Days like this don’t come along very often—an unscheduled
Saturday to myself, at home, alone. My husband, a sign language interpreter at
a high school, left for the mainland on an early ferry and will return on the
last boat tonight after interpreting for some students participating in a
regional robotics competition. I lounged
in bed awhile, reading the first few chapters of
The View from Casa Chepitos, a new memoir by
Judith Gille. Gille’s descriptions of the
flowers, food, architecture, and culture of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico gave
an intermission to the gusting wind and the sun struggling to break through the
morning gray—two of the very things that had nudged Gille to San Miguel a decade
ago. There was
one thing on my
schedule for today—a run to Barn Bread Bakery—and that nudged
me to hold my place with a bookmark and set the memoir aside.
Today’s offering included an assortment of breads baked in
the wood-fired oven (see
Saturday
Breads).
This week’s bake included scones (apple spice, hazelnut/dried plum/orange zest) and cinnamon rolls, too.
I nestled goodies into a canvas bag to take home, brewed a
cup of coffee, and savored a plum scone.
To go with my little feast, another treasure I
recently discovered—a poetry anthology edited by Kevin Young called The Hungry Ear - Poems of Food and Drink. Young describes food “as both an everyday and extraordinary festivity—which is where, alongside poetry, it belongs.”
This morning, William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” was the perfect accompaniment to Barn Bread’s extraordinary plum scone:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox…
The Hungry Ear
follows the seasons with its sections Harvest Moon, Wintering, Spring Rain, and
Sweet Summer and offers a full menu that includes fruit and vegetables, beer
and bacon, short orders, dinner for two, and giving thanks. The index of
contributors is as extensive as a fine dining wine list with poems by Wendell
Berry, Elizabeth Bishop, Billy Collins, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston
Hughes, Jane Kenyon, Ted Kooser, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich and a
couple dozen more.
The sun brightened the sky on and off all morning, and I
chastised myself for not using this open-ended day to hike among the firs at
Iceberg Point or amble the beach along Swift’s Bay. But to be honest, I share Kevin Young’s view
that “there is nothing like food and drink to remind us of life’s pleasures,
sating far more than hunger…. Food transports us to another place like little
else, even if it’s just the couch after Thanksgiving turkey.” Words transport
us, too, and today I’m indulging in them as well.
After my morning scone and coffee, some reading and a little
writing, my unscheduled Saturday included another trip to Barn Bread. This time
I arrived just as Nathan pulled a pizza from the oven—sizzling with
locally-raised sausage and kale—and slid in another one, topped with
caramelized onions and delicate squash.
A few minutes later, he rolled out a
gluten-free crust for another with sausage and veggies.
There aren’t any poems in
The Hungry Ear about pizza (though there is an entire section
devoted to pork, including Young’s own, “Ode to Pork”). Tomorrow, my husband
will have a much-needed day off, too, and you can guess what we’ll have for
dinner. Maybe it will inspire a poem or two.
