Widow's Endorphins: What's in Your Potato Salad?

Widow's Endorphins: What's in Your Potato Salad?: I love al fresco dining - food simply tastes better outdoors!  Simple food - even better!  My memories of childhood Summers inclu...

What's in Your Potato Salad?

I love al fresco dining - food simply tastes better outdoors!  Simple food - even better! 

My memories of childhood Summers include evening picnics in the many parks surrounding Vancouver.  Dad would arrive home from work, and Mum would have the enormous family picnic basket packed with plates, cutlery, mugs, salt and pepper shakers (their tops covered with plastic wrap to prevent spills), a large thermos, and a cotton table cloth.  Once dinner for six (or eight, if our Grandparents were with us), was tucked inside, we could barely close the lid on the basket.
  

Earlier in the day, Mum would have roasted a whole chicken, or baked chicken thighs and legs, and chilled them.  She would have boiled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, and chilled them to make her Potato Salad.  Somehow, she would have found the time to bake a cake, or fruit pie to take with us.

We'd load up the Station Wagon and head for Lighthouse Park, Cates Park, Stanley Park, Spanish Banks, or Deer Lake. Those were the days before seatbelt legislation, when we kids would all be riding in the lowered back seats of the car, waving at every passing motorist, or loudly counting every out-of-province license plate we could see (California plates were coveted).           

Our local deli counter has as many as four different potato salads from which to choose.  Some are made with red potatoes, green beans and a vinaigrette, some have ham and grated Cheddar cheese in them, some have hard boiled egg.  Simple food is not so simple.  Family tradition, and regional differences, play a big part in potato salad choices.  

Mum's Potato Salad was made with white potatoes, hard boiled eggs, celery, fresh parsley, mayonnaise, mustard, a little pickle relish, salt and pepper.  Onions were omitted for Dad's sake.  The egg yolks and mustard gave it a sunny yellow glow.  Her Mother-in-Law made it the same way. Comfort food, made with love.  The first time I made it for my husband, he could barely eat it.

His mother was a terrible cook, with a great job as the head of room service for a famous hotel.  She brought home amazing left overs.  In his teens, he would hang out in the hotel kitchens, watching the chefs prepare classic dishes.  He was a far better cook than I will ever be:  his Seafood Lasagna and Bouillabaisse were divine!

"This is not Potato Salad!", he declared, glaring at his plate.  "You never put hard boiled eggs in potato salad!"  Horror creeping across his face, he cried,"pickle relish?!!"  With a look of disappointment, "you made it all mushy.  Where are the potato pieces?  You should be able to see pieces of potato".  About the only thing he liked, was the mustard.  Gordon Ramsay would have been in tears! 

I learned to make his favourite Potato Salad, adding pickle relish and Egg Salad to my own.  We'd eat outdoors, on the balcony, listening to the evening song of the birds and squirrels.  "Ruint it", he'd say, pointing to my plate, and imitating an old Irish priest, "ya ruint it".  He'd wink, and all would be well with the world.

It's been nearly two years since he died, leaving me with mostly great memories (the potato salad al fresco fiasco aside). Dad died when I was 17.  Mum has been paralyzed for more than 30 years.  All of my Grandparents are gone.  It's no picnic.  All the more reason to celebrate life, by creating more picnics in our lives!       

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

Widow's Endorphins: Balance and Bicycles

Widow's Endorphins: Balance and Bicycles: Remember learning to ride a bicycle?  Along with tying your shoelaces for the first time, learning to ride a two-wheeler is one of life...

Balance and Bicycles

Remember learning to ride a bicycle?  Along with tying your shoelaces for the first time, learning to ride a two-wheeler is one of life's milestones.  Maybe you made an easy transition from a tricycle to a bicycle, or, perhaps you needed those little rear "training wheels" for extra balance, and peace of mind.  Almost everyone had Mum or Dad run alongside them, providing a guiding hand - until they quietly let go, and just watched. You rode like the wind, all the way to the other side of the next door neighbour's driveway.

