Converted Sugars

Noon talk by the potter in the upstairs gallery, Stephanie Craig. Very good talk but sparsely attended. Opening reception with her tonight, but I didn't stay for it, as it started clouding up and looking ominous. Freshening breeze and the leaves were turning inside out. Wanted to get home. Three days off, but I'll probably have to run into town one day, quick trip, to get some supplies, as I didn't have a chance to get over to Kroger today. Nothing prepared me to see the fox, I'd just stopped on the landing at the bottom of the driveway, to switch into 4-wheel drive, and she was about 50 feet away, in the median, with a young grouse in her mouth. She twitched her ass and glanced at me, walked down into the hollow. Love you too. I wondered how I knew it was the same fox, something about comportment, is that the correct word? the way she carried herself. This is absolutely the same fox. You could argue that I couldn't know that, for an actual fact. Shit, you can argue almost anything. But I do know what I see. Phlox on the wayside, a bunch of geese controlling the beach. Intelligence is over-rated. Afraid I'd lose power, I made a piece of toast (one of those over-sized loaves of multi-grain bread) and sliced a Ronnie tomato on top, then several slices of double cheddar, ran it back through the toaster-oven while I fried a perfect egg to go on top. With a goodly twist of black pepper, this is the perfect taste of summer. The piece of bread is so large that I cut the crusts off and use them to sop up the last of the juice and yolk. The tomato is so sweet I have the thought that late summer is all about converted sugars. What the sun does with starches. I have a dish in mind to cook, vaguely Greek, a kind of Moussaka, with lamb and tomatoes and eggplant. It's the eggplant and artichoke season and I'm anxious to get started. Have my eye on the various fall displays outside various businesses, the panoply of pumpkins and squashes. I draw a map, and raid these places, before the first frost, lay in my larder of winter vegetables. I don't think of it as stealing so much as salvaging. The cream soups and risottos. Linda said she didn't have the patience for risotto, and I can understand that, I have one that I cook, that takes two hours of moderate attention, though I can read an Elmore Leonard, at the island, while I'm stirring. So time is a consideration. We parse things differently. I was going to read that novel anyway, so I might as well be cooking. If you caramelize cubed carrots and squash, fold them into a risotto at the end, with large amounts of butter and cheese, you end up with a killer dish. Converted sugars. I hadn't realized that was so much the point. I had (once again) assumed some things that were not true. Phone was out last night, so I couldn't send, and decided to run to town this morning so I could call the phone company, they promised it would be restored by late afternoon. Had to run the gauntlet on the way in, as the Weghorst family was having their yearly congregation of Tennessee Walker people. They park campers, cook out, and ride their horses on Mackletree and into the state forest on various trails. The road is covered in horse shit. But these horses are beautiful, well-cared for, and ridden often, unlike the vast majority that are confined in too small a space and never tended. I drive slowly, stop often, and let them pass me. Do my shopping in town, stop by the museum to chat with TR and D, then head home, around the long way so that I don't have to go through the horses again. There was a nice package of chicken gizzards at Kroger and I bought them to make a dish I think I invented. I separate them into lobes and trim off some of the connective tissue, saute them with caramelized onions and red peppers and serve them on a bed of rice. I love the texture of gizzards, but, then, I also chew the cartilage from bird bones and the roadkill I bring home. Stopped several times today, to take a dead animal off the road, and give them a little dignity in death. A couple of cats, a beagle, a woodchuck; the crows can deal with them much more quickly if they don't have to keep flying off because of oncoming traffic. I carry a very sharp knife with me all the time, a Gerber, Linda sent it to me, and when I take an animal off the road, I open it up, slit the gut-sack from chin to ass-hole. Just being helpful. I'm proud of myself this weekend, I actually got rid of some things. I'd already stacked about a hundred pounds of paper that needed to be recycled, and a couple of boxes that needed to go to the Goodwill, and then I realized I didn't need that catapult, AND I didn't concern myself with any petty observations. Your problem, might simply involve zoochemistry. Biomorphism, something.