IrishOboe

I hope everyone has a lovely day.  We’re having long time friends over and eating hamburgers from a friend’s ranch.

There’s not much to report.  My arms are steadily getting better and I can now play piano without pain and am getting better with fiddle, though I tend to forget and practice until I realize that – ouch! – I’ve been in pain for a while!  The other day I was working on a piece by Guillaume Dufay and decided to try to play the cantus line (lowest line) and sing the melody.  That’s a particular challenge for polyphonic music because the lines are so independent in rhythm and contour.  I’d think too much about my voice and start playing the voice part or I’d think too much about the fiddle and my voice would start swooping to that contour.  It was quite a mental challenge and took my mind off the fact that I can’t play perfectly in tune.  That and double stops helps me from going insane.  I just can’t make a single line sing out beautifully like I want to yet.

I’ve finally started going through the stuff I brought back from Japan and putting it into some sort of scrap book.  This is about as far from Creative Memories as you can get, but it’s getting the job done.

The more exciting activities of the week have been my adventures in cooking.  Mom and I made gingered carrots, a lactose fermented dish from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook.   It’s edible, but not quite what we expected.  I adore the fermented veggies we get at our health food store and the pickled veggies of Japan and Korea.  As we made the carrots I noted there was a recipe for kimchi and a rushed out to get the ingredients since I love kimchi so much.  It smelled heavenly but it had the same strange taste that the carrots did.  We’re thinking it might be the whey we used which Mom made from yogurt rather than cream and so the cultures are somewhat different and could give it that strange taste.  It was be awesome if I could learn to make my own delicious kimchi.  It’s so delicious and incredibly healthy.

Growing up Mom was always famous for her homemade bread, but I never tried to learn to make it myself.  Grandpa Langdon gave me a bread machine before college and I used it frequently but now it’s in the attic and I decided it was time to learn myself.  The other day I made Mom’s homemade pizza (birthday party stable in our family) as my first attempt and the dough was good, but didn’t quite rise correctly.  Yesterday I made raisin bread and it was easy and came out perfectly!  Making bread is an essential skill in the states where the bread is not so good, but I’m not sure I’ll have the motivation in Switzerland where I can get so many delicious varieties.