susan hayward photography

Sunday Comics: Famous Artists

In my child's elementary school, the kids learn about famous artists and the techniques they used. Jake noticed the other day that all of the artists they have studied so far are dead. As doornails. He chewed on this for quite some time, then came up with this idea illustrated here:

"The only artist who was famous while alive was the inventor of the circle."

Sad, but true, probably. And wouldn't you know, the circle had been around for ages by the time I was born. So this explains why I am not famous. However, I like to think that the person who invented the circle was a woman--Eve maybe. She was drawing something for her many children, all of whom had terrible table manners. "We need something like this to put our food on," she might have said as the boys gathered around the campfire and attacked the roast she had spent all day cooking. "You know, so we can eat like civilized people." She picked up a stick and drew this thing in the dirt. It was round. It was complete. It was . . . a plate. 

Next to the circle, Eve drew a rectangle. Her lines were straight and bold. "This is the next thing," she told her kids. The boys grunted and jostled each other for a better look at what their mother had just invented. "It's called a table, and we're going to put our plates on it." The boys scratched their heads. They weren't sure they liked these new things their mother had come up with. 

Can you guess what came next? Squares. "These are stools," Eve said, drawing the final lines with a fluorish. "You will sit on them to eat the food on your plates." The boys groaned. Eve giggled. She had this all figured out, even down to cleanup duty.

Just then, Adam walked by. "And that," Eve said, pointing to her husband, "is called a dishwasher." 

 

In the Kitchen with Susan

 

For me, cooking is what I imagine a drug trip might be like. I daydream, I write. I listen to music. And quite often I forget about what’s in the oven until it smokes up the kitchen enough for the fire alarm to startle me out of my revery. I nibble on sugar as I cook, sip a little hot cocoa. Frequently, I hallucinate, imagining myself an Intellectual with Something to Say. Epiphanies abound. Pronouncements tumble from my lips and onto the page, leaving little grease marks in the margins. 

Just look at this latest kitchen masterpiece:

The chicken is sizzling in the skillet now, the kitchen heavy with the smell of garlic and onions roasting in the oven. I hear French music on the computer, which leads me to think of seventh grade French class. My teacher was the real thing: a tiny madame from France who never smiled, probably because she spent most of her days in a dilapidated junior high with dusty linoleum floors and walls the color of a sick person on the verge of vomiting.

In my memory, I always picture Madame at the front of the room, the hard line of her thin lips creased in a frown, screaming, “No elbows on zee desk!” I remember her wearing a wool dress that looked scratchy and stiff (although for all I know that might have been a memory from watching Tippi Hedren movies).

Madame taught us how to make the French “r” sound. She said something to the effect of “Zis is not Spanish!” There might have been a slam of a ruler here as she grew increasingly agitated by the thought of unkempt Spanish R’s rolling will-nilly through the room. “In France zee ‘r’ is gutteral,” she said, demonstrating by parting her red lips and making a choking sound deep in the back of her throat, as if working up to a growl or performing a ventriliquist act. 

Back in the kitchen, the oil spatters and sizzles.  I turn to the clock and realize there’s only 30 minutes left until I have to pick up Three because he has his cello today. Once when I forgot him, Three dragged the cello all the way home. When he finally made it to our front door, he fell down at my feet, his chest heaving. Extending one arm in my direction he gasped, “Help me!”  So I really must go, which is a pity, considering the sauce isn’t done yet and the chicken smells a little raw. No matter. The children won’t notice. Much. 

Alas, now as I read over my words, it appears my thoughts flounder at the shallow end of the pool rather than the deep. Perhaps this is why most of what I cook gets ruined. Though I’ve never experienced it, I wonder if this is what the day after a drug trip looks like. Not a gastronomic or literary masterpiece as I once thought, just a pink slice of dead bird smothered in over-salted sauce and a blinking computer screen spattered with olive oil. This is, I think, what you might call "crashing."  If not for the suitcase on the floor and the epiphanies floating lifeless in the backyard pool, I might have thought I never left home.  

Food Photography: Chicken and Veggies

This is a chicken and roasted vegetable dish from Laura Muir's blog fresh cooking=happy people. I'll tell you the story of what happened when I cooked it later on this week. For now, I need your help choosing a photograph. Keep in mind that during the cooking of this meal I had to pick up one kid from school. Then, just when I finished cooking and got it all set up, another kid wanted a ride to basketball. When I finally got back from that, the light was totally different than what I planned. But I still like some of them. What do you think? Which one is your favorite? 

 

      

Sunday Comics

So apparently, all Jake thinks about during church is food. The top illustration depicts a cat (I think) saying, "Not mice loaf again." Come to think of it, we haven't had meat loaf in a long while, not since the time I cooked it for nearly two hours and it still came out pink and made me sick.

The next comic shows two bottles, one labeled "blood" and the other "fruit punch." Jake must have also been thirsty. Although now that he mentions it, it has been a long time since I've had me some good fruit punch. Remember Hawaiian Punch? It was really just red sugar water, but to me it was mother's milk. I only got it on school field trips, when my mother would put it in the fridge overnight, then wrap it in foil to keep it cold.

