Category: Blood

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A Walk And A Reverie With Apples, Cheese And Cognac Or How To Embrace The Pandemic And Meet Pan.

How does a journey begin?  Well, with a walk.  A church and a cemetery affords the beginning.  Bare branches on the edge of spring with stubs of brown-green grass and a path of graded small stones.  An avenue of trees really, as we look down the path past grave markers and towards the dwellings of … Continue reading A Walk And A Reverie With Apples, Cheese And Cognac Or How To Embrace The Pandemic And Meet Pan.

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What Does The Great Stag See From The Forest At The Turn of A New Year? Björkar, Björk And Calf Liver Served With Fried Egg and Potatoes, While Contemplating The Good Resonance Of All Things.

It’s good to think of Hannibal as we leave the Winter Solstice behind.  Well, at least remember the Great Stag who witnesses Björkar.  Birches.  Member of the Betulaceae family.  Deciduous hardwood.  Dropping what is no longer needed.  The falling away of what no longer fits.  Dark horizontal lines on white, paper-thin plates.  You can peel … Continue reading What Does The Great Stag See From The Forest At The Turn of A New Year? Björkar, Björk And Calf Liver Served With Fried Egg and Potatoes, While Contemplating The Good Resonance Of All Things.

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Eating Ulysses. Bloom Balls.

Though James Joyce’s Ulysses properly begins with, Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.  A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air.  He held the bowl aloft and intoned: —Introibo ad altare Dei . (3) … Continue reading Eating Ulysses. Bloom Balls.

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Night Of A Red Right Hand / First Postcard.

I take the long way to the Cirkus Arena.  Walking from Slussen across Slussenområdet with its bridges rising over locks between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea, and further towards the Stockholm Cathedral, Riddarholm Church and Baroque orange and yellow facades greeting me as I descend into Gamla Stan, stepping cobblestone to cobblestone in black patent leather shoes, past ornate … Continue reading Night Of A Red Right Hand / First Postcard.

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Roasted Spring Lamb And Veg With Several Calls To The Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Five hours roasting at 150 Celsius or about 300 Fahrenheit and Maillard Reactions abound as lamb bone, flesh and skin browns, fat melts and a wondrous dark, umami aroma fills the kitchen and house.  Carbohydrate molecules and amino acids change and change in dry heat as colors and taste merge.  Fat molecules with the aid … Continue reading Roasted Spring Lamb And Veg With Several Calls To The Suicide Prevention Hotline.

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Spring Lamb With Roasted Vegetables, Agnus Dei, William Blake, the Tenebrae Choir, Broadway And Seventeen Years Of Therapy.

Spring lamb.  First born and first kill.  Three to five months old and now on our table, well one of its legs.  An offering for new growth and warmer days.  Flesh and sign of a flayed god and his ascendance into blue skies.  Once upon a time a celebration at the end of fasting. The … Continue reading Spring Lamb With Roasted Vegetables, Agnus Dei, William Blake, the Tenebrae Choir, Broadway And Seventeen Years Of Therapy.

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More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Last I left Love, I considered Nick Cave’s dark turnings of the lover’s call, playing off of Dante’s first sonnet of beatific and cannibalistic vision.  Yet, Dante a few sonnets on in Vita Nuova, also broods on the havoc Love causes, so one might say with Marc Antony in Shake the Spear’s Julius Caesar, “Cry … Continue reading More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

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Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

My devotion to offal, especially heart, has appeared frequently throughout this blog.  Recipes for this great, bloody muscle resurrect my body and spirit, piercing my tongue and thoughts with recipes revealing its divine aroma and taste.  I have worshipped lamb hearts.   I have worshipped smoked reindeer heart. I have smoked a heart myself. I have … Continue reading Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

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Cooking The Bog. Day One.

Think of a community of the living and the dead, mingling together in water, jostling back and forth with each other; bones and flesh, blood and fin, and all sorts of vegetal matter bubbling and foaming, slowly turning into a dense red bog.  In the beginning however, ah, in the beginning, there’s the fishmonger Melanders … Continue reading Cooking The Bog. Day One.