Small Kittens Playing In Summer

I woke up feeling rested today, optimistic, and my mood was matched by the sunlight beaming into the bedroom.  Sunlight, which is different than foglight because it includes warmth and throws shadows, filled all the corners of the room.  I thought of the summer mornings when I was small, how the sunlight looked in the cool of the morning before the heat rose, sunny heat that flattened our cats into torpid mats of warm fur, slowly breathing as they dreamed.

We had a few raggedy cats that were fed Friskies Cat Food from cans and caught gophers on our property.  Buzzy was a big gray and white male who strolled his territory like a Mafia don.  He had some rakish scars on his nose and a few nicks in his ears and a surprisingly high weak voice.  He was burly and handsome and roamed far from our house into the neighborhood.  It became evident that our neighbors were taking better care of him then we were.  He'd come back to our yard brushed and fluffed, grateful for pleasantries and snacks when we provided them.  He was a scrapper and ran off other cats, demanded respect from them.  "Buzzy's in a fight!" we'd yell and run to witness a sound thumping by our hero tomcat.  Dust would fly and a few clumps of fur lifted on the breeze when he was done.  It was a simple thing to us; we didn't know any better than to just watch and see what would happen.  He lived a long time, to his credit and not ours.

Tinkerbell was the female we had the longest.  (I shudder to think how little we knew about taking proper care of pets back then.)  She had litters of kittens that were raised in flattened tunnels of golden grasses that grew on our property, a rural and semi-wild area in the early years of my childhood.  Tinkerbell was attentive to her kittens.  I spent hours watching their interplay, listening to her little sounds as she responded to their squeals and cries, tiny mews.  She licked them clean and nursed them to their hearts' content and looked immensely pleased with herself as they suckled.  Those were sweet quiet hours to witness and experience feline instincts and behavior, and I was fascinated.  The kittens looked so small and weak as they pawed and groped for a nipple with tiny pink paws and mouths, and then nursed quietly with their eyes tight shut, ears back and forth with the motion of drinking.  They smelled of dusty fur, half damp from the licking, and staggered under the force of her busy tongue when she raked it across their flanks and heads.  I'd stick my finger into the path of a tongue stroke and feel the coarse surface clean it indiscriminately.  She kept her eyes closed as she did the cleaning and didn't care if she had washed a finger or a kitten.

I imitated the way Tinkerbell would grasp a kitten by the nape of its neck and lift it up so it hung down, a kitten ball, patiently waiting to be deposited somewhere else.  I saw its instinctive curl-up with tail tucked between its legs passively.  I mimicked her voice that called kittens to her, and the kittens came to me.  I pretended I was one of the little ones, calling her as if I were lost and needed help, and she came to me anxiously.  It was like magic, and the cats trusted me; I knew this was an honor and very special.

I most loved to watch the gang of kittens playing wildly on the small back lawn under the willow tree and liquid maple where they scooted around in the leaves and clumps of grass.  There's nothing funnier and more entertaining than the antics of kittens at play.  They were chasing, tackling, dancing on their hind legs in surprise when a sister or brother attacks from behind a small clump or twig.  They worried and chewed each other's bellies and legs, raising squeals of protest and then all would run pell-mell to another area or a few feet up a tree trunk, dropping down on the chaser and squashing them momentarily.

Then, exhausted by all the mania and false terror, they'd call Tinkerbell who had been resting idly in the shade, unconcerned by the feints and attacks of kittens gamboling and tumbling in the yard.  She'd rouse herself and call them to her with a peculiar purring mrrowwww, and they'd trot lightly over to her.  With their fur combed backwards by her rough tongue again and sleep lowering their eyelids, they'd flop down in the shade and flake out flat, unconscious in a twitching sleep very soon after.

The warm sun, like this morning's sun, in the midafternoon hours, burned hot and wrapped the summer days in lazy splendor, a time of perfection and ease.

Tour de France Tomorrow! Allez!!!

I think my heart rate has gone up.  I might need to see a doctor, but I'll only go if there's a TV showing the Tour de France in the exam room.  I don't want to miss a day of it.  I've been hooked on the Tour since the days when Eddy Merckx was cannibalizing his opponents on the high mountains of France,  all across Europe.  I was riding a Schwinn LeTour around town and hanging out at the local bike shop where I read all the cycling magazines and every VeloNews cover to cover.  No TV coverage back then and hardly a squeak about it in the paper, but I was enthralled.  It has that kind of ability to grip the imagination.  Intrigue! Suffering! Controversy! Heroism!  I'm all over it every year.  

The Tour starts tomorrow (July 3) and goes for three weeks.  Skinny guys the size of your average whippet climb like angels on bikes that weigh 14 lb (by regulation).  They have hearts the size of cantaloupes with resting pulse rates like blue whales (30-40 beats per minute).  They spend all year racing each other on long courses in France, Spain, Italy and dozens of other countries, but the big race that really matters to most of them is the Tour.  

It takes time to understand the nuances and get what matters about the Tour.  Try this:  Get on any bike and try to ride up your neighborhood hill - fast - and then watch a mountain stage where the climb goes for 20 miles up, reaching altitudes above tree line, and then has three more climbs just like it after that - and they are actually racing all day.  It's just plain nuts, defies imagination and sanity like no other sporting event, and it has been contested for a hundred years.  I hope it goes on for a thousand more.

France is getting ready to host its big circus while the whole cycling world watches, just like we do when the Super Bowl is played every year, only this is a super bowl every day for three weeks.  It's that big.  Le sigh....

Versus TV channel is carrying live coverage.  You can also check it out on VeloNews.com, CyclingTV.com and by Googling Tour de France 2010.  Each team has a website, of course, so you can look them up that way too.  Lance Armstrong is riding for Team RadioShack; he's the most recognizable rider and one certain to be at the center of the traveling storm that is the Tour de France.

