Perfect summer recipe: Dandelion Soufflé

One of my favorite recipes comes from "Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls" by Marjorie Winslow (1961). August is reminding me of this precious book I received as a gift when I was still young enough to cook from it. TV be damned; this is an homage to my backyard, play-by-myself-and-imagination times growing up.

"Dandelion Soufflé"

"After the dandelions in your lawn have gone to seed, shake their fluffy tops into an empty frozen pie pan until it is brimming over. Set in a moderate oven that is out of the wind. While it is cooking, seat your doll at a table located in a light breeze. Serve the souffle immediately and just watch it disappear! You will never have leftovers with this dish."

:-)

Sentimentally, I remain,
Ellen H.

"Ode to silky water" - a poem.

I've been attending a weekly writer's group this summer and it's been great. Yesterday I typed up all the writings I've done so far for the prompts and assignments. Then from a few paragraphs of prose, I crafted a poem. It's an ode to warm lakes (which I miss here in Colorado!) and is getting me excited for the upcoming family reunion/vacation in August in Wisconsin-- by a lake, of course. Sigh... and read on:

I remember—

silky water, languid,

temperature of a bathtub

so poignant in my mind.

impossibly warm--

when large bodies of water

and the water from the hose

are so icy cool.

impossibly smooth--

in summer evenings

of the mosquito-filled Midwest

no wind to disturb

so calming, so quiet.

a consistency so distinct--

sit on the cabin dock, dip your feet in

watch the water-skating bugs

bend the surface

just heavy enough to dent it.

so satiny-- it must be

full of skin-moisturizing algae bits

soaked up from years of

sitting still in a lake.

so unlike clear-as-air water--

purified by mountain descent

and sunlight-sifting

as it tumbles down

the Arkansas River…

yes, the water here in Colorado

is so foreign

to lake water in Wisconsin--

that it’s nearly wholly

A Different Substance.

©Ellen H. 2015 

[*Reminder: please do not copy or use any of my writing without my permission.]

July on a cold January night.

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One bleak, black night, we sped along the highway through the dull plains of eastern Colorado when I heard a song I will never forget. I was sitting in the backseat of my parents’ station wagon, Mom and Dad up front. We were headed to Iowa to return me to college after winter break in my Colorado hometown. In typical parental fashion, NPR was the radio station of choice. The current program was introducing musicians and their new albums. Tonight, the host described the folk singer/songwriter Laura Veirs and her album titled “July Flame”. To really get a taste of her style, he played the title track. With our eyes bored from darkness and flat plains, our ears were captive to the sounds. It’s a beautiful song, but what made it unforgettable was how the mood and the meaning behind it were so perfectly in tune with my life at the moment.

The mystical sound fit the scenery surprisingly well. It was ironic, no doubt, introducing a song called “July Flame” in January. But somehow the steady, beating toms and haunting electric guitar evoked the barren cold of the landscape around us. Then the wistful, echoing female voice sang in lyrics, poetic yet concise: “July Flame, I’m seeing fireworks, they’re so beautiful, tell me why it hurts?” Aching loneliness—that’s what made the song like the scenery. “Can I call you mine? Can I call you mine?” the chorus pleaded softly.

The sound mirrored the feelings inside me too. I had just seen B over Winter Break and told him I liked him again. He hadn’t replied… which hurt, but I understood. I had turned the tables, since I’d been the one to break it off with him a few years prior. He might not trust me enough to try again. I just had to tell him how I felt, in person, before I left. Still, it was rather new experience for me, this uncertain love making my heart sore as I left for another semester of college, states away. “Can I call you mine?” the artist sang over the radio again. The song’s feeling wasn’t just loneliness, but recalled any kind of emptiness that longed to be filled.

The July theme of the song resonated too. It fit in many ways: We spent much of our time together during summers off from school. His birthday is in July. More than that, we’d started dating in July the first time around, so he’d already been my July flame once. And, perhaps most importantly, July represented warmth in contrast to this cold winter and my empty arms.

Amazingly, July would continue to be significant to us: a few months later, Ben became interested in me again and I accepted his offer to date steadily again on July 4^th of that year. Fireworks indeed… but year-round now that he’s my husband. But in a way, that flame first warmed me on a January night amidst the desolate plains.

You see? You were my July Flame. Only you.

It was too perfect a song not to ascribe it to you.

You were, and still are,

the July flame to my cold January.

For my love,

Ellen H.

P.S. To listen to this wonderful song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLilpPtY2JU

Lyrics:

July flame
Fiery kite
Will-o-the-Wisp
Lead me through the night

July flame
Sweet summer peach
High up in the branch
Just out of my reach

Can I call you mine?...

July flame
I'm seeing fireworks
They're so beautiful
Tell me why it hurts

July flame
Ashes of a secret heart
Falling in my lemonade
Unslakable thirsting in the backyard

Can I call you mine?...

On lies and the truths that oppose them.

“Be free from all the lies the world will tell you about not being smart enough or pretty enough, good enough or clean enough. No sin or even a lifetime of sin excludes us from the freedom the Cross of Jesus affords. Yes, we are undeserving of God’s rich mercy, but Jesus makes us deserving. His goodness alone makes us good enough.” 

