2 cups peeled and diced sweet potatoes, butternut squash or white potatoes
2 t. dried thyme leaves
2 T. dried parsley
1 t. salt
4 C. cooked white or brown rice
In a medium saucepan, place the beans in plenty of water and cook for about 1 hour, over medium heat, until tender. Drain, reserving 2 C. cooking liquid.
In a large saucepan, heat the oil. Add the onion, bell peppers, tomato, garlic and chipotle peppers and saute for 8-10 minutes. Add the beans, reserved cooking liquid, sweet potatoes and thyme and cook for 25-30 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Stir in the parsley and salt and cook for 5-10 minutes more. Spoon the rice into bowls and ladle the feijoada over the top.
This is a story within a story, that starts out from a wholesaler in New York who sent a letter to the postmaster of a small mid-western town. He asked for the name of an honest lawyer who would take a collection case against a local debtor who had refused to pay for a shipment of the wholesaler’s goods. He got this reply:
“Dear Sir,
I am the postmaster of this village and received your letter. I am also an honest lawyer and ordinarily would be pleased to accept a case against a local debtor. In this case, however, I also happen to be the person you sold those crummy goods to. I received your demand to pay and refused to honor it. I am also the banker you sent the draft to draw on the merchant, and I sent that back with a note stating that the merchant had refused to pay. And if I were not, for the time being, substituting for the pastor of our local church, I would tell you just where to stick your claim.”
Unlike the postmaster, not many of us are multi-talented. We cannot do ALL things well, or even fairly well. You may be a skilled chef, for example. Or, on the other hand, your motto may be more like mine: “Where there’s smoke, there’s dinner.”
As gifted as the great mathematician was, even Albert Einstein experienced feelings of inadequacy. In 1948 Einstein was offered the first presidency of the new nation of Israel. He turned it down with this statement: “I know little about the nature of people…. And I am saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it…. I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people.”
Einstein knew plenty about the nature of the universe, but this wise and sensitive man also knew that he lacked the necessary political skill for such a demanding position. Is there really any shame in knowing our limitations?
Einstein focused on that which he did well and the world is the better for it. Madame Marie Curie said, “Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
Be confident! You may not recognize it, but you are gifted for something! Whether it be big or small, do what you are gifted to do and you will be happy.
Widely accepted as the greatest of the Brazilian Modernist poets, Manuel Bandeira (1886–1968) spent most of his life suffering from tuberculosis. It has been said “his poetry spits blood” and yet he is a poet of wit and humor. Bandeira’s poetry wanders through Brazil’s hidden life, beauty and language, through the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon, European and Brazilian civilization. He convalesced at the sanitarium Thomas Mann described where his fellow patient was Paul Luard. Readers may see a certain brotherhood between these two great poets. Bandeira’s gifts as a poet and his humanity were much appreciated by Elizabeth Bishop. There is something of the carnival in Bandeira’s poetry, a wild celebration that precedes and perhaps precluded the Passion. He is a poet of revelation, mystery and strangely ironic humor.
Pasárgada
From Libertinagem, 1930
I’m leaving for Pasargada
There, I am the king’s friend
Have the woman I want
In the bed that I choose
I’m leaving for Pasargada
I am leaving because
Here I am not happy
Life there is adventure
And so very inconsequent, that
A queen of Spain, Joan the Mad
Becomes my relative, through
The daughter in law I never had
How I’ll do calisthenics
Cycle riding
Wild donkey taming
Climb greasy poles
Do some sea bathing!
When feeling tired
I’ll lie by the river bank
Send for a Siren
To retell the old tales
Those spun by Rose
When I was a child
I’m leaving for Pasargada
There, you have everything
Another civilization
With a safe-proof system
For the dangers of conception
Automatic phone booths
Alkaloids for the asking
Good looking harlots
With whom to romance
When, during the night
I am feeling sadder
Sad without hope
Wishing to kill myself
— There I am the king’s friend —
Have the woman I want
In the bed that I choose
I’m leaving for Pasargada
Translated by A. B. M. Cadaxa
And what is your Pasagarda?
