“The death of someone with whom a person has been long and closely associated leaves a literal vacuum in that person’s life. The streams of psychic energy directed toward that lost someone now have no object. . . Since the consciousness of the deceased is so vulnerable to impressions, the emotions of those left behind can have a powerful effect on it. Intense sorrow creates a vibration which actually causes pain to the departed, holding them back from progression.” Richard Mattheson, What Dreams May Come These heart-shaped muffins stained with the blood of beets are the stuff of lovers separated by death. There’s a haunting ache in finding one’s true love: the knowledge that one day, one of you will die, and the other will be left alone. Fields of the Nephilim take this subject on in their concept album, Elizium. It’s loosely inspired by Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, which tells the story of a man who dies in a car crash and journeys through the afterlife ...
MARCH OF THE PIG: SLOW ROASTED COCOA SPICE PORK SHOULDER WITH BLEEDING HEART BEET RELISH + LOVE LETTER TO THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
It was the summer of 1994. I had just graduated middle school, and used the money I had received for my birthday to buy The Downward Spiral on cassette from the music store at my suburban strip mall. These were the olden days. There were no music streaming services. The internet had barely begun and had not yet made its way into my family’s home. I had no idea what it would sound like. But the singles that had been released thus far resonated with me, and I felt confident taking the risk of investing in the album. I came home and slipped the cassette out of its stylish and arty slipcase - a design move I had never seen before that made me feel like I was about to experience something very special. I opened the hard plastic case, unfolded the booklet of lyrics, put the cassette into my Walkman, lay down on my bed, and listened for the first time to what would become my favorite album of all time. Middle school was a difficult time for me, your typical story of an ...
Naked Porridge with Dark Cherries and Fresh Ginger
Naked Porridges are a beautiful way to experience the unembellished perfection of seasonal fruit, especially during cherry season. This particular Naked Porridge is a blend of perfectly cooked steel cut oats topped with a luscious mountain of dark cherries, freshly grated ginger, and olive oil. It's incredibly easy to throw together, and a foolproof way to a transcendentally delicious summertime breakfast experience. When steel cut oats are perfectly cooked, cherries are at the peak of their season, and you’ve got some decent olive oil lying around, sometimes it’s best to leave things naked so that the simple beauty of the ingredients can shine through. If you missed my previous post on Naked Porridge, please give it a visit, but this is the concept in a nutshell: when steel cut oats are perfectly cooked, they need no flamboyant over-ornamentation. The fail-safe way to perfectly cooked steel cut oats is to salt them, soak them overnight, and then oven bake them the next morning ...
Naked Porridge: The Porridge Ritual, Stripped
This is a post about the easiest way to make perfectly cooked steel cut oats, the beauty that can be found in simplicity, and how to work a more streamlined version of the Porridge Ritual into your morning routine on days when you’re super busy. Perfectly cooked steel cut oats need no flamboyant embellishment and are a wondrous thing all on their own. Their nutty flavor and rugged texture is often masked by too much sweetness or too much richness: syrupy compotes and luscious milks in Europe, brown sugar and candy cane-like dried fruits in the States. But just as the glow of someone’s skin can be dulled by too much powder, so too can the natural beauty of a grain be lost in a sea of over ornamentation. There is something deeply satisfying about a simple, naked bowl of steel cut oats topped with nothing more than a crispy piece of fresh fruit and finished with a drizzle of olive oil and a few jagged flecks of sea salt. My Naked Porridge recipe contains what I call the holy ...
How To Stop Eating At Your Desk: The Porridge Ritual + Cardamom Rose Porridge with Matcha Dust and Sprouted Pumpkin Seed Butter
This is my porridge ritual. It’s a refuge in the form of a warm bowl of porridge eaten slowly before the day begins, and it warms my belly and heals my soul every morning. It’s a valentine for anyone whose heart has ever been broken from overwork, burnout, and too many meals spent eating at their desk. I was one of those sad office people with no boundaries who ate most of my meals at work and always at my desk. I knew that every time I stopped to take a bite, I was compromising my productivity, jeopardizing my ability to meet a deadline, or perhaps revealing myself as an undesirable hire who could be replaced with someone younger, hungrier and all too eager to sacrifice their health just to have my job. If anything, eating in this way is perversely celebrated as a badge of honor in the average American workplace. Years of this lifestyle took its toll. It seemed that I had been conditioned to believe that stopping to eat was a sign of weakness and that it should be hurried ...