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We all live in a Yellow Duckmarine...

Constance also told us (rather belatedly) that we had to send some muffins, or failing that, muffin mix, to her friend Susan back home. This is because of their warped version of the song “All My Loving” that they’ve changed to “All My Muffins.” You know, “all my muffins, I will send to you-ou.” Hence the need to post muffins.
Hmm.
We found some day-glo muffins at the 99p store (also picked up some umbrellas…) and we wandered around Liverpool One looking for a post office. Eventually, muffins and packing materials had been acquired and the muffins were sent. Except that Constance forgot to write down Susan’s address before we left on the trip. We grudgingly went into a Starbucks because they were supposed to have wi-fi and we needed to look up the address. As it happened, the wi-fi was so slow as to be impossible to use so that was a waste. Instead, we used the time to package the muffins and ingest some sugar. We eventually guessed at the address and, it turns out, we were off by only one number. Susan did get the package all the same (and ate the day-glo muffins), so all was well.

I swear, my life often feels like a series of near-misses with catastrophe. As if I’m constantly warding off crisis by the skin of my teeth. I know sending muffins to a friend back home doesn’t sound like it could go that terribly wrong, but you must remember I am a parent of a teenager. Everything takes on epic proportions when you’re 14. Even so, it feels like my life is high maintenance. I’m not really sure what that says about my life, because I don’t think I, personally, am all that high maintenance (others may disagree, I don’t know). Somehow, though, my life is forever in flux, teetering on the brink of…something. I’m pretty sure I have influence over that, but I just live the only way I can, the only way I know how, the way I feel compelled to live it. On the other hand, boring would be far worse than forever in flux. I think.

So, after the muffin escapade, we headed back to the hotel (in the pouring rain) with a brief stop at the Cornish Pasty Company (mmm, pasties). Duncan was set on using the hotel swimming pool so Constance and I took a stroll over to St. John’s Memorial Garden. It’s a “memorial garden” instead of a park because it used to be a cemetery, and by calling it a memorial garden they can leave all the dead bodies in the ground. If it were a park, they’d have to disinter everyone and move them. Too expensive, so…memorial garden it is!

Frolicking in the garden of the dead

We ordered room service on our last night, seeing as how we were bushed and the rain was coming down furiously. The food was ok, not going out was wonderful.

There are two kinds of weather in Britain: rain, and looks like it might. - Asterix

The next morning we packed up and walked back over to Lime Street Station. So much left to see and no time to see it! The Tate Liverpool, the cathedrals, the International Slavery Museum (oh yes, Liverpool was a major depot of the slave trade), Croxteth Hall, the list goes on…

Alas, our stay had come to an end and we sat in the station waiting for our train to Edinburgh, from thence by bus to Stow. While we were waiting, there was an announcement of a delayed train “due to a fatality.” Funny, I don’t think they usually tell you that part back at home.

So long, Liverpool. I underestimated you... Sorry.

Next up: Scotland!

What do you think of when you think of Liverpool? I’m betting The Beatles. That’s what I figured too.

When we first started making real plans to take this trip to Scotland (because I pushed relentlessly, I know…), Constance avowed that we’d also be going to Liverpool “on the way.” You know, since we’d be in the area and all. Mark thought this was kind of crazy, seeing as how being in the area was akin to stopping in Seattle when we were going to San Francisco from, say, Germany. I agreed, but I also pointed out that Scotland was a lot closer to Liverpool than California was, and that nearness was a relative term. And Constance would not be put off.

We decided that we’d stop in Liverpool for 3 days before heading into Scotland. Since we flew into London, it really was on the way, more or less. I figured 3 days was plenty of time to do the whole Beatles tourist thing.

We arrived in the evening and we were starving. The helpful concierge suggested we walk over to Liverpool One, a shopping plaza, that had lots of restaurants. I wasn’t terribly keen on going to a mall, but we were all very tired and hungry and we decided to just go and see what we saw. In the end, we went to a lovely French restaurant called Cafe Rouge. It is a chain, but the food was good (no, seriously, the English know French food).

Constance is thrilled to be here, can you tell?

Oh, and did I mention the rain? It was raining, not too, too hard, but enough to get us pretty thoroughly wet. This would be a continuing theme…

Anyway, Cafe Rouge was quite nice. Our waiter nervously approached our table and said, “I just have to tell you we’re all out of steak tonight. And whole chickens. The pirates ate them all.” (I believe there was some other form of meat he mentioned as well, but I’ve forgotten.) We hesitated for a moment, still processing that tidbit. After we had our moment, we assured him it was not a problem.

