Spring and Fall

Hello from Sydney, where it was a frosty 10 degrees C this morning.

In Autumn, we get plenty of these -- piled high and deliciously cheap -- in the fruit and veg market:

 So I make this.

I think of it as Five Minute Cauliflower Cheddar Soup. My dear lifetime-ago friend Margie got this recipe from her mom when we were both beautiful and 24 and completely unable to cook. But we could make this soup! And it was warm and delicious.

Want to hear a story about those days and keeping warm? (You do. You really do.)

As first-year teachers, Margie and I rented a desperately cold house in British Columbia, heated by a massive, black wood burning stove sitting smack in the middle of the living room. That stove required a stream of boyfriends to feed it. When men would come to the house before a date, we’d sweetly inquire if they would mind chopping – um – a cord of firewood so we didn’t freeze.

Finally, the long winter was over. It was Spring. The owner of the house dropped in, frowned and said, ‘You girls should turn up the heat. It’s freezing in here,’ … and pointed to the thermostat on the wall.

Yep. That’s a true story.

Five Minute Cauliflower Cheddar Soup

• 1 cauliflower
• chicken stock to cover
• 2 cups (in total) of milk &/or thickened cream
• 1 cup grated cheddar

Chop the cauliflower + cover with stock in soup pot. Cook, then purée with a hand blender. Add milk / cream and cheddar. Stir until cheddar is melted. (Big hugs to Margie’s mom. I’m still making this adapted version of her recipe, 26 years later.)

Of course while we're enjoying Fall, our Northern Hemisphere friends and family are thinking Spring. "Spring and Fall"...it's the title of one of the most beautiful poems in the world. Hopkins dedicated this poem 'to a young child.' Remember it from English class? I do.

“Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.”

— Gerard Manly Hopkins

Have a beautiful Spring or Fall day, everyone. Sending love from Sydney.