What We’re Eating and Drinking: Seared Scallops & Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc
We’re still on our eat-less-meat kick but Ray wants an animal protein tonight so I’m compromising and serving seafood. Seared scallops this time, served over fresh pasta with kale salad (on the side). This meal is magically delicious–even Noah loves it and scallops can be of questionable texture and fishy-ness for folks who don’t automatically love foods that come out of the ocean. It’s is an easy dish, too, with very few ingredients…just olive oil, garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes (sauté together until the garlic starts to brown) and then add the scallops to the hot, spicy oil, searing on each side. I grate a bit of pecorino on top, which I know is a verboten combination (seafood/dairy)–even deadly according to some old wives’ tales–but matching the hard saltiness of the cheese with the soft salinity of the scallops is worth the risk to me. We’re having some Sauvignon Blanc to go with it–from the same vineyard as my beloved rosé. I know I’ve shared a bottle or two of this wine with you over the past few years–I think I even remember a long day of packing in your closet a year ago when we gabbed and boxed shoes, probably making plans for this very blog!
Gina: That looks delicious! I fall into that category of people who question the odd texture of scallops. More often than not, they’re kind of spongy and chewy. So few can cook them well, but these look lovely! I’ve been craving kale all week, but it’s not easy to find here. Every time I ask for it, the grocer thinks I’m looking for cabbage, and in fact, if you enter “kale” into an online translator, you get “cavolo” (cabbage). I found another word, “ravizzone”, and I’m hoping it leads me to the good stuff!
What We’re Talking About: (still) Stuck in Neutral with the Job & the Poetry Publishing.
So, I got another rejection from another poetry journal today. It was such a bummer to wake up to that message in my inbox this morning. The rejection thing is starting to get old. And continuing to make me doubt the purpose of writing in the first place and, well, the worth of it. I mean I KNOW I’m supposed to write for myself and enjoy the process and if nobody wants to read it it doesn’t matter and art is sacred and blah blah blah but who wants continual rejection? Who wants to be told by a committee of poets that the poems you are writing just aren’t up to snuff? Blech. I mean I guess I could just not send the things out, but then what to I do with them? Bind them up in a journal? Hang them on my fridge? Also, as everyone already knows, searching for a job is a horrendously life-eroding process. I was thinking the other day about how many times I’ve been on a job hunt in my life and it’s MANY. Like, I wonder if I do this to myself on purpose. And the thing is, once you have the job (and are tired from the job and start to resent the job) you forget about how difficult it was to get the job in the first place. You don’t think about all of the blood and sweat and tears that went into getting the very job you landed and then you have the audacity to complain about it. Sigh. If I ever land a job and stay at it long enough for it to tire me out and I start to complain, you have permission (and the obligation) to remind me of this moment in time and tell me to quit bitching!
Gina: When the time comes, I will direct you to Friday Night Dinner 15. It’s all on record here! But right now, I think that what I’m supposed to tell you is that rejection is part of the whole game, blah, blah, blah. My mom, as she has done so many times with me, would pull out the story of Dr Seuss, who after getting the courage to write down his fanciful tales, endured dozens of rejections before someone said “YES!” (It always works by the way. It’s probably the enthusiasm she puts behind it!) Also, check this out. Courtesy of Ms. Cindy Gallop’s newsfeed yesterday: http://firstround.com/article/What-to-Do-at-the-Crossroads-of-Should-and-Must#ixzz31cJDi6WV
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