Viva la Torta! Fudge Torte

The most recent baked confection was an experiment of sorts. Thanks to all of those who participated in the research phase and provided such helpful feedback. What brought it on was the want to give something to my vegetarian friend as thanks for volunteering to help us out another night at the TH. Maybe like bartering - this torte for five hours of your life. Anyway.

It contains (nearly) no animal product and also no flour. I'm not sure why I went the no-flour direction, but in any case, that's how it ended up. I think it was a good choice.

So the torte is mostly legume: bean curd and lentils. Chocolate was the next important thing, and cocoa powder, a little sugar, leavening and vanilla and salt [Salt is so important! Especially in chocolate things. And especially in hot cocoa with vanilla. You must add salt.]. It baked in a spring-form pan for nearly 70 minutes in a medium oven, and when it was done it had all these deep cracks and crevices... beautiful. I covered them all in ganache, though. We tried it the next day - dense and moist and fudgey. That's when I decided it must be a torte and not a cake. The most common negative comment was that the texture was a bit mealy, but no so much that you wanted to stop eating it. [As a note, the second trial I used black-eyed peas instead of lentils, but I think the lentils may have been better. I also added ground and chopped almonds to the batter, and while I like almonds I didn't like how the bits broke up the texture.]

So all in all, I think it was a success. Hooray for experiments.

cakes - frogs - cacti

I made a ridiculous chocolate cake last night... it took me until midnight to finish, but I find the whole process very satisfying. And then I get to feed it to my dear friends. It wasn't anything fancy or unique, just really fudgey: four layers of a pretty deep and somewhat dense chocolate cake with dark ganache between layers and covering it. I had some today and found it to be a pretty intense chocolate experience. I'm not sure what it should be called; maybe the "Good-Thing-I-Didn't-Give-Up-Chocolate-for-Lent Cake."


Earlier in the day before cake I went on a long run, which was good because it was warm! But it was kind of aweful too. It was just hard, mentally and physically. There were good things in it, though, like: 1) it was sunny and warm; 2) I did run anyway, even though it was hard; AND 3) in the swampy sections before The Plains I heard MANY spring peepers (little frogs that show up early spring). I'm always surprised by them, they show up so early. They give me hope that seasons of cold and grey and seeming deadness and immobility may be the needed passage toward new seasons of warmth, of verdant places, of growth, of hope realized a little more. I really need these visible reminders in order to keep some kind of perspective when life feels bleak.

I have a Christmas Cactus - Schlumbergera x buckleyii - that is also teaching me this. I thought it was dead and broken and was a little mad about it. I wrote a silly little ditty about this experience...

---

It's been sitting
in that corner
over a year
doing nothing.

I thought
maybe the cat
had chewed the life
out of its stems -
that blasted cat -
teeth marks still
white and pocked.

I thought
maybe I didn't
pay enough attention
to its needs
for water
light
dormancy.

I read something about those things once in a book.

Hey! Aren't you supposed to flower once a year?
Ridiculous cactus.

We mainly snuck glances of disgust at each other.
Or maybe just I did.

So, you can imagine
my surprise when
rosey tapered buds
appeared.

Surely not -
not after I'd given up.

I monitored it tentatively, questioningly.

One morning I woke
to be met by
that elusive flower -
an explosion,
a dragon glowering fuschia,
a holy creature
covered in flaming tongues.

Who knew that
scaly, bracketed stems
could have such
an unexpected ending?

---

a quiet and chilly morning

many things are new. it's even a new year now, according to our calendar.

through this east window at my parents' house i see the warm of the horizon slowly grow, the leafless trees a dark mangle of lines before its deepening brightness.

i like the following poem. i don't really feel this way right now - more unanswered, sorrowed, wondering about this life-business - but i appreciate it as a hope.

