March 2015 Archives

We had a strange assortment of leftovers from a party, including a bag of oranges, a bunch of mint and and a whole jar of black olives. A friend recently returned from a trip to South America gifted us some unidentified dried chiles. This must be a salad! The addition of cilantro and salt rounded it out. We considered adding red onion or feta - maybe next time - but the salad stood well without them.

Tod says, "The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Each ingredient contributes its own unique character and the salad wouldn't be the same without any of them. The chiles contribute a shocking level of capsaicin but the mouth quickly grows used to it and, in fact, craves more. Just the level of spiciness that addicts seek out. The oranges are all sweetness, the olives provide a roundness, the cilantro is a high note and the mint a cool relief."

There's no particular recipe, but we used two oranges, a big handful each of mint and cilantro, a tablespoon of sliced black olives and a 10 cm soaked dried chile snipped into shreds.

We performed a ten minute musical. Country girl (Louise) versus her city-loving sister (me) with Jen as our neighbor and Shirley as the Narrator. Louise and Jen rewrote lyrics to famous musical songs. Tod recorded background tracks for us. We practiced in the car on the way to Kalamazoo, MI, and worked on our dance number between the bed and the dresser in the hotel room. It was so much fun to create and prepare that the prize was only the icing on the cake.

I was pretty happy to find the lyrics to the songs and I want to share them so that I can sing them again some day or in case you need a musical about sisters or country life. The narration is lost, so you'll have to figure out how to thread the story together. The order of songs was Wouldn't it be Loverly (Louise), Sheep Shit in the Shadows (me), Favorite Things (duet), It's a Fine Life (Jen), Sisters (duet).