This issue of Gélatine has been congealing in the refrigerator of my mind for months. I'm excited to share this semisolid offering. There are two essential shifts that I wish to highlight. The first is that Jellied Gold and Gélatine will always be available for free on Substack. The second is that Gélatine will be a quarterly long-form publication. You can look forward to reading it on each solstice and equinox. It can be one more way for you and me to notice, and align with nature. It’s an opportunity for mindfulness.

I’ll continue to develop the recipe for Gélatine. I expect it will change a little every time. For me, the best part of Gélatine will always be this moment, when I get to express my gratitude and affection in a way that isn’t possible in my weekly posts.

Thank you for being my dear reader!

I Made You Another Mix Tape

I’m still really into you…

What I’m Growing

Kittens mostly. Four rambunctious little foster kittens. As a result, I’ve spent more time indoors than usual, caring for them. I’ve also been working hard on editing my upcoming book. It will be available by the vernal equinox 2026. The kittens are working hard to keep me on track. With four feline assistants, what could go wrong?

My daughter and I are also working the bench, blending perfumes that will launch this fall and winter. We’re creating little zines for each fragrance, and hand-stamping the soft fabric bags that the perfumes are packaged in. I’m obsessed with the green, smokey scent of Ivy Blaze. They’ll be available here in November.

In the garden, hollyhock and Cinderella pumpkins are everything right now. My Julia Child rose bush is also blooming like crazy. My focus out there this fall will be on setting up an amazing drip irrigation system. Other than that, my goal is to be mindful about where I throw my jack-o-lanterns to rot, because that will be where they sprout next spring. This is a lesson two years in the learning. I don’t know why I’m so hard to teach.

Make it or Fake it

Protein Pumpkin Pancakes

Because pumpkin. You could omit the flaxmeal and hempseeds to keep it simple, but IMO it’s tastier and better for you with them.

Ingredients

• ¼ cup oat flour (pulverize some steel cut oats in your spice grinder to avoid searching for this in a Whole Foods.)

• ⅛ cup of flax meal

• ⅛ cup of hempseeds

• 3 tablespoons of Pumpkin Pie spice.

• 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder.

• ¼ cup egg whites

• ¼ cup of pumpkin puree

Instructions

• Preheat pancake griddle to 300 degrees and spray with cooking spray. You can use a skillet, but keep in mind you want to cook these low and slow.

• Combine oat flour, flax meal, hempseeds, protein powder, and pumpkin pie spice.

• Mix in egg whites and pumpkin puree.

• Add up to two tablespoons of your favorite milk if you need too. The consistency of your batter should be thick but somewhat spreadable.

• Spoon batter onto the griddle and gently spread it down into a pancake shape.

• Cook it for a minute or two. Look at your pancake. The wet side should start to look less liquidy before you flip it.

• Serve them with butter and syrup, whipped cream, or whatever you like!

What I’ve been Reading

Britannica’s Great Books of The Western World

I’m following the recommended 10-year reading list suggested in volume one of this collection. My favorite reading selection so far has been The Clouds by Aristophanes. While its main claim to fame is as a satire of the Athenian philosophers of its time, particularly Socrates, the clouds themselves have a speaking part, fulfilling the role of the chorus. The poetic descriptions of nature resonated with me:

“Rise we aloft with our garments of dew.

Come from old Ocean’s unchangeable bed,

Come till the mountain’s green summit we tread,

Come to the peaks with their landscapes untold,

Gaze on the earth with her harvests of gold,

Gaze on the rivers in majesty streaming,

Gaze on the lordly invincible Sea,

Come for the eye of the ether is beaming,

Come for all of nature is flashing and free.”

It was enough to sustain me through the text. It bears noting that Plato’s Apology and Crito were the suggested reading selections before The Clouds. While I appreciated the glimpse into a tumultuous time in Athens that these combined readings offered up, I found my new motto in The Clouds.

“Now then you agree in rejecting with me

The Gods you believed in when young,

And my creed you’ll embrace “I believe in wide space,

In the Clouds, in the eloquent Tongue.”

The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd

I’ve been slowly reading and re-reading this edition. It features an introduction written by Robert Macfarlane that is almost as long as the book itself. I am switching back and forth between physical paperback and the audiobook narrated by Tilda Swinton. It’s one kind of experience to listen to this book and another to go back and reread what I heard, or read ahead before I hear it.

