Strawberry Cookies and Annie Hall

I like the process of thinking about happiness.  It's not always my nature!  Like brushing my teeth, exercise and eating veggies, it's a practice that I decided to make part of my life.

Learning:  Khan Academy.   I've recently upgraded my math skills, looking for the gaps in understanding and finding ways to teach myself.  I've borrowed books from the library, read math blogs and now am working with Khan Academy, a free website for learning.  They have a daily practice that I find helpful and through sheer repetition I can gain a deeper understanding of concepts.  When I get stuck, I can ask SE for clarification!

Reading:  Raymond Carver.  I borrowed Where I'm Calling From, a compilation of some of this Oregon writer's short stories and last night I read the first three stories.  I really want to read "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and usually I would skip ahead to the story I want, but I've decided to treat the compilation as a work in itself and read from beginning to end.  The stories so far are raw, gritty,  definitely not "happy" stories, although it makes me happy to find out about this writer and has works.  Happiness comes in varied shapes.

Food:  Strawberries and Cream cookies.  The delight here comes from the scent and appearance of these cookies more than the taste.  They are the first of the baking for the pink-themed wedding shower of my niece.  It was comforting to have SE to help bake, to have two people involved and tidy up as we went along.

Movie:  Annie Hall (1977).  I caught the end of this movie the other night on the TCM channel, and borrowed the DVD from the library to watch as we baked the cookies.  What I love about this movie is the way Woody is the actor, director, character all at once, how he steps in and out of the story, how he makes us empathize with his loveable but unlikeable character, how in the last frames he creates nostalgia for his relationship with Annie.  Imagine creating that kind of emotion in people you will never meet!  As I was feeling wistful about people I've never met, I included relationships in my own life that I've outgrown, along with the universal feeling of the glorious messiness of all love and friendship.

Song:  Be Not Afraid.  I sang it with T at her mother-in-law's funeral yesterday morning.  Familiar songs are a comfort at sad times.  Afterwards, outside the church, a crow screeched loudly which I hope wasn't a review of our singing!

Oranges and Muffins

Listing pink baked goods for my niece's upcoming wedding shower.  So far I've come up with pink Rice Krispie squares, brownies with pink icing, raspberry bars.  Thank goodness for Google.  I am going to make a few this week to freeze ahead of time.

Food:  Oranges.  Here I can also include clementines and tangerines.  The last bag of clementines I bought tasted a lot like tangerines, with that faint piney zing that I love.  Oranges are best eaten fresh, whether chilled or at room temperature.  They can be messy, which is why I used to cut and peel them when I took a lunch to work.  They can sting around your mouth when eating wedges.   I like the smell of orange peel too.  I rarely cook with oranges, but there is one Bundt cake recipe in the Dorie Greenspan baking book that calls for the sugar to be rubbed with orange peel and that cake was sensational, mixed with cinnamon, raisins and a bit of chocolate.

Food:  Bran muffins.  I bake them a lot, using buttermilk and raisins.  They are quickly put together and taste better than any bakery or packaged ones.  Today I used some dried blueberries leftover from another cooking project and added cinnamon.  I freeze them in a bag and grab as needed.

Place:  Rouge Park.  This is a big park about 15 minutes away with lots of trails in the woods.  It's over 40 sq. km and extends from Lake Ontario to Major Mackenzie Drive.  I volunteer there, leading guided hikes and helping out with events.  Since I started coming regularly to Rouge Park, I've developed an interest in birding and can now identify most of the common birds by sight and song.

Reading:  The New York Times Magazine.  I like doing the crosswords and I enjoy reading the articles.  This Sunday they drastically revised the format, with different type faces and fonts.  It's a little bigger than usual, which makes it harder to fold and squish into my purse when going on the train.  But I'm keeping an open mind!


Movie:  The Goodbye Girl by Neil Simon.  I saw the last half of Annie Hall  on TCM, followed by this one, last night.  They both came out in 1977,  with Annie Hall winning Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director at the Oscars.  Woody Allen lost Best Actor to Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl.  A toss up.  I love them both.

