Vegan delights
My friend who's the accomplished vegan chef suggested we go out to dinner last night at her favorite vegan Thai restaurant in the University District. Our beloved son is also a friend of hers, so he chauffeured us down to Araya's on 45th St. The building has housed many doomed eating establishments over the thirty one years we've lived in Seattle, but Araya's seems to have taken root nicely. The interior is dimly lit, always an appeal to me, unless it covers hordes of rats or pimpy looking guys, and the customers spanned a wide range of ages and colors. The food is very good, and amazingly inexpensive. Beloved son has long talked appreciatively of their lunch buffet, from 12-4, an all-you-can-eat bonanza for about six bucks. Eatathons are not my forte, but it sounds like a great idea for a very late lunch.
This afternoon I went to the senior center and found that there is a tai chi class a couple of afternoons a week, from 2:30-3:30, drop-ins welcome, perfect time for my mother. We will try to get there Thursday.
I've put aside The Tale of Genji for a bit and started another Elizabeth Bowen novel, Eva Trout; last one on my pile of Bowen books, except for a collection of short stories. Here's an excerpt from Eva Trout, part of a specimen-pinning description of a character named Constantine Ormeau - what a name, evoking ormulu, fakey Frenchness, any number of weaselly attributes - here it is:
"Why this shadowless face, with its lack of and almost disdain for accentuation, should strike one on the instant as being memorable; how, so unhaunted-looking, it nonentheless conveyed its power to haunt, it was hard to say. He would be fifty? He was in good condition. Celerity, though its use was indolent, characterised his movements. One can not so much look youthful as lack age - as time goes by, a frightening deficiency. Most of all, about this ever-freshness of Constantine's (what had it fed on: life-blood?) and his guard of blankness, there lurked, somewhere, youth's most dreadful residuum: youthful cruelty."
In Eva Trout, Bowen is engaging in a wicked and subtle humor, something not always present in her earlier works. Every page is full of riches. Here is another character, Iseult Arble, a woman dining with Mr. Ormeau - "Advancing upon their table came hosts of oysters... Iseult's enjoyment of her oysters was at once methodical and voluptuous. The very first she swallowed wrought a change in her. Greed softened and in a peculiar way spiritualised her abstruse beauty, with its touch of the schoolroom. Eating became her - more than once she had been fallen in love with over a meal. She gave herself up, untainted, to this truest sensuality that she knew. Her nonchalance with the menu had been a feint; or more, a prudishness as to her deeper nature - of which the revelation was so surprising, so at variance with the Iseult that had been, as to be first intriguing, then disturbing, then in itself seductive..."
This was Bowen's last work. I shall endeavor to savor it as I would a feast of oysters...
This afternoon I went to the senior center and found that there is a tai chi class a couple of afternoons a week, from 2:30-3:30, drop-ins welcome, perfect time for my mother. We will try to get there Thursday.
I've put aside The Tale of Genji for a bit and started another Elizabeth Bowen novel, Eva Trout; last one on my pile of Bowen books, except for a collection of short stories. Here's an excerpt from Eva Trout, part of a specimen-pinning description of a character named Constantine Ormeau - what a name, evoking ormulu, fakey Frenchness, any number of weaselly attributes - here it is:
"Why this shadowless face, with its lack of and almost disdain for accentuation, should strike one on the instant as being memorable; how, so unhaunted-looking, it nonentheless conveyed its power to haunt, it was hard to say. He would be fifty? He was in good condition. Celerity, though its use was indolent, characterised his movements. One can not so much look youthful as lack age - as time goes by, a frightening deficiency. Most of all, about this ever-freshness of Constantine's (what had it fed on: life-blood?) and his guard of blankness, there lurked, somewhere, youth's most dreadful residuum: youthful cruelty."
In Eva Trout, Bowen is engaging in a wicked and subtle humor, something not always present in her earlier works. Every page is full of riches. Here is another character, Iseult Arble, a woman dining with Mr. Ormeau - "Advancing upon their table came hosts of oysters... Iseult's enjoyment of her oysters was at once methodical and voluptuous. The very first she swallowed wrought a change in her. Greed softened and in a peculiar way spiritualised her abstruse beauty, with its touch of the schoolroom. Eating became her - more than once she had been fallen in love with over a meal. She gave herself up, untainted, to this truest sensuality that she knew. Her nonchalance with the menu had been a feint; or more, a prudishness as to her deeper nature - of which the revelation was so surprising, so at variance with the Iseult that had been, as to be first intriguing, then disturbing, then in itself seductive..."
This was Bowen's last work. I shall endeavor to savor it as I would a feast of oysters...
posted by isabelita at 10:50 AM
4 Comments:
No doubt, the feast would be comprised of Puget Sound and variouse other style oysters. We get 'em every so often round here and I gobble them up. I like the big tasty ones that you can savor with a nice glass of white.
Blog on sister.
'spike, where are you that you have access to our sweet wonderful oysters?
Is Eva any relation to Kilgore?
Isa,
We get them flown in or shipped in - I don't know. Doesn't happen often, because we live close to Tamalas Bay in the SF area - and we happen to have some snazzy versions of oysters locally.
But some of the more upscale joints have Washington Oysters listed and they are well worth it.
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