Crispy crunchy iceberg.
After you've had all the GREENness and oakleafs and reds and mescluns with their tiny personalities and their wee cutenesses and popularity, after bales of romaine and bushels of arugula and radicchio, acres of endive and cress and frisee, there comes a time in the tide of things in which only iceberg will do.
It's a good old sweatshirt of a vegetable, a trusty friend and colleague, a lean-on-me food that can provide the L for BLT, shred into a perfect nest for keeping teensy tea sandwiches fresh and moist, top a taco or a sub or a burger with less than elan, but more than ennui.
It shreds or chops or leaves or cups with ease, making the transition from filler to cushion to neat package. Wedges of it with a cloak of dressing whose recipe is guarded like State Secrets take their place on tables with the most exquisite cuts of meat, in steakhouses of brilliant pedigree and long tenure, where white-shirted waiters in aprons-to-their-shoes have grown old in such lofty service.
It floats forth on pristine crystal plates in some of the most privileged homes, some of the most treasured restaurants, and nestles between layers of ersatz beef and secret sauce with perfect ease and equal aplomb.
And a pile of finely-shredded, lightly-salted iceberg is my favorite accompaniment beside a juicy grilled cheeseburger with all the fixin's. I eat it with my fingers, and don't even PRETEND it's fries.
It has its own credentials.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
PAPER OR PLASTIC?
Another blogger's musings about carrying shopping bags brought to mind my own attempts to GREEN my little bit of things. I try vainly to remember to put the big bag filled with regular-sized bags into whichever car I'm going to the grocery in. I get into the store, into the checkout line, and THEN wish I'd brought them in from the car---any other minute in the process, and I could have run out the shusssssh of the Exit and grabbed them up, but having stood, hostage to the latest bright blurbs in the adventures of Brangelina or the how-I-did-its of the newest O, I could not cause further delay to the long, snail-pace line behind me.
And so, as I prepare to depart the house, I mind-list the necessaries: bags, glasses, keys, card-and-ID, and list. The grabbing of the smalls is a breeze, as I put on my shoes, feeling the fresh-from-the shower comfort of cool cottons and Altoid breath, hair neatly up and smooth, the going-somewhere fresh of the day and the out-the-door brisk walk to the car. Blithely bagless til it's too late, and I'm mumbling my stairs-bags-trips mantra to the unheeding clerk beeping the items across the go-nowhere belt.
Too many plastic bags are overflowing the HUGE wall-hung bag in the pantry/laundry room. Our grocery has handy hanging rolls above the produce, set there like the valances on Miss Scarlett's portieres, and I wind off a great long stole of bags, wrapping them around my neck. As I choose the produce and bag it in that gossamer cling, I tear off each one in turn, til the babyseat is overflowing with poufy tops spouting above the lemons and avocados and tomatoes shining through the thin clear film.
Then, the meat department, where little floor posts hold vertical rolls for those pesky leaking trays of chicken parts, pork chops, and icy naked birds bound up in their own slick corsets. The brain cramp comes in trying to get each tray situated just SO in the bag, the price scan facing the clear side of the plastic, though I KNOW that little old magnetic thing can read through walls, if necessary. Two like items are set back-to-back, as I try to position the barcode as well as possible between the bits of green tracery on the film.
And at checkout, my worst bit of brainburn comes when they say "Paper or Plastic?" Though there are signs blaring everywhere touting the use of paper and the evils of plastic, I say "Plastic." Then the compulsion comes to blurt the same mantra I say every week, "If your paper bags had handles, I'd use paper. I have to carry the groceries up the steps and down a flight of stairs to get to the kitchen, and with paper, I can carry only one bag at a time." Do I really think that's going into the cashier's head as she peeps the endless flow of items past her little cheeping sentry? Do I think she cares?
Nope, and I say it anyway, to assuage this need-to-excuse. She could care less if I requested FIVE bags per item---she's not bagging the stuff. And still I choose plastic, still I explain. I also sometimes feel this manic urge to say it quite loudly, for the information of all the folks eyeing my un-eco choice as if I'd just taken a crosscut saw to Pooh's house.
