Footnotes to a Conversation, December 5, 2022

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” – Anaïs Nin

Spicing It Up

Soup is my go-to recipe in the winter. I’ve realized that I love the creativity involved in making a soup (or casserole) from scratch. I consider the vegetable(s) I have on hand and then consider the type of soup I want when I’m finished – hearty, light, spicy – and dig into my spices drawer to see what could work. I read recipes to get ideas, but I don’t follow them. I picked up some useful tips from this article on how to liven up soup with all sorts of toppings or added ingredients. Some strike me as too labour-intensive for a one-person meal, but I can see myself sprinkling some za’atar, orange slices, or a dollop of pesto on a bowl of soup. [The Guardian]

Quirky and Oddball

For years, we’ve valued consistency. Buy a bottle wine this year and it should taste exactly the same as it did last year. But is that what today’s consumers want? Tariq Ahmed of Revel Cider thrives on trying on new combinations and flavours.  He’s betting that customers want variety and unusual, an experience as well as a taste. Revel sells around 80 different products, many of them for a limited time only.

“There’s Ribbon, a blend of red plums and blueberries and rosé grape juice. Fountain mixes apple juice with blueberries that have been sweetened with hyssop, a shrub in the mint family. And Mirabelle takes a base of apple, then throws in strawberries and lemon verbena. Most of Revel’s ciders take three years to be bottled or canned: apple-juice fermentation in the first year; another fruit added whole in the second; and a botanical incorporated in the third.”

“Wine can be very serious, and beer is the epitome of casual. But there’s something inherently quirky about cider and its various oddball expressions—a kind of alluring back-orchard scrappiness. In this spirit, Revel’s new offerings may emerge out of Ahmed’s stumbling upon a pamphlet on Norman cider making or after he chances across a patch of roadside flowers, nibbling to test their sweetness, adding a dash of this or a handful of that and seeing what might explode.” [The Walrus]

Reading – Slowly

I’m a fast reader, always conscious that there are so many more books that I want to read. And yet, very few of them end up being memorable. On an average day, Yiyun Li reads 10 different books, spending half an hour on each title: “People often say they devoured a book in one sitting. But I want to savour a book, which means I give myself just 10 pages a day of any book.” Elizabeth Strout has also chosen to read slowly: “This is partly to savour every word. The way a sentence sounds to my ear is so important to me in the whole reading experience, and I always want to get it all – like when you read poetry.” [The Guardian]

I Want to Read . . .

The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel – It’s astonishing how often history texts manage to completely overlook half the human race! Hessel’s book tries to right the balance by writing about the women left out of other art history books. The book is expensive – let’s hope our libraries purchase it.

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.