Real Soup
By Melissa Ward
On the Renewal of Dancing
Life is odd. A mixture. A puzzle. A quirk in the great void.
Looking out at the winter sky where the stunning moon and speckling stars
hang in the cold with no returning gaze, one's heart can fill with unnerving
speculations.
Are we paying close enough attention, we might ask ourselves? Are we
absorbing the silence, taking it in, saving it for our hours of need? Have
we spent enough time contemplating the edge of the universe and our relationship
to it, or the concept that the resolution of suffering is wisdom?
Possibly car trouble holds a higher priority. Perhaps our feet hurt and
we are cranky. Or maybe we are busy pursuing the final fly of the year as
it teeters through the living room on a fool's errand.
Deep concentration on reality is difficult to those of us fully engaged
in it, especially if one begins by attempting to define it in its many new,
commercialized forms. We tend to need bridge material between the profound
and the mundane.
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We do get locked up. Enclosed in effective
circuits like house wiring. Time speeds by and we are still working. Things
darken and become arid, prosaic, howlingly humdrum. We forget to allow the
extraordinary to happen, those sorts of time when the sparks fly out from
us, when the answers come before the question, when the opening of the heart
momentarily transcends all planetary dysfunctions, when we see in the faces
of loved ones, friends, new people our own joy reflected.
This brings me to dancing. Dancing brings us home.
Greek dancing, in my Irish opinion, is especially effective in bringing
the masses to communion in great long noisy serpentines of perspiring giggly
people who are struggling to sway, kick, pivot and whirl and remain generally
upright whilst following the cues from some far away tinkling sunny music
behind the scene, and the eloquent feet of the line leader.
Breathless, on the brink of dehydration, near collapse, this small crowd
experiences a kind of full, outgoing integrity that tends to unify theories;
it reminds us, simply, of our link with everything. This is good.
In honor of all such events, I offer the rustic Grecian appetizer spread,
Skordalia.
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An hors d'oeuvre that takes less than
five minutes to prepare from ingredients in the humblest pantry, packs a
wonderfully bold wallop of garlic, and has the added virtue of using any
and all of the stale bread in the household, this bread and garlic dip from
Macedonia has not a beauteous face.
It will tend to sit in a wheaty lump as if waiting to attach wallpaper
unless you just serve it out briskly and give it a chance to prove itself
and win smiles from those suspicious faces.
An ancient recipe, more method than measurement, make Skordalia to your
taste.
Assemble all the dry bread - whole wheat in particular - from the bread
box and assess its status. If it is quite hard and thick you may need to
soak it in a large bowl under a weight for a few minutes in order to achieve
the same outcome as running slices under cold water.
Squeeze soaked bread out, breaking it into pieces at the same time, and
drop it into the bowl of a food processor or blender. A mortar and pestle
is traditional here.
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Add to 4-5 dampened and squeezed slices
of bread:
3-10 cloves of fresh garlic
1/2 - 1 C. olive oil
1/4 - 13 red wine vinegar
salt to taste
Serve it with cucumber slices, celery, bread, artichokes, beets, bread
sticks, or, like a true Greek, with shark fritters.
Or just eat it out of the blender. Like a good wine, it pleases the heart. |