You did it!  It was an unforgettable accomplishment.  More than just having learned to ride a bike, you gained independence.  Freedom.

That exhilarating feeling of gliding like a bird, of wind-in-your-hair freedom, that sense of being able to take yourself anywhere you want to go, to explore your world -  are the archetypal experiences which make the simple bicycle such a powerful iconic symbol.

Even before turning my floral photography hobby into a business, I was scouting for a lovely bicycle, with a front wicker basket for carrying a bouquet of fresh flowers.  They're usually propped against the wall of a hipster coffee house, owner no where to be found;  or, whizzing past me on the streets of Toronto. Last weekend, I saw the prettiest turquoise-mint green bike, steps from my front door.  I overcame my shyness, and approached a stranger to ask if I could please borrow her bicycle for a floral photo shoot in the park next door.  She kindly agreed!

Michelle Golfman took a short break from her hectic schedule at Havergal College, a private school for girls in mid-town Toronto, to bring her bike to the park next door, for the noon hour photo shoot. Earlier in the day, florists Lisa and Michelle Priestap, the two sisters who own Florigens Design, were taking delivery of fresh flowers, which they knew would work well with both the turquoise mint coloured bike, and the mid-August flowers blooming in the park.  Lisa is expecting her first "little sprout" in a few weeks.  All three women know a thing or two about balancing home and career.

That balancing act is not always easy.  There are many bumps in the road of life which can throw us off kilter.  Like the kid who falls off the bike, we just get back on that bicycle, take a deep breath, and find our balance again. 

Finding that sense of balance is often as simple as stopping to smell the roses...even if only in photographs.  A beautiful image restores a sense of calm.  It's why I do, what I do.  Flowers and floral photography are my natural pain and stress relievers, or endorphins.  This is my way of sharing that sense of well being with you.   

    

This blog is a little bike ride for the soul.  It's a chance to take your tired, overworked, and overwhelmed mind for a spin.  A chance to relax from life's stresses, rejuvenate your creativity, and improve your outlook.  It's not just for widows - everyone enjoys daydreaming upon a flower.  I hope these pictures brighten your day, and take you on a happy journey. May this be a day when you ride like the wind!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

Widow's Endorphins: Mucha Do About Lilies

Widow's Endorphins: Mucha Do About Lilies: Alphonse Mucha.  His name is synonymous with Art Nouveau, the turn of the last Century art form characterized by flowing, organic, fem...

Mucha Do About Lilies

Alphonse Mucha.  His name is synonymous with Art Nouveau, the turn of the last Century art form characterized by flowing, organic, feminine forms, and ornate design.  I think of him, at this time of year, when intertwining lilies grow in abundance. 

Mucha believed it was his duty as an artist, to create beautiful art for everyone - rich or poor. Together with his printer, Imprimerie Champenois, he created a new art genre - the decorative panel. They were the original art posters.  The panels were beautifully illustrated, and widely available.  Mucha believed that through beautiful art, the quality of life was improved.

Born in 1860, in Ivancice, Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, Mucha was drawing pictures from the time he was a little boy.  He worked in Vienna as a theatre set painter, and took art classes at night. When fire destroyed the theatre, killing 400 people, he found commissioned work painting decorative scenes on the walls, ceilings and furniture in the castles of wealthy families.  A Count became his patron, and paid for years of formal art training.  Then, the money stopped.  Mucha took commissions for illustrations for French and Czech publications.  One of those publications, Le costume au theatre et a la ville, published by Lemercier, was a Godsend.

As a favour to a friend at Lemercier's printing shop, he spent the day after Christmas, correcting proofs. The famous melodramatic actress, Sarah Bernhardt called on the printer, urgently needing a new poster for her production of Gismonda, which was opening the following week.  All the artists were on Christmas holiday, so Mucha worked his magic.

By New Year's Day 1895, Mucha's posters were up all over Paris.  The Gismonda poster, with its elongated shape, near life-size figure of Bernhardt, and subtle pastel colours, caused a sensation, and collectors were using razor blades to remove posters off hoardings in the dead of night.