And at home, there's no need for the flimsy produce bags, so they go into the trash, wadded into the space of a peanut. The nice thick white ones are for saving, for all sorts of uses---birdcage cleanouts, for carrying lunches or snacks, and all the other quick-carry needs. And during my unfortunate knee problem a couple of years ago, I discovered the handy way to tote stuff up and downstairs when you’re being ultra careful---hang a bag on your arm or throw it down “tump” to the bottom.
So plastic it is, crammed with hard things and heavy things and things that bump against knee and elbow like a poor man's rock-and-sock cosh; the bread loaf folds itself upward in its private bag like a cocooned caterpillar, and keeps the curve through its many open-and-closes. And the loaf or pack of buns captured in the closeness of the poly-bubble with the dryer-sheets' fragrance is ruined before it reaches home.
I'd rather have paper---I like the IDEA of it, the fleetingness of it, the sturdy crisp brown-ness of the bags as they stand like starched clothes, fresh from the iron. I like a neat array of them slotted between the freezer's side and the baking-pan rack. They're handy for lining cake pans, for draining fish and hushpuppies, for holding the corn-from-the-grill a few minutes, and the shucks for disposal, for dredging chicken to fry.
Something about that fold-down and shake of a big paper bag, the whooshy sound of the chicken shaken within, and the little cloud of flour emerging as the folds are unfurled, reminds me of cooks in my past, and the repetition of such an age-old ritual rounds out the generations, somehow, in a very satisfying way. And the scent of that sizzling chicken only adds to the charm.
And so, as I prepare to depart the house, I mind-list the necessaries: bags, glasses, keys, card-and-ID, and list. The grabbing of the smalls is a breeze, as I put on my shoes, feeling the fresh-from-the shower comfort of cool cottons and Altoid breath, hair neatly up and smooth, the going-somewhere fresh of the day and the out-the-door brisk walk to the car. Blithely bagless til it's too late, and I'm mumbling my stairs-bags-trips mantra to the unheeding clerk beeping the items across the go-nowhere belt.
Too many plastic bags are overflowing the HUGE wall-hung bag in the pantry/laundry room. Our grocery has handy hanging rolls above the produce, set there like the valances on Miss Scarlett's portieres, and I wind off a great long stole of bags, wrapping them around my neck. As I choose the produce and bag it in that gossamer cling, I tear off each one in turn, til the babyseat is overflowing with poufy tops spouting above the lemons and avocados and tomatoes shining through the thin clear film.
Then, the meat department, where little floor posts hold vertical rolls for those pesky leaking trays of chicken parts, pork chops, and icy naked birds bound up in their own slick corsets. The brain cramp comes in trying to get each tray situated just SO in the bag, the price scan facing the clear side of the plastic, though I KNOW that little old magnetic thing can read through walls, if necessary. Two like items are set back-to-back, as I try to position the barcode as well as possible between the bits of green tracery on the film.
And at checkout, my worst bit of brainburn comes when they say "Paper or Plastic?" Though there are signs blaring everywhere touting the use of paper and the evils of plastic, I say "Plastic." Then the compulsion comes to blurt the same mantra I say every week, "If your paper bags had handles, I'd use paper. I have to carry the groceries up the steps and down a flight of stairs to get to the kitchen, and with paper, I can carry only one bag at a time." Do I really think that's going into the cashier's head as she peeps the endless flow of items past her little cheeping sentry? Do I think she cares?
Nope, and I say it anyway, to assuage this need-to-excuse. She could care less if I requested FIVE bags per item---she's not bagging the stuff. And still I choose plastic, still I explain. I also sometimes feel this manic urge to say it quite loudly, for the information of all the folks eyeing my un-eco choice as if I'd just taken a crosscut saw to Pooh's house.
And at home, there's no need for the flimsy produce bags, so they go into the trash, wadded into the space of a peanut. The nice thick white ones are for saving, for all sorts of uses---birdcage cleanouts, for carrying lunches or snacks, and all the other quick-carry needs. And during my unfortunate knee problem a couple of years ago, I discovered the handy way to tote stuff up and downstairs when you’re being ultra careful---hang a bag on your arm or throw it down “tump” to the bottom.
So plastic it is, crammed with hard things and heavy things and things that bump against knee and elbow like a poor man's rock-and-sock cosh; the bread loaf folds itself upward in its private bag like a cocooned caterpillar, and keeps the curve through its many open-and-closes. And the loaf or pack of buns captured in the closeness of the poly-bubble with the dryer-sheets' fragrance is ruined before it reaches home.
