Wonderful Team Member Readership Award – Part 2:

I am very honoured to be nominated by ‘Footprints in the Sand’ – for this award. – http://esengasvoice.wordpress.com

This is Part 2. Please be sure to read Part 1 for a full introductory explanation.

A Great Reader is:         one who prefers the company of books to TV –                “I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

My order of nominations is random and no priority is suggested in terms of numbering. Today I am posting my second five nominees:

 

 

6. http://mobiusfaith.wordpress.com

Terry is a digital artist extraordinaire and and his writing beautifully emphasizes this passion and his creative view of life. His painterly digital transformations and photographs are often interwoven with music – always an artistic treat.

7. http://moleculesofemotion.wordpress.com

Gregory explores the psychology, science and philosophy behind visual art, including his own wonderful work. His written explorations are wide, deep and totally fascinating.

8. http://starsrainsunmoon.com

Mari is a poet par excellence. Her writings are surreal, emotional, heart moving and burningly honest. Traveling through her work and unraveling her words is always a trans-formative experience. She writes: “The role of an artist is not to find solutions but to compel us to love life in all its countless inexhaustible manifestations”.

9. http://beautyanddreams.wordpress.com

Chrissy’s blog contains her own art and beautiful writings about books that have inspired her, especially children’s literature of magic and wisdom. She also explores and shares authors who write about life’s spiritual and philosophical questions.

10. http://notestothemilkman.wordpress.com

John is an accomplished print maker from the north west of England. His excellent writings about art are deep, thought provoking and perceptive and his blog’s title has to be my all-time favorite.

Tomorrow I will introduce my final four nominees – plus snuck-in additions beyond my allocated 14 – (another personal creative interpretation)…

Image Credits – all from Google Images. Girl Reading by Pablo Picasso. / Claude Monet Reading by Pierre-August Renoir. 1872. / Tolstoy Reading in the Forest by Ilya Yefimovich Repin. 1891.

artratcafe CAFE – The Onion…

For the next while artratcafe CAFE will be celebrating vegetables and offering them to you in fresh abundance. This week we sing the praises of the humble but classic onion with inspiration from two poets and a number of classic painters. The first poem is by Lorna Crozier (b. 1948), a Canadian poet and the Head Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria. The poem, Onions, is from her sensual and delightful book of poems, The Sex Lives of Vegetables:
“The onion loves the onion.
It hugs its many layers,
saying, O, O, O,
each vowel smaller
than the last.

Some say it has no heart.
It surrounds itself,
feels whole. Primordial.
First among vegetables.

If Eve had bitten it
instead of the apple,
how different
Paradise”.

The second poem is a somewhat longer and more romantic Ode to the Onion by the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).

 

“Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

 

 

 

 

 

You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance of the snowy anemone                                                                                                                             and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature”.

 

 

 

And what is a celebration of the onion without a classic recipe: French Onion Soup:

50 g butter
3 large onions, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/3 c flour
3 c stock
1/4 c white wine
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of thyme
baguette, sliced
3/4 c grated Gruyère
Dijon mustard

In a heavy pot, melt the butter over medium high heat and begin to cook the onions. Lower the heat to medium-low and stir occasionally for 25 minutes until the onions begin to caramelize and turn golden brown.

Add the garlic and flour and continue to stir for 2 minutes. Begin to blend the stock, 1 cup at a time and add the white wine. Stir continuously and bring to a boil. Add the bay leaf and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for an additional 25 minutes. Remove the bay leaf.

Slice the baguette and spread a thin layer of mustard on each. Preheat the broiler in the oven and cover the soup with an even layer of baguette slices. Top with the Gruyère cheese. Slide under the broiler and cook until the cheese has melted and begins to bubble.

Ladle into a bowl and serve with one or two of the baguette slices. Delicious with a salade niçoise.

Image Credits from top to bottom: Still Life with Cat and Onions by Boris Grigoriev. 1928.  The Onions by Pierre Renoir. 1881.   Still Life with Drawing Board and Onions by Vincent van Gogh. The Red Onions by Henri Matisse.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Google Images.   Information Credits: Wikipedia.