Wee soda bread…
Soda Bread
Vita Sackville-West (circa 1926)
My momma’s birthday is today! We celebrated it last night with a tasty meal at home. I try to make those I love a special dessert for their special day. Our resources and mobility are limited these days, obviously. Because of this, I needed to make something with ingredients I had at home. I decided that it was finally time to make Emily Dickinson’s coconut cake. It’s been on my radar for at least 12 years. No joke.
Emily’s handwritten recipe
I used this post as my guide. Like that blogger, I mixed the cake by hand.
Since this was for my mom’s birthday, I embellished the cake a bit by adding a blueberry glaze* before topping it with walnuts and confectioners’ sugar.
Birthday cake
The cake itself is moist, flavorful, and not overly sweet. Perfect with a cup of tea.
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*For the glaze, I added approximately 3/4 cup blueberries and 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar to a blender and mixed it until it was smooth.
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“Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.”–Emily Dickinson
Happy birthday, mom! I love you.
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I hope you are all well during these difficult, uncertain times. Have a great weekend.
“Elegance is elimination.”–Balenciaga
Ngaio Marsh by Henry Herbert Clifford (1935).
This 85-year-old photograph of New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh proves that elegance, coziness, and individuality can be as stylish as anything out of the pages of a 21st-century fashion magazine.
Embellishments are minimal: an eccentric shoulder, a few buttons, an indifferently tilted hat, a bit of pattern and texture here or there.
Clean lines. Confidence.
She is, more than anything, mysterious.
How appropriate.
Lady Reading Poetry by Ishibashi Kazunori (1906):
Lady Reading Poetry by Ishibashi Kazunori (1906).
Eudora Welty
Here’s the recipe I use, if you’re interested. I love it because, in addition to being delicious, this recipe strikes what I consider to be a perfect balance: It’s involved enough to make you feel accomplished but easy enough to not dominate your entire day. Bonus: If you love toast, then this is definitely the right bread for you!
Dutch Oven Bread.
My poem is featured on Silver Birch Press! Check it out.
Ajar is a sacred word
by Alicia Austen
Ajar is
a sacred word
now
that it is necessary to be noncommittal
Houses stand
erect and
old
shut like
fists
except
where breezes enter through open orifices
and private sounds
escape
above empty sidewalks
Looking out
from my armored entry,
I close my eyes
in order to picture what I do not see—
people walking past
wheels moving
a mass of
artificial
colors
flickering in sunlight
Is this why we–
periodically–
consecrate the mundane?
Does strife
imbue it
with special powers
until
it shines like
molten wax?
If a neighborhood is an entity—
silence anarchy—
what is humanity,
but a movie projected at the wrong speed
one step ahead
or
behind
reality
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I write things as I see them, which means avoiding the literal at all costs while embracing oddness, layers, and complexity. My goal is to…
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