Getting going

"The morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness." William Shakespeare

The quote and the painting were featured on my art desk calendar this morning, which sort of coincided with the thoughts I had been previously been having about the routines we go through in the morning, so I thought I would begin with it.

The painting is by Charles-François Daubigny and it's called Morning by the Lake painted in 1858. I am dimly aware of the artist's name, but do not know this painting. But yes I thought, as I turned the page over to discover it, it does convey the stillness of the early morning - just around dawn. If you live in a rural setting that is. Dawn in the city is not quiet or still - particularly in the colder months.

Dawn generally wakes me in the morning, as we have one window on my side of the bed, with no curtain to stop the light coming through. But I do not open my eyes as I am not ready to wake.

I am not a morning person - as I have said many times.

But before I get on to the getting going theme I sort of intend to explore, a word or two about the Shakespeare quote, which has quite a different sense - well, now that I think about it, perhaps not so different - a kind of quiet relief, that the darkness - bad dreams perhaps - is over and the world can begin again. So few words with so much to think about them. For one thing people usually talk about night stealing the day, not the other way around. Which is tantalising.

As I was working through my morning routine - coffee and crumpet, a short read, a few exercises, a shower, teeth etc., dressing ... - it's different for everyone but all things that we work our way through semi-automatically - as I worked through it, I thought that for many of us the morning routine is possibly the only true routine of the day. Or maybe the routine that is enacted, as I said, in a semi-conscious way and our other routines - getting to work, getting children off to school, cooking the dinner ... - are more deliberate, and also more open to variation and interruption, as the whole world comes into play rather than just one's own inner workings both mental and physical.

It's almost like an orchestra tuning up before launching into Beethoven's Fifth or an athlete doing their warmup exercises before a big race. It's automatic and non-thinking. The rest of the day - the rest of life needs thought. But that routine gets us into the right frame of mind, prepares us for whatever today might bring.

For a few days now I have been staring at that bowl of persimmons and knowing I had to do something with them - but what? There was no routine that would get me going on this. And so I procrastinated by browsing the web looking for ideas, writing about them in a blog, and doing other things with my day. Then I noticed that David had extracted a couple that were seriously soft, and so I knew that action needed to be taken. But still I put it off another day, with excuses about doing other things.

Yesterday I ran out of excuses - which is another way of getting going. I finally realised that it would be (a) extremely impolite and wasteful not to do something with them - I mean they cost over $2.00 each in the supermarket - and (b) It might be a chance to experiment and do something new and exciting.

So I set to it. And let me tell you it is not a lot of fun, cutting up persimmons. The leaves at the top were dry and clung to the fruit so they disintegrated into crumbs as I approached to cut out the core - which was strongly attached. You don't have to peel them but I decided to, for I had three different purposes in mind. The main one was to make a fruit paste and so I weighed out a kilogram - the amount specified in a recipe I found - but I also wanted to try the Tarte Tatin that I had found and so I decided to peel a few - well peel some and leave the peel on for others and then slive them into neat rings - and I also decided to do what my friend does and just peel, core, chop and freeze.

Having dug out the core, peeling was easy, and I started by slicing across the fruit for the tart when I encountered the seeds shown here - which are not only an obstacle - but cling to the fruit with incredible determination. You have to dig them out - and if the fruit is at all tender your perfect slices become somewhat squashed. Pretty easy to chop although your hands are a bit sticky with juice by now.

However, I had indeed overcome the getting going bit and was not about to give up. Sliced fruit, in a container with some lemon juice, chopped fruit in a freezer bag in the freezer - will I ever do anything with them, which is a depressing thought? Now for making my imitation quince paste - but with persimmons.

At the end of chopping up a kilo of fruit I had vowed never to do this again. But I did do it. Then the first step was to soften the chopped fruit with some water and lemon juice which they told me would take a mere quarter of an hour or so. Ha ha. Maybe 40 minutes or so later, including frequent stirring to stop it burning, I gave up. Some bits were still a bit firm but I decided that since it had to be puréed in a belnder it didn't matter. That bit went well.

Then you add sugar and cook until it is really, really thick - pull your spoon through it and the base of the pan is supposed to show briefly. To be fair they did say that it would take almost an hour - and it did - and because I did not stir constantly I burnt it slightly a couple of times, but the burnt bits were easily removed.

Eventually I got to the right point and, as instructed, poured it into a baking paper lined tray and left it to cool.

And wonder of wonders it was indeed firm to the touch, so I covered it with some greaseproof paper and put it in the fridge overnight.

This morning I took it out, removed the greaseproof paper, cut it into squares which were then wrapped in greaseproof paper and put them in the fridge. I just hope the paper does not stick to the squares too much, so that I can't remove them without squashing them.

What does it taste like? To be honest, I'm not sure there is much taste other than sugar. I had even put in a drizzle of pomegranate molasses to boost the taste but the taste is - shall I say? - subtle. Although nice. I know it's not a word one is supposed to use, but apposite here.

However, I could not fit it all into my plastic container and so I have set some aside in an empty gift box I had, to give to my friend Monika who makes amazing plum, and also quince paste.

I think mine is squidgier than hers.

I wonder if I would have tackled this task earlier if I had some kind of warm-up routine to get to it. Or is it that some things are just too hard to easily confront? Even if it turns out, when you actually get to it, that it wasn't too hard, and even if the end result is very gratifying. Because really I did get a kick of great satisfaction that my paste did at least turn out to be more or less the right consistency and was not burnt. I suppose my wandering around the net, and making excuses for no time and so on is a sort of routine, but not a very efficient one. Maybe you can only develop a routine for things you do all the time.

"The problem with waiting until tomorrow is that when it finally arrives, it is called today."

Jim Rohn

YEARS GONE BY

May 21

2025 - Nigel's spicy sausage pasta step by step

2024 - Calzone

2023 - Mundane to trendy and back to mundane

2022 - Blasts from the past in the Dandenongs

2021 - Missing

2010 - Missing

2019 - Home brands are still evolving

2018 - More comfort - dumplings

2017 - Nothing