~*~*~*~*~*
Pneumothorax
Fever, hemoptysis, dyspnea and night sweats
The whole life that could have been
And was not
Cough, cough, cough
He sent for a doctor
‘Say thirty three’
‘Thirty three, thirty three, thirty three’
‘Inhale’
‘. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .’
‘You have a cavity in the left lung and the
right lung is infiltrated’
‘Do you believe, doctor, that we could try
a pneumothorax?’
‘No, the only thing to do is to play
an Argentinian tango’
Translated by A. B. M. Cadaxa
~*~*~*~*~*~*
The Road
This road, where I live, between two turns of the way
Is more interesting than a city avenue
In the cities everybody looks alike
Everybody is everybody
Not here: you feel that here everyone carries his own soul
Each being is himself
Even the dogs
These country dogs look like business men
Go around always worried
How many people coming and going!
Everything has an impressive air that leads to meditation
Burial on foot or the milk cart pulled by a fozy goat
Not even water whispers are lacking,
Suggesting with the voice of symbols
That life goes on, goes on!
And youth shall end
Seemingly inspired by the book “If I Had My Life To Live Over” by Erma Bombeck, there have been a number of poems written with that title as the opening line. I’ve published 2 here and urge you to read them.
Then I ask you ~ if you had your life to live over, what would you do?
If I Had My Life To Live Over If I Had My Life To Live Over
by Erma Bombeck I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the firepace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day cause my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculped like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television – more while watching life.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren’t there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, “Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.”
There would have been more “I love you”… more “I’m sorry”… but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute…look at it and really see it…live it… and never give it back
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
The moon is always female and so
am I although often in this vale
of razorblades I have wished I could
put on and take off my sex like a dress
and why not? Do men always wear their sex
always? The priest, the doctor, the teacher
all tell us they come to their professions
neuter as clams and the truth is
when I work I am pure as an angel
tiger and clear is my eye and hot
my brain and silent all the whining
grunting piglets of the appetites.
For we were priests to the goddesses
to whom were fashioned the first altars
of clumsy stone on stone and leaping animal
in the wombdark caves, long before men
put on skirts and masks to scare babies.
For we were healers with herbs and poultices
with our milk and careful fingers
long before they began learning to cut up
the living by making jokes at corpses.
For we were making sounds from our throats
and lips to warn and encourage the helpless
young long before schools were built
to teach boys to obey and be bored and kill.
I wake in a strange slack empty bed
of a motel, shaking like dry leaves
the wind rips loose, and in my head
is bound a girl of twelve whose female
organs all but the numb womb are being
cut from her with a knife. Clitoridectomy,
whatever Latin name you call it, in a quarter
of the world girl children are so maimed
and I think of her and I cannot stop.
And I think of her and I cannot stop.
If you are a woman you feel the knife in the words.
If you are a man, then at age four or else
at twelve you are seized and held down
and your penis is cut off. You are left
your testicles but they are sewed to your
crotch. When your spouse buys you, you
are torn or cut open so that your precious
semen can be siphoned out, but of course
you feel nothing. But pain. But pain.
For the uses of men we have been butchered
and crippled and shut up and carved open
under the moon that swells and shines
and shrinks again into nothingness, pregnant
and then waning toward its little monthly
death. The moon is always female but the sun
is female only in lands where females
are let into the sun to run and climb.
A woman is screaming and I hear her.
A woman is bleeding and I see her
bleeding from the mouth, the womb, the breasts
in a fountain of dark blood of dismal
daily tedious sorrow quite palatable
to the taste of the mighty and taken for granted
that the bread of domesticity be baked
of our flesh, that the hearth be built
of our bones of animals kept for meat and milk,
that we open and lie under and weep.
I want to say over the names of my mothers
like the stones of a path I am climbing
rock by slippery rock into the mists.
Never even at knife point have I wanted
or been willing to be or become a man.
I want only to be myself and free.
I am waiting for the moon to rise. Here
I squat, the whole country with its steel
mills and its coal mines and its prisons
at my back and the continent tilting
up into mountains and torn by shining lakes
all behind me on this scythe of straw,
a sand bar cast on the ocean waves, and I
wait for the moon to rise red and heavy
in my eyes. Chilled, cranky, fearful
in the dark I wait and I am all the time
climbing slippery rocks in a mist while
far below the waves crash in the sea caves;
I am descending a stairway under the groaning
sea while the black waters buffet me
like rockweed to and fro.
I have swum the upper waters leaping
in dolphin’s skin for joy equally into the nec-
cessary air and the tumult of the powerful wave.
I am entering the chambers I have visited.
I have floated through them sleeping and sleep-
walking and waking, drowning in passion
festooned with green bladderwrack of misery.
I have wandered these chambers in the rock
where the moon freezes the air and all hair
is black or silver. Now I will tell you
what I have learned lying under the moon
naked as women do: now I will tell you
the changes of the high and lower moon.
Out of necessity’s hard stones we suck
what water we can and so we have survived,
women born of women. There is knowing
with the teeth as well as knowing with
the tongue and knowing with the fingertips
as well as knowing with words and with all
the fine flickering hungers of the brain.
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a model’s fashion size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It’s in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
found this one in 101 Cookbooks… yummiters! the recipe calls for almonds; i am allergic to nuts of all varieties, so in my household the almonds are optional. this has quickly become a huge fave of all three Glass sisters. expect to see it at the next NNC potluck…
— glass
Caesar dressing:
1/3 cup slivered or sliced almonds (optional)
3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
3/4 cup silken tofu
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 heaping tablespoon capers
4 teaspoons caper brine
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
Salt
Croutons:
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves roasted garlic
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 medium size loaf French or Italian bread (little less than 1 pound), stale and torn or sliced into bite-sized pieces
1/4 teaspoon salt
Salad:
1 large head romaine lettuce, chopped
Freshly cracked black pepper
Handful or two of spinach and/or arugula, torn into bite-sized pieces (optional)
Prepare the dressing: Pulse the sliced almonds in a food processor or blender until crumbly. Empty the ground almonds into an airtight container that you’ll be using to store the finished dressing. Blend the garlic, tofu, and oil in the food processor or belnder until creamy. Add the lemon juice, capers, caper brine, sugar, and mustard powder, and pulse until blended. Adjust the salt and lemon juice to taste. Put into the container with the ground almonds and whisk to combine. Cover and allow the dressing to chill in the refrigerator for a minimum of 30 minutes, optimally 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
While the dressing is chilling, prepare the croutons: Preheat the oven to 400F. Combine the olive oil, roasted garlic, and lemon juice in a large bowl. With a fork or immersion blender, mash orblend the mixture until creamy. Add the torn bread and toss to coat each piece with the oil mixture. Spread onto a rimmed baking sheet, sprinkle with salt, if desired, and bake for 12 to 14 minutes until golden brown. Toss the croutons twice during the baking process. Remove from the oven and cool the croutons on the baking sheet.
To assemble the salad, place in a large bowl 2 to 3 cups of lettuce/greens per individual serving (amount depending on whether it’s a side or an entree). Ladle on 1/3 cup of the dressing (or more or less to taste), and use kitchen tongs to toss the greens and coat them with dressing. Add the warm croutons, toss again, and transfer to a serving dish. Sprinkle with a little freshly cracked pepper. If not serving right away, warm croutons in 300F oven for 5 to 8 minutes before adding to the salad.
Serves 4 to 6 as a side, 2 to 3 as a main dish.
Nottington Reads 
You must be logged in to post a comment.