Nan Shephard loved clouds, too. Her descriptions of them sends me into ecstasies. Almost all of her descriptions of nature in the Cairngorms have this effect. Reading this book is like eating a rich, dark chocolate cake. I think I will just beg you to read it. If you love poetic, worshipful descriptions of nature, then here is some cake for you.

* I had no idea that the audiobook was narrated by Tilda Swinton before I started listening. It was destiny. If you’ve read previous issues of Gélatine, you may be aware that I’m irregularly interested in her. I highly recommend this audiobook as a consequence.

Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austin

While looking for another book on the shelf, my hand lingered on a Classics Club edition of this novel. I realized that I’ve never read anything by Jane Austin. I promptly read this book and was pleasantly surprised. I had always been under the impression that this story was a romantic comedy. I found it to be, actually, about pride and prejudice. It’s a book with a distinct sting that I’ve never seen emphasized in a film adaptation. It’s hard on all of its characters, and while it is funny, it is even sadder in a way that reminded me of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. It is ever so slightly romantic in a funhouse mirror sort of way, but the more important element is our heroine growing to see herself and her family in a clearer light. It’s a painful self-reckoning that leads to transformation.

And Now For Some Vintage Jelly

Jelly published elsewhere in 2024…

Stratocumulus

First, the clouds, draped over the golden, barren tree tops in hues of gray, blue, and white. Some of these nude tree folk are borrowing clouds to disguise their nakedness. Others haven’t bothered to undress for winter and wear shades of thirsty moss ranging from yellow to muddy green. With sips of coffee, these clouds must be first in the world today. Everything else can come after the clouds, after the trees, and after the coffee.

For that matter, why must there be anything else at all? Why can’t clouds be first, next, and last? It helps if you know their names. These are stratocumulus; patchy gray and white formations of water vapor with dark honeycomb-like lattices. They are tattlers. Rain was just here. Rain is coming. They stir a little drama, but not too much, keeping things interesting but not dangerous.

Before the sun approached and pulled the clouds apart to expose a little blue sky, the mist was hanging among the tree branches, spilling over the red rooftops. Offended by the sun’s intrusion, the mist vanished and stratocumulus drifted southward. Clouds transform, move on, and evaporate before I can finish considering them. They’re complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends told in collections of molecules interacting through the matrix of time. They’re just as interesting as anybody else. How unfair to box them up as scenery.

Please “heart” this post if you appreciated it so that more people can discover Jellied Gold and Gélatine on Substack. I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Is there something you would like to see in Gélatine? Oh yeah, and, if you haven’t already…

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I know, I know, I said Gélatine would be for paid subscribers, but let’s be honest, I only have you. Don’t you think you deserve a little of the reserve goo? I think you do. This one is on the house. Bon appétit.

Thank you for being my dear reader!

I Made You Another Mix Tape

I’m really, really into you…

What I’m Growing

While my attention was elsewhere, the garden changed. Nasturtiums vanished. Poppies grew tall, their blossoms became long, heavy seed pods, and the plants lost their vivacious green, adopting a silvery hue and falling flat in tangled heaps. The white blossoms on the berry bramble turned into ripening mauve berries. The roses withered. Lavender put on aromatic spears. The four-foot hollyhock stems were weighed down by their crepe-like champagne double blooms.

The path that had been cleared of weeds was once again stubbled with their tenacious green growth. Pumpkins that I should have transplanted looked near death. Everything was dry, but some plants thrived in the arid conditions, while others wilted; thus, the salvia continued blooming, while the dianthus stood solemn, and the pansies and nasturtiums crisped into dust. I trimmed the dried heads of the cosmos carefully to save their seeds. I collected poppy seeds too- the talon-shaped pods spring open at the lightest touch, making collection extra sporty.

Even the geraniums required attention, a little extra water, and the removal of spent blossoms. The mint was exploding, and tiny young katydids were hunting on the big leaves. It is time to start misting the berry brambles for the young praying manti that would surely appear soon. They have hunted here for generations. There is nothing to do about lost garden time except to get back in the garden and work. Before enlightenment, trim, weed, water, plant, and gather seeds. After enlightenment, trim, weed, water, plant, and gather seeds.

