Hermitcraft: Red Spaghetti (and Similar Rhodophytes)

As spring brings back the tender new seaweed, I rate it proper to share one of my favourites. This is Gracilariopsis sjoestedtii, a rhodophyte also known as "red spaghetti". As that name suggests, it's edible, though not in exactly the way you might conclude.

G. sjoestedtii is native to the eastern Pacific but relatives with similar attributes can be found across the planet. Like many in its phylum it's a good source of agar, a vegan jelly put to a wide range of uses in science and industry. And more importantly, gastronomy.

To that end you can poach rhodophytes in water or milk and press the gunk out of them, as humans have done for millennia, then use it to thicken soups and desserts. But for my money G. sjoestedtii is best simply eaten raw, more or less as-is, in the Korean style.

Unlike most seaweeds, this one is tender, succulent, and mild straight off the beach. Which is why I often eat it straight off the beach. However, it's also salty, so don't do this unless you're near home or packing drinking water.

If you bring some home, refrigerate immediately and wash it just before eating. Fresh water destroys marine algae at the cellular level, resulting in instant putrefaction.

You can chop chilled Gracilariopsis and add it to salads. Or just make a Gracilariopsis salad; cut the stems into bite-sized lengths, toss with a little finely chopped red onion, maybe other ingredients as called; dress lightly with oil and vinegar. Rice vinegar is particularly good, but I've also had plenty of success with herbed vinegars or plain old apple cider vinegar.

Though the noodle-like red algae don't cook especially well, turning instantly to stringy bright green hair, you can add them raw to hot soups or noodles, just before serving, for a pleasant touch of the sea.

And they make an excellent topping for crackers, baked potatoes, and hamburgers. On franks and brats, the shred-like pieces are remarkably suggestive of a marine sauerkraut.

Or just pitch bite-sized bits into your Bassho bowl (recipe: cooked brown rice, vegetable, protein – microwave, or steam lightly in a lidded pan), where they can serve for either vegetable or protein, according to need. I particularly like to pair Gracilariopsis with beans in this quick, sustaining monastic meal.

Nothing better in your Buddha bowl.

WW: Champion flower arrangement

(This is one of a long line of grand-champion county fair entries my mom made throughout her life. This time it's a 2018 flower arrangement - featuring among other things some teasel I'd brought home for her from one of my tramps. 

Mom belonged to a few garden clubs, and held most of the offices in them at one point or another. At show time, if they didn't get enough entries in a given class, they couldn't award a ribbon to any of those who did enter, so to prevent their efforts coming to nil, my mother would hastily stick something of her own in, to keep the category open.

Which "prop", more than once, took the entire class. To her eternal embarrassment, and the family's endless amusement.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Histoire d'hiver

My mom died three nights ago. I had been looking after her for several years, managed her home hospice daily over the last six months, and as usual, was alone with her in the house when she went.

The blessing is that she went quietly, after dropping into a two-day sleep from which she did not rouse. Finally she simply declined the next breath, and that was that.

Likely the death any of us would choose if choice were given.

It's famously hard to know what to say to a person in my place. What is less well-known is how hard it is to know what to say when you're the person in my place. Aside from Issa, few meet the challenge.

Which is perhaps why one of my favourite cinematic moments has been running through my mind.

It's the last line of the brilliant Canadian coming-of-age memoir, Histoires d'hiver. As the final scene of his childhood plays out, the protagonist, now my age, says this in voiceover:

« Papa est décédé il y a quinze ans déjà, et maman, elle, la nuit dernière. Et aujourd'hui, je me sens comme un enfant qui n'a plus le choix de devenir enfin un adulte, car il n'est plus le petit gars de personne. »

(English translation here.)

I expect I'll share further meditations as they become available.

(Photo from the final scene of Histoires d'hiver. The movie itself, like most Canadian films, is difficult to find. The YouTube video linked in the text is the only source I could locate, and of course, YouTube tends to blank such things straightway.)

WW: Daffodils sprouting in flood water

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Refuge

"Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places."

Henry Beston

(Photo courtesy of Mario Dobelmann and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Walking stick

(I've posted about my monk stick before, but there's no denying it has a very "rural" vibe. Ideal for forest and field, but rather too "Lord of the Rings" for road and town. That needs something shorter, and probably without a berry hook.

Hence the above. It's about sternum-height and is made from a nice piece of evergreen huckleberry [Vaccinium ovatum]. Though somewhat heavy for a walking stick, it's a hard, fine-grained wood, resistant to abuse, and oiling to a satiny deep gold lustre. A brass pipe cap - invisible under the snow - serves as a ferrule.

I've gotten used to the heft of the thing, and received some nice comments.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Wandering

Not all who wander are lost. Some of us are looking for our keys.

Or our glasses.

Or our glasses so we can find our keys.


(Photo courtesy of Maxpixel.net and a generous photographer.)