Food - Liver

If you look back on your childhood trying to find times of interior warmth , what comes to mind for you?
For me it's walking home from school on a frosty evening with  the dark already gathering itself around you.
As you round the corner you see the  lights of your house shining dimly through the closed curtains. You know that your mum and your sisters are already home. You run those last few steps as quickly as you can  and there you are opening the door, throwing your bag on the floor and as you take off your heavy gabardine coat you breathe in the delicious aroma of liver and onions. It's one of our favourite meals for the cold months.
It has to be lambs liver. Mum fries onions in some dripping left over from the Sunday roast then  adds the liver and cooks gently, making sure it's not over cooked - that would make the liver tough. She takes out the liver and onions and  makes gravy with the mouthwatering juices that are left in the pan.
Mashed potatoes peas and carrots complete the dish.
The gravy is so scrumptious that we mop the left overs up with chunks of bread.  Yummy.

When I got married , mother-in-law cooked liver and bacon. I hadn't had liver for a while so I was really looking forward to it. However, it was not at all the same meal. She used a totally different method. Pigs liver  with onions and bacon braised in a rich gravy. Such a disappointment.

I have cooked the dish many more times over the years and am a little perplexed that none of my nine children like it at all.

The version I like best is my mother's recipe but I use pig's liver instead of lambs.

We had some the other day which led me to ponder on how, even now after all these years, the smell of liver cooking takes me back to another time.

A few poems/ words...

A Light Will Shine

Stop... be still... wait...
For you do not know.
What you want - good in itself
Could be the wrong thing for you.
Accept what comes...
Joyously.
Live with contentment.
For, out of the darkness,
A light will shine.
You will see things
 from a different place.
You will look back.
Times you thought were bad
are those that moved you on.

HOPE

Place your  hope on the water,
trust it will weather the storms.
Send it off in a little raft
made of bumpy logs
Tie it  together with dreams
formed from strong roots.
It will meet fast flowing rapids
A water of lies
 Will crash over it.
Yet, your hope still will survive
And come to land
In fertile soil,
Where those with clear minds
Will gather  it to themselves
Be healed by it
And plant it
where it can do some good.

Gifts

Welcome the days when you are not full of joy.
Take them, as gifts for your learning.
Use them as time to be yearning,
For new light to enter.
The shadows of feelings shaping the house,
Built on the foundations of suffering,
Strong against the winds of sorrows,
Ready, when peace and joy resume,
To rest...
To be...

The Stolen Dream...

The Stolen Dream

I don't know how I feel about it .
We'd  almost signed the lawyer's writ, 
When, those who were selling to us

Made the most unfortunate fuss

And pulled out. 

Our move, only days away,

almost there, on our way.

Now, though the sun shines overhead,

The moon beckons me, and I am led

into the shadows.

My dream  stolen,  taken from me

Yet still it continues in memory to be,

A complete reality.

I sit in the garden in this sun,
grandchildren, picnics, lots of fun.
Enjoy the plants,  colours so bright,
Drink wine, with friends, late into the night,
But it's not to be.

Something better round the corner

 they say,
A new adventure for another day.
It wasn't meant to be this time, oh no.
We'll just have to have another go,
At searching.

I'm sorry I've bored you all with my rhyme
Not very good and way out of time
Maybe I'll have some better news soon,
If it's the right phase of the moon,

Eating snails

Playing around with early memories

Eating snails:

The New Baby

She plays under the caravan,

Sits in summer dress, in semi dark.

Bare legs

Brown slime oozes through toes

As she rubs her feet up and down

In  squelchy mud.

“One ...two ... three ... four ... five ... seven...”

She picks up her snails,

Arranges them on leaves,

Gathered earlier that morning - with Dad.

Above her, the baby cries...

She looks up – sighs...

Unaware that this new guest

Will mean the world to her.

Taking a shiny snail in two hands

She sees the head move...

She tastes it,

Dribbles ,

Chews and chews

And finishes it off.

Biting on the shell it gives up nothing more.

She drops it down, with the others.

She’ll not have another.

She continues to make a home,

Under the caravan.

Flu

The bug that attacked me was probably invisible to the naked eye, yes that small.  A tiny , microscopic cell.
 Yet it had such a devastating effect on my system. I have been weak for more than a week and bedridden for part of that time.
On Wednesday, I woke to silence and darkness and assumed it must be predawn. I lifted my head, a mountain of pain, a swirl of waterfalls and whirlpools and reached out my hand . It was like trying to swim in quicksand and my energy didn't seem up to it.My neck rebelled"no, get back down". Limbs,shivering,  dripping, unable to manage themselves, sought pardon and asked for mercy. My mobile says 2.45amI switch on the light and slowly, with deliberate movements I find the paracetamol . Taking too long to get into the packet my hands shake, making it worse. The pills scratch the back of my throat and I'm grateful for the water that washes them down. Water which I don't normally drink but am forced to rely on for days as nothing else is acceptable to this alien creature. I dare not slump back down. The next task is even more difficult that the first. I have to get to the toilet. I edge my way to the side of the bed, rest, get legs nearly down, rest, bring body up to sitting position, rest, sway, rest, still dizzy, hold myself there to balance. Try standing, whoaa, ok. Make way out of bedroom along corridor, sliding along walls,  not giving in to temptation to get down on all fours.Eventually I make it back to bed, sore, breathing heavily and feeling as if I've run a marathon. No, I think, I'll not get up today.

I didn't sleep much after that and the early morning birdsong at 4.15 am heralded in the new day, which I wasn't to see.