Make it or Fake it

California Dream Tea

Ew, Disclaimers:

California poppies are protected by state law. You can only pick them from your own yard or garden here. You should not drive or operate heavy machinery after drinking this tea. This is way more serious than camomile, so think twice and consult a physician before mixing your home-brewed California Dream Tea with any prescription drugs. One more thing- it’s bitter.

So now that you’ve been warned, why drink this tea? It might wash away the troubles of the day and make you very sleepy. It isn’t poisonous or dangerous. It isn’t the same poppy that opium comes from. And it might be growing in your backyard.

Ingredients

• Fresh leaves, stems, and flowers of the California Poppy (Eschscholzia Californica). Just enough to fill your tea ball or basket.

• Fresh leaves of mint. One or two sprigs will do.

• A drop of honey.

Instructions

1. Wash all your leaves, stems, and flowers.

2. Boil some water.

3. Use kitchen shears to trim your mint and poppy leaves and stems to a size that will be easy to pack into a tea ball or tea basket.

4. Stuff your trimmed mint and poppy into a tea ball or basket.

5. Pour hot water over your tea ball or basket in a pretty tea cup or mug. (Make sure your tea vessel is pretty enough. Don’t mess this part up.)

6. Allow it to steep for at least 3 minutes. You can leave it longer, up to 10 minutes, but your tea will get colder.

7. Add a little honey to taste. Or be bold, brash, & bitter and skip the honey.

What I’ve been Reading

Great Ideas from the Great Books, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler

My husband inherited his grandparents' books. One particular book from this collection, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's Great Ideas from the Great Books, was particularly unusual and interesting to us. It is composed of a collection of questions addressed to Adler by readers of his syndicated newspaper column of the same name, and of course, his answers. The column started appearing in major newspapers in 1959, while the first edition of the book was published in 1961. In addition to its vintage, it stood out to us due to the philosophical nature of the questions and the fact that Alder professed to be drawing his responses from the Great Books of Western Civilization.

We would open it at random and read a chapter to stimulate conversation. What did we think about the question and the answer? It was an excellent pairing with red wine in the evening or with pour-over on a lazy Sunday morning. Admittedly, at the time, we had little idea of what this book was or where it came from. We intuited that it was from a column published during the 50s or 60s. I frequently wondered what was meant by the Great Books. It sounded very presumptuous to me.

One day, on my own, I read the introduction of the book, and my mind was blown. The Great Books Movement began during World War II. Adler and his collaborator, Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, started leading adult reading and discussion groups outside of Universities with books that were considered the foundation of a liberal education. The challenge was that many of these books were difficult to obtain in good condition, some were entirely unavailable, and others had never been translated into English.

In 1943, William Benton, who at that time was serving as publisher and chairman at Encyclopaedia Britannica, participated in one of these groups along with 39 other men. He introduced an idea that took hold of their shared imagination. What if a set of great books could be published in the English language, making it widely available to the American public? Wasn’t that a potent way to empower the free world to recognize, face, and overcome the evils so clearly and vividly manifested in the recent World War?

Eight years and 54 volumes later, Britannica’s Great Books of The Western World came into existence. At this first publishing, it included 443 works from 74 authors. Adler himself penned an extraordinary two-volume index called the Syntopicon, dividing “all thought” into 102 basic ideas from “Angel” to “World” and further breaking these ideas into 2,987 topics containing 163,000 exact references to the passages to be found in The Great Books of The Western World collection.

Since reading that introduction years ago, I have dreamed of finding these books in an estate sale or a thrift store. This month, my husband surprised me by ordering a used collection from an online seller. I have volumes 1-32. The rest are lost in the mail. The seller says he is praying for us. Meanwhile, I’ve read volume 1 and can’t wait to tell you about it… next month.

And Now For Some Vintage Jelly

Jelly published elsewhere in 2024…

SUM TOTAL

Bad poems, unfinished homework, abandoned dreams. Unsent letters, fragments of drawing, unrealized objectives, and abilities. Good intentions, scattered like leaves by the unrelenting wind of time. Friendships unexplored, trips planned but never taken, words unspoken or mis-spoken or spoken on deaf ears. Bad hair days, ill-fitting clothing, height, weight, and number of cavities. Things that you wouldn’t post on social media, real things, true things; the only way to be known to another someday when the culture, the civilization, maybe the species is gone. This is what I wanted to give.

