1-7 September 24 QOTW

Image description: red leather cowboy boots with fringes beside some red high heels with circles on a paisley tablecloth taken many years ago at an Ottawa Vintage Show and Sale.

Get yr cowgirl boots on, friends and let’s strut into autumn. September’s here. We need energy. And we need to cocoon with the cold weather coming on. Red reminds us there’s no place like home. Home may not be what convention dictates. Maybe your home is a local cafe where you meet kindreds. Or a library where you sit and read your favourite books. Or your apartment aerie high above the clouds. A place where you feel welcome, nurtured, comfortable and safe. I wish you all of these things as we find our wings and bearings for the new season.

Sunday

“When else shall we live, if not now?? asked Seneca before a table laid for his pleasure and his friends. It is a question whose answer is easily precluded. When indeed? We are alive, and now. When elsse live, and how more pleasantly than supping with sweet comrades?

M.F.K. Fischer, “Meals for Me,” Serve It Forth, as quoted in Love & Saffron, A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love by Kim Fay, which I found out about from

Wake Lloire

on their Substack, and am currently reading as an e-book from the Ottawa Public Library.

Monday

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges as quoted by Gregory Betts @funnomad on X.

Tuesday

What kind of world could we build together if we consistently invoked curiosity? How might that change our personal lives, the lives of our communities, and of other beings on this planet, as we circle around the sun?

T. Thorn Coyle, When We Are Curious.

Wednesday

I hate tabasco sauce more than I hate paprika and I can’t taste paprika.

Charles Earl in one of our many conversations about food. We actually make a blend of spices that we call “fake paprika blend” and we use it whenever a recipe calls for paprika.

Image description: Text: Caution: rabbit holes ahead. Circle with yellow triangle and black exclamation mark in the centre. Rabbit with big ears in a field.

There’s a theory that some folks might not be able to taste paprika because of genetics, like with cilantro tasting like soap for some. Mebbe. I can taste and like smoked paprika but the non-smoked kind has no additional flavour for me. I am willing to eat something made by someone who enjoys paprika. Please feel free to invite me over for dinner. Charles too!

Thursday

I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is paying attention. I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy.

Brother Lawrence as quoted by @SarahBessey in This isn’t a life I get to live over again in Field Notes.

Friday

To me, eating well is not just about what tastes good but about the connections that are made through the food itself. I am hardly saying anything new by stating that our links to what we eat have practically disappeared beneath sheets of plastic wrap. But what are also disappearing are the wonderful, vital human connections we’re able to make when we buy something we love to eat from someone who loves to sell it, who bought it from someone who loves to grow, catch, or raise it. Whether we know it or not, great comfort is found in these relationships, and they are very much a part of what solidifies a community.

Stanley Tucci, Taste: My Life Through Food

We watched his show, Searching for Italy and loved it! I adore food shows! Here I could easily go down a rabbit hole of great food shows, such as Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, also a book, and apparently she’s got a new one coming out. But I won’t. Yet…

Saturday

Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

If you have inspiring and intriguing quotes to share, please reach out. I’d love to include them here.

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