A fridge of one's own

After my trip to the market yesterday, I couldn't bear the thought of putting the neatly stacked cartons of blackberries and svelte triumvirate of darkling eggplants into our fridge. Nor the frilly lettuce nor the dark, leathery avocados. No, not with the momento mori still life, "Ode to the demise of a very bland fruit salad" (among other fecund items) bursting into life (death?) on the back shelf. So, with grocery sacks strewn throughout our living room, I pulled every last item from our fridge (the bread heels in long, plastic bags, the half-eaten lime, the ketchup bottle), knelt on the cold tile floor and scrubbed. Like a pregnant Cinderella. I ripped drawer after drawer after shelf and drenched the entire kitchen with my enthusiastic and deadly use of the sink sprayer and suds (hours after, Mike found water hanging from some far cabinet corner and looked at me with arched brow). Now, having finished, having categorized and placed everything back in at right angles, I can't stop staring. All day I peek in to see the glow, to see the quiet, crimson strawberries and long green cucumbers sitting silently in their cool palace.

Welcome to the animal kingdom

Watching Planet Earth a few weeks ago, I felt a strange kinship with the elephants. Especially the pregnant one whose swelling belly brushed the dusty ground. The labor of walking, of carrying. As my body stretches to accommodate life, I'm amazed at the animal in me. The taut, hard belly burgeoning from my frame; the swelling breasts; the rib cage that aches its growing; the fleet kicks of life pushing the body's boundary. How strange to feel like a mammal, to join the kingdom, to relate to the tusked, gray body drooping to earth.

The Big Day...

He was a happy man.

Molten Chocolate Cake

My friends, this cake is not messing around...I've made it twice now and it has rocked my world both times. Add some fresh strawberries and vanilla bean ice cream on top and you will melt with the gooey chocolate insides.

Clark n' Kelsie sittin' in a tree...

It's true. My "little" (6'5'') brother, Clark, is getting married this weekend. If he's married, do I have to stop saying "the kids" are coming to visit when he comes over? Mike always makes fun of me for clucking around my younger siblings like a mother hen, swooping around them with my fluttering maternal wings to make sure they have plenty of food and towels and pillows and that they make it to bed in good time and travel safely in the snow and and and.... Never mind the fact that they are all well into their college years and well-acquainted with independence (and, the jerks, much much taller than me besides). After one of my anxious, detailed planning sessions preceeding their arrival, Mike will mockingly say to me, "Let's make sure we have enough sidewalk chalk and animated movies to keep them entertained too. Oooo...do we have enough sippy cups?" I glare in return. We always called Britton and Clark "the boys" growing up and I can't imagine calling them, "the men." Even though (I admit), they are no longer adolescent, gangly boys in need of an (overly) protective elder sister's watchful eye (nay, vigilant...their poor girlfriends, I was notorious for mad-dogging them).

I remember the day when I saw Clark as a man for the first time, when my eyes finally saw past the smooth-faced boy time-frozen in my mind. We were in my grandmother's backyard on a dry, hot June afternoon, sitting on the cool cement stoop in the shade. Clark was coming out to school for his first semester. He had grabbed his guitar and wanted to play me a few of the songs he had written over the preceeding months (and which he planned to use as ammunition to slay the flocks of swooning ladies up at BYU-I, and--trust me--slay he did...the poor suckers never stood a chance). As he crooned and lilted through his songs, I saw him. His broad shoulders and angular face. A man's face. All in an instant. It shocked me.

I'm still shocked.

And on Saturday he'll be married. Ring on finger. Lovely lady at his side. Strutting into the future as man and wife.

The Politics of the Plate

Just came across this astonishing article in Gourmet. I should have known my winter rubies came at a price.