Happy Monday!

Muir Fresh Harvest: Beautiful Fruits and Vegetables

Image and text copyright Susan Hayward Photography

Disclaimer:  I was not paid to write this review or take photographs for this company, although I do know Mike and Laura Muir personally. I just happen to like good food, and they just happen to sell it.

 

Aren't these fruits and veggies beautiful? I ordered them from Muir Fresh Harvest, a local Salt Lake company that specializes in "bundles," or boxes of yummy produce and fine foods. It's kind of like a co-op, but in my opinion even better. Let me tell you why.

With a co-op, you usually don't know what will come in your box. If you don't like cauliflower, but end up with five pounds of it in your co-op, you're stuck with it. But with Muir Fresh Harvest, Laura Muir posts the contents of each bundle before you order it. So you know what you're buying before you even sign up. The bundles come every two weeks, and I can tell you that the food is so fresh, it lasts a lot longer than what you'll buy in the grocery store. 

But what if you get this assortment of food and you don't know quite what to do with it? That's the next best part. Laura Muir provides recipes using your bundle produce on her blog, Fresh Cooking=Happy People. Laura's a talented cook who can turn out a good meal any day of the week. Her recipes are not too difficult and always turn out tasty, which is a plus for people like me who either don't like to cook or just don't really know how. 

Admittedly, when I opened the box and found everything so fresh and pretty, I mostly wanted to photograph the food, not eat it. So I took pictures of it all afternoon, moving each piece this way and that until it looked just right. And then the next day I cooked up one of Laura's recipes. Tune in on Monday to see how it turned out. 

In the meantime, hop on over to Muir Fresh Harvest and find out what's coming in the next bundle. For $35 plus tax, you'll get a giant box of tasty food. And then look up Fresh Cooking=Happy People to find out what you can do with it. 

Bon Appetit!

A Letter to My Husband on His Birthday

November 14, 2011 

Dear Babe:

The other day I borrowed your razor. I was planning on you getting upset about it, at which point I would say, “Yeah, well, remember my bucket.” That probably doesn’t make sense to you, so I’ll explain.

Years ago, back when I actually mopped the kitchen floor, I had a nice bucket. It was wide enough for my mop to get into and deep enough to hold a lot of cleaning solution without slopping over the sides.

One day I could not find it. “Have you seen my bucket?” I asked you. Turns out you had used it to put tar on some broken roof shingles. TAR, I say. You brought the bucket to me, thinking rather foolishly that it was still perfectly fine. But, covered in black goo it was useless. So I bought a new bucket. And then another. You kept on using them for non-mopping purposes and I had to buy more. But the worst was when I caught you using my kitchen mop to clean the deck of melted snow and dirt. Granted, I had not used the mop for more than a year by that time. But still. I might have mopped someday, and a clean mop and bucket would be handy to have when that time came.

So, when my razors were too dull and my legs too hairy, I got the idea that I could use your fancy Gillette to make my point. Wouldn’t it be grand to show you how it feels to have your stuff used for the wrong purpose? But darn it if I didn’t like your razor more than any of the cheap girl razors I had bought. Your Gillette was heavy in my hand and had three blades instead of one. Plus, the head swiveled smoothly as I ran it over my knees. Instead of looking like a botched suicide, my legs came out looking smooth and feeling positively silky. However, I was still determined to make my point, even if I did secretly want to buy one for myself.

Later that night while I brushed my teeth, I saw the razor in the shower where I had left it on a wet shelf to get nice and dull. “By the way,” I said to you, smiling wickedly. “Hope you don’t mind that I used your razor to shave my legs.”  

You looked up from your magazine. “That’s good,” you said. “You should buy better razors like mine. They’re nice, aren’t they?” Then you flipped the page and kept on reading.

The toothpaste dribbled down my chin as I stood there in the bathroom doorway, my mouth open. You must have learned to share in kindergarten while all I remember is napping on green mats every afternoon.  It’s clear to me what this is all about. You are a better person than me. Also, I need to lighten up. So instead of making the bucket parallel, I said something like, “Yeah, you’re right.”  

Petty annoyances like these had taken their place in the back of my mind until Saturday morning, when we had a family yard work day. As I raked leaves, you walked by. “Where’s a bucket?” you muttered to yourself. I had to smile. Even though I knew where a bucket was, my first instinct was to keep it to myself. Whatever you needed a bucket for in the backyard could not be good. But then, I remembered the razor.  

“What’d you need a bucket for?” I asked, crunching my way through the leaves to where you stood by the shed, the contents of which lay strewn on the grass. 

“Just wanted to drain some oil from the lawn mowers,” you said.

Luckily, you had found an old milk jug to serve this purpose. But you know what? I wouldn’t have minded if you ruined another bucket. Because it just doesn’t matter anymore. You are good at the important things like spending time with the family and occasionally doing the dishes. Plus, you don’t mind when I use your razor. And that, my dear, is worth more than a few mangled buckets. 

It’s worth everything.

