Liver Pâté

Are you a parent?

If you are, I think you can attest that one of the toughest, most worrying things as a parent is seeing your child ill.

My son has been so ill recently. He has caught one thing after another from nursery, and has developed huge dark circles under his eyes, and lost some weight. I can feel his little tiny bones through his skin, and he has lost that round chubbiness of toddlerhood.

It’s the most troubling thing and frankly I am just burdened by it.

Now of course we are having him checked up by doctors and whatnot, but I also sat down to research some ways to add nutrients into the body after bouts of illness and weightloss.

One of the biggest causes for dark circles around eyes is vitamin A deficiency. I have no proof (yet) that my son is deficient in vitamin A but it can’t harm to get some down him, can it?

Liver is apparently one of the biggest sources of vitamin A, so I sourced some liver from the local butcher.

I hated liver growing up. My father loves it, and the Moroccan way to cook it is to cut it into small pieces, fry it up with onions, garlic, coriander and a bit of cumin. Lots of seasoning, and the resulting liver in gravy concoction is eaten with some crusty bread. Freshly baked french loaf is the tastiest option, according to my family. I could never eat this food. The smell of liver alone put me off, and therefore eating it was simply impossible.

I am an adult now. And I know that liver is an excellent source of nutrients for my unwell child, so I looked up ways to cook it where it would not taste so… LIVERY.

One great way is making liver pâté! It’s liver cooked up with onions and garlic, some dijon mustard, balsmic vinegar, herbs and seasonings…. and a LOT of butter. You can spread it on toast or crackers and it’s just a really tasty savoury spread. So I made some tonight while my kids were in bed.

Let us see how well it goes down tomorrow, ey.

Image credit

The End!

Well, we have officially reached the end of November, and the end of Nano Poblano and of course, Nanowrimo.

When I pasted my entire month’s worth of blogs into a Word document, the total word count came up to 12,567 words. Which to be honest is more than I have written in a month in MANY years. So I am Very Pleased.

It was TOUGH.

It was hard to prioritise time to write a post each day.

I would just sit down, put the number in the title, and then just write. So whatever came out of my fingertips was published immediately with no editing and no re-reading.

My plan is to read over what I have done, do a tonne of editing and planning, and then make it into the Thing it has been in my head for over seventeen years.

Might take me a few more years lol.

Might be next November when I challenge myself again.

But it will happen.

This challenge has taught me one thing: I do have time to write about 500 words a day. They don’t have to be perfect or edited, they just have to be there on paper. It’s better than nothing!

If you did nanowrimo or nano poblano or any other writing challenge this month, how did you fare?

[25]

Note: I write these daily Novembers to the background noise of my kids screaming. These days like to run around chasing each other and scream. It’s some kind of game. Their cries pierce right through my ears. They interrupt my thoughts and halt my words and make my brain feel like mush . I stop them sometimes, and other times I let them do it, because it seems like they enjoy it and they need to get it out of their system.

I am actually behind.

I am behind and I could panic about it but I won’t.

I won’t let the overwhelm overwhelm me.

Let this be my 25th post.

It has no substance.

My brain is mush.

But brains are mush. And it is within that mush that ideas grow.

Bloggiversary

I am writing an extra blog post today because it is my Bloggiversary. Nine years ago today I sat down, and decided I did not want my old blog on Blogspot, and wanted to write out the things that rattled around in my brain like dainty fairies wearing saucepans in a new, cleaner space.

So I opened up a new blog. And I called it ‘Ocean Bream’.

Not after the fish. But after a lovely, whimsical book I read called The Spellbook of Listen Taylor where a woman really, just really wanted to be asked how her ocean bream was, my love?

At the time I wasn’t married, but I was a few months into ‘seeing’ my husband, who I had known my entire life. We ‘courted’ for a while and then decided to get married in January 2014. So my bloggiversary is very close to my anniversary, and for me, somehow, that feels a little special.

Image Credit: Shawna Erback

Sunrise and Rainbow [22]

My sister sent me a text when I was downstairs in my mother’s house, working at the dining table.