I'd rather have paper---I like the IDEA of it, the fleetingness of it, the sturdy crisp brown-ness of the bags as they stand like starched clothes, fresh from the iron. I like a neat array of them slotted between the freezer's side and the baking-pan rack. They're handy for lining cake pans, for draining fish and hushpuppies, for holding the corn-from-the-grill a few minutes, and the shucks for disposal, for dredging chicken to fry.
Something about that fold-down and shake of a big paper bag, the whooshy sound of the chicken shaken within, and the little cloud of flour emerging as the folds are unfurled, reminds me of cooks in my past, and the repetition of such an age-old ritual rounds out the generations, somehow, in a very satisfying way. And the scent of that sizzling chicken only adds to the charm.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
DELTA WEDDING
I’ve been following the wedding preparations of one of my favorite young writers, and since the wedding a couple of weeks ago, she’s been posting pictures of lead-up-to and the wedding and reception. I was really looking forward to both, because of my lifetime of attending and helping with and cooking for Southern weddings.
And this one was everything a Deep-South wedding should be---a gathering of family, good friends and neighbors and church members to celebrate and affirm and support the new family.
With my very best wishes to Keetha and The Husband:
http://writekudzu.blogspot.com/
And this one was everything a Deep-South wedding should be---a gathering of family, good friends and neighbors and church members to celebrate and affirm and support the new family.
With my very best wishes to Keetha and The Husband:
http://writekudzu.blogspot.com/
(A much later, edited-in PS to my dear Readers: What you want is the WEDDING POST. Not the one for today, the 17th. No, anything but that).
It was beautifully, classically simple, with the colors chosen for springtime and for the groom’s Alma Mater; it included parents, grandparents and the young son of the bride. The wedding was in a beautiful old church, with lifelong friends and relatives as attendants; the reception was in a lovely old house, with wooden floors and furniture polished with the steps and touches of a century. And the Southern touches were there, in the flowers---lush bouquets of hydrangea in enormous vases like julep cups, and in the patina of the sideboard holding tall tiered stands of chocolate-dipped strawberries, and a tray of golden, perfect cheese straws---both de rigueur at a serious Southern affair.
There were small biscuits of several flavors, with the juicy pink slices of ham in its garnishes of pineapple and cherries; a footed bowl of chicken salad and regal rows of fancy crackers on a silver tray, tulle draping the lattice backdrop and damask beneath the tiered cake. I even spied a small silver bowl of Richardson’s mints among the artistic array of forks and monogrammed napkins.
And the Groom’s table, with chocolate layer cake and the Mississippi State helmet and colors, right down to the carefully-chosen M&M’s---that says HOME to me.
I loved being taken back to so many happy, happy occasions, the times when a gathering meant hugging and laughing, when a group of people stood together to celebrate the beginning of a whole new group, whose own gatherings will grow and encompass and spread to welcome other new beginnings.
I’m going to get out Mrs. Jennings’ recipe for Cheese Straws and see if I can unearth the cookie press. Last time I saw it, the Grandchildren were using all the little insert doohickeys like a Spirograph to draw shapes on most of the printer paper in the house. The wedding straws circled round that big silver tray in perfect symmetry were rolled and cut, with a little pinking-shears ravioli-edger thingie, but Mrs. J’s straws were always the squeezed-out ones.
The dough is thick as piecrust, and has to be extruded in one smooth line (oh, the tales of breakages and cracks and tapery little bits and pieces when I'd waver just a little in strength and my hands would give out) so I could never imagine how such a fragile-looking little woman could make dozens of those things practically every Thursday and Friday, for whatever goings-on were happening on the weekend.
They were flat on the bottom from the smooth side of the shaping-tip, and had tiny ridges atop, like the horizon-stretching rows of good rich farmland we lived amongst, and those tapery tops had a crispness that crackled to the bite. They were rich and crisp and made with “real butter”---stressed with each and every order, as she apologetically quoted the price, and seemed to need to explain the expense. I can remember that they were twenty dollars for two pounds, her minimum order, back when I was first learning to decorate cakes.
They’re supposed to be made with a mixer, but I short-cutted the process many years ago, after Mrs. J. retired---Putting the finely-shredded sharp cheese into the processor, then the butter, then the sifted flour and seasonings, just for enough whirls to make the dough clump---those make a mighty fine approximation, and can be rolled, wrapped, frozen and sliced into “Cheese Pennies” just as well.
