Notes on Writing and Barley Salad
If you can't write, cook!
Notes on Writing
So, I’m on the final stretch of A Word of Our Own: A Memoir of Bodies, Language, and Home. This week I was supposed to be sending you Chapter 21, the next to last chapter, or nearly, if I write an afterword.
But once I started working on it I realized it needs more concentration and courage than I have at the moment (I’m packing for a brief trip to Kentucky—the place where it all began). Perfect timing, right?
The only thing to do is put paid subscriptions on pause so I can do the unthinkable and think. Which means tugging at all the threads of images and ideas, opening myself to where they really take me, not where I’d like to go.
In the meantime, I’ll send what the spirit moves me. Today, it’s a recipe.
Ultra-Delish Barley Butternut Salad
Ingredients: barley, butternut squash, red onion, olives, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, preserved lemon, mint, salt
What you do is cook up about a Bonne Maman jar’s worth of barley with a little salt and oil—just the way you prepare rice.
While that’s cooking you peel half a butternut squash and cut it into bite-sized cubes of maybe 2 cm or so.
Those you sauté in oil with a red onion chopped roughly the same size.
After a moment, cover it, and let it cook peacefully on medium heat while you run off to your computer to dash off a note.
Jump up in a panic when you smell roasted onion, and give it a stir.
It’s okay if a few pieces of squash are dark, very dark.
If the onions are soft, but the squash is hard, add a few tablespoons of water, re-cover for a few minutes and let cook until nearly soft.
Add in a couple handfuls of pitted olives, preferably kalamata.
For a final touch, add the juice from half a fresh lemon, and either some of its minced peel, or a tablespoon of minced preserved lemon.
Sprinkle with a little salt and some dried or fresh mint.
Give it a gentle stir.
This is a great side dish in itself. But we’re making a salad, so next— add in your barley, taste it again to see if it needs more lemon or mint or salt, then stick it in the fridge for a while so the flavors blend, or just gobble it down.
That’s it for this time.
Stay tuned for Ch 21—soon if not immediately.
If you feel like it, why not heart or share or subscribe or say hello or something. I don’t bite. Or not usually.
xoxo K