It was 7am. The house was silent. Everybody was fast asleep.

‘There’s a rainbow outside’ she wrote.

Immediately I jumped up, yanked open the curtains, and this is what I saw.

On one side, a gorgeous rainbow. Then behind me, opposite the rainbow, the prettiest sunrise!

Needless to say today I did not manage to sit to write a proper blog post. But I can’t miss a day, not when we are this close to the finish line. Every day in November a blog post! So here is my contribution from today. My eyes are stinging with exhaustion, I am about to collapse into bed, hoping my kids sleep through the night tonight! And I am happy I managed to get a post out before November 22 ends!

Company [15]

Republishing this as part of my NanoWrimo. It fits. It belongs. Is it cheating? Maybe, maybe! But it belongs.

A basket of strawberries, over a slender brown arm, gleaming in the heady sun of July.

A basket of strawberries, and fields rolling away with greenery and promise. Insects buzzing in the thickets nearby, birds chirruping, as a soft breeze swooping through the very tips of the trees, a gentle swooshing sound, bringing a coolness that prickled the tiniest hairs on her skin.

Perhaps now she would turn, and would see a tall, handsome figure walking up the hill towards her. Perhaps he would call on her to wait for him. She would stand, alright, and wait for him, and when he joined her he would whisk her away somewhere. He would have his motorcar waiting, and they would sail into the horizon. Where would they go? She wasn’t entirely sure, but it would be somewhere great. She would look upon his face and a thread of understanding would pass from his eyes to hers. She stood, now, in the long, almost still, summer afternoon, at the crest of the hill, with the scenery rolling away from her, far into the distance, and shadows of clouds drifting lazily across the sunny landscape.

And so, so still, almost like a picture.

‘Hi! Laura! Hiiii!’

She whipped around, her basket almost slipping from her arm. A tall figure, marching up the hill towards her. He was waving his hat madly, certainly not her mysterious handsome stranger. He was handsome, there was no denying that. Handsome, but so… so … familiar. For it was only Tom.

‘Oh. It’s you.’ she said, when he had reached her, and she continued to pick her way across the field. She lifted her skirts a little, the meadow grass rising high above her hem.

‘You say that like you are disappointed,’ he said, there was a small twinkle in his eye, so slight, and it irritated her.

‘Am I not the handsome stranger you so anticipated?’

She looked sharply at him, but there was only amusement in his eyes. Bright, mirthful eyes, as blue as the deep sky all around them.

‘No, not disappointed,’ she said lightly, shifting the basket to her other arm. He glanced inside. Strawberries of all kinds and colours tumbled over each other, small ones, big ones, shaped like tomatoes and hearts, bright red, gentle pink, red tinged with white and green.

‘I’ve come to drag you back for supper.’

‘Much ado about supper,’ she picked a wild strawberry from her basket and popped it into her mouth, ‘I’m not hungry’.

‘My sister sent me after you,’ he said, ‘I’m to bring you home immediately.’

‘Well you needn’t always do as you’re told,’ she scolded, severely, ‘I was rather enjoying my solitude and expecting to have an adventure, until you came along and dis-enthralled the occasion.’

‘Oh, I dis-enthralled the occasion, did I. And what occasion was this, that it commanded you to trail your muddy skirts in solitude through the fields?’

‘Never you mind!’ she snapped.

‘My, but you are sour today.’

She sighed, and then glanced at him. He was looking expectantly at her, and his face was so youthful, so carefree, and his eyes danced just so, in that boyish way of his, that she relented a little.

‘I was longing for an adventure,’ she said, finally, stooping a little to pick a wild stalk from by her feet, ‘and I supposed, when I saw your figure in the distance, that you might be it.’

He contemplated her for a few moments, and his face was blank, and then he erupted into loud laughter, and she laughed with him, because it was frivolous and silly, and he made it seem so carefree, and it made her happy.