It turns out there was an enormous gathering of “pirates” that day in Liverpool in an attempt to break the world record; how sad that we missed it! We all found it terribly funny that the pirates came through and cleaned out the restaurant of all the big pieces of meat. The other funny part was that many of our friends had been at the Northern California Pirate Festival setting that very world record. Small, geeky world.
The pirates became a running joke for us during our stay in Liverpool.

The kitchen stayed open late so we could have dessert. The desserts were excellent. We overtipped. (oops)

One strawberry ice-cream concoction and one chocolate.

I had the clafouti.

Duncan ate his too fast for me to get a picture before it was gone…

We mostly just passed out after we got back from dinner. Mark and I had shared a bottle of red wine and we were feeling no pain. The rain helped keep the warm mugginess of Liverpool from being oppressive and we didn’t mind all that much being wet. We’re rain-loving folks anyway.

A little tele before bed:

Misses, will ya, make me tea. Make love to me. Put on the tele, to the BBC!

I have to admit, it was all any of us could do not to break into Monty Python and Eddie Izzard bits and speak with British accents. We really, honestly didn’t want to mock anyone, nor to make anyone feel we were mocking them, but the accents SO wanted to come out.

The next day was all about The Beatles Story. We went down to the Albert Dock and descended into the lengthy, and highly produced, Beatles “experience.” I did learn a lot about the band, possibly more than I ever had the inclination to know. Some of the location recreations were really cool. I love that sort of thing. There was a Cavern Club, the office of the Mersey Beat, and a psychedelic Yellow Submarine area. My numerous pictures of that, and other locales in Liverpool can be found here.

After spending far too much money at the Fab4 Store on the way out (partnered with Starbucks, there’s no escape), we were hungry and went looking for a place to eat lunch. We almost ended up at a pub-type place, but they were out of nearly everything (residual pirate fall-out?), though we learned an important factoid there: they had something called Scouse on the menu, apparently a traditional lamb stew that is a local speciality. From this stew comes the locals’ name for residents: Scousers. Not to be confused with Mancs (from Manchester). There is quite the rivalry between Scousers and Mancs, mostly friendly (but not always). Never having been to Manchester myself, I lean toward the Scouser side of things.

So, didn’t eat at that restaurant, don’t remember its name. We did eat at Gusto, an Italian restaurant right on the waterfront.

On the way back, it started pouring. We didn’t have any umbrellas (naturally) so we got exceedingly wet. Stopped to take this silly picture in which you can tell the kids are simply sopping:

But, where's the pool?

When we were nearly back to the hotel, we stopped in a pub called the Rat and Parrot. How could we not, you know? Coffee in the UK seems to always be served with a sprinkling of sweet cocoa powder on top. Also, virtually every dessert appears to be served with the choice of vanilla ice cream, sweet cream, or whipped cream, and most are served warm. That means that if you order chocolate cake, it will come warm with melty chocolate frosting and in a pool of cream or with a dollop of ice cream. Took some getting used to, but I think I like it. Warm sticky toffee pudding with cream? Oh my god.

Liverpool TBC…

That is all.

Other than spilling a large quantity of very hot coffee in my lap, the SF airport was an uneventful place for us. There was one incident with a haughty Starbucks employee who declared that they didn’t take punch cards because, “This is the airport!” Well, of course! What was I thinking?!

Anyway, we boarded our little plane to Calgary and tried to settle in to the journey. Coming in to the Calgary airport (YYC) was pretty miserable (for me, in any case) because of severe turbulence as we negotiated the mountain winds in our flying shoebox. I haven’t felt that queasy on an airplane in quite some time.

The Calgary airport is homey, but weird. It’s got this whole “space cowboy” thing going on; literally. I mean, there is an actual  museum/exhibit thing that is even called Space Cowboy.
We didn’t go in.

The greeters and information folks wear red vests and big white cowboy hats. I’m not kidding. I wanted to take a picture but was too embarrassed to ask. Some of the automatic glass doors had wooden saloon-style doors painted on them. Yes, really. There was an elaborate display celebrating the majestic moose and we were seduced by the sounds of a large indoor waterfall. Giant models of space shuttles and spacemen hung from the ceiling in a variety of spots. It was kind of strange.

