treats

chestnut and pear bread pudding, I had this for dinner the other night with a little bit of warm caramel,

J. made it for me, as well as these fennel and sesame cookies, biscuits, cracker cookies. . . paximadia is what they are really called I guess. I've been pestering him to make them for months now, I must have come across this recipe in may or june and I've been pining for them since then, but with fennel seeds too. And hot black coffee. I've been pining for all sorts of hard bread like cracker like things lately, rusks, taralli, biscotti, grissini. I bought some taralli from the world foods not long ago, dry stale awful things that made me miss Israel the overnight baker so deeply. Nothing like arriving early in the morning to see him packing up his stuff, racks of bread and cookies, and wine biscuits all over the place. I just got a new cookbook (yes, shocking, I know) and I think I'm gearing up to make some of the yeasted crackery breads and rusks. No, I don't make J. bake everything, just almost everything.We had greek barley rusks for the first time in Queens, a place that is gone now, the owner got up from her table when she saw them delivered to ours and poured the olive oil over them herself, chopped tomatoes, the juice, salt, parsley?, olive oil, olive oil, olive oil and the weird nutty soft hard mushy crunchy rusks, a mountain of them.

cold weather, the wind, ripe pears cut nicely, and chicory, this one down here I was told is called "lucia" after a town. The picture doesn't do any justice to what it's like to crack it open, little blood flecks intensifying toward the center, the palest most elegant yellow.

snap of, snap the

we aren't used to ice here, nor really the slanting winter sun.

I missed my bus yesterday morning, trying to photograph this one poor tree that dropped every single leaf in a big heap the night before. I didn't really catch it, I should have gone back for more pictures after I watched the 14 drive off without me.

no shadow no stars

the thick fog when I walk home at night, the scuffing through leaves and the smell, sometimes you get caught in the rain

late gardening

Plenty of herbs still in the garden, and kale, and every time I go to finally pull out those squash plants I find another one hanging there.

First time in Verboort

I forgot to take a picture of my lemon meringue pie, dang, next year I guess. The beer garden was down the road from the church compound, at the gun club. The shuttle was the church school bus. The driver worked on her knitting while we loaded and unloaded and told everyone not to throw up during the ride, at 1 in the afternoon. I think she was joking, but I guess things can get rowdy later on in the evening.

The scale of the dinner was like nothing I've ever seen. Our tickets were, as you can see, 1428 and 1429, they were serving 2400 and under by the time we left and just barley warming up. I think they served 7000 last year, all the while wearing cute little dutch bonnets.