Bernhardt must have liked the way her image looked placed in an archway, like a saint in a grotto, with a halo shape around her head, because she offered Mucha a six-year contract to not only produce her posters, to design her theatre sets and costumes, as well.  After that, he was sitting pretty!

There are those lilies!  In this 1896 Sarah Bernhardt poster, the six petals of the lilies, create a softer, wilder balance to the more angular Star of David design in the background.  A Catholic, Mucha often placed a circular halo shape around a woman's head, similar to the elaborate golden halos found in Byzantine art.

Lilies are not sweet, little girl flowers.  Lilies are all woman:  exotic, elegant, and powerful, with a simplicity, purity and organic quality that make them one of the most complex flowers to paint and photograph.  Like a great actress, lilies can play almost any role, conveying the solemnity of a funeral, the exotic, bohemian or refined.

  

By 1896, Mucha was working with one of the most prestigious printing houses in Europe, Imprimerie Champenois, which commissioned him to do a series of decorative panels illustrating the four seasons.  These were so popular, that other decorative panel series were produced:  flowers (including the Lily panel below), the times of the day, and gemstones.  

The mass-produced decorative panels were affordable.  "I was happy", he later wrote, "to be involved in an art for the people and not for private drawing rooms.  It was inexpensive, accessible to the general public, and it found a home in poor families as well as in more affluent circles." 

Everyone was asking for the Mucha touch.  Champenois began putting Mucha's art on calendars, postcards, theatre programmes, menus, and began licensing designs and illustrations to companies in Europe and North America.  Mucha's illustrations were on everything from chocolate to champagne. One of the most recognized, is the Moet & Chandon Grand Cremant Imperial poster.

There is so much variation within the Lily family.  I photographed these three varieties over the long weekend:  the speckled pink and white Stargazer Lily, the dusty rose Asiatic Lily, and the orange double Day Lily which grows in "my backyard garden".

Women with long, flowing hair are a signature of Mucha's work.  In this 1902 poster for the British company, Cycles Perfecta, the woman is stationary, yet, her flowing, windswept hair, create the sensation of movement, and a sense of freedom.

Mucha spent much time in America.  In 1909, he painted an oil on canvas work depicting American actress Maude Adams in her one-night gala performance of Joan of Arc.  Mucha also created the theatre sets and costumes for the production. The Joan of Arc painting remained in the lobby of the Empire Theatre in New York City.  Take a closer look at the painting, and you'll see the repetitive shape of lilies, framing the figure.  After all, the fleur de lis is as French as Joan of Arc.

Madonna of the Lilies is famous - even as an unfinished work.  This is what was to have decorated the walls of a Jerusalem church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  The 1905 painting uses lilies as a sign of purity, and the wreath of ivy, a sign of remembrance.

Although he travelled extensively all his life, Mucha was in his heart, a Czech.  His later years were spent painting enormous canvasses telling the story of the Slav people.  The Slav Epic, often described as a "monumental" work, depicts the history of the Slav people from ancient times.  The largest is six by eight metres (20 by 26 feet).  If you are in Prague, Czech Republic, visit the Mucha Museum to see his impressive work.

Mucha died just days before his 79th birthday, having lived an extraordinary life.  I didn't even talk about his early childhood memories of one of the worst battles between Prussia and Austria, which took place about 20 miles from his home, leaving 53-thousand dead, wounded or missing;  I didn't even mention the epiphany he had in St Wenceslas Church, when he realized an artist could make a living; not a word about his late in life marriage and children;  no mention of his 1934 Officier de la Legion d' Honneur award, or that he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for his Masonic Temple activities...you'll just have to read about all of his life on-line, at the Mucha Foundation.

The Mucha Foundation was begun by his late Daughter-in-Law, and his Grandson to preserve and promote Mucha's legacy.  The Mucha Trust collection is the world's largest collection of Mucha's art. It has more than 3-thousand works of art, 4-thousand photographs, and a written archive...and a few lilies!

Lily photographs copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated
Everything else, courtesy of The Mucha Foundation's Mucha Trust.