I did check out the “interfaith” chapel, just for kicks. By interfaith, I guess they meant “a variety of Christian denominations.” Oh well.
It was a funny sort of chapel, the tablecloth had cowboy boots on it:

Real homey, don't you think?

A model of the space shuttle was hanging right over the altar, to peculiar effect.

Direct flight to heaven?

Our layover was only four hours, enough time to eat and look around the airport a little, but not enough time to really see or do anything. It had looked pretty out the airplane windows on our approach…
We decided we would have to come back to see Calgary proper at some point.

So near, and yet so far.

Next we began our epic plane and train journey to Liverpool. This second leg of the flight was nine hours, lasting through the night, with our arrival to be roughly 11am the next day. Here’s the crazy part: the further east we flew, the later it got, right? Except that since we were flying above the line of darkness (yes, we were!), it was still broad daylight at 2:00 in the morning.

Always knew I was ahead of the curve.

I shit you not. We were consistently just ahead of the bell curve of darkness. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

It inspired me to write the following poem (ahem):
Flying north of night,
Skirting the darkness.
It follows us in our journey,
Remaining always a step behind.
Hours jump ahead
But we move through them
Irreverently.
Time has no hold here.
We create our own wake,
Never looking back.

Upon landing at London Heathrow, we began the next leg of the journey: 5 hours or so on various trains. Destination: Liverpool! Because Constance wouldn’t permit us to be remotely nearby without making a stop in Liverpool (a remarkably cool town, by the way, but that’s for the next post…).

I had done my homework and I knew we’d need to get the Heathrow Connect (cheaper than the Express) to Paddington. At that point we would acquire a Family and Friends Railcard and use the attendant discount to buy National Rail tickets for cheaper. Thence, the Tube (London Underground) to Euston Station and the National Rail to Lime Street Station, Liverpool. All well and good. There did happen to be works on the Tube line we needed to take though, so we had to take the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus and then transfer to the Victoria line to Euston. Also, can’t actually purchase the Railcards at Paddington; have to get them at Euston. The website never mentioned that!
Anyway, no great shakes, right? Except you have to add 2 very tired children and 1 very tired husband (well, and a tired me), 3 large suitcases, 4 carry-on size bags, and a purse into the mix. Let’s just say it was quite a negotiation. We ultimately prevailed and made it to Lime St. Station intact with no loss of luggage (Duncan left a blanket on the plane, but it wasn’t his favorite “blankie,” thank goodness). Fortunately, our hotel was a mere 3 blocks away at One Queen Square, even if we did end up going rather further around because we didn’t know it was a mere 3 blocks away. What can I say? Making sense of a map is difficult when you’re tired.

By the way, mind the gap.

They mean it.

To be continued….!

Actually, the incense is something that was unfinished from before, so really I was tying up loose ends. Not to mention that it earns me some money for our trip (yay!). I’m an avid amateur herbalist, and so I’ve been working on developing a line of incenses and other herbal products. (The jam could actually tie in with this, but we’ll see.) Currently, I have two varieties of incense: Descendence Incense and Transcendence Incense, and they’re carried at The Sacred Well in Oakland.
The Well had requested more Transcendence Incense from me way back in November, but, what with school and all, I just couldn’t get it done. Now I’ve completed the order and earned some dough. Yay again!

Everybody needs a little transcendence now and then...

Of course, I’m also working on knitting a funky shawl, just because I feel like it,

Big needles mean I'll be done soon, I hope.

trying to get some more dioramas finished to sell through Gray Lady,

Can you guess what this'll look like?

coercing a friend to give me some blackberries to make more preserves (with Drambuie this time, I think), crocheting my outfit for Off the Needles: A Knitting Pinup Calendar, and…oh yeah, there’s that elderberry wine in the closet I still have to rack and sweeten, and I also still need to get honey to start the crab-apple mead going (crab-apple juice frozen in the back of my fridge). Mmm, a couple of other unfinished needle-work projects in there, too, but we won’t mention them.

Oh! And a friend of mine commissioned me to design a tarot deck for an iPad app he’s working on.
And I just got invited to teach classes to “mid-kids” at the Northern California Women’s Herbal Symposium this September.

Honestly, I don’t know how I end up getting so busy! I don’t set out to do a million things at once, I just seem to keep finding myself in the midst of it all. I can’t resist a new challenge, a new project, new ideas, new stimulation, new opportunities.
In school, my teachers said I lacked focus… I guess I could admit to that, but I prefer to think I’m just well-rounded.