–from a devotional about Eve’s shame after The Fall and the cure from God. (http://shereadstruth.com/2015/06/02/eve)

            I watched the movie Good Will Hunting for the first time last night. It made me think about people’s gifts and their hindrances to using them. For the main character, Will Hunting, it was his childhood that held him back: he was abused, abandoned, and therefore became apathetic. He finally builds rapport with a therapist, Sean, and near the end of the movie, he’s opening up to him. But Will is still stuck on what he wants to do with his life and his incredible mind, not believing he’s worthy or that he’ll succeed.

His therapist realizes he’s stuck because of the lies he’s believed. Will could not control the circumstances of his upbringing but somehow has told himself he should have lived differently anyway. The therapist says gently, “It’s not your fault, son. It’s not your fault.” Of course, Will realizes this on a rational level, and says so. But the therapist continues to say it, pounding the Truth of it past his mind into his heart. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” Will resists, turning to violent defense mechanisms that have served him for years. The therapist persists, whispering. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” Eventually, Will breaks down and accepts this truth, hugging Sean, who is more a father-figure than a therapist in this moment. It’s an excellent scene and it made me thoughtful about what made it so poignant.

            Then today I read a devotional about shame and its beginnings with Eve in Genesis. Shame tells us all sorts of lies and they hold us back. My prevailing personal lie (though there have been many) has been “You’ll never be good enough.” And while there’s nothing wrong with having a therapist, it's been helpful for me to simply listen to God Himself telling me the counteractive Truth. It’s a good meditative practice. Sit quietly and imagine God telling you the opposite of whatever lie you’ve been hearing in your head (or audibly by people in your life?). Don’t just hear it once. Hear it many, many times. Enough times to start fighting the predominant narrative in your head.

            You are good enough.

            You are good enough.

Right now. And yesterday. And tomorrow. You are good enough.

            Not that I deserve God’s mercy, or all the riches in the world, or anything for that matter. But I am good enough because Jesus made me so. Because He deemed me worthy. I’ve always liked the quote by C.S. Lewis, “Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.” Amen.

            …You know that’s why I say Amen? (Church preachers can affirm this, I'm that person in the back saying it during the sermon!) Because it’s my soul affirming the truth of something. Like, “God is love.”  “Amen!” Or “I could never do anything to make God love me more.”  “Amen!”
I'm teaching my soul to recognize truth—and what’s not. Then my soul resonates with its sweetness. Affirms the firmness of it. Validates its wholeness. Listening to the world, our crazy culture, and the shame from my wounds can make me forget what truth sounds like. That’s why, when I’m feeling beat down, reading Scripture and singing worship songs and meditating on truth phrases are so powerful. Because it centers my soul again, and wakes up the goodness of truth. It might be a bit uncomfortable at first, like stretching can be, or sinking into a steaming hot tub. But then it feels good. And it’s good for me.

            So, what lies are you believing? How are they beating you down? How are they holding you back? Did you even realize they’re holding you back? And, what truths do you desperately need to hear? Be free, my friend. You were created to be free. Let it launch you to fulfill your truest self.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” –Jesus  (John 8:32)

Pine-scented walks, an early memory: a writing exercise

To encourage my brain to continue to play with words and to encourage me to keep handwriting things, I attend writer's workshops whenever possible. Today I want to share a special exercise I wrote from the workshop I went to today. The prompt was: Where and when would you go back in your past to visit a memory and why? 
(*Note: This is dedicated to all mothers, and especially my mother. She is also a writer and lives in the same city I do, so we attended the session together. Of course, I read it to her.)
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Perhaps I would go back to an early memory of walking to preschool at St. Pat’s Catholic Church, three blocks from our house, hand-in-hand with my mother. My, my, I must have been young. Four years old, I think? It’s a very simple memory, almost like a dream…

At the dead-end of the street at the edge of our neighborhood in Wisconsin, a stand of carefully planted pine trees stood tall, already old, forming a wall of protection between that quaint, safe neighborhood and the business part of town. Just on the other side was the Catholic church, joining that protective force, standing on its own, apart from the cluster of churches on the opposite side of town. Just the church and the pine trees. We weren’t Catholic, but it was a happy place to attend preschool, which I remember fairly well.

But the walks… Mornings of pine-scented quiet, so close to home we just walked each day, but me still too young to go by myself… and we didn’t have to hold hands, but we did. (Is it one memory or a composite of several ones?) I liked that there wasn’t a sidewalk at the dead-end. We just stepped over the curb and onto the dirt deer path the last twenty feet to the parking lot. The empty lot led to the back door of the church where my classroom was.

I’ve always liked trees… and maybe those trees started it all. They probably seemed even taller to my young eyes. They were majestic and special, like Heidi’s, the Swiss girl of literature, the swishing of the needle-laden branches in the breeze a very nostalgic sound. Those who grew up near the coast may fondly remember the pleasant white noise of the ocean, but I, a Midwest girl through-and-through, remember the pines.

Maybe I would go back to this memory just to squeeze my mother’s hand again, look up and say, “Thank you for this walk. Thank you for your part in my love of trees, morning walks and quiet neighborhoods.” Perhaps I’m choosing this moment in my life because it was an end of an era of me living at home, leaving my special last-kid-at-home relationship with Mom. It was just before my entrance into a much longer era of fulltime school attendance. But, perhaps surprisingly, given the era’s classic sentimentality, my memory is not ever of her crying, not of holding me back tightly from more hours away from home and from growing up, but rather of quietly holding my hand… taking me there.

Selah.