‘Ah, hence the disappointment’, he said, wiping his eyes, ‘come now, Laura, your adventure shall not forsake you, but it is time to go back for supper, else they’ll all be mad, and we shall have a merry time of it.’

Irritation set in again, and made her square her shoulders, ‘need they be so .. so.. rigid!?’

‘They are worried,’ he smiled gently, ‘John isn’t here, so I expect I am your company for the evening, and your mother wanted to make sure that you were available for it, and behaved like the lady that you are.’

‘Lady, indeed!’

‘Well, is the promise of my being company not enough to entice your stubborn spirit?’

Laura threw her head back and laughed heartily, ‘Oh, Tom. Company, really?! You aren’t company anymore. You don’t need me there to entertain you, when all the others are there. You’re simply — why, you’re part of the furniture!’

He regarded her silently, and the laughter vanished from his eyes. She didn’t notice, for her back was to him, as she sailed along ahead of him.

The breeze rustled through the tall meadow grass, the buttercups and wild daises rippling in wonderful waves across the sloping hills, the wind pushing clouds along in the sky, the leaves gently conversing with each other in the distant thicket. A loud motorcar announced itself on the road just beyond the field, whizzing past in a flash of silver and red, and then silence once more. Silence and the earthly sounds of nature, and the two of them, picking their way through the field and on to the road, her ahead, him behind.

Raspberries in Water [12]

You’ve seen it before, haven’t you? Floating around on the ether.

Tell me you’ve seen it?

A startle of light.

That’s the only way it can be described.

It tells the secrets of the universe.

Or at least this galaxy.

The earth spins around in space, you see. The stars are distant suns.

And when you think about the earth, do you think it’s a spaceship, that we are hurtling through the black vacuum of space?

Or is it an ecosystem of itself?

The Sahara desert is a graveyard of ancient plankton. It used to be a sea that dried up, and the sand is the old seabed.

Five thousand years old, it is said. Every day at noon, the winds lift the sand particles, really the ancient plankton particles, into the air.

And carries the particles over the globe we call earth to the Amazon rainforest, where they melt into the millions of raindrops that saturate the earth in that part of the world. The ancient plankton particles contain iron and essential minerals for life, for fertilisation, for the rapid growth of the thick undergrowth in the Amazon.

A whole entire world, yet all of its parts conspire to create one heaving, breathing being.

Do you think the earth breathes?

Ethereal [10]

I don’t know how to pay attention.

To the moon, to the stars, to the earth spinning in the galaxy.

I don’t know how to slow down and hear the leaves fall.

I sometimes stand still when it is dark, but light. I can hear the call of the humming system that is life. I can hear it in the way the trees rustle together.

I can see it when the clouds, dark and purple, scud themselves over the beaming moon.

I can hear it when humanity is tucked away for the night. In the stillness.

It roars loudly when the machinery shuts off for the night.

It roars and it calls me, you see.

But I am always in a rush, I don’t heed its call.

What would happen if I stopped, and listened? If I turned my eyes upwards. If I let them focus, till the blur became a sharp knife to slice through reality as I know it.

What would I hear? What would I see?

Image Credit

Night [9]

The night time is awfully romantic.

It changes a town.

Lights reflect messily on the rippling surface of the river, and when she walks across the bridge under the lampposts and the falling leaves of a dark, dark November night… why, the possibilities are endless.

She thinks things she would never dare contemplate in broad daylight.

Things she has tucked away in the furthest corners of her mind.

The streets, so familiar by daylight, have turned into magical avenues. Lined with tall trees, branches half bare, half covered with yellow and brown leaves. Leaves adoring each avenue, piling under the lampposts, which light up the night softly. Delicately.

Allowing room for thoughts to steal into her mind where they have no business to be.

Mellowing her firm heart.

There he was, waiting for her, just as Mary said he would be. He stood in the doorway of the post office, his cap pulled low over his eyes, arms folded to keep out the cold. Their eyes met and his lit up. Hers scanned the ground by his feet.

