While most of Saturday was consumed by periodic searches for the missing car key—I’d driven myself and the car home on Thursday, it had to be here somewhere—I made time to whip up a batch of Moosewood’s Cream of Broccoli soup, updated by Mollie K. for the new, low-fat age in her revised edition of the book. It is amazing to me how simple it can be to make soup from scratch. Onion sautéed in butter, vegetable stock, a few handfuls of chopped green, orange, and yellow peppers, bag of Safeway organic frozen broccoli florets. Bring out my $5 yard sale Oster blender, vintage deco 40s for sure with its enamel concentric circle base, mix in the low-fat sour cream, and voilà we have soup. So that’s my Sunday pre-hitting-the-road brunch. The roasted garlic asiago bread accompaniment is definitely jazzing things up.
I like these slow-unfolding mornings. Packing my suitcase, packing the car, deciding which books to stuff into which tote sack. The last of the dishes rinsed and hidden in the machine. Time to look at e-mails, skim just enough news to know I can’t let its poison into my being today. Go deeply into fewer things, this Sunday’s mantra, re-discovered on a list of insights typed up who knows how long back. Useful one for writing, for living a calm, focused life, too. What would make my list of fewer things? What, really and truly, do I care so much about I can’t imagine having it gone from my life, a possesion, a passion not unlike Mark Bittner with the birds in the film I watched last night, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Certainly admitting and accepting my “short list” of preoccupations might go a long way to helping me decide what I’m going to keep on doing, what it’s time to toss out. I’m going to reflect on, write more about this during this, my Hilton hotel-living week.
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