Summer Rhythm

Sunlight is darting through shreds of fog that trail about like visible dreams.  The drifting vapors make shifting shapes overhead, now thickening densely and then thinning into transparency again.  The fog seems bound straight for inland valleys but then pulls back again, as if breathing heavily, in and out, over the course of the day.  

The dance moves mysteriously and silently without end all summer long, tempo quickened by northern or southern breezes in the afternoon, quieting after the sun sails over the western horizon.

You see a grey smudge heaving over the hilltops in the distance as if the hills themselves were pulling a gray blanket up to their chins and curling up for a nap.  But, the stern draping blanket cools the hills down and they lie shivering and damp in the cold gray light.

It's the summer rhythm of our coast, the respiration of an ecosystem, visible as moving moist air and the rise and fall of varying breezes.  If the sun glances back at a certain time of afternoon and finds thin spots in the fog, the tawny grasses that flank rolling hills are set alight and glow.

Summer Plums: Lebanon Long Ago

A friend of mine who emigrated here from Lebanon brought some fresh plums to me, straight from the tree in his garden.  They have an aroma of roses and sunlight.  When you bite into one, the juice runs down your arm and the flavors of sweet languid summer, songs sung on twilight porches, rope swings and glittering droplets on a morning stream arise in your mouth.  

My friend from Lebanon makes baba ghanouj.  So, I am giving him a gift of tahini for the recipe.  He will stir it up and remember the good things of his original home in the Middle East.  He used to play with his friends in dusty streets and carried a machine gun, heard guns often in his city, lived in spite of the war around him well loved by his family.  He loved them, too, but left the country years ago.  He finished school here in the States, became a US citizen, works smart and hard.  He loves his wife and kids and has a half acre where he grows stone fruit trees that groan under the burden of goodness and tender sweet juices.  He gives away the fruit he and his family cannot eat, which is generous, but he simply says he cannot stand to see it go to waste.

So I held a box of the fragrant plums as he gave them to me with a smile.  I'll make something out of them, several somethings because there are a lot of plums.  He will get the tahini that I bought for him and the trade will be satisfying on both hands.  He will make the baba ghanouj when his eggplants can be harvested and roasted, and will remember the beauty of Lebanon, a country filled with rugged beauty and beautiful people who love summer fruit as much as I do, who inhale the delicate fresh fragrance of plums and recall times spent laughing on verandas and beside streams in the summer.

Cold Swim With Braised Chicken

Heavy, dripping fog hid any sun around here for miles inland early this morning.  Swimming felt rough, a real challenge.  Lots of bodies in the lanes creating circling currents induces fatigue more quickly.  But, we were all in the same tub, so to speak, and felt an esprit de corps I like about sports.  After an hour and a half, the fun was done, so we wobbled indoors to the showers.  No hot water, again.  Definitely none at all.  

A long swim in "rough seas" and a cold shower will put your mind in search of warmth and comfort, which I found at Trader Joe's in Monterey.  A newish store to the downtown area, this market shares parking space with Peet's Coffee & Tea as well as RJ Burgers and Pharmaca pharmacy.  Parking sharks circle like the real denizens of the deep during prime-time shopping hours.  The TJ's in Monterey had to begin opening at 8 AM instead of 9 when people complained about congestion in the lot.

One day, when I had made the mistake of attempting to find a parking spot in the middle of a Saturday morning, it was very close to impossible to find a spot.  A woman had walked into the lot from somewhere else and was standing in an open spot waiting for her friend to arrive from somewhere else downtown.  She tried to stand me off when I was pulling in, but I got into it with her and she relented.  I am not usually confrontational, but the stakes were high that day, so I had to yell.

Today, it was much more peaceful.  Sharks were trolling somewhere else or not awake yet.  Still feeling the chill of the shower and my appetite waking up with a roar, I zeroed in on some organic chicken legs, spices and herbs and, of course, the free food samples.

Handouts are something I really treasure in life.  Why not?  I have gotten lots of good ideas through sampling.  I love altruistic behavior, especially when good free stuff ends up in my hand or stomach.

Hot Sumatra coffee was a fine cold-shower antidote.  Not so much the fresh peach cube-ettes and yogurt, but it took the roar in my stomach down a few decibels.  I said thank-you (remembering what my momma taught me) to the sample preparer, although she still looked half asleep and a little sketchy using a sharp knife on the peaches.

At home again, chicken braised in oil and onions with herbs coating all possible surfaces perfumed the air in no time.  Slow roasting brought flavors to a peak.  I enjoyed every morsel, and felt warmed through and through.

Recipe:

1 yellow onion
1 head garlic
parts of one chicken or enough pieces to fill 9 x 13 in pan
basil
fennel
salt & pepper
saffron if you have it.  Fine without it.

Dice onion into 1/4 " cubes, set aside.  Heat safflower and/or olive oil in pan until it wriggles around but doesn't smoke.  Wash and pat dry chicken pieces.  Brown on medium heat, turning to prevent sticking.  Sprinkle 3-4 Tbsp herbs over contents of pan as chicken cooks.  Add onions after chicken is half browned.  Braise until browned and onion is semi-soft.  Salt and pepper liberally to taste.  Lay chicken pieces in baking dish and pour juices and onion over it evenly.  Cut tips off garlic cloves, leaving head intact.  Coat with oil by pouring small amount over head of garlic while it sits in one corner of pan with chicken or put in garlic roaster if you have one (soak lid in water first for 10 minutes).  Bake all uncovered in oven for about an hour at 325.  Serve hot or cold.  Garlic will become soft and can be squeezed out and used in aioli (sorry, no recipe here today) or eaten with chicken and french bread baguette.