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It's funny, but I don't feel uncertainty as a knife edge. A ridge, perhaps; but nothing as compelling as a knife edge.
Living with uncertainty, however (and hello! that's the human condition) can move us toward our truest power. Here I am again, on the knife edge of actually committing myself to a thought. And as usual, I quit. Not going there.
So here's what else I have been pondering. Not as deep as the idea of my truest power, but . . . but this is who I am. Therefore true to that extent, at least.
I love peas. In my first spoken-word CD I have a long essay about peas, so I won't go into the whole of my history with peas. And you don't have to tell me that we're a full two months away from pea season in Ontario. But here's something new.
At the summer farmers' markets I can't resist buying a quart of peas every week. Real shucking peas, not the edible-pod kind. And then I get home and face having to shell the whole quart. A pleasant enough task if you take the peas outside, sit in the rocking chair, put the bowl in your lap, and run your thumb-nail along the seam of each pea in an unhurried manner before popping out those peas-in-a-pod. You can pretend you're replicating earlier times.
And then one cookbook or another told me to lightly steam peas in the pod then dip each pod in melted butter and drag the pod through your teeth, releasing all the peas into your mouth along with the skimming of butter. Oh my goodness, does this ever work!
It turns out that, much as I love butter, I like the peas just as well when I omit the butter and simply strip the cooked pods with my teeth. And then I realized that I could strip the lightly cooked pods with my fingers and collect the popped-out (unpodded) peas in a bowl. Much easier than shucking them in the raw state.
And thus is answered a question I've long had about commercial preservation of peas, whether canned or frozen. THIS must be how they shell them: steam first, then shell by running the shells through some mechanical roller. And here I was imagining a factory of women slitting open those tough pods with a thumb-nail, hour after hour. It's satisfying to have an answer to one of life's pressing questions.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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