tigress
in a pickle

vegetables are a thing of beauty to me. i love photographing them, and they whole-heartedly lend themselves to home decor around my digz. in the spring, summer, and fall you’ll find daily studies in still life on my counters, tabletops, and sills. as an otherwise visual minimalist, my vegetal presentations border on the ornate.  though my muses are whittled down in the slowest coldest months – namely those of the allium and cucubits species, and the winter forms of those even – my displays are most certainly not. ornate, in fact, turns toward the baroque in a visual cacaphony of other-wordly shapes and colors.

the cast morphs away with winter’s meals. the last ones standing morph as well; the bright eggshell blues, deep oranges and forest greens fade to more soothing shades, and taught october skins mottle. by february and most certainly march, i’m scrambling to put them to good use before the last curtain falls.

and then they offer up a glorious encore. squash guts. the blazing sun of summer sprawled about my kitchen sink! a beautiful reminder that summer, in fact, is right around the month of may. which is just around the month of april, which is just after the month that we are in today!

i must admit this was my first endeavor into farl making. there’s nary a drop of irish blood in this cat. but nigel enticed me with his reflection on bread-making and wonderful prose.  so i made it – or something very close to nigel’s version. it’s basically akin to a potato pancake and is much more a savory than a sweet. it’s moist and filling in a light-but-still-stick-to-your-ribs kind of way. traditionally farl is served with bacon, sausage and eggs. the minute it came out of the oven we sliced it up and ate it with chunks of sharp english chedder. it worked – immensely. the last two slices standing made a perfect accompaniment to a green bean curry on the following night’s supper.