Use Their Words: Breakfast Edition

I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned-beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours, and at least one source of good music…all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

- Hunter S. Thompson, c/o Lapham's Quarterly

This is a man who understands breakfast pleasure.

Use Their Words

Hulk is all about productive discomfort–the notion that growth requires us to step outside of the familiar spaces where we feel safe. My pain during childbirth had less to do with the relative strength of any given contraction but with the attitude I brought to coping with that. When I felt vulnerable or passive, I tried to hide from the contractions, which only made it harder. My midwives and my mom really helped me dig in, get active and aggressively pursue the contractions.  I would dance to bring on contractions, then get in position and say, “Okay, this is gonna fucking suck, and I’m gonna make it suck even more, because then there will be one less contraction between me and my child.” I created new comfort zones.

- Jessica Lawson, aka Feminist Hulk, on the relationship between childbirth and SMASH.  Much more Lawson awesome at the Ms. Magazine Blog.

Use Their Words

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

- Franz Kafka

Their Words/Your Hands: Blackberry Season

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full,

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

- Seamus Heaney, Blackberry Picking

Blackberry season comes earlier here in DC than in Ireland; the dregs of our first batch from the farmer’s market just succumbed to rot.  Fortunately, most of them made it into our greedy mouths. Another batch went into the below recipe for Blackberry Pistachio Icebox Cake, which I made yesterday for a work pot-luck.

Blackberry Pistachio Icebox Cake

1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1 1/2 teaspoons rose water
1/4 cup sugar
A couple of packets of tea biscuit cookies, or whatever absorbent, not-too-sweet wafer you find lying around (I used the Caramel/Toffee flavor of pizzelle from Whole Foods)
3 cups blackberries, sliced in half
2/3 cup unsalted pistachio nuts, toasted and roughly chopped
1/4 cup pomegranate molasses (or more, to taste)

In a large bowl, combine cream, rose water, and sugar. Use electric mixer to whip mixture on high speed until it holds stiff peaks.

Line the bottom of an 8x8 baking dish (or whatever size you have handy) with wafers. Spread on one quarter of the cream. Sprinkle one quarter of the blackerries and pistachios on top, and finish with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses. Repeat for four layers.

Cover and chill in refrigerator for at least 6 hours or overnight.


Brazenly stolen and slightly reworded from Max Falkowitz’s recipe on Serious Eats

Use Their Words

"But no matter how justifiable such anger with Congress may be, we'd still like to take the chance to remind [Jeff] Jarvis and everyone else that we here in the city of Washington didn't have any part in electing the group of jokers that's playing chicken with the country's financial future -- and, in fact, they've been toying with us for years. Welcome to the club!"

- Aaron Morrissey at DCist on the trending #F**kYouWashington hashtag

Use Their Words

"I knew I could be with [my wife] for a long time because we could sit down to make something together and not drive each other crazy.  She once said to me, 'I want to guard your solitude.' And at that point, I said, 'We should get married, because I want to guard your solitude.' I don't want anything messing with what she has to do.  Whatever her higher purpose is, my job is to bat things away from it"

- TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe, talking about his artist wife (as quoted in BUST)

Desire

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

- E.B. White