Mushrooms n' Grits

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's birthday! In celebration, I offer this recipe.

Mushrooms n' grits

The mushrooms

Some mushrooms

An onion

Garlic and/or shallots, if you like

Any herbs you like. I prefer rosemary and sage, ideally fresh.

Bacon, if you want. Butter or any cooking oil you like otherwise.

White wine, if you like

Salt

Any other spices you like (I usually go with black pepper)

Cut up the mushrooms, onions, and any other alliums you're using. Lightly salt the vegetables. If you're using bacon, cut it into small bits as well.

In a pan on the stovetop, cook the bacon, if you're using it. Remove the bacon bits from the pan, leaving the grease in the pan. Otherwise, heat the oil.

Add the onions and shallots to the oil in the pan and cook until they look a bit translucent.

Add any chopped fresh herbs and any spices you like, then add the mushrooms and cook, adding garlic near the end of cooking. You can add a splash of white wine at this point, if you like.

Taste and adjust spices as desired. Serve on top of the grits.

The grits

Four parts liquid (water, milk, any kind of stock or broth you like. I often use half milk and half water or broth)

One part grits (if hominy grits are unavailable, cornmeal, polenta, mămăligă, or similar can be used)

Salt

Any spices you like (I like black pepper, cayenne pepper, some kind of pepper sauce like Tabasco or Crystal, and garlic powder)

Cheese, if you want (I like a nice sharp cheddar, some swiss, and a little parmesan, when I can manage it)

Bring the liquid to a boil, and add salt and spices.

Add the grits slowly, mixing to keep the grits from getting lumpy.

When the grits boil, turn the heat low and add any cheese you want, mixing it well.

Taste and adjust spices as desired.

Hat (5),friday, holding company...

the holding company will be called Hat,  why Hat ? she was asked. I left my hat in a taxi... long ago, then a white haired gentleman you made me a present of a black crepe hat. the crepe hat still sits on my head.

