Saturday, January 27, 2007

To Live...

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
-Emily Dickinson



I was despairing last night. After getting home impossibly late, I checked the weather only to discover that it called for rain - again! - on Saturday. Normally that wouldn't be an issue. Normally gently-raining Saturdays are among my favorite things. But not this weekend. It just wouldn't do. I have onions to plant. I have lettuces to thin and seed and get going. I'm a busy girl. A busy girl with a garden. The rain will have to wait.

And would you believe... it did? I didn't brew coffee or anything this morning; I leaped from bed, pulled on jeans and my gardening boots, and rushed outside. Planting? Done! Mulching? Mulched! Lettuces? Better! In fact, I even have some little pretties patiently unfurling in an old dish pan I uncovered ages ago underneath Freeman House. (Above.) I like the portable lettuce set-up. I like to think of it as to go salad.

But wouldn't you know, just as soon as I'd visited the roses, blueberries, onions, lettuces, arugula, and lamb's ear, the sky opened up. By the time I burst through the kitchen door, my clothes were soaked, my hair was dripping, and my boots were squishing as I walked. Yick. Time to get cleaned up and make something to eat.

But not just anything to eat, of course. Oh no. Days ago, after glimpsing the unfairly beautiful quiche that Deb turned out of her Smitten Kitchen, I have craved quiche. I mean, craved quiche. And not the frozen ones I saw the other day at Sam's Club, either. I mean warm, homemade, buttery, cheesy quiche. Like Deb's. Okay, okay... it's raining so hard I'm done for the day anyway. Quiche me.

So, as it rained and rumbled on the other side of my window panes, I grabbed my trusty pastry cutter-inner (what's it called?) and cut butter into flour. (Yeah, by hand. I don't own a food processor or mixer or anything. Although I cook all the time, I really don't like them. I find them noisy and hard to clean. So I use things like food mills and this pastry cutter, which I found buried in a box of old kitchen implements in Harper County, Kansas. The proprietor said everything came out of an old boarding house that used to serve meals to none other than Sheriff Doc Holiday. Cool.)


So as rain dripped and drummed from the roof down to the ivy under the kitchen window, I cut pastry and rolled out dough and mixed filling and got my quiche in the oven. A short time later, it was done. What time is it? I wondered, looking for a clock. Probably too late for lunch but too early for dinner...


It was. So I looked at my quiche. I took a picture of it. I promised it I would be back later and wandered to the back of the house to grab my raincoat, switching on lamps as I went. A friend and I are walking to the old theatre downtown tonight to catch In Pursuit of Happyness. He promised to hold the umbrella as we walk if I promised not to jump in puddles and splash him like I did last time.

Gosh, this rainy Saturday has gone by fast. Too fast. I probably should have gotten more done. I should have been more diligent with my arugula duties. It's just... well, it's just... just that living doesn't seem to leave time for anything else, does it?

Emily was right. It can be startling when you think about it...

(Don't forget to comment on the Happy 100th! blog post if you haven't already. Delicious prizes are at stake!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hadn't come across that particular quote before, but I really like it. I will have to write it down somewhere so that I remember it.

Your quiche is lovely. It makes me crave some too.

smilnsigh said...

"my trusty pastry cutter-inner (what's it called?)"

,-) I think it's called just that! Or at least, I've always called mine, a pastry cutter.

And I must say, your Quiche looks so yummy that I want some. And I don't even like Quiche!

It's amazing to me, that you're already doing all those garden things. Up here in the NE, it's cold and some snow cover and ... nothing looks like Spring. But, I still haven't lost my taste for the cozy feel of Winter. From inside a warm house, that is! ,-)

"if I promised not to jump in puddles and splash him like I did last time."

You write in such a cute way!

'MN'