Author / Sixer

by Sixer

First Snow



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“. . . a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up everywhere.”

– The Wind in the Willows

It’s the first snow in my new house. I love the affect of snow, although sadly it does not show off my pond as well as ice does, or the still calm days that make it a dark mirror full of grass and tress and sky – a sky so much closer and personable than it’s distant original. Snow is just like faerie dust, sprinkled over the world to hide the slumbering limbs of the trees and make the brown plants sparkle. From my garret window the world was still and gray, but when I opened my door to take pictures with The Camera, I found a world full of light. I tried to master the “manual” focus:

Branch in Semi-focus

But crouching on my doorstep trying to get the focus wheel to spin got cold fast. I closed the door on the new world and turned to toastier pursuits. Fifteen minuets later, when my hands were finally wrapped round a warm mug of oatmeal, the sun poked its head above the tree line opposite my house. I have great windows for dawn, and so I couldn’t resist trying to take a picture through the plastic and screen.

It’s a pretty dramatic beginning, isn’t it?

by Sixer

The Non-resolution of 2013

One of the things I feel quite strongly about it is making resolutions you know you are never really going to keep. That’s too much like lying to my taste. Also, I really, really hate to lose.

I always lose when it comes to resolutions and and other goal-like promises.

But I also hate sitting and saying “not gonna'” just because you don’t think anything you do will ever bear fruit. Like just sitting there is any better of an option, at least failing gives you something to laugh at, if not learn from. So for 2013 I’m, not resolving, but pledging to be part of The Cationess sew-along. It’s specifically geared toward stash busting, which is hardly my problem, but the more laid back nature of using up unwanted extra fabric is quite inviting. I only have 1.5 weeks left, what do you think I should make for January?

by Sixer

Monday-Tuesday Bento

Maryland has been in a cloud. Not a nice, cozy, fleecy cloud either, but a damp, wet, almost-fog of a cloud. Today promises just be just as gray – the kind of days I loved in college for their gothic beauty. They aren’t so pretty when you’re out driving in them, let me tell you. Which means I had to make my own pretty this week

A little too cheesy?

Aren’t they cute? These are the products of one of my Christmas presents, a set of aspic cutters {{1}}. [[1]] I here by vow to take a picture of them all squashed in their adorable tin, with a quarter for size comparison. [[1]] Here’s the whole bento, sans artsy angles:

Rice, Umeboshi, Carrots strips, and Lentil Balls

And then Mondays:

Rice, fish soboro, chicken, carraot-ginger kinpura

The pink stuff was supposed to be Maki-san’s Sakura Denbu, but I 1) managed to mush in into granules instead of threads and 2) put in way too much pink food coloring. In real life it’s more of a hot pink – crazy fun to look at but a little scary to eat. I have about two more cups of it stored up in my freezer.

Putting this together took mere minutes, even if you count washing the rice before putting it in the rice cooker. I was so elated to find I had made something both cute and practical that I almost showed it off at work, but I restrained. What kind of oversized ego would you need to actually do a thing like that? No, I contented myself with the knowledge that I would be posting about it here, on the blog completely dedicated to me. I couldn’t resist with the stars though. For some reason it doesn’t seem as shameless to show of a Christmas present.

Todays bento promises to be pretty boring looking – spring soup and lentil balls – but maybe I’ll spice things up visually with a sprinkle of stars, or a handful of hearts. As long as the clouds are here my attempts at cute will have to go on.

by Sixer

Bento with a Friend

This post is brought to you by a new friend

Get the picture?

He’s a little shy, and there were twenty inches of fingerprint grease on the mirror, so I’m afraid this blurry little picture is all your going to get of our new companion. I’m still learning about him myself and haven’t even picked out a name for him yet. What do you think? He’s on “loan” to me from my brother, who has a nicer, bigger camera now.

Thanks to our new and nameless friend I was able to snap a photo of this rare sight:

Heavily edited for your protection

Fish, rice with umeboshi, broccoli, and Spring Soup

Yes, an actual bento. I take packed lunches with me to work everyday, but even when it’s good food and well thought out, I somehow never seem to be ready to put it together until the last minute, and then there’s no time even for pretty. I’m trying to combat this, because it really is more lazy thinking than anything else, and to do so I have been adding to my freezer stock. Is it strange that I love the word stock? The idea of laying away, storing up, putting down – all of these just seem so romantic to me somehow, and preforming them gives me a feeling of contentment like warm honey in my soul. This must be how farmers feel about their freshly sown fields, or knitter’s about adding to their stash. Deep down inside, every human being is part squirrel.

The stock item in this photo is the green soup. It tastes like spring, but not much else. It’s celery and cucumber with a bite of lime and an avocado’s worth of creaminess, yet despite the fact that the first bite brings with it the promises of May, I can’t say I’m impressed. It’s not bad, but it’s so unmemorable that I’m always surprised to taste it and find it’s not bland. This picture is of Monday’s bento. I’ll be eating the soup again today with spicy lentil balls {{1}}. My mom helped me bake this concoction, and I have about 5 dozen of them in my freezer now. With a little cheese, these spiced beans make the soup into something that actually taste like a meal.

[[1]] In case you’re curious, I doubled this recipe, omitted the sesame, and used white rice because I didn’t have any brown. I didn’t have any coriander either. Doubling the recipe had the unintended side effect of surpassing my pot’s capacity, and I ended up having to cook it down in two batches. I don’t think I ever did get it to the correct dryness. When  I defrost these in the microwave they tend to crumble into soft clumps. Guilty confession:  I had them for breakfast this morning with a little honey and two fried eggs. [[1]]

by Sixer

Blueberry Morning

There’s a cereal out there called  “Blueberry Morning,” or “Blueberry delight,” or  “Eat Me, I’m Healthy and Taste Like Artificially Natural Dried Blueberries!

The cereal is good, and I wouldn’t say no to a bowl of it right now,  but I mention it only as a way of excusing myself incase I’ve accidentally used a copyrighted name as my title.

For my own blueberry morning I woke earlier then I had too, a feat accomplished by bribing myself with Merlin episodes and, after that wore off, with a blueberry milkshake. The shake was really quite perfect – though I can’t promise it was the shake itself and not just the heady taste of huddling in a chair with a blanket, binging on TV before work. The base is blueberries (as promised) and almond milk, but it would not have been complete if I had not carelessly – rashly even – dumped two handfuls of oats into the blender, added a clump of flax seed,  and pulsed before pouring in the frozen berries and milk. You know those blue-box, blueberry muffin mixes? The ones with the little candied “blueberries”? It was like drinking that batter.

Only really, really, cold. At dawn. During the winter.

Somethings are worth suffering for.

Emboldened by this success,  I tried adding oats to a chocolate-avocado shake last night. The result was . . . edible, and probably fixable, but nothing I could actually serve to another person. Not even my mom. On days like these, when I take the time to play with my food a bit,  I just can’t fathom who would waste their lives on alchemy and turning one tasteless metal into another tasteless metal when, hello, there’s food to experiment with. Magic is all around us, but it’s in the near-and-daer things, not the lofty, far-off wonders.