Dessa, the rapper/philosopher/dark-diva made this great point last night at the Castle in Rochester, MN that because the gravity on the moon is one-sixth ours here on Earth, her tits would look great there. Alas, we live where everything is heavier. In the same poem she describes the sinking feeling of letting bathwater drain around your body, becoming aware of the loss of buoyancy as your viscera take on their own heaviness and as your hair falls like a wet blanket over skin. “Whenever you take a bath, the bath takes back. And the five-sixths are yours to carry.” I think an analogy can be made here to the familiar settling state of post-Mardi Gras ennui– a sobering heaviness that remains in New Orleans when all of the confetti has fallen and the beads are scattered and the king cake has hardened to stale. The silence after the bands and paraders have retired from the streets, with perhaps only hollow echoes like the sounds of water thrumming down a drain pipe.
As co-captain of the Midcity Dead Beans parade, my message at the start of our march this year was, “We make these [bean] suits which are heavy and fragile to remind us of the ways in which life itself is at once heavy and fragile.” With this year’s parade theme as “Extinct and Mythical Beings,” we toasted concern to all that may be now be threatened by extinction: bees, the Gulf Coast, turtles and other hosts of beings finding the ocean increasingly uninhabitable. Life is indeed heavy and fragile.
This week I’ve carried my five-sixths up to Minnesota for ongoing cancer care, a different kind of heaviness. I am both literally and figuratively walking on ice while awaiting my prognosis. I am grateful for the generous company of friends who host and treat and buoy my heavy spirits along this marathon sojourn back to health.
And while I’m rarely Cooking for One, the recipes in this lovely cookbook by Joanie Zisk can be multiplied to suit any amount of plates you plan to set. This shrimp dish was delicious. I think the concept of this cookbook is an important reminder that even when you are just cooking for yourself, it is tender and loving to prepare a healthy and full meal (rather than opt for a snack dinner). Feast and toast to solitude. Or make these recipes for you and friend who are trying to work on portion control…
Bake This Day weekly picks:
When I get back home to New Orleans, I look forward to diving headfirst into crawfish season. A Cajun Life has a panoply of spices and shrimp boils and hush puppy mix and jambalaya and, and, and. Another Oregon-Louisiana connection (like Bake This Day) with the founders having roots in Eunice, LA now operating out of Gresham, OR.
Betterine is a vegan, dairy-free butter substitute that does not have all the nasty chemicals of margarine. Mostly coconut oil. I tried it out to make some French toast (realizing that I was defeating the vegan spirit in doing so), but as a butter-ish substitute for cooking, worked great! Will try next in baking…
A note that hyperlinked products featured have been gifted. Opinions all mine.