The aptly named Stormy Weather rose. It's a climber, given to me for Mother's Day, I think, at least a decade ago, planted by the back gate into the side yard. There's it's hung on, although wisteria and wild sweet-potato vine threaten every year to choke it out. It blooms reliably, late in the season, and makes beautiful orange rose hips which I leave for the birds, though I could make tea with them. The blooms are small and, like most climbers, relatively short-lived. They don't make great cut flowers, which is a shame, because the smell, like the deep magenta color, is intense and beautiful.
The parish has changed its daily Mass schedule, so that the noon Mass, with confessions beforehand, is today, not tomorrow (now Father's day off). Adjusting my own schedule accordingly. Today is the memorial of St. Jerome, so I'll be there to celebrate him.
Day and week as usual. I have writing and research to do on various fronts, not least for this lecture I'm giving in November, on pilgrimage and the poetic imagination, centered especially on the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Really need to make some effort in that direction.
Difficult news continues to pour out of western North Carolina. If you want to send aid, friends in the area tell me that the Red Cross is doing great work already, so that's a good place to start.
Otherwise . . .
Once again, I didn't exert myself to make an outfit plan for the week, so I'm back to relying on my own ability to reach for things outside my default modes (which are more temptations than anything else --- yes, yes, I could happily wear yesterday's dress every day, but I'm not going to).
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Erika&Co. vintage linen-cotton floral pinafore dress, bought December 2023, last worn September 18. Total wears this year to date: 15
*Very old thrifted cotton gauze Indian tunic. I can't remember when I bought this top. I don't wear it that much, but I hang onto it because it's unique, it has beautiful details, I love the color, and sometimes it's just exactly what I want to wear. Last worn in this exact outfit combination on June 22.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought in April, worn constantly. Yes, yes, I could be wearing more fallish shoes, but I seem to have gotten that out of my system in August. Now, on the last day of September, when the projected high is 79F, I figure: I have all winter to wear closed-toed shoes, during which time I will be pining to wear these Birkenstocks. Might as well make hay &c.
So, an all-secondhand outfit again, which pleases me. As always, I love this versatile pinafore dress, despite the propensity of the tag always to be sticking out. I could just cut it off, I guess, if it really bugs me all that much.
Day 3 hair twisted up in a scrunchie bun. I do have some beautiful scrunchies --- one of my small impulse-buy indulgences on the rare occasions when I go to Walmart --- and I want to make sure that I wear them. My hair is finally long enough, and the layers are grown out enough, that I can make a twisted bun this way without everything falling out. It's easy to look like Olive Oyl this way, but I think I've managed to avoid having the knot of hair stick out too much.
I'm eating, right now, a bowl of braised cannelini beans, which weirdly are what I wanted for breakfast. I was reading last night about braising beans, and I made a mental note then to add this idea to my fund of meal go-tos for the fall and winter. As food becomes ever more and more expensive, beans only increase in their appeal as a cheap source of nutrition. We're not vegetarian, nor do we intend to be, but meat is pricey, and I'm always looking for ways to stretch my weekly supply of it, while putting something good on the table for dinner (not to mention feeding myself breakfast and lunch).
I have a supply of dried beans, though those end up being mostly emergency stores. Week in and week out, I try to build up my stock of canned beans, which are still inexpensive, though not as cheap per volume as dried, and a lot quicker and easier to work with. My favorite beans to have on hand are black beans, chickpeas/garbanzo beans, and these cannelini beans, though northern beans are a good alternative. We're not great fans of either kidney or pinto beans, generally, though I certainly don't despise them. I just find these other varieties far more versatile and appealing for the kinds of recipes I want to make.
So, these braised cannelini beans could be vegetarian with the substitution of vegetable stock for chicken bone broth, but bone broth is what I used. You could also omit the feta or substitute some plant-based "cheese" and make these vegan, but I did not.
Here's the basic recipe, which I made up on the spot:
1 can cannelini or other white beans, rinsed
1 TB olive oil
1 clove garlic, smashed and minced
roughly 2 tsp dried minced onion (you could use fresh, to taste)
1/2 cup broth
1-2 tsp oregano
1 small red pepper (I think the one I used was a banana pepper)
roughly 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1. Sautee aromatics (garlic, onion, oregano, pepper) in olive oil until soft
2. Add broth and stir together for a moment
3. Add beans and simmer until the beans and the broth together become a kind of slush, as if you'd made a sauce with them
4. Add feta, stirring it in until it gets melty
5. Salt and pepper to taste
6. Enjoy
I would definitely make this on a larger scale as a dinner, doubling or tripling amounts, but a single can of beans gave me a good, filling one-person meal. Again, I used store-bought organic chicken bone broth (from Aldi; comes in a carton, the rest of which I stored in the fridge, to use in some way for dinner tonight before I forget it's there), but you could use a homemade broth, and you could easily sub in a little vegetable broth if you didn't want any meat product in your meal.
I had feta cheese on hand, so I knew I wanted Greek-ish flavors, but you could tilt a meal like this in any cuisine direction, really --- Italian, Mexican, curry, and so on --- with a quick change of spices and cheese. If you wanted curry, I'd recommend also adding a little coconut milk to your braising (not too much, if you don't want the end result to be soup), and/or substituting yogurt for the cheese.
If you're watching your caloric intake, especially if you're trying to stay in a caloric deficit, I'd be careful about amounts of cheese, because that's where calories can really add up. Think of cheese as an additional flavor, not a core ingredient. Cheese doesn't add that much protein, for one thing. It provides a fairly poor nutritional return for the amount of empty calories that come with it. Yes, you need some fat intake daily, but with cheese you get that and not much else. For another, more positive thing, the general effect of braising, especially with soft white beans, is to make things creamy and slushy, so you don't actually need the cheese to provide that comforting texture. 1/4 cup is a fairly generous estimation of how much feta I used. It was enough to reinforce the creaminess and add flavor, but that didn't require a huge amount.
So there you go --- possibly you've been doing this forever, but I had not been conscious of beans as a thing to braise, and now I am. Again, especially as we head (GRADUALLY) into cooler weather, I'm looking for comfort foods to make, and I'm especially looking for inexpensive comfort foods, so that the carnivores at the table don't miss meat as the centerpiece of a meal. Something has got to give in the grocery budget, but I really don't want the two of us, as we sit down every night, to be hyper-aware that something has given, and that we are dining on scarcity.
Well, I guess I should really bestir myself to let the dog out and do some actual work. As you were.
UPDATE:
Did not make it to Mass. My sweet rather time-blind husband took my car out to fill it up for me, and . . . I guess I could get there for Communion, but I probably wouldn't get there any sooner. Fr. says a fast daily Mass. So I've read the readings, and now I'm going to do some laundry.
ALSO:
Here's actually the article I read last night that made me want to braise some beans this morning.