... they spent  friday at home, she not answering her phone, not looking at the messages, not looking at email. they had slept badly, by the time they had gone to sleep at between 1 and 2 in the morning they had slept the sleep of the exhausted.  They were woken up by the radio coming on after seven am, he had a quick shower before going downstairs in his dressing gown to prepare the children's breakfast. She chatted with them as they got dressed and checked and prepared their bags for  school. it was a dull grey morning with uniform light grey stratus clouds. Walking the children to school, waving them off through the gates,  saying good morning to some of the other mothers she recognized. Walking back and saying good morning to the weekly visit from council security from one dragon. Reading pages of of a japanese comic  novel about coffee, time and death - she thought the coffee was badly made and the writer didn't understand about killing people.  He made her breakfast, giving her a flat white and fruit yogurt. He was reading bertholt brecht's journals 1934-1955 and a Marabou text on plasticity.   So eurocentric she teased him.  I am merely trying to be a good husband  and a bad policeman he told her.  Drinking his own coffee he looked at her over the brecht { I feel as if I had been exiled from our era, this is tahiti in the form of a big city}.   will they be OK without you ? (meaning as they both knew will you be OK not being there?).  she sighs and says - They and software are finalizing the due diligence process today, it's a foregone conclusion now,  and the restructuring of K  to create hat... H. she sighs and scoops some more yogurt into her bowl. i can't do it anymore, i feel as if they really wanted to do this to trap us, you and i  in our fragile situation, only by ignoring them can we recover some spacetime for us.  she  asks him if he wants to go for a run with her,   he knows that she needs some exercise and that she needs to be with him today. that would be nice,  not to far though, a few miles. they ran down old shire lane into where it turned into an old track, where she stopped, taking care of him, taking pity on him and and started to walk  and speak, it was a secret they shared that  life is prolonged  as you walk, walking expands time rather than collapses it as running does. It was here walking back towards home that they began to consider whether the fragility of their lives might change as a result of this... On  the way back she calls osaka, her friend who promptly leaves the office with a bag of documents and comes for lunch. They find his work partner (your work wife is here she says with a touch of cynicism)  has parked her car in front of the house,  and is sitting in the back garden on the bench talking on the phone, writing notes in notebook  as she speaks. She thinks she looks very tired, slightly grey faced.  He makes her come coffee and toast and tells her to come into the house. osaka arrives from the office in the early afternoon. she brings the due diligence documents produced by her partners at K and brioche buns studded with crystalline sugar and a selection of french patisseries for the late afternoon and when her children.  in some ways she is more interested in being their aunt and feeding them cake than the documents. But osaka knows that she needs her support today. she comes by train and is collected from the station. they entered the house with their characteristic silence. More sentences flow.  They stand quietly in the hallway listening to the others talking about their work { "what about these cases?"  "the one who needs locking up is kennard, the pink file. we can use the fraud, but its the nasty sexual practices..." "let's monitor them and arrest next wednesday or thursday. Unless you feel tomorrow is better?” “No, its not that urgent”}  She puts the brioche that osaka had brought with her on a plate and they eat them drinking coffee and talking about the due diligence.   She is looking at the files that osaka  had brought with her, whilst osaka sitting on one of the stools,   is reading a few random entries in the brecht journals and periodically looking affectionally at jess. "I bought the collected poems last week" osaka says to him.  They talk about the four sets of documents -  two of the sets want you to forgive and like them.  The third is from the chinese who are acting like humane imperialists, whilst the fourth set is for the protection of K and you.  By this time her inner exhaustion has caught up with her again and she looks like she wants to rest her tired head on the table.  Her husband looks at her and wishes there was something he could do, he pours her some elderflower and rhubarb drink into a tumbler. The project, they agree, supplies them with some financial liquidity and safety from their criminal associates, K invests in it and accepts the risk, and also supplies the site for the second quantum computer, the second home for the sentient ai machine,  the london and primary european node. They know, she swallowing the drink, that they are saving them looking at the first two files,  and that they are confusing this with trust and love. She raised her head from the table. All three sets of people think trust is a commodity.  That the documents, the contracts  mean trust and friendship.  They imagine her and K signing the documents and their people assassinating her the following tuesday.  Neither had ever seen them looking worried before. They explain why they needed them to accompany them, to present the illusion of them being a gang,  disguising the fragility and weakness of their situation.  We may have to run,  take the line of flight and try and vanish...  {No you will not have to. jess said reaching over the table and creating a  pile of documents. Putting the K documents to one side. She tapped the pile of folders. The thing is you are wrong, your understanding of this is wrong. we are not criminals. they are.  She puts her hand on the pile. These people are criminals becoming capitalists, or as in the chinese  conglomerates case are already capitalists. We live like this because these people have forced us to. These people are part of the history that brought us to this moment, we accept the version of her personal history that these criminals defined for us. She says looking at her. It seems to me that their actions have forced you to think of yourselves as criminals again, but you and we live like this because these people and others have forced us to.  i didn't know you felt like that  she said,  i always thought... jess smiled at her,  the warmth flooded the room. the three of them looked at her. oh how could you not know that? }

 Still,  he said, they will go away and I will remain a bad policeman, making tea for my friends. He puts loose tea in the glass teapot, waits for the water to boil.. She says,(which she you might ask;)  the other thing is where you say gang, i think instead a loose collective, a group who were forced to know each other because the alternative was death. To think of ourselves as criminals is to remain within their world.  So instead of a gang we enter the room as a collective. The criminals,  she says taking an empty glass, dropping an ice cube into it, putting the glass on the pile of documents,  think that a business deal, a signed contract is a sign of weakness, that they are all weaker than they were before. We are melting their sovereignty.  We are not criminals,  capitalists or of the state, she said, imposing  something else on the future.   Park stood and said she needed to collect the children,  she was taking Sam with her she said.  She looked at jess and moved in what was really a fluid attacking movement that she had learnt from a man  in a tokyo dojo, towards jess and putting her arms around her hugged her. she said something inaudible in her ear as jess hesitantly put her arms around her.  Stay, please stay. we won’t be long. thanks for looking after me, us. staccato speech forms. 

They. park and sam spent the friday and the weekend at home, they left the house in the middle of friday afternoon and walked to the school to collect the children,  by the end of the day park had recovered and sam was beginning to relax. During the walk park said that she thought that jess was probably right,  sam put his arm around her, and agreed. it’s better she said because i thought i was going to have to kill some of them.  yes, he said pulling her body against his,  jess will never know that she has enabled me to put the bag away. The children were pleased to see their aunts... their aunts stayed overnight sam and park were amused that they slept together. jess driving osaka home on saturday morning... park watched them leave, pleased at how happy they looked. I think they are happy, she said to him.  It's nice isn't it.  I feel better she says..

many are in favour of order.  when its time to eat they spread a cloth over the table.  if they have one, or they wipe with their hands the crumbs from the table, so long as their hands are not to tired...(Brecht)