Oscars and Brussels Sprouts

The day after the Oscars. Lots of fun with picking favourites last night and being with family to enjoy the show. 
 Reading: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. This was a comfortable love story centred around books. Something jumped out at me as I finished the book yesterday, a reference to a book by Raymond Carver called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love".  That happens to be the book that is central to the plot of Birdman, the movie that won Best Picture for 2014 last night.  I love coincidences like that.
Food:  Almond croissants.  JM brought them for Oscar snacking and I discovered that SE likes them as much as I do!  The flavour and texture of almond filling is irresistible to me, soft and sweet.  Chocolate is nice too, but almond is the best.
Everyday things:  Snow.  I might as well say it now, staring fiercely into the last weeks of winter.  I do like snow--powdery, slushy, crunchy, delicate, feather-light sometimes, and heavy as mud at others. Animal tracks in the snow are a wonder, as is the gradual buildup of layers of falling snow on an evergreen branch.  When I was a kid I could never get enough snow down in the city, and now I do have enough, more than enough, but I still enjoy it!
Plant:  Parsley.  I like parsley as a food too, but it's one of my favourite growing things.  It's a biennial, which means it lasts two growing seasons.  In my garden, it rarely survives the winter frost, but I set up some plants under grow lights last fall and have been enjoying the harvest all winter.  I like the curly leaves and the way the stems jut out at an angle, and the way the new leaves come up from the centre of the plant.
Learned:  There might be a genetic reason for people not liking to eat brussels sprouts!  There's a gene for taste sensitivity called TAS2R38 that may be responsible for some people hating this vegetable.

Oscar Night

I'm really looking forward to watching the Academy Awards presentation tonight.  No time for fussy cooking--calamari, egg rolls and shrimp ready to go in the oven from the freezer, along with a bottle of prosecco. The prosecco froze solid out on the porch last week but it should be okay for tonight!

Event:  Oscar night itself.  I rarely miss it.  It always brings back happy memories of watching it with my mom, dad and sibs growing up and now with my own family.  Sometimes we do a pool, but this year it will be enough to pick our favourites.

Movie:  Birdman.  My pick for best film this year, out of the ones I've seen.  It was inventive, surreal, and hilarious.  I'm not sure if the main character, Reggin, was mentally ill, or if his alter ego, Birdman, represents that little nagging voice that all of us hear.

Movie:  Boyhood.  A leisurely ramble through 12 years of growing up.  I will be happy if this one ends up winning Best Picture too.  It made me think a lot about relationships and parenting, and inspired wonderful discussions.

Movie:  The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game.  Both biopics and both disappointing ultimately, though well-intentioned, well-acted and well-made.  I felt a little manipulated and resentful in the same way I felt about the Disney and P.L. Travers movie, Saving Mr. Banks.  Maybe I should just get over it, but I prefer fictitious characters, which to me, deliver truth that's missing in an account of someone's actual life.  And then if the narrative is sculpted to promote a point, it feels cheap.  Well, that's always been my problem with history--"says who"?

Event:  Cinechats, a weekly film presentation at Durham College in Oshawa, by John Arkelian, editor of Artsforum.  Quality films every Thursday at 6:30, at the low price of $3, along with a wonderful email containing a description of the upcoming film for the week.  It's 10th anniversary will be March 5.  A cultural treasure.

St. Catharines

After a sad day at St. Catharines for the memorial service of my cousin Joe, I'm reminded of things which comfort me.

People:  Family.  The knowledge that we are connected through blood, through promises, through events.  The faces of loved ones in the midst of grief.

Places:   Niagara Region.  Even in winter, with the beauty of the frozen bay, the white fields, the flat landscape as we drive through.

Food:  Avocado.  The smooth, nubbly skin, the way it sits in my hand, the velvet light green interior.  It was on my chicken sandwich at lunch today. 

Song:  "You're in my heart", by Rod Stewart, sung by Mike at his brother's funeral.  Another brother Jim made a little box for his brother's ashes, and the words "You're in my heart, you're in my soul" were inscribed on it.  I will never hear that song the same way again.

Learned:  I saw a list of equivalencies from fractions to decimals, such as 1/2 equals 0.5, 1/8 equals 0.125.  I usually work out those kinds of things as I need them, but it occurs to me that it might be handy to memorize 1/2 to 1/9 to help with recipes and everyday calculating.   Numbers are comforting.

Frost and Ray

So many things make me happy. I'd like to post them daily to make a collection. The challenge will be not to repeat myself!
  Reading: A poem by David Ray called "Thanks, Robert Frost". In it, he talks about "hope for the past", that what we did in the past will turn out all right. Other poems by Robert Frost that I like are: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Dust of Snow", and "Fire and Ice". That last one was from high school days!
  Food: Jams from Hillsview Farms in Maynooth. My favourite so far is gooseberry. The one I have open now is blackberry jelly, and it's very nice on crunchy toast.
  Learned: Boston ferns are great air purifiers. B. C. Wolverton and Anne Johnson from NASA conducted a study in 1989 which tested the ability of house plants to remove toxins like formaldehyde and benzene from the air. Some of the best ones are dracaena, peace lily and Boston ferns. The transpiration rate of these plants also improves humidity in the indoor air.
  Everyday Things: Maggie the labradoodle. She makes me happy just by being on the earth.