Skip to main content

Absent Place - an April Day



Absent Place — an April Day —

Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow —

Emily Dickinson

I don't usually start with poems but the lines from this one by Emily Dickinson struck a chord with me. We all know what happened at the end of March and that for five weeks we have been living with so many restrictions. 

I have to say I have enjoyed working from home and not having to sit in traffic. Nearly every day I have gone for a walk or two within the 2km radius and have explored nearly every road in my area. There's so much to see and so many changes to note. 

Over the last five weeks I must have photographed nearly every paused construction site in this part of Dublin. It will be interesting to revisit them in a year's time to see what happened to them. 

Apart from walks my main activities have been cooking and knitting. But I have continued to cook and bake too, trying out new recipes, repeating older ones. The spouse and I have also been recreating paintings. So far we have done "Les Amant" by Rene Magritte, "La Mort de Marat" by Jacques-Louis David and "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Great fun! 

I'm going to leave it at that for now, apart from a big kiss to J'Zo who likes to check in on this blog. 

Stay safe, everyone! 

Minnie


Classic Madeira with lemon icing;
orange Madeira with orange icing
Flourless chocolate and citrus cake

Rhubarb and orange cake

Crusty lemon bake

Focaccia

Simnel cake

One tray pork and pasta bake

Tomato and cheese flan

Cream of onion, cheese and apple soup

Comments

  1. I've been enjoying all those pandemic treats. Thank you. x

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lovage Soup

Lovage Soup   Today I made lovage soup, the second recipe by Sophie Grigson in The Soup Book that I have used in the last four days. She introduces the recipe with these remarks: "If you don't grow this old-fashioned herb yourself, ask around among your gardening friends or head down to the nearest garden centre to see if they sell it. " As I mentioned in my last blog entry (18th May), lovage now features among the herbs in my front garden. As the spouse left the camera at home, I took some photographs. Parsley, sorrel and lovage in Minnie's garden. Rosemary, parsley and lovage in Minnie's garden.  I had hoped to add chervil to my collection of herbs - there's a recipe for vegetable and chervil soup in The Soup Book - but "Young Stephen" wasn't able to source any for me. At least he tried. Just while I'm mentioning Stephen, I have to reveal that the spouse and the older offspring claim that he has been mention...

2019: Another year over ...

I was very busy last month as I prepared for Christmas. My cooking ventures included making three soups from The Soup Book : zuppa di verdure, Brussels sprout soup and kichidi, which I first made in January 2013, December 2010 and November 2011 respectively. I'm not sure what happened to the kichidi when I made it two days ago, but pouring out the water in which I simmered the lentils, rice and ginger was probably not a good idea.  Jamie Oliver's Christmas rocky road I spread the Christmas love by making Nigella 's and Jamie Oliver 's Christmas rocky road. Nigella uses amaretti biscuits, Brazil nuts and glace cherries while Jamie uses popcorn, coconut and stem ginger syrup. Cut and put into bags left over from the older offspring's wedding, both types of rocky road were well received as gifts. A large cake tin full of Nigella's was put to good use at my sister T's house over Christmas.  Nigella's Christmas rocky road One of my colleagues p...

Unresting Castles in May

The Trees  The trees are coming into leaf  Like something almost being said;  The recent buds relax and spread,  Their greenness is a kind of grief.  Is it that they are born again  And we grow old? No, they die too.  Their yearly trick of looking new  Is written down in rings of grain.  Yet still the unresting castles thresh  In fullgrown thickness every May.  Last year is dead, they seem to say,  Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.  Philip Larkin   Last month (May 2020) trickled in, cool and grey, and gushed out in glorious sunshine. Perhaps that is what has helped to make the last few weeks of lockdown bearable. I picked one of our poetry anthologies ( The Ring of Words edited by Roger McGough, 1998, Faber & Faber) off the bookshelves and selected poems that I considered to be positive, soothing or uplifting. The poem above was surprisingly optimistic for Philip Larkin.  So many people are writing either profes...