TapwaterJ

Muskegon, Monarchs, and Milkweed

Tapwater Jackson

I watched a Nova rerun of The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies again, which is a tribute to the miracle of those things that should make us humble and grateful -- but which mostly don't.

The playground of the elementary school I went to was a large lot of beach sand and two pretend baseball fields without grass. But, the outfields were covered with milkweed, and the milkweed was the hatchery for thousands of monarchs; poised to be the generation that played its part in the migration from Canada to Mexico.

I would lie in the milkweed and watch the chrysalides, hoping for my turn to emerge -- until, of course, my little league coach yelled at me to get in the game. Adults.








Image Richard LeGallienne





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Borbala Suto-Nagy




Urban




























About The Artist


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Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake

Rebecca Coffey, McSweeney's









1. Allow the angel to reach room temperature. Then kill it.

2. Kill God. Set Him aside.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

4. Ecstatically whip, as if possessed by a storm-wind of freedom, 1-1/2 cups of excellent egg whites with 1/4 tsp. salt and 1-1/2 tsp. cream of tartar. Continue until peaks are as if raised to their own heights and given wings in a fine air, a robust air.

5. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, about 3 tbsp. at a time.

6. You are brilliant.

7. Now, add 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/4 tsp. almond extract, and then sift together 1-1/4 cups flour and 3/4 cup sugar.

8. Blend in God and the angel. Emboldened, add the egg mixture.

9. Gaze into the uberbatter. The uberbatter will gaze into you.

10. While prancing about in a frenzy of self-satisfaction and anticipation, use a rubber scraper to push the uberbatter into an ungreased 10" tube pan, for it is destined to be there.

11. Bake on a lower rack until done, usually 35-40 minutes, while reciting to the upper rack a long, convoluted anecdote about your childhood.

12. Invert the tube pan over a bottle for a few hours. Then impetuously rap the pan. Shout, "Aha!" and slide a knife along the pan's insides.

13. Call what tumbles out a cake if you dare. Call it miraculous even.

14. Eat it. It is delicate, morbid, loveable, and you will die depressed, delirious, and overweight.

Elevating Simple Legumes - Dal 5 Ways


Mark Bittman, The Minimalist, The New York Times



"If the word "dal" conjures up images of a simple dish of well-flavored lentils, the kind of thing you might see at an Indian lunch buffet, that's not inaccurate. But it is incomplete, because dal is a generic term for bean dishes, and for the beans and lentils used to make them.
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These can be revelations. I distinctly remember the first incredibly rich dal I ate in Northern India. I'd been aware of the important role butter plays (often in the form of ghee) in some Indian cooking, but that was the first time I really tasted it. For something based on beans and containing no meat, the dish was mind-boggling."

Spiced Red Lentil Dal

Mung Bean Dal With Apples and Coconut Tarka

Lentils With Curried Tarka

Navy Beans With Poppy Seed Tarka

French Lentils With Cashews




Dali, not Dal -- Do Not Eat



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Standing Stones A Flickr Blog

Life - Beppe02

George Dmitriev



Sea Art




Moon and Sea



Waves At Rocks



At Coast #8



About The Artist


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A Man Is Only As Good

A Saturday Poem by 3 Quarks Daily







A man is only as good
as what he says to a dog
when he has to get up out of bed
in the middle of a wintry night
because some damned dog has been barking;

and he goes and opens the door
in his vest and boxer shorts
and there on the pock-marked wasteground
called a playing field out front
he finds the mutt with one paw

raised in expectation
and an expression that says Thank God
for a minute there I thought
there was no one awake but me
in this goddamned town.


By Pat Boran

From New and Selected Poems
Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2007







Image: George Booth, About Dogs