Rest period
Well. I don't know about your brain, but mine is really hamster-like. It spends far more time than I think it should on a mental hamster wheel, racing, racing, spinning out thoughts, going nowhere. It won't even take a moment to call me "Baby Doll."
While I might like an affectionate nickname, what I need is a rest. Laurie Anderson speaks (or rather doesn't speak) volumes about rests. It wouldn't be a Laurie Anderson song without unusual rests in the middle of phrases, as Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives demonstrate in their parody/tribute My Dinner with Laurie. Anderson knows how to use silence. Her idiosyncratic pauses and rhythms give the same old, same old words and phrases new meaning.
We talk about "the pause that refreshes." Anderson makes intentional use of these, to great effect. What about those involuntary pauses, when our thoughts scatter and we lose the important ones? Most of the time, this doesn't feel particularly refreshing: "I had something I wanted to say and now it's gone straight out of my head," or "I came to the grocery store for something but now I can't think what it was." There is refreshment, though, in getting lost this way--not in thought, but from thought.
When upsetting things happen, my brain keeps me up most of the night, apparently training for a triathlon on its hamster wheel. So it's been, lately. Then, this morning, something changed. I had a second or two in which I blinked dazedly in my not-a-morning-person way and thought, "I was upset about something, wasn't I?" For just an instant, I couldn't remember what it was. It all stormed back over me in another instant, but now I know things are going to get better. It's not the sleeping or not sleeping; it's the moment of waking up having forgotten.
Such moments cleanse the mind in the way that sorbet cleanses the palate. There's much to explore on the topic of why Laurie Anderson is and is not like sorbet; my brain got on the hamster wheel for a while about that. I thought about unusual sorbets, ones whose flavors give us pause. These were popular about ten years ago, as part of an exploration of the psychology of food. (Because we expect these things to be sweet, the brain struggles to catch up with the palate when we face mustard ice cream or salmon sorbet.) The unexpected frozen flavors cause us to think, rather than not think, though. They provide the opposite of an intellectual rest. Traditional palate-cleansers are simpler.
Sorbet needs to be churned or spun to keep it from freezing into a block of flavored ice. That's easy with an ice cream maker, tough going without one. If I had an ice cream maker, I'd make a palate-cleansing sorbet out of kkaenip (Korean perilla), a vegetable with a flavor halfway between mint and amaranth greens. (I've never seen a recipe for this. I just think it would work well.) Since I have no ice cream maker, I made a sorbet substitute from the food network's web site. It's quick, easy, and refreshingly good.
Frozen Banana Sorbet
1 ripe banana, cut into chunks and frozen1 T lime juice, freshly squeezed
1 T honey
Place all ingredients in a food processor. Puree. Stop when the puree coheres but is still slightly chunky. Serve immediately.
This recipe is courtesy of Chef Bobo, Executive Chef and Food Service Director, The Calhoun School.
I added a few frozen blackberries to mine, for more color and a brighter flavor. Next time, I want to make a more thought-provoking version, without the blackberries but with fresh mint and chili peppers. I imagine the basic recipe would also be good--and more dessert-like--with the addition of shaved dark chocolate or Dutch cocoa powder.
4 comments:
You write "Because we expect these things to be sweet, the brain struggles to catch up with the palate when we face mustard ice cream or salmon sorbet." I had the same pause when I read that you wrote (in your December 30th entry) that you were flavoring your homemade yogurt with bay leaves. I had assumed berries or honey and was taken aback when I read 'bay leaves." My first thought was "how odd," but then I thought about non-sweet yogurt items like raita, which I love.
Pauses. Right. In my limited efforts at rapping, pausing and timing are the keys to making the lyrics jump out. That's why I prefer 90s rap; today there's this fetish for ultra-fast delivery. One of the few I like these days is Chamillionaire. In the Trunk has some good examples of effective use of pausing and rhythm.
Laurie Anderson has a very cool voice! You know about so many kinds of music!
O man, once I woke up in the middle of a trans-Atlantic flight because I was being served a connoli, but it was actually a cannelloni! With the time change, my concept of what time it was and what meal I ought to be eating was way off. I almost barfed it up! But then I ate it.
PJS, I think fresh bay leaves have a sweeter flavor than dried ones. I don't know why I started combining fresh bay leaves with steamed milk, but Ive liked those flavors together for a long time. Since yogurt's made with scalded milk, I thought of the bay leaves right away. Sophra has a wonderful bay-leaf-flavored cake. Vaguely on both those topics, how do you feel about olive oil cake and other sweet dishes made with olive oil?
CP, thanks. Haven't heard In the Trunk; will listen. So you had a different sort of waking-up-having-forgotten with the connoli/cannelloni. Expectations will get you, every time! (They get all of us, of course.) There's a whole food "thing" of making one thing look like another...
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