Happy Birthday, Babe.

Tips for a Great Family Picture

Dude wanted a family picture. I wanted one, too, only one taken in the backyard with the kids dressed in whatever they happened to be wearing, their hair messy and their shoes untied. You know, like how we really are, not as the magazines say we should be. It reminded me of the time someone came over right after I had cleaned the house and I told them, “This is what our house would look like if we didn’t live here.” 

Likewise, Paul told his father after being ordered to comb his hair and put on some nice jeans--which would require a change from the shorts he had worn to school that day-- “Why take a picture looking like you don’t really look?” he asked. Why indeed?

So it went something like this: Dude got home from work expecting to find three boys perfectly coiffed and dressed, lined up at the door giddy to take a picture. Instead, he found three zombies glued to the Playstation, still wearing their school clothes. The sun was slipping down the sky, threatening to extinguish all hopes of the fall-colors-in-the-canyon picture that we had planned on. There were some caustic words exchanged between Dude and children, a few hostile glances toward me, which I interpreted as, “Why didn’t you get the kids ready before I got home?” There were a few doors slammed as hairbrushes were retrieved and hair combed to perfection, the sound of a few quick spirts of hairspray. I recall some mopey slogging back to the bedroom when dirty shorts and a t-shirt didn’t pass the Dude Review. There was some yelling, that much I remember. And a few mutterings of “What’s his problem?” and “[Insert any one of five family member’s name here] is acting like a jerk.”

By the time we arrived at the picture location, we did not find the sun peeking through yellow-leafed aspen trees as it had when we had scouted the place the day before, providing a touch of warm light around the head. The sun hung precariously close to the mountains like a yo-yo dangling from a string. "We're losing light!"Dude yelled. But, light or no light, I was not about to try again another day, and neither was anyone else, especially our oldest, who madly texted “This is soooooo stupid” to all of his friends. So we muddled through the best we knew how. Dude set up the camera, our offspring assembled themselves by a fence, and I pushed the self-timer button and ran to the family. This is what we got:

Shortly after, the sun fell behind the mountain and the moment was over. As we hiked back to the car, the stench of fresh horse manure hung like a storm cloud over the minivan. "Well, this has been a crappy evening," I said. And I meant it literally.

The moral of the story is, if you want a family picture, have the youngest color one for you. Nine times out of ten everyone will be smiling, no one’s eyes will be closed, and the sun will always be shining.

 

Sunday Comics

I don’t want to get into a big discussion about religion, but there’s something you need to understand about me before you look at the comics in today’s post. I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints--you know, The Mormons. Which is to say, I am a follower of Jesus Christ and I read The Book of Mormon in addition to the Bible. This is not to be confused with the notion that I worship Mormon, a prophet who abridged the book of scripture that bears his name. While I think that Mormon was a great prophet, I don’t have a shrine to him in my house, and I don’t think he can do much for me in the way of getting to Heaven. However, I do have a few pictures of Jesus on my walls. Now Jesus, He can get me places, not to mention make me feel a whole lot better about a whole lot of things in the here and now.

So that’s your background. Now for the illustration that my youngest drew. In the LDS  Church,we don’t eat breakfast and lunch the first Sunday of every month. The money we save from not eating we donate to the poor and needy. We call this religious practice fasting, which is different from starvation because we’re supposed to be starving for a good cause. That good cause can be anything, from wishing someone who’s sick will get better to hoping for world peace. It’s a day to show God that you want something so much you’re willing to give up your morning bagel for it. And your lunch. The idea is that starvation coupled with prayer becomes a faith building experience.

But it’s a hard sell to the kids, especially mine. In our house, we like food. We are not those kind of people who forget to eat. So last Sunday morning, the youngest ate breakfast as usual, never wondering why no one else joined him in the kitchen as he chomped his cereal and slurped his milk. It wasn’t until we got to church that he remembered.

When he was supposed to be listening to the speakers, he drew these:

I can only assume that he created them in sympathy to those whose empty stomachs groaned and gurgled through the meeting. Like mine. And his father's. And his brother's. But apparently not the cat's.

Details of the Day

Sound for the day:

A little boy sucking on a lolly pop with great, satisfied slurps, as if he were drinking a most delicious milkshake and had made it to the bottom.

Heart for the Day:

While reorganizing my bookshelves, I came across a few Halloween books that the kids have outgrown. I took one over to the little girl next door, a precocious two year-old with a new baby sister. Her father answered the door and the little girl toddled over to see who was standing on her porch. I showed them the book. “I thought your daughter might like this,” I said. The girl clutched her blanket with one hand and brushed some hair out of her eyes with the other. She stared at me for a moment, looked at the book, then at her father and said softly, “Let’s read it, Daddy.” Made me melt. 

Last night, the same little girl came trick-or-treating. I gave her a little Snickers bar. She stared at it in her hand, then looked into my big bowl of candy, as if contemplating whether she could take all of it and be done for the night.  

"What do you say?" her parents asked their child, meaning that she should thank me for the free treats.  She held the candy bar up towards them and said, "Open it."

I really like this kid.