New recipe, new recipe. In an effort to use up some white mushrooms that were slowly going bad in my fridge, I made this very basic (and mild) mushroom soup:

Chop onions (2) and garlic (2 cloves). Saute in butter and/or olive oil (3 tablespoons) until onion is translucent and lightly browned. Add chopped white mushrooms (~1 pound) and saute until mushrooms release their juices. Stir in brown basmati rice (~1 cup) and rice wine vinegar (2 tablespoons). Add 4-5 cups of water, or enough to cover the mixture well. Salt generously. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and cook until the rice is tender. Remove from heat, and use a hand or regular blender to blend soup to desired texture, add pepper, and enjoy.

I am in love with using a hand blender to make soup.

And, to go with, a poem I read in high school.

Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

-Sylvia Plath

Today begins a 30-day period where I'll be shooting a roll of film (or the "digital equivalent", which I say is at least 100 photos) every day for my photography class. To build a foundation, today I only took pictures of the ground.

Morning Coffee

I like the cold rooms of autumn, sitting
early in the morning at an open window,
or on the roof, dressing-gown drawn close,
the valley and the morning coffee glowing--
this cooling, that warming.

Red and yellow multiply, but the green
wanes, and into the mud the leaves
fall--fall in heaps,
the devalued currency of summer:
so much of it! so worthless!

Gradually the sky's
downy grey turns blue, the slight
chill dies down. The tide
of day comes rolling in--
in waves, gigantic, patient, barreling.

I can start to carry on. I give myself up
to an impersonal imperative.

-Gyorgy Petri

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
----And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
----But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
----Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
----And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
----And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
----No matter where it's going.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Memory

And you wait, you wait for that one thing

that will infinitely enlarge your life;

the gigantic, the stupendous,

the awakening of stones,

depths turned round toward you.

The volumes bound in rust and gold

flicker dimly on the shelves;

and you think of lands traveled across,

of paintings, of the clothes of

women found and lost.

And then suddenly you know: it was then.

You rise, and before you

stands the fear and prayer and shape

of a vanished year.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, 1905

Another scheduled post, another week in motion.

Is over.


(And ended, for me, in Arizona.)