CHEESE STRAWS
Oven 300. 5 dozen.
Put 2 c. Kraft Extra-Sharp fine shreds into processor and whirl for a few seconds. Drop in a stick of room-temp butter and whirl.
Sift 1 ½ c. plain flour with 1 t. salt and a big sprinkle of cayenne. (Old Bay is permissible, if you're bent that way).
Add to processor and whirl just til it holds together slightly. Put out onto cool surface and knead just a few seconds, then fill cookie press, and add ridged-line tip or plate. Squeeze out onto Silpat into 2” lines, cutting ends neatly flat. Bake 10-13 minutes til golden. Cool on racks.
For Pennies, halve the dough and roll into two rolls about the size of a quarter. Wrap tightly with waxed paper or Saran, bag, and freeze. To bake, slice into 1/4” slices and place on Silpat-lined cookie sheets.
From thawed, add a minute or so to above time. From frozen, add about 3 minutes. Cool on racks.
Stack either shape gently between layers of parchment or waxed paper in air-tight containers. They keep nicely for three or four days.
Mrs. J. always required us to bring her our own Tupperwares a couple of days before she baked. I guess you can use up just so many Hostess Fruitcake tins before you run out.
Monday, June 15, 2009
YORKSHIRE PUDDING
When I went to England for the first time, I had a list of things to try and see and do and buy and experience, quite a few of them food-related. I wanted a bowl of porridge in Scotland (related in another post), Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, treacle tart, a real afternoon tea with scones and cream and jam, and several other traditional things (all of which were accomplished and enjoyed very much).
So the first night on the road, we had dinner at our little hotel, and it was the only buffet of the trip, save for the bountiful breakfasts for which England is so famed. As I passed the gentleman who was "carving the joint," I asked for the beef. He misunderstood and carved off two hefty, steaming, juicy slices of the pork instead. I just accepted it, went right down the line, retrieved the nice muffin-pan shape of golden Yorkshire pudding, poured a bit of the rich brown gravy from the silver boat onto both, and had one of the best dining experiences of my life. It was rich and salty and BEEFY with the essence of the meat.
Later in the week, we stopped for lunch in the Lake District, and Yorkshire pudding was one of the features of the day in the restaurant/souvenir shop we were ushered into. I thought I'd try it one more time, and it was a bit different from the first. My plate arrived, or at least I hoped there was a plate under the weight of that huge bowl-shaped piece of browned dough holding its pint of gravy. The gravy was not so rich this time, nor did it have that tang of good meat essence nor the satisfying flavour of anything but browned flour and whatever liquid was used to make it. But it made up in quantity.
It was enormous. It covered a dinner plate, with just room on the edges for the server to get a tiny thumb-grip on either side. It looked as if a brown cake-pan had been appropriated from the kitchen, filled with brown liquid, and sent to table, its little ridges of sides barely holding in the flood. It sloshed when it was set before me, and the quandary arose: dip a spoon in that bread bowl and eat gravy soup until the ramparts could be breached, or cut right in, thus granting exit to enough brown sauce to flood the pretty tablecloth and perhaps flow back toward the kitchen. I'm a generous cook, with a lavish hand with the groceries, but I think I've served MEALS without that much gravy on the table.
Then we looked around us. Whole families were chowing down on plates of the kiddie-pool-sized servings. Twig-sized young women were tucking into the stuff with the gusto of lorry-drivers, and small children had their OWN great moats of brown in front of them. It was amazing. This was food for hearty hikers, tramping into the house in Wellies, beaming and rosy-cheeking their way through great trenchers of heavy food and gallons of steaming tea. Flour and water were the order of the day, and we were all consuming enough carbs to bankrupt Atkins several years early.
The pudding appeared to have been baked in a pieplate or cakepan, with inch-high sides which rose up and held its juicy burden, and the bottom was just about the depth of a piecrust, though springy and tender. I shared spoonfuls of the gravy all round the table; my companions scooped up spoons and bowls of it. One lady had no receptacle save her plate, so she lifted her teacup to the tablecloth and accepted a saucerful.
