Cooking with the Sisters

Last week, when I was cooking with a couple of friends at Cohousing, Angela said: I wanna be in your blog. Here goes. It was Stacia’s turn to focus the meal, and her menu included roasted vegetable tarts, spinach salad, corn on the cob, baguette, and pear-ginger crumble. Easy-peasy – and delicious.

Stacia & Angela with some of the tarts in front of them.
The oven gloves were donated by Vanessa. Thanks kiddo.

When The Sisters cook together once a month, there is more to our time than just the food. There is the chat. We have such different perspectives on so many things that there are always new insights. This time, during our break, Angela read us the first part of an article that had struck her as being quite important: Miracle Boomeritis. This is what I mean about our different perspectives. The Course of Miracles is not where I naturally gravitate, but because of our friendship I get to be a kind of tourist in Angela country. This piece was well worth reflecting on.

Then, Stacia read a poem Japanese Maple by Clive James, a poet who is terminally ill, and who wrote this reflection on being fully open to every experience in the time that remains:

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
…….

It is worth reading the poem in its entirety, and the context of it as well.
As for my contribution, well it was spiritual, but only if you include the spirits found in a cocktail glass. I have since heard that cocktails can be improved by using Tibetan singing bowls while preparing them. I must try that. Anyway, this particular cocktail was a concoction that Duncan and I had invented the previous week when we were both baking a cake for 100 people to celebrate the first ten years of Roberts Creek Cohousing:

The Roberts Creek Sunset.

1½ ounces Hornito Tequila
1 ounce St. Germaine elderflower
½ ounce fresh lime juice
Combine ingredients with ice in a shaker, pour into glasses, and top with: 2 drops of Fee Brothers Grapefruit Bitters.

Next time I make this, I think I will ease back on the St. Germaine. Anyway, if I am going to do a blog for Angela about our cooking day, then there had better be a few more cooking pictures.

The irrepressible Peter had a joke to tell us while we were cooking.

It takes a lot of skill to make bratty comments, zingers actually,
while still focusing on brushing egg on the pastry.

Stacia & Angela with Stacia adding the goat cheese topping. The filling for the tarts was made of roasted veggies and bacon, and then they were topped with prosciutto and finally cheese. The roasted yellow beets were a great addition – we parboiled them first before skinning them. Creamed cheese was spread on the pastry before the veggies were put on top. Excellent tactic. Some of the ingredients came from the Cohousing gardens. Always a blessing.

We'll do this again!