‘I told Mary I would walk you as far as the dorm block,’ he began, when she stopped in front of him.

‘That would be… thank you..’ she said, her voice low and demure.

‘I daren’t go any further than that,’ he went on and a wry smile took hold of his features.

‘Aunt Martha would hang you,’ Laura smiled then.

There.

That was not so hard.

Things were normal.

It was just the night, and these strange strange streets.

Grim November evenings, still gorgeously autumnal, the river and its lights, the students walking back from the ball, carefree laughter.

Endless possibilities.

Rendered skewed by the romantic nature of the night.

‘She would hang me, and roast my legs and serve them up with dinner,’

‘Thank you, Tom. For taking the time. You needn’t have bothered yourself.’

‘Don’t I always walk you home?’

Yes but this time it feels different.

‘Yes, and thank you,’

She did not see the bewildered glance he threw in her direction, nor the way his eyes lingered on her face as she looked up through the half bare branches at the beautiful old moon, which was witness to…

It was witness, that ancient moon.

Sketchbook [6]

I will draw you a picture. Close your eyes. Wait.

Draw, or paint?

Describe.

Alright. I am listening.

It’s two people dancing.

Is it us?

No! NO! For goodness’ sake. Don’t think like that!

Is it so terrible?

YES. Tom. Ugh. Don’t ruin it.

Alright. ALRIGHT. Carry on, your Highness.

Two people dancing, but they’re slow. A little rickety. There are stars above them. Hundreds and thousands of stars, and they are almost floating. Her hair is silver, ethereal…

Ahh. Like Persephone’s hair?

Exactly like that! You know, don’t you!

I like to think I do.

You do! Oh, you do. So she has her ethereal floating hair, and his is white as snow, brushed back tightly, just as he used to brush it in his days of youth. In fact I do not think he has ever stopped or brushing it like that or changed the way he got ready everyday.

You’re saying, they are dancing just like they did when they were twenty?

Ye-ee-eess. That is what I am saying. They are dancing in a window, you see, and the window is tall, with many pretty panes, and it curves at the top. Slopes up and then down. A beautiful rainbow of a curve. And each square pane is a picture of them dancing. In and out. Holding hands. Separating. Coming back together. And each pane is a different painting. There is a meadow full of poppies. An old house, dilapidated. He is young in that one. Muscular. She is so beautiful, and she holds him tightly. And in the next pane the house is freshly painted, and they are dancing close, but not holding each other, because their arms are full.

Full of what?

Little cherubs of children, of course.

Is this a moving picture?

It’s alive, Tom. Brimming with life. It moves and breathes, and there is a climbing rose growing about its edges.

Climbing rose. I like that.

It’s climbing around the edge of the window, and along all the frames which surround all the panes containing the tiny figures of my dancing couple. They are young and old. Near and far. Dear and departed.

Are there any where they are cross with each other?

Yes, a few. There is one where she dances away from him, her nose turned up, eyes closed, and he knits his brows together so that they make a nice long dark scarf. Oh, he is mighty cross.

Do they ever stop dancing? When they’re cross, I mean?

No. Never.

And this rose that surrounds them, is it thorny?

Roses, Tom. ROSES. And why do you ask such a question? I don’t know if it’s thorny. I don’t think of the thorns. I think only of the blooms.

Ah.

What do you think?

It’s beautiful.

I like to think of this painting. Drawing. Picture. Image. I think of it often.

It’s a little magical, I suppose.

Not very adventurous. But I never was, you see. You’re the one who wants to go gadding about the world, doctoring people back to health. I am quite content to stay here in a nice house overlooking the hills, rolling along with the seasons.

Pricking your fingers on the thorny rose bushes…

You’re laughing at me!

I am not!

You are! How cruel! I shan’t talk to you anymore.

Come now, Laura…

YOU may prick your fingers on the thorns. I never do.

You certainly do not.

Humph.

You ought to paint your picture, thorns and all.

I shall, I think. And I shall ignore your comment about thorns.

Image Credit: Ana Gonzalez Esteve