Chilled Blueberry Soup with Espresso, Triple Sec, and Yogurt Garnish

This is a very simple and refreshing warm-season soup that is both refreshing and nourishing. I do not have a typed recipe for this (though I do have pictures) and these are the ingredients that I used:

Orange juice, coffee, triple sec, sugar, a small amount of cornstarch, heavy cream, yogurt, and of course fresh blueberries.

The process goes something like this:

Make a sort of velouté with orange juice and triple sec (or other flavored alcohol of your choice). Thicken it with a cornstarch slurry, sweeten it with sugar (or honey), and flavor it with coffee. Add fresh blueberries and simmer them for just a couple minutes. Shut the flame off and add a bit of cream. The key is to balance the flavors...too much sugar will make it taste like a dessert, too much cream will make it too rich to eat, and too much alcohol will make it too harsh. Anyhow, the next thing you do is puree it in a blender and chill it.

Once thoroughly chilled it can be garnished in any number of ways, but for this recipe I chose to do a simple plate-scape with plain yogurt...it adds not only color but also a bit of tartness in each spoonful, offsetting the sweetness of the sugar and berries a bit; making the flavor more multi-dimensional.

As with any cooking use a recipe as a guide not a blueprint, but if you do need an actual printable recipe the following look pretty good (and they are all slightly different)...click here, here, here, or here. The following photos correspond with the above directions.

Public Art...Wheel Sculpture and Yarn Bomb (updated)

On my way to work the other day I noticed two artists assembling the above piece. It's on the corner of Allen and Franklin and would have caught my eye anyhow but because it was being built out of bicycle wheels I stopped and talked to them (figures, one of the few times I forgot my camera...I would have liked to have their picture next to their art). The wheels, they told me, were donated by Rick Cycle Shop, which is located across the street. They also mentioned that it would be up all summer for the many outdoor events our city hosts (click here for a sample listing). 

Then on my way to work this morning I couldn't help but notice the below yarn bomb on a couple bicycle racks on the opposite corner. Given their rainbow colors I'm assuming they were placed here in honor of the Pride Parade yesterday. 

I mentioned to the bicycle wheel artists that I would post a photo of their art on my blog and told them how to find it...not sure if they are reading this (or if the yarn bombers are either), but I'd just like to say thank you. Thank you for making a beautiful city just a little more beautiful with your free outdoor art.

Update....

A reader commented on this post offering information on the artist and the sponser for the wheel art pictured above; I like to give credit when I can. Anyhow, I cut-and-past the following from the comment form (the links were added by me):

"The bicycle wheel sculpture was commissioned by the Greater Allentown First Fridays. Buffalo State art professor Jozef Bajus created the piece with the help of his students. There is also another piece at Quaker Bonnet up the street." 

How To Simply Live

The title of this post is a question not a statement, and I pose it mostly to myself. It could easily be rearranged to say How to Live Simply and have the same meaning. To live simply and to simply live are one-in-the-same in my opinion...and I'm still trying to figure out how to do this. I go through phases where I don't think about it that often but I've been currently pondering it again. Because to me--in the spead up techo-world in which we currently reside--this is very difficult at times...to be in the world but not of it (and I often think of this Bible passage). Anyhow I recently read this pdf document titled The Art of Living Simply (click here to download it). I believe it is a synopsis of the book, Voluntary Simplicity, by Duane Elgin...and if you've never read the book and are interested in living simply I highly recommend it. Sometimes I really think that I complicate things in my life that do not need to be complicated; it's in my nature. I'm trying to learn to just be. Anyhow, I found the document interesting and inspiring and thought I'd pass it along...below is the opening paragraph.

Peace.

Simple Living is “living in a way that is outwardly simple and inwardly rich. This way of life embraces frugality of consumption, a strong sense of environmental urgency, and a desire to return to living and working environments which are of a more human scale.” (Duane S. Elgin and Arnold Mitchell)

Things That Can Be Carried On A Bike (#318)

An acoustic guitar.

Home.

Things That Can Be Carried On A Bike (#317)

$53.12 in groceries and other staples.

 .

Five Quotes About Bicycles

Photo found here.

Get a bicycle.  You will certainly not regret it, if you live.
--Mark Twain

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.
--H.G. Wells 

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
--Susan B. Anthony

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
 -- Iris Murdoch

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments.  Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man.  And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became.  Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others.  Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.
-- Elizabeth West

For additional quotes click here. 

Bike Share

I had mentioned in an earlier post about a recent day trip to Toronto and how I was impressed not only with the amount of people on bikes, but also the somewhat new bike-share program called Bixi (click here or here to read more about Bixi). Bixi began in Montreal but quickly established itself in other major Canadian cities, and has now begun to show up in some American ones as well. I first heard of bike sharing few years ago here in Buffalo when a local orginization started Buffalo Blue bikes, but it's nothing like the professional and prolific Bixi program. This is such an awesome concept. Anyhow, I just came across the below film at Treehugger (but produced by Streetfilms) and was inspired to re-post it here. It's a short film regarding the Chinese bike-share program which is the largest bike-share in the world. It's just a few minutes long but worth your time...these bike-share programs, to me, are a sign of hope.

Things That Can Be Carried On A Bike (#316)

A light but bulky load (the opposite of #315):

An 8L plastic bucket, in which I carried raw bread dough to work this morning.

A foil container containing a small amount of sauteed prime rib trimmings.

A canvas bag containing books; actual and electronic.

Large, medium, and small cardboard boxes--one inside the other--which I used to camouflage my son's birthday present (a new digital camera).

Two loaves of freshly baked whole wheat bread.

Employee Meal 6.2.11

Seared prime rib trimmings with herbs and spices.

I was trimming and seasoning 10 prime rib for a dinner tomorrow evening and sauteed the trimmings for the staff...mmm!

Five Quotes from Leo Tolstoy

"Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced."

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back."

"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."

"War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves."

OK...so I said five quotes, but here's a couple more.

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity."

"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."