{"id":1201,"date":"2016-10-28T11:24:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T15:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2017-04-26T17:08:59","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T21:08:59","slug":"buckwheat-apples-and-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/?p=1201","title":{"rendered":"Buckwheat, Apples and Ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"img_5857\"<\/a>Working from\u00a0home has many perks\u00a0(as well as some downsides). It’s hard for me to stay out of the kitchen when I’m supposed to be at my desk. Yesterday\u00a0I decided to give myself something special for elevenses<\/em>, as they say in England. I had made buckwheat pancake batter earlier in the morning for Theo, but then he was\u00a0late for school and\u00a0in the rush we didn’t cook them. \u00a0So later on I decided to make\u00a0some\u00a0pancakes. They were brown and warm and slightly crisp on the outside, but inside each pancake a slice of\u00a0caramelized apple added\u00a0soft sweetness. I drizzled dark Vermont\u00a0maple syrup over them and sat with a cup of coffee. I warmed the milk and foamed\u00a0it just the way I like it, and indulged in\u00a0my mid morning treat, recognizing the goodness of it all.<\/p>\n

Moments of peace come and go- for me they usually arrive\u00a0courtesy of food, flavors, and treasured objects. My coffee cup, for example, was made in Orvieto. It’s wide at the top, and not too deep- perfectly scaled so my coffee doesn’t cool down before I can drink it all up. The pottery is painted in the traditional hues that many ceramicists of\u00a0Orvieto\u00a0have used for centuries: greenish-blue and accents of dark brown (is this the classic\u00a0burnt umber<\/em> of a\u00a0Crayola box)? Its patterns and stripes are simple, repetitive. This cup feels good in my hands, and each time I pick it up I think of the day I bought it.<\/p>\n

It was Lucian’s birthday- it would have been his 11th, and we were still freshly in mourning. Orvieto was a perfect place for this occasion. It’s a dramatic but quiet town built on a huge rocky outcropping, and it’s an easy day trip from Rome. Earlier that day we’d walked the trail around the old city walls, and picked wildflowers. Orvieto’s\u00a0sloping streets are filled with pretty shops. There is plenty of\u00a0traditional, good, Umbrian hill town food there, like umbrichelli <\/em>pasta dusted with fluffy grated cheese and truffles, braised cinghiale, and roasted pigeon, and we rested with a hearty lunch.\u00a0\u00a0At the center of the town\u00a0is\u00a0the stunning cathedral. Its black and pink bricks create\u00a0narrow stripes, so uplifting and gloriously different from all the whites and greys of Rome- while gruesomely detailed biblical scenes carved into the facade signal a\u00a0warning: know these ancient stories and be fearful.<\/p>\n

I bought this\u00a0cup I now hold in my hands from another Anna, whose small pottery studio was tucked just behind the main piazza. A few steps up a\u00a0stone\u00a0alley, her gate was canopied by draping vines of honeysuckle.\u00a0I was so enchanted by them that I paused with Theo so Greg could take a photo of us. When a woman\u00a0called out from the shadows of a doorway: Buon Giorno! we realized we were actually standing in the entrance to her shop,\u00a0not on a lane, as we had presumed… and though we weren’t looking to buy any\u00a0ceramics, we entered her space, respectful and quiet. I came away with a\u00a0cup, though I wish I’d bought six, and a simple jar for decanting olive oil. It has a slender body with\u00a0a narrow top for pouring, and is made from the warmly pigmented Umbrian clay. \u00a0Anna and her little studio were engaging and humble. When we left, we walked back towards the piazza, where I stopped\u00a0to look at the photos I’d taken- and I realized that instead of a lovely, honeysuckle covered archway, the photo\u00a0I had taken was\u00a0just one frame, and it was completely black. A little ghost had been there and is with me still.\"img_9043\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"img_9053\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working from\u00a0home has many perks\u00a0(as well as some downsides). It’s hard for me to stay out of the kitchen when I’m supposed to be at my desk. Yesterday\u00a0I decided to give myself something special for elevenses, as they say in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[47,142,145,143,106,148,92,149,150,17,146,141,107,144,53,114,147],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ICYG-jn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakovel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}