Food for Thought

Today at lunch Kam and I were joined by local artist Jon Strongbow who came by to pick up a book he ordered.  Kam and Jon have only met each other a couple of times, but they must be fashion soul mates as this photo taken outside our front gate attests:

The day was bright and sunny and we were able to sit on the balcony.  For lunch today we had a salad with romaine lettuce, red cabbage, yellow carrots, cherry tomatoes, and toasted pumpkin seeds; served with this we had roasted golden beets, grilled onions and sweet peppers, olives, pepperoncini, hummus, Bulgarian feta cheese, and pita bread.  Kam and I split a can of dry cider, and for dessert we had a bit of dark chocolate with cinnamon, cayenne, and cherries, spicy!

What we're reading:

My sister loaned me a graphic novel she loved:  Stiches:  A Memoir by David Small.  It's the dark story of the author's 1950's childhood in an unhappy and uncommunicative family and his experience of having what he thought was a minor operation that was really to treat thyroid cancer he was not told about, and which he got after being exposed to radiation to treat sinus issues by his doctor father.  The drawings are haunting and beautiful.
--Amy

This week I am reading Edmund White’s collection of essays called Our Paris. Also a book on the home life of William Morris. And the Journal of Eugene Delacroix.  Our Paris is like a more serious David Sedaris, and Delacroix is something of a harbinger of Proust.
--Kam

"I am reading a trilogy by a guy named Barry Hughart and it’s pretty awesome.  The first one is called Bridge of Birds and it’s basically about Chinese history and Chinese mythology and he extrapolates from that. the story is about a China that never existed but should’ve existed and it’s really beautiful. The dialogue is hilarious; of course it’s bloody like a mythology story, but there’s magic in it in a tragic kind of Chinese way."
--Jon Strongbow