-------

"Why I Wake Early"
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety -

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light -
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
(mary oliver)
-------

this week i have done two things: finished the children's book for my mom and looked at seed catalogues. the book is a story about two friends, a heron and kingfisher, who live by a river. i did all the illustrations in watercolor, and i'm really delighted by how it turned out. i also plan on binding it myself, thanks to a friend who taught me how. the seed catalogues make me even more excited than before about this year's garden... and make it hard to choose what variety of anything to grow. i want to grow bok choy, kale, and collards; green beans and shell beans; tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers (i found aji limo seeds!); zucchini and a winter squash; cucumbers for pickling, and chinese cabbage. and maybe try eggplant again. it's hard to decide.

first frost

today i finished out my garden for the summer - meaning, i ripped out all the remaining plants so now there is just a long row of dirt sprinkled with weeds and a lost tomato here and there. i was really putting off this day; i didn't want the need for me to tend it to cease. but it frosted last night, so everything was blackened and wilted anyway (except for the rosemary plant! i dug it up and potted it, and hope to nurse it through the winter months).

so i finished. but i didn't want to be finished. after the work i chose a grassy patch at the end of my row, and lied down in it, and was still. i stayed there for quite a while, thinking about my garden and the earth and the cycle of things and life in general and my life in particular. the sun felt so warm, like being in the middle of a just-baked bread pudding. so many birds singing of their lives - crows and chickadees and goldfinches and sparrows and a dozen others i couldn't recognize - and the crickets too, of course. and the grasses, played upon by the winds. some small (i hope) and unseen insect crawling on my leg. i forget sometimes that i/we share the universe with all these. the sun and the grasses and the beetles and the dirt... we all exist here together on this earth-place. it delighted and awed me to remember that this little song sparrow on the wire and i, we both have a place here, and in some ways depend on each other. this harlequin cabbage beetle (who ate holes in the bok choy! i guess he likes it as much as me) is beautiful in its completeness and intricacies. i don't know how to explain better what i was feeling... just a sense of good and of wholeness.

so now i must include another poem by mary oliver (the last four parts are best)...

Peonies
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklnessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

carpet is scratchy

i need to make more grape pie for its healing qualities, but i have no grapes.

i'm listening to brahm's requiem because it is one of my grandfather's favorite pieces, and it is beautiful, and it reminds me of him.

there is goldenrod in a quart mason jar on the table, like feathers of sun. there is also a purple thistle, prickly.

what does it all mean?

i had a dream this week that i found a baby polar bear. unfortunately the mama polar bear then found me and i was running away. she was big, and agressive, and not happy. yikes. then the very next night i had a dream that there was a venemous snake in my bed, and i was terrified to move for fear that it would bite me. i came to find out the next day that the very night i had that dream my brother-in-law was out looking for snakes (herping, they call it. i call it snaking). i figured he was behind it all, and it turns out i was right. thanks, josh.

at this moment i'm trying to knit and write letters at the same time... and typing this too, apparently. it's not working well. something else that didn't work well today: i made cookies that ended in disaster. not really disaster, just, not cookies. i wanted crispy-chewy mounds of oatmeal sesame raisin and ended up with a pile of some sort of granola look-alike. sigh. fortunately i had already made shortcake, at the request of my housemate heidi since she had strawberries, and it at least was a success. i put a bit of roasted cornmeal in the batter for a different texture... it was good. maybe a little too corny, but still good. we ate it for lunch, which probably wasn't the best decision. i say that every time i eat cookies or something similar for lunch, but i don't seem to be learning my lesson. all vegetables tomorrow.

spinning

i saw an inchworm the other day.  i nearly squashed him, on accident.  they're pretty fascinating to watch, how they inch along.  wouldn't it be funny if we moved that way.  here's a poem i've been thinking about, written by mary oliver:

--------

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention

"As long as we are able to

be extravagant we will be

hugely and damply

extravagant.  Then we will drop

foil by foil to the ground.  This

is our unalterable task, and we do it

joyfully."

And they went on.  "Listen,

the heart-shackles are not, as you think,

death, illness, pain, unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,

selfishness."

Their fragrance all the while rising 

from their blind bodies, making me

spin with joy.

--------

for clarity...

lassitude = exhaustion, weariness

rue = regret, wish to be undone

vainglory = excessive vanity, boastfulness