sentient marrow

I always find ice and snow captivating. This morning I awoke to ice-covered trees. The landscape reflected shades of gray and white with warm flecks of rust and gold. I embrace the feelings that a gray and desolate day can hold. Little glimmers of hope amidst desolation. A visual representation of the valley of death with a shadow of light hinting at the coming renewal.

I spent the better part of today thinking I’d be writing a poem about what was occurring in nature but life and the mundane had other plans. My son needed to make a recipe from Madagascar to bring into his Global Cuisine class. What we thought was going to be a simple coconut pudding turned out to be a late night cooking fest. The recipe stated that it only served 4, so we doubled it in order for us to be able to sample some at home. Little did we know that the Madagascaran (?) appetite must be huge because the recipe made enough to serve at least 20. While the recipe’s name indicated it was a pudding, it most certainly was not, nor was it a cake by any true definition of the word. It involved boiling large quantities of coconut milk and then cooking a whole box of Cream of Wheat in the milk with a fantastic assemblage of spices. The topping was made out of carmelized sugar which took an eternity to achieve the correct consistency. Below are a couple of photos of the “cake” and my son experimenting with the carmelized sugar.

What was learned in the kitchen tonight? My son is enjoying listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has a knack for choosing the most time intensive recipes as this was not our first foray into lengthy food creations (don’t get me started on homemade ravioli), and that spending unplanned time with my son in the kitchen into the wee hours of night will always mean more to me than expressing myself through a poem.

So… family trumps all.