Replacement Lunch and Mosquito Pie

Due to the catastrophe of my morning yesterday (overly dramatic much?), I ended up going out for lunch yesterday. This actually served two purposes. One, work is super stressful and mind cramping right now. The past couple of weeks, even when I’ve packed a lunch, I’ve wanted nothing more than to get out of the office and go chill out somewhere else. It’s not so much that I am unhappy at work as it is that I need to physically remove myself from the projects I’m working on in order to not continue to think about them. Even at that, my mind is pre-occupied with my to-do list. I’ve actually been dreaming about my task list at night - waking up in a panic that I’ve forgotten to do something. Yesterday, I didn’t feel super hungry when lunch time rolled around but I knew that I need to get out and go for a walk. Among other things, sitting at my desk all day is pretty hard on my body. I headed out the door with no real plan for where I was going, which you can tell from my hap-hazard route below:


I ended up stopping in at the Co-op to see what yummy things they might have in the deli case. Turns out, they had lots of things I wanted to try. I decided on Leek Roasted Carrots with Tempeh. Long name. I’ve been seeing “tempeh” come up on a lot of other blog postings and wondered what the heck it was. I asked at the co-op and no one was able to give me a straight answer, one guy even told me “it’s a combination of lots of things I think.” Concerning? I figured it was some soy based product that was similar to tofu based on the way I’ve seen people use it in recipes on their blogs, so I was willing to overlook that lack of explanation and try it anyway. I also got a cup of Chedder Tomato Cauliflower Soup - which came with a nice slice of freshly made sunflower seed bread.

I really enjoyed this lunch. The soup had so many veggies in it (potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower, etc) and the cheddar was just a hint of flavor in the background. I felt super energized after eating this. But, the real winner was the carrots and tempeh. Turns out, I LOVE tempeh. I decided to Wikipedia this strange food, that has the texture of chicken and a kind of nutty flavor, and here’s the deal. Tempeh is a soy based food product - sort of a cross over between miso and tofu. I say that, because tempeh is fermented similarly to miso - except that it is left as a whole bean during the process. I was actually really interested to learn that tempeh is the only traditional soy food that did not originate in the Sinosphere - like tofu and miso did. You can read the awesome Wikipedia article here - if you are nerdy and care, like me :)
I will definitely be on the lookout for some tempeh recipes!

Coming up! This weekend is such a mish-mash of things and emotions. Tonight we are watching the Huskies with some friends, tomorrow we have Cirque du Soleil with a few friends, and Sunday is a memorial service for Nick’s uncle - who also was the minister at our wedding.
It’s a strange feeling to be both excited for the events of the weekend and also to feel a somber silence inside about the memorial service. Death is such a strange thing - I’m happy for him to not be suffering and I’m incredibly sad for the person who is now gone from his family and his peers. Grieving for the loss here on earth - but happy for the “next adventure” for Marcus whatever that may mean.

I will share a piece of the last email on Marcus’ condition I received before he passed away. I have minimized it quite a bit, but it was so beautiful - I want to remember it forever.

Laurie writes:
There is a fairy tale by E.E. Cummings titled The House that Ate Mosquito Pie. Do you know it? The story starts like this. “Once there was a house who fell in love with a bird.” After hearing an ethereal song in the clouds the house ponders, “{f}or the house knew (all inside of himself) that the song was looking for nobody but him, and that the singing floating flying person was coming to see him and nobody else, out of all the sunlight and all the air and all the world and all the sky… Nobody can suppose how happy the house was when all at once the tiny flying person alighted right beside him and said: ‘May I come to live in you?’ The house answered, very humbly and very happily: ‘Now I know why I have been very lonely for ever and ever such a long time-it was all for this day. Please live in me, and never stop living in me until we both stop living.’ And later the house asked the bird, ‘What shall we have for lunch?’ and the bird thought and thought. Finally she said: ‘Since you’re such a beautiful house and since I love you so much, I should like to fly out and catch some mosquitoes so that we can have a bit of mosquito pie!” After being visited by bothersome humans who the house scared away, “the bird flew out and caught mosquitoes until she had enough for a delicious pie, and she brought them all back and gave them to the house who cooked them with a good deal of sugar and made them into a pie; and so the bird and the house each ate three big helpings of perfectly delicious mosquito pie (and let me tell you that they felt very well indeed afterwards). Not only that-but no people ever bothered them any more and so they were as happy together as happy could be.”

He likes the idea of reincarnation better than heaven; a repeated theme since October. “I want to return as a river swallow. The river swallows,” he says, “skirt the top of the water looking for sustenance.” The air is clear and the scenery beautiful as they aerodynamically flit and dive. They sing simply and twitter to communicate during courtship. “Will you be a river swallow, too?”

Upon awaking from a nap one afternoon he said, “Where will I go when I am gone?” I responded, “You will be flying along the river as a swallow and will wait until I join you. I will build a nest for you and I will make mosquito pie.”