The leap into September makes me feel that time is accelerating. My departure for Tbilisi is just over two weeks from now. We’ve had butterflies each day, and a few visits from a hummingbird, the last one five days ago, probably as he was heading south.
sedum is lovely pale bloom, in the Annex
The garlic chive flowers, the basil, the phlox, are alive with feeding insects. The wild rose is jewelled with brilliant orange-red hips. My Thai chile plant, a perennial I planted in June and plan to bring indoors for the winter (optimistically), is producing loads of tiny prik ee noo chiles.
rose hips; small Thai chiles; garlic chive flower with insect (bee?)
Last weekend, with the moon just coming off full, I cycled with dawnthebaker to a casual birthday party near Budapest Beach. People brought contributions to the festivities, including take-out sushi, a huge tomato salad, some cheese and bread, wine other drinks, tablecloths to lay on the flat rocks by the beach. We were all happy to be out on a beautiful evening in a lovely spot.
this looks edited or photoshopped, but is not…just lucky magic
A set of storm centres, with gusting winds, hail, and torrential rain, surged across the Toronto region late on Wednesday afternoon, leaving devastation of all kinds, from damaged crops to downed trees and smashed cars, along with serious flooding. It was a sobering reminder of nature’s power. I’d been out on my bicycle visiting a friend and luckily made it home about half an hour before the intense action began, hurrying as I saw dark clouds massing and felt early raindrops giving warning.
After the first downpour, there was a pause, a slight brightening. Then came a pounding of hail. Incredible. Deep torrents of water rushed down the street. The wind swirled the trees in the back garden, bowing them over and then swooshing them upright again. The huge maple that fills my view to the west swayed and rippled against the sky. It lost no branches, though there were leaves flying around. But up the street one of the large mature chestnut trees lost a huge lower branch. It fell across the street, blocking it completely and smashing onto my partner’s parked car.
clearing the branch, before nightfall
Many of the other beautifully-treed streets in the centre of the city were also blocked by fallen branches. The impressive thing was how quickly the city sprang into action: there was a crew with a chainsaw cutting up the fallen branch on our street less than an hour after the end of the storm, clearing the road (and leaving the damaged car looking a bit pathetic).
farewell to Tashi’s boots
On Saturday I did a difficult thing: I took Tashi’s leather boots, boots made for walking in cold and snow, size thirteen (too large for anyone else I know), to the Salvation Army. They’ve been in residence on a shelf in the front hall for two years, a reminder of him, a reminder of loss. Perhaps it was the arrival of September that pushed me to finally donate them. It was very hard to see them go. I just had to say to myself, Let them be lived in by someone who needs them.
And now, since writing about the boots, I’ve found myself looking in my photos for shots of Tashi in January of 2023 and 2024, when he had work and plans and was living well, all while knowing that his brain tumour would get active again. He didn’t talk about it, he just went on with life. How valiant and graceful that was, and how wise. There he is, alive and alert and lovely, in the photos. Remembering the way he lived through all of it is like a command to channel my good energy, whatever handicaps arrive due to age, infirmity, bad luck. Complaining is tedious and worrying is a big waste of time.
goldenrod is beautiful, and attracts birds and bees, so I’m happy to have some in the garden
KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: with talk of grilled corn and zucchini, fried rice…
We had beloved visitors from out of town for a couple of nights this week. The first night I made a large pot of brown jasmine rice. The rest of the meal was cooked on the charcoal grill. We had pork loin cut in half lengthwise and marinated with pomegranate molasses and fish sauce for a good half hour or more. Small zucchinis sliced lengthwise, brushed with a little olive oil and fish sauce, grilled quickly, and so did cobs of local corn with the last layer of husk still on them to keep them moist as they cooked. Three beautiful smooth whole eggplants from Footsteps Farm, pricked with a fork, came off the grill beautifully softened. They were easy to scoop out of their skins and mash together in a bowl with a little pomegranate molasses and some tahini, as well as salt. The only other prep needed after the grilling was to slice the pork. I still had a small jar of red ajika from Georgia, so that went out too, as a condiment.
grilled pork, zucchini, corn, rice, and the soft pile of baba ghanouj at bottom right
The next night six of us had planned to eat out, but the storm (see above) kept us home. Luckily there was a lot of leftover rice from the previous night’s meal, and a few cooked potatoes in the fridge, plus I had a small bag of flat beans from the farmers market; all that made fried rice the best option to anchor the meal. I got the rice started by heating oil in my large wok, adding some green curry paste, and some garlic, and once it had softened, adding chopped flat beans and some of the cooked potatoes, chopped small. Then I set the wok aside while I figured out the rest of the meal.
There was fresh fish: a lake trout fillet plus two pieces of sockeye salmon from Fisherfolk. I cooked each in my large cast-iron skillet. The trout cooked in oil flavoured with mustard seed and nigella, in which I had softened some thinly sliced cipollini onion. I used sliced white onion and fennel seed for the sockeye, and poured over miso thinned with water, before covering the pan for a few minutes so the fish could steam cook.
Once the fish was cooked and set out, I could reheat the wok and stir-fry the rice with the flavourings already in the pan. While I was doing that, a large bag of fine green beans, true haricots verts, slender and delicious, from Wychwood farmers’ market, cooked up quickly in a little boiling salted water. I dressed them with sesame oil, a splash of soy sauce, and a dash of aged pear vinegar. Meantime our friends’ son Neil chopped up a heap of ripe tomatoes that we drizzled with good olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and decorated with some chopped herbs from the rain-washed garden.
It’s always a pleasure to be able come up with a good meal at the last minute, while staying relaxed. All it takes is a little pause and focus at the start to figure out the order of operations! We could say that about a lot of situations, I guess.
bounty!
AND BOOKS:
My friend Judy gave me a charming book by Daniel Hahn called Catching Fire: A Translation Diary, a treat for anyone who is interested in the mystery and challenge of language and translation. Highly recommended.
And I’ve reconnected with Qiu Xiaolong’s Detective Chen series, set in Shanghai, and full of food details, local life, and political realities of the past and present. I’ve just finished Shanghai Redemption. There are still a few more of them that I haven’t read. As always I’m very grateful to the Toronto Public Library, indebted!
lovely gnarly heirloom tomatoes at Wychwood Farmers Market today, grown by Green & Bloom