We all dipped and slurped and it made immediate "English dip" for the hearty sandwiches of all others at the table. I managed to down about a third of the rich eggy bready pudding, saturated as it was with the salty sauce, and passed samples to fellow travelers at other tables. When we finally lugged our stuffed selves out and back onto the bus, we left one semi-circle standing like a dough map of Stonehenge, listing toward the gravy. The stuff could have made a Biblical legend, a story passed down through whole families as they gathered on Friday nights, with children for generations asking, “Tell about the gravy which never ran out.”
When we left to go trekking through Wordsworth country, there was STILL a great moat of gravy left on that plate, with the golden pudding swelling and growing limply pale in the light of the grey afternoon.
So the first night on the road, we had dinner at our little hotel, and it was the only buffet of the trip, save for the bountiful breakfasts for which England is so famed. As I passed the gentleman who was "carving the joint," I asked for the beef. He misunderstood and carved off two hefty, steaming, juicy slices of the pork instead. I just accepted it, went right down the line, retrieved the nice muffin-pan shape of golden Yorkshire pudding, poured a bit of the rich brown gravy from the silver boat onto both, and had one of the best dining experiences of my life. It was rich and salty and BEEFY with the essence of the meat.
Later in the week, we stopped for lunch in the Lake District, and Yorkshire pudding was one of the features of the day in the restaurant/souvenir shop we were ushered into. I thought I'd try it one more time, and it was a bit different from the first. My plate arrived, or at least I hoped there was a plate under the weight of that huge bowl-shaped piece of browned dough holding its pint of gravy. The gravy was not so rich this time, nor did it have that tang of good meat essence nor the satisfying flavour of anything but browned flour and whatever liquid was used to make it. But it made up in quantity.
It was enormous. It covered a dinner plate, with just room on the edges for the server to get a tiny thumb-grip on either side. It looked as if a brown cake-pan had been appropriated from the kitchen, filled with brown liquid, and sent to table, its little ridges of sides barely holding in the flood. It sloshed when it was set before me, and the quandary arose: dip a spoon in that bread bowl and eat gravy soup until the ramparts could be breached, or cut right in, thus granting exit to enough brown sauce to flood the pretty tablecloth and perhaps flow back toward the kitchen. I'm a generous cook, with a lavish hand with the groceries, but I think I've served MEALS without that much gravy on the table.
Then we looked around us. Whole families were chowing down on plates of the kiddie-pool-sized servings. Twig-sized young women were tucking into the stuff with the gusto of lorry-drivers, and small children had their OWN great moats of brown in front of them. It was amazing. This was food for hearty hikers, tramping into the house in Wellies, beaming and rosy-cheeking their way through great trenchers of heavy food and gallons of steaming tea. Flour and water were the order of the day, and we were all consuming enough carbs to bankrupt Atkins several years early.
The pudding appeared to have been baked in a pieplate or cakepan, with inch-high sides which rose up and held its juicy burden, and the bottom was just about the depth of a piecrust, though springy and tender. I shared spoonfuls of the gravy all round the table; my companions scooped up spoons and bowls of it. One lady had no receptacle save her plate, so she lifted her teacup to the tablecloth and accepted a saucerful.
We all dipped and slurped and it made immediate "English dip" for the hearty sandwiches of all others at the table. I managed to down about a third of the rich eggy bready pudding, saturated as it was with the salty sauce, and passed samples to fellow travelers at other tables. When we finally lugged our stuffed selves out and back onto the bus, we left one semi-circle standing like a dough map of Stonehenge, listing toward the gravy. The stuff could have made a Biblical legend, a story passed down through whole families as they gathered on Friday nights, with children for generations asking, “Tell about the gravy which never ran out.”
When we left to go trekking through Wordsworth country, there was STILL a great moat of gravy left on that plate, with the golden pudding swelling and growing limply pale in the light of the grey afternoon.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
SONNETS IN THE ROSES
This time several years ago, we were in England. I somehow thought I had posted this little memory, but on looking back through all the months, I cannot seem to find it anywhere.
Our first real stop was at Stratford-on-Avon, home of the Bard, and we toured his home and gardens, with a lot of picture-taking and exclaiming at Anne Hathaway’s lovely thatched cottage. We gazed up at the Juliet window in his house, its mullioned shutters open over the little balcony, and as we entered, we were swept up in a tide of the very young “Up With People”-type crowd that had surrounded us in the airport, their red polos and khakis their admission to the club.
