Wild Mustard

This time of year, the fields that haven't been planted, are a yellow blush, and the yellow day lily always precedes the tiger lily. Down at Turkey Creek there's a stretch of tiger lilies that runs for hundreds of yards. A very light tempura batter, with a beaten egg-white, is good, with a citrus/soy dipping sauce. I made a dish of wild mustard greens with dandelion greens, that was completely inedible, but the first fried lily buds were incredible, sweet and complex, and I vow to go there many times during the coming season. Seems early to me but I saw my first rattlesnake, a female timber rattler, the yellow sub-set, a very beautiful thing, and still half-asleep, so no threat. About five feet long and quite fat, pregnant I think. Hard rain moves in and I shuffle some buckets, fill the soup kettle with enough water to wash my hair. Sunday bodes fair, so I need to clean up before I go down and socialize. Stay on top of this, what's constellated, the mandate being that I pretty much remain myself. I wander into the role of father, wonder at the parts we play. I can't remember my lines and I'm completely blocked in by two fat ladies with shopping carts. Rather than saying something inappropriate, I read the labels on the cat food. I like reading labels and trying to pronounce the names of some of the ingredients. I wanted to ask one of the women (she certainly weighed more than three hundred pounds) where she got her blue jeans. And when they get to that size, how do the people that make them know what to make? Take a class in sail-making. I was in Ted Hood's sail loft in Marblehead a couple of times, once when they were making a main-sail for a 12 meter boat. It was a very large piece of cloth. There were several of the most powerful sewing machines I've ever seen. Amazingly complex operation. Boat and sail design were on the early band-wagon for computers. With good reason, so many numbers to crunch. Even if you're rich, ordering custom built cabinets means you're getting cabinets built from a computer print out which has listed every piece of wood for that set of cabinets and its exact size. I get called out a couple of times a year to hang or re-hang paintings, and I always find time to examine the various cabinets and shelves. What we display is indicative of something, it's not actually meaningless, but it might not mean much. Something is better than nothing, so we go with that. I was bundling some old London Reviews and New York Reviews to recycle and got swept away rereading articles, then listened to Science Friday on the radio. There was a piece on morels that was fun, $30 a pound in NYC, and I realized I'm living above my station, for six weeks or so I eat them almost every day. I had a simple omelet and fried potatoes, covered in morel soup, this morning. I browned them in butter, cooked until they released their moisture, added a can of chicken broth, thickened it with some crushed beans. This is, actually, the best sauce in the history of the universe.