Re: reading

I believe it’s once again time for me to reread Braiding Sweetgrass and A Sand County Almanac. Time spent with either or both of those works will be more satisfying and rewarding than time spent checking headlines or doom-scrolling social media. I can incorporate Almanac by matching it month by month with Ted Kooser’s The Wheeling Year: A Poet's Field Book and stretch each out over a year. As for Sweetgrass, some time ago I began to take notes as I last reread it. Now it's past time for me to locate that notebook and see if I want to pick up where I left off or simply enjoy (again) some fantastic thinking and wonderful writing from Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Recently I’ve been troubled by my observation that people keep looking for new knowledge and wisdom instead of applying and building on what’s already available. (I plead nolo contendere.) Then, this morning I started reading Chris La Tray’s Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel and thought “I’d like to be the kind of person who can write haiku like this.” Since I’ve not tried writing haiku for years, I decided to back up and regroup. Hence, the rereading added to a new reading list. If it continues to be a long, cold, cloudy, winter, I’m prepared as long as we don’t run out of coffee. It’s way too cold to practice fly-casting in the back yard.

Irish soda bread

Photo by J. Harrington

This week also brings a new adventure. I’m going to take a crack at baking sourdough rye bread. The levain got mixed today. We’ll see if the starter was vigorous enough or if we need to go back to square one. This morning I used a commercial mix and baked a loaf of Irish soda bread. It’s delicious and much less trouble than artisan sourdough. It also creates a diminished sense of accomplishment compared to “from scratch.” I’ll add rereading sections of Sourdough by Science to the list. Mastery may be to ambitious but improvement is possible.

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

By Bill Holm

Start with the square heavy loaf 

steamed a whole day in a hot spring 

until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast 

grow dense as a black hole of bread. 

Let it age and dry a little, 

then soak the old loaf for a day 

in warm water flavored 

with raisins and lemon slices. 

Boil it until it is thick as molasses. 

Pour it in a flat white bowl. 

Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream 

to melt in its brown belly. 

This soup is alive as any animal, 

and the yeast and cream and rye 

will sing inside you after eating 

for a long time.

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