I wanted to leave some possible remaining other the color of my eyes, waist measurement, and height. My blemished skin, dry hands, headaches, bad moods, awkward encounters, unpopular opinions, and unproven ideas. A pocketful of dried beans and a buffalo nickel. The striving for meaning, the lack of meaning, the eventual departure from a need for meaning. Unimportance, inability, failures; the trying so hard and losing so hard that the heart cracks open and the spirit is sucked out like the marrow from a bone.

Alexander the Great isn’t the truth. Queen Victoria isn’t the truth. They’re the exception, the ones who leave a mark. Many more, myself especially, are unremarkable. Except. I wish to leave this remark. That I was here. I lived, and dreamed, and laughed, and bled, and feared, and loved as much as I could. I was human. I was not The Great or The Victorious, but I dreamed of the future and affectionately wished to give it all of myself. Not only the lovely, excellent parts. That would be selfish of me. I wish to give this too - the crude, common parts. The truth. The entirety. My whole life with all of my love.

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Spring. My meditations on the season began with the Vernal Equinox in March, but the flowers waited to unabashedly unfurl their petals in April . This period of rebirth coincided with Jellied Gold blooming anew on Substack. I’m so grateful you’ve made a little room in your inbox for me.

This special monthly issue, Gélatine, will make a regular appearance on the last Sunday of the month for my paid subscribers. I wanted you to get a taste before it’s formally on the menu. The great news is that if you refer readers to Jellied Gold, you can get Gélatine for free.

Thank you for being my dear reader!

Subscribe now

I Made You Another Mix Tape

I told you, I’m really into you…

Liner Notes:

In the spirit of rebirth, this month’s playlist features new music released in April, paired with tracks that never get old. New stuff that I’m thrilled about includes a Vegyn remix of Air’s Kelly Watch the Stars and some Arcade Fire. Pareidolies from French duo Polo & Pan's new album, 22:22, made my month. The album is enjoyable from beginning to end, and the cover art is cool. This track, though, is my favorite.

And then there was Deepest. What? At first, I didn’t know what to do with this brand-spanking-new track from Orbital. It features Tilda Swinton guiding you through a meditation, or perhaps hypnotizing you. (If you don’t trust Tilda with your mind, see her in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Suspiria.) It quickly went from being odd and confusing to taking its place as the star of my daily routine.

What I’m Growing

Nasturtiums ruled the month. They thrive in the cooler weather, self-sowing every year since I first introduced them. They’ll vanish completely in the withering heat that’s on its way. For now, I enjoy them as much as I possibly can. Poppies I planted last year have spread outside of their intended bed and are blooming beside renegade cosmos. My rotting jack-o-lanterns, tossed into a friendly flower bed last fall, have just given birth to little pumpkin seedlings. The berry brambles are budding, and the bees are out of their minds over the hot-lips sage and lavender.

Make it or Fake it

Naturtium Wraps

Ingredients

• 12–14 large nasturtium leaves

• 1 medium root vegetable- beet, carrot, or turnip

• 4 ounces goat cheese or cream cheese

• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

• 2 teaspoons herbs- fresh dill, chives, or tarragon, or dried herbs (or you could use a cheese spread that already has herbs added to it…)

• Naturtium flowers for garnish

Instructions

1. Wash the nasturtium leaves and flowers. Pat the leaves dry, but be gentle with the flowers.

2. Wash your root vegetable. No peeling is necessary if it’s fresh and organic.

3. Julienne your root vegetable or spiralize it.

4. Mix the goat cheese with pepper and fresh or dried herbs with a fork.

5. Place nasturtium leaves on a cutting board or counter with the stem side up.

6. Scoop 1 slightly heaping teaspoon of the cheese mixture into the middle of each leaf (you know, use your eyes and adjust the amount to suit your leaf size).

7. Place about 3 slices of root vegetable on top of the cheese.

8. Gently roll it up and put a toothpick in it to hold everything in place.

9. