His name is A....., and he works in the back of the pizza slice shop
on U Street in front of which his book stand sits. I've been taking
a small bag of books to donate to him every day this week. This aft
when I was taking another bag down there, a nice man caught the
elevator door for me with his cane at Col. Heights metro.
He asked about the books, and I told him about A....'s little stand.
He asked me if I had any books by John Grisham. I said I didn't
think so, but he was welcome to look through what I had. He dug
around and pulled one out..."Yoga!" he cried, delighted. He shook
my hand...."I'm J......," he said, "I'm Mary," I said, and off he
limped to the gates.
2.
Books I'm keeping....I've put two on my dining room table/workspace
for further investigation:
Feed Your Soul by George Fowler and Jeff Lehr.--an interesting book
given to me by one of Sally's friends. What's interesting is how
it meshes with what I'm learning about food as I get older. For
example, there's a recipe titled "Unexpected Companions," which is
about a sandwich made out of leftovers: whole grain bread/bun,
avocado, roasted chicken, and zucchini-garlic sauce. As I read it,
it seemed to me to be like bahn mi, which some old friends from Iowa
adore now that they're living here and have access to many Asian
restaurants. I may have an avocado in my fridge, do have
roasted chicken, can improvise the sauce (mayo is good), add whatever
veggies I want, Bingo! I know from glancing through Kramerbooks
yesterday that making a proper bahn mi relates to HOW you assemble
it. First open the bun, add a smear of sauce on both open faces,
then slices of avocado, then slices of chicken, veggies. I have some
pickles I want to use, then more sauce, if you want, Close the sandwich,
and it's ready to eat! very simple, very delicious. Very flexible!
Cheese, pork roast instead of chicken...
Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
by Austin Kleon. One of those impulse purchases for $10.95 plus tax
that I couldn't resist. The Table of Contents is interesting--I simply
could have read it in the bookstore, but I wanted to have it for a
while. The first page in the first chapter, "Steal Like An Artist," is
a quote from Pablo Picasso: "Art is theft." You learn this when you
cook, btw. Am I stealing Julia Child's dinner? No. I'm copying her
process and wanting to share her esprit!! Further along in the book,
in the chapter "Start Copying," the writer Wilson Mizner says
"If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism, but if you copy from many,
it's research."
No comments:
Post a Comment