Life Juice

Yesterday's overcast, voggy air made room for amazing blue skies today. I left the house relatively early, to take my sister to her singing lesson in Chinatown. I spent the hour strolling through the streets, the shelves of storefronts spilling with bananas, mangoes and prickly fruit the size of footballs that I'd never seen before--they might have been jackfruit of an unfamiliar variety, and then found a nice spot to people watch, with Louis Armstrong in my ear. It's a great feeling to be able to sit and watch life pass by for nearly an hour and not be bored. Perhaps I'm just one of those people who are easily amused or generally content with my surroundings. I hear from my mom that I was one of those babies that played with their feet for hours. I appreciate those small things like studying the different struts and walks people have, and wondering where they all might be going. So many lives cross right in front of us all the time, all of them a spiral of ideas, hopes and dreams, challenges, stories.

Seeing the bizarre produce inspired me to review the vegetables in my own fridge, for a bit of creative salad-making. Ok. So no jackfruit, cherimoya or sea asparagus in my kitchen today. Pretty standard ingredients were floating around and beckoned me to use them up. Red leaf lettuce, beets, carrots, pears, cucumber, goat cheese, black pepper, gomasio, my special lemon dressing, love. Eating on our garden-bench is so lovely. I can't describe it any other way, but perhaps I'll add whimsical and peaceful to the list. Our wind chime rings, the myna birds chatter and the waves carry on behind.

Yesterday I did a bit of juicing. It took me back to the time when I was 9, living in San Francisco. We juiced all the time, and often went to a really cool juice bar on Columbus St, "Juicy Lucy's." She was pretty much my first employer ever. I'd juice, chop vegetables and do her dishes, and at the end of a few hours, she'd reward me with a slice of her special banana bread, or other baked goody of my choice. She served her juices in these beautiful asian-style ceramic bowls, most of them handmade. For old time's sake I served my carrot-apple-beet-lemon-ginger juice in bowls as well. It's interesting to observe the actual culture of drinking a juice. You actually don't drink it like water or normal juice, but are supposed to chew it and savor it, as if it were a cup of eggnog or something. My mom tells me that you're supposed to take juice with a bit of olive oil, so that the vitamins are more easily absorbable, which I guess makes sense, but I don't usually go that far. I have a hard time chewing my juice as well, because it just tastes too good and chewing makes the act so cerebral! So maybe my future café can be a salad-and juice bar. 

I found an unfurling fern frond, an opening Vinca blossom, geranium buds and best of all, a lime-green inch worm. I also finally found the Black & White setting on my camera, I've been looking for ages! I couldn't resist trying it out.

Unfurling Fern

Rosemary bush is now taller than my mama...