About a week later, the walls started to feel a little too close. Cabin fever had set in and we all needed a breath of fresh air. So we bundled the baby up and headed out for lunch and a stroll, a debut to city life for the new little Chicagoan. The first-time parents chose Wicker Park, a neighborhood bustling with restaurants and an ever-growing arts scene.
Lauren and Anthony suggested we stop by the Jackson Junge Gallery, a place they had visited before. Inside, we discovered the work of artist Anastasia Mak, and it stopped us in our tracks. Her paintings pulsed with color and movement, each piece filled with its own kind of joy.
One painting in particular held our attention. The original, a striking 36-by-48-inch piece, anchored the exhibit. Lauren and Anthony chose a few of Anastasia's prints to take home that day. I didn’t, but that image sure stayed with me.
It took a little over a year, but I finally ordered a print of "Red Rebellion" from her website. I took it to my favorite frame shop, where, after some searching, we found a frame that looked and felt just right. Now it hangs among my collection of red flowers and bird artwork, a sweet reminder of that day when my little grandson met his city for the first time.
Recently I’ve been on a bit of a spring-cleaning kick in my pantry. You know how it goes...cans get shoved to the back, forgotten about, and then suddenly they’ve expired and they're headed for the trash. With grocery prices creeping up, I’m trying to be mindful about using what I already have before it gets bad.
The other night, I took stock and found a couple cans of beans (black and cannellini) and a can of tomato paste in the pantry, and in the fridge, a half a carton of chicken broth and a container of burrata cheese. That little lineup ended up inspiring dinner. I loosely followed Ali Slagle’s Cheesy White Bean Tomato Bake from NYT Cooking, but made a few swaps and added my own spins, including sautéed onions and chopped collard greens.
There have been times when my husband gives me the side-eye that says, "Really? That's for dinner?" I thought this might be one of those nights but nope...he liked it!
Cheesy White Bean Tomato Bake
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 fat garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons tomato paste (I used the whole can)
2 (15-ounce) cans white beans (such as cannellini or Great Northern...black beans were fine)
½ cup boiling water (chicken broth was tasty and I added more to make a generous sauce for the beans)
Salt and black pepper
⅓ pound mozzarella, coarsely grated (about 1⅓ cups) (I chunked the whole ball of burrata and used it all)
Heat oven to 475 degrees. In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high. Fry the garlic until it’s lightly golden, about 1 minute. (This is where I sauteed the garlic, chopped onion, and chopped bunch of collard greens all together). Stir in the tomato paste (be careful of splattering) and fry for 30 seconds, reducing the heat as needed to prevent the garlic from burning.
Add the beans, water (chicken broth) and generous pinches of salt and pepper and stir to combine. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top, then bake until the cheese has melted and browned in spots, 5 to 10 minutes. If the top is not as toasted as you’d like, run the skillet under the broiler for a minute or 2. Serve at once.
The Rearview Mirror
by Robert Morgan
This little pool in the air is
not a spring but sink into which
trees and highways, banks and fields are
sipped away into minuteness. All
split on the present then merge in
stretched perspective, radiant in
reverse, the wild world guttering
back to one lit point, as our way
weeps away to the horizon
in this eye where the past flies ahead.
Various people have gotten credit for inventing the car. But who invented the rearview mirror? And could that unsung genius have guessed what a marvelous, indispensable metaphor he or she has given to the world?
A pretty bouquet for the Easter dinner table grown by a young woman who has a small-scale flower farm in Dayton's Historic Inner East neighborhood. She sells the bouquets at Pink Moon Goods, a gift and stationery shop in the neighboring Huffman Historic District. Two women-owned businesses helping one another out.
The Miami Valley Bikeways is the nation’s largest paved trail network.
Two US Bike Routes pass through Dayton and RiverScape. US BR 25 North begins at the Michigan border and passes through Toledo, Lima and Dayton before ending just north of Cincinnati. This route runs along segments of the Little Miami Scenic Trail and Great Miami River Trail. USBR 50 in Ohio connects West Virginia in the east through Columbus to Indiana in the west. A few bikers were riding a long the river but had a few detours because the river was flooding the trail.