Now if only I can get Lonely Planet to hire me to write for their travel guides…

I was lucky enough to receive a whole lot of organically grown peaches and plums from some friends’ fruit trees and I had to come up with an idea for what to do with it before it spoiled.

I took several plums and started a plum cordial: plums, cinnamon sticks, candied ginger, lavender blossoms (from my own patio garden), all in a big gallon bottle with a whole mess of vodka I’d gotten for tincturing before I decided I like brandy better for tincturing.

This needs to soak for a while.

When I’ve decided it’s more or less done, I’ll strain it, sweeten it to taste with a simple syrup, and then let it sit some more so the flavors can blend.
Now then, on to the preserves part.

I already had a couple of apples and some lemon juice and zest left over from making Apple Brown Betty for a 4th of July party. I blanched the peaches (so I could easily remove the skins) and peeled them, peeled the apples, and cut everything up. It took a while. When I was done I had 20 cups of fruit. Yes, 20 cups. I know jam recipes say you shouldn’t make more than 6-10 cups at a time because it won’t set right, but I decided to go for it anyway. (For anyone who has read my blog before, you may begin to see a pattern developing here.) Stuck all the fruit, some lemon juice and 10 cups of sugar in my biggest stock pot (hey, it’s less sugar than the recipe called for even!).
It looked like this:

Fruit, you will be preserves!

It needed to sit in the pot for at least a couple of hours before cooking (the sugar helps draw out the juice) and I kind of got started later than I meant to… That meant that the preserve-making process went on late into the night. Doh!
Moral of this part of the story? When canning, start before 3:30 in the afternoon because once you get started cooking, you really have to go until it’s done. It was completely done (including the boiling-water process part) at 4:30am.

I enjoyed the whole process, even if I was fading a bit at 3am. Hearing the jam jars PING! as they cooled from the boiling water bath was worth it. I don’t have any fancy equipment, I heated the empty jars in a chicken fryer full of hot water (they’re short jars), lifted them in and out of the stock pot with barbecue tongs, and used a towel in the bottom of the big process pot. I actually had to wash my stock pot after filling the jars so I could use it again right away to process them. A canning funnel is now on my list of must-have kitchen equipment, but it all worked fine makeshift style.

Last night I decided to make labels for the jars, because…well, because I’m like that. I put a little something together in Illustrator and cut them into circles on speckly card stock. My friends who are designers would, I’m sure, scoff at my simple design, and they certainly could have done better and fancier. All the same, the labels are far better than Sharpie on the lid.

Bask in the glory of homemade preserves!

The fonts are Fortunaschwein and Cochin, in case you were wondering.

I enjoyed it so much that I’m making plans for more preserves! Maybe I’ll add lavender or thyme to the next batch! Maybe Drambuie, maybe whisky! Maybe I could get a booth at the Farmer’s Market and sell them for $7.50 a pop! I guess it depends on how much people like it. We’ll see…
In the meantime, it’s still fun.

I don’t know either.

Sometimes it seems easier to me to begin within a set of parameters. Sometimes limits stimulate creative thinking. This is one of the reasons I’ve been a perpetual student for the last 20 years: because in school I’m forced to push myself and jump-start my thinking by having to generate something that conforms to a specific set of rules.

Now that I’m done with school (for now), I have to find ways to create my own parameters and my own rules. It’s really quite challenging in its own right. I’m not particularly good at rules.

Magnetic poetry provides one such set of parameters. I know, it can be used to make really stupid and pointlessly crude phrases (that is certainly one of its most popular uses), but it can also be used to force a certain kind of flexibility in imagery and word choice. I realized I like it because it’s a sort of verbal collage. In the same way that I cut out images and move them around until they look right, I enjoy taking words and moving them around until they feel right. There is some element of selection, of course, but the options aren’t originally my own. I have to use what I’ve got.

Hmm, that relates to the cooking thing, too. Using leftovers, and all that.

So, what does it mean to be an artist anyway?
Does it really mean “creative problem solver”? That doesn’t sound as glamorous somehow…
Well, I don’t know. Maybe. Too many choices, I can’t even begin to decide.

.
.
.

Some Poetry That May or May Not Be Good,
But Was Made with Magnetic Poetry

A thousand whispers
Planet balmy like evening wind
What gold-red moon sips my breath?
Strange universe falling

.
.

Tinge my pithy Kafkaesque zeal
With crass delights and sanguine veils
(that was a great philosophy-themed set)

.
.

still roses cry their elaborate symphony
as my bitter honey sleeps,
a languid beauty

shadowed tongues dream easy beneath
the forested light
and sing the mists away

Why?

Because.

I really can’t give a better reason, I just want it because I’ve always wanted it. Because.

So, that’s all fine and everything.
I’m feeling remarkably tired these days even though I have far less to do. I think it’s a factor of my slowing down: now I’m actually noticing how tired I am because I’m stopping to smell the roses (or coffee), and stuff. No more onward and upward for me. Time for a nap. Or many.

I’m trying to get back to cooking. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed and I still do (once I manage to overcome my inclination to do absolutely nothing for several months). I also enjoy eating food cooked from scratch; I used to be quite a purist about that sort of thing before frozen organic vegetables packaged in plastic bags became a staple in my household. (sigh)

To that end, tonight I decided to be resourceful and make some rice pudding from leftover cooked brown rice. Yes, brown rice (!). Already a red warning light is going off in your head, I can tell. No one makes rice pudding with brown rice! It won’t be, well, mushy enough! It was slightly overcooked actually and I decided to go for it. I also just hate to waste and since the microwave died it’s not very convenient to reheat anything (that’s a whole other ongoing misadventure in my kitchen life).

Anyway, rice pudding it was going to be. Only one recipe in Joy of Cooking but it seemed alright; the Joy of Cooking is always a good place to start. The recipe seemed to be more of a baked custard recipe than a pudding recipe but that’s ok with me, I like custard too. I substituted freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and grapefruit zest for the lemon juice and zest and skipped lining the pan with cake crumbs, both because I didn’t have any and because I’d never heard of such a thing when it comes to rice pudding. Oh, and I cooked it in a water bath because that’s what you do with baked custards. Other than the aforementioned minor alterations, I followed the recipe exactly. All the proportions were just as specified.

Looks yummy, no?

It is yummy, though a bit more ricey than puddingy. The kids were suspicious.

Not a light dessert.

Actually, eating it reminds me of the raisins and rice my mom used to make for breakfast sometimes: leftover rice heated in a pan with milk, butter, raisins, and maybe honey. Good solid comfort food, and not too bad for you as long as you kept the butter to a relative minimum (hard for me, I love butter).

Tomorrow: banana bread and, here’s hoping, plum jam. Got to get that started before all those luscious plums go bad.

What does cooking have to do with art, you might reasonably ask, now that I’ve racked up so much debt getting my fancy art degree? A fine question.

One could argue that everything is art, but I won’t get into that.

Chop wood carry water, you know…

So, what have I been up to anyway? Well, I finished the spring semester at my school. That was good, only one year left to go before I (finally) get my BFA. Almost 37 (I’m 37, I’m not old!) and I haven’t finished my undergrad yet. That’s right folks, I’m an underachiever (as evinced by my blog upkeep too, I fancy).

What else…hmmm? Oh, that’s right. I just got back from Italy. Uh huh. Underachiever maybe, but at least I leave the country every 18 years or so. (Went to France in 1990/91. Does Canada count? That was more recent: 2003.) It was for the summer session at my school (THANK YOU FINANCIAL AID); the class was “Italy: Art and Contemporary Culture.”

Still processing all of that, to be sure. I learned that all that Catholocism was a teeny bit oppressive and terrifying, but only in certain locations. I also discovered that Venice is not my kind of town, no matter how beautiful and poetic it is (also the 90-degree temps and 98% humidity weren’t my thang), but Rome and Florence abso-frickin-lutely were. Maybe I’ll do my grad studies in Florence?? Maybe I’ll just camp out on the Ponte Vecchio and never leave. Oops, too late.

Swimming in the Adriatic, visiting Etruscan tombs, walking through the Roman Forum and on the Via Appia Antica (that’s a real Roman road where you can walk on the original stones, chariot-wheel ruts and everything). It was…too much to sum up in a blog post. Transformative, almost transcendent at times. Cool.

Alright, now it’s summer and I guess I have no good reason not to keep up my blog. I will do my darndest, I swear (assuming anyone reads this thing anyway). Of course, I’m about to go help a friend deliver a baby tonight/tomorrow. That should make some good blog fodder. No rest for the wicked – uh, I mean weary.

love to all my peeps who actually missed me while I was gone (??!!) (who knew?).

- Jenny