This week’s bread, one-quarter rouge de Bordeaux flour and the rest all-purpose, made another beautiful loaf. As it was cooling, I was craving cream cheese-olive spread, so I whipped up a batch, and enjoyed it on the warm heel and one slice of fresh bread.
Later that night I finally made the lasagna rolls I’d been planning for several weeks, first chopping and sautéing kale and mushrooms with a few minced garlic cloves.
Then the veggies get mixed in with ricotta, parmesan, and an egg, and spread over cooked (and cooled) lasagna noodles. What a juggling act that is! The noodles have to be cooked enough to be pliable, cooled enough not to melt the cheeses, yet warm enough not to have dried out.
Then each noodle gets rolled up neatly and nestled in a bed of marinara, topped with more marinara, and sprinkled with ample shredded mozzarella.
The result is a pan full of richly delicious single-serve lasagna portions, so delicious, so convenient. I froze some in pairs, but found that one roll made an ample meal. This was a five ⭐️ recipe, and I’m grateful to my vegetarian cousin for sharing it.
The past few days have finally afforded some time to spend outside for all of us. Biko is enjoying free rein in the whole yarden at last, and so grateful to be out of his round pen. He still has to come in overnight until temps stay above 40℉, but as soon as I put him out in the morning he ambles up to the spot that gets first light and sunbathes there until he’s warm enough to start his morning rounds grazing fresh grasses and weed sprouts. Wren reminds me each evening when it’s time to go find him. Even after all winter without this job, she hasn’t forgotten her responsibility, and seeks him with bounding alacrity as soon as I ask her to “Find Biko!”
I’m grateful for the right tools for the job, as always. After cutting back bunch grasses with the hardy little Sunjoe yesterday I warmed up enough to lose the vest, and then powered up the weed torch for the first time since I bought it last fall. This is a great little tool for weeding crevices and other hard to reach spots. I’m grateful for the energy and time to be able to work in the yarden for a little bit of each day between shifts at the desk.
This morning when I stepped outside after meditation, I got a little jolt seeing Topaz resting on top of Stellar’s grave. They were close. I’m sure I’m projecting, but there was a poignance to her lying there, where I’ve never seen her before. She’s still not too fond of Wren, and I think she, like me, still misses her big old dog friend sometimes. But maybe it’s just a cozy spot for a morning nap. And maybe I’ve just been feeling the loss of that great dog a little bit extra this past week, as I mourn the unexpected death of a bright young man whose mother I’ve been close with since before his birth forty years ago. I continue to feel the shockwaves of his parents’ and siblings’ grief a few thousand miles away and a week later. I’ve known a few friends over the years who have lost a child in various ways, and each time the magnitude of their loss has paralyzed me. I cannot imagine anything worse.
Now, with the wisdom of age, the sharp personal grief I experience for my friend is softened by an expanded perspective: As I hold empathy for this one profound loss for one family I love, I can also feel compassion for the thousands of mothers across the world who lost a child on that same day. Depending where you ask, between 16,000 and 30,000 people under age 40 die every day worldwide; one source reports that 14,000 children under age 5 die daily across the world. As the Buddha teaches in the Five Remembrances, I am of the nature to grow old; I am of the nature to grow ill; I am of the nature to die; all that is dear to me and everyone I love is of the nature to change and I will be separated from them. I am grateful for the (still tenuous) equanimity that I’ve found in reckoning with the truth of death and impermanence.
I’m grateful for the ineluctable return of Spring.