I lost sight of everyone in my tour group, so I just explored at my leisure, seeing the canopied bed (a rope-suspension affair that I cannot fathom being comfortable, no matter how many geese were sacrificed to the mattress), and the rough tables at which I imagined him penning his magnificent verse. The fireplaces still held ashes, the candle-drip still clung to yellowed, bent tallow, and the windows looked out upon the colours of Spring.
I stood for a moment in the Juliet-window, not imagining a young swain come to sweep me away, but trying to grasp the universe of ideas and words and contexts which must have whizzed through that amazing mind as he gazed out. His words poured onto the paper, onto the stage, into minds and hearts and down through wars and changings and evolvings of our world, making the phrasings and idiom of yesteryear into a part of our own vocabulary, sometimes understood, sometimes lost to Time, but an integral part of today’s theater and language, fresh as from the Globe.
I wandered on through, emerging into the gardens. Our guide had said that we had two hours to see the site and the town, with a hand-waved direction toward the souvenir shops branching out on almost every street. I stepped into the first shop and bought ten postcards and a tiny, pocket-sized golden book of sonnets.
Walking out and around, I headed away from commerce and tourist confusion, in the direction of the big parking lot where waited our bus. Within a couple of blocks of there, I spied a little gravel-paved courtyard within a small gateway, which framed an enormous yellow rosebush with branches reaching up to the housetops. I couldn’t resist stepping in for a moment, and since the sign advertised only weekday hours and the "closed" sign on the door greeted anyone who might enter that deserted, walled place, I realized that my Saturday presence would probably be of no bother to anyone.
Whilst all my traveling companions were strolling and looking, buying garish bits and pieces of take-home and send-to memorabilia to commemorate their time in this place, I walked to a low stone wall encircling the plot, sat beneath the great golden umbrella of roses, and read all the sonnets in the Summer sunshine of the place they were created.
Try buying a keychain or a coffee mug that can top that.
Our first real stop was at Stratford-on-Avon, home of the Bard, and we toured his home and gardens, with a lot of picture-taking and exclaiming at Anne Hathaway’s lovely thatched cottage. We gazed up at the Juliet window in his house, its mullioned shutters open over the little balcony, and as we entered, we were swept up in a tide of the very young “Up With People”-type crowd that had surrounded us in the airport, their red polos and khakis their admission to the club.
I lost sight of everyone in my tour group, so I just explored at my leisure, seeing the canopied bed (a rope-suspension affair that I cannot fathom being comfortable, no matter how many geese were sacrificed to the mattress), and the rough tables at which I imagined him penning his magnificent verse. The fireplaces still held ashes, the candle-drip still clung to yellowed, bent tallow, and the windows looked out upon the colours of Spring.
I stood for a moment in the Juliet-window, not imagining a young swain come to sweep me away, but trying to grasp the universe of ideas and words and contexts which must have whizzed through that amazing mind as he gazed out. His words poured onto the paper, onto the stage, into minds and hearts and down through wars and changings and evolvings of our world, making the phrasings and idiom of yesteryear into a part of our own vocabulary, sometimes understood, sometimes lost to Time, but an integral part of today’s theater and language, fresh as from the Globe.
I wandered on through, emerging into the gardens. Our guide had said that we had two hours to see the site and the town, with a hand-waved direction toward the souvenir shops branching out on almost every street. I stepped into the first shop and bought ten postcards and a tiny, pocket-sized golden book of sonnets.
Walking out and around, I headed away from commerce and tourist confusion, in the direction of the big parking lot where waited our bus. Within a couple of blocks of there, I spied a little gravel-paved courtyard within a small gateway, which framed an enormous yellow rosebush with branches reaching up to the housetops. I couldn’t resist stepping in for a moment, and since the sign advertised only weekday hours and the "closed" sign on the door greeted anyone who might enter that deserted, walled place, I realized that my Saturday presence would probably be of no bother to anyone.
Whilst all my traveling companions were strolling and looking, buying garish bits and pieces of take-home and send-to memorabilia to commemorate their time in this place, I walked to a low stone wall encircling the plot, sat beneath the great golden umbrella of roses, and read all the sonnets in the Summer sunshine of the place they were created.
Try buying a keychain or a coffee mug that can top that.
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