along the trail in the shady places.  Some of the trees have the beginnings of red budding.  From the Little River Roasting Company, there is the aroma of burned coffee beans.

Here is how to make real hot chocolate the way my mother taught me:

For each cup in a small sauce pan add:

1/4 cup water
a brimming tablespoon of powered chocolate
a tablespoon of sugar
a small pinch of salt
Cook until all dissolved and then add:
2/3 cup milk
(My cousin adds a drop of vanilla at this point. Her mother was my mother's sister so they learned from their mother.)
Heat and pour over a marshmallow or two into your mug and watch the snow fall as you sip.

February 10, 2013 Birdhouses

Decatur, cold and raining, but the daffodils are blooming.  When I left my house, the fly catcher flew out from the eaves where she builds her house every year in the spring.  Every year she changes the side and starts her nest again.
I went on a walk with Ryan and Mathew.  Mathew and I each had a leash on Boofa.  "Do you want to go to the library?" Ryan asked Mathew.
Low and behold on the side of the residential street, there was a little house on a  post, painted a bright yellow with little flowers stenciled on it, only a little bigger than a bird house.  Open the door and inside were two shelves of books:  for adults and also for children.
The honor system applies to this book birdhouse.  You can take a book.  You can bring it back.  You can add another book.
They pointed out another book birdhouse on Ponce de Leon in front of the Dancing Goat Coffee House.

After our walk, we went to Martin's gig with his band, "Neon Blank" at Shorty's Pizza.  It was the first time in my life, I was able to say, "I'm with the band."

February 5, 2013 Down by the Riverside

"I'm gwine to lay down my burden
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
I'm gwine to lay down my burden
Down by the riverside.
Ain't gwine to study war no more."

I discovered the trail down the banks of the Congaree off the Canal walk in Columbia.  A winding walk, in the cool moist river air, arched with now leafless trees clothed in ivy, with hundreds of birds sailing in and out and around while I disturb their paradise.

At the end of the walk are the locks of the canal, the dam and the fishway.  This fishway is constructed in a fashion similar to the Saint Ours Fishway on the Richelieu River in Quebec.

10,000 to 3,500 years ago there was a Native American settlement just across the river where now three story apartment buildings loom.  Here on the trail side were seasonal settlements, a mere 3,000 years old where the early Americans came to fish seasonally.  Points for hunting and scraping and use as tools were found across the water.

My mother said that when she was a child "down home" in Lancaster County, they frequently found arrowheads in the woods.  Now it is more difficult.

I would like very much to find an arrowhead.

Already, azalea, forsythia and flowering quince are blooming in Columbia.

February 3, 2013 Skulls and Seed Pods

Temperatures in the high 30's, an oxygen blue sky above us, the creek cloudy brown like a flask of leftover iced tea in the refrigerator, the trees gray, tall and still, silently waiting while the frogs sing to them about the coming spring.  I find a small bleached white skull by the trail, either a possum or a raccoon.  Maybe a skunk. I can't tell as the teeth are gone now as well as what I think should be the mandible.  A raccoon has 40 teeth.  A possum has  50 teeth.  A skunk as 34.  A cat has 30 teeth.

I collect seed pods from a vine, like Christmas ornaments with a candle stamen inside.  I would think they are a milkweed, but they are on a vine, not a stalk. They are shaped like Thai dancers with their elbows out, palms touching over their heads. I have rubbings of these dancers from the walls of Thai temples.

We left India and stopped in Bangkok, ate mangos for breakfast and rode on a boat on the Chao Phraya          
river.  The war in Viet Nam was still raging close by.  It was 1966.

In Japan, we lived in Shinjuku, and then moved near the International University where next door there was an orphanage with beautiful Eurasian and Afroasian toddlers waiting for adoption.  They came from Viet Nam, the children of American soldiers who went home without them.  Or who had died.

The announcement today that the skull unearthed in the Greyfriars area of Leicestershire, England was indeed that of Richard III, complete with a full set of teeth, a spine showing the famous curvature and skull showing head injury indicating the cause of his death in battle.  DNA from 17th generation descendants of his sister confirmed.  He was born in 1485.

Human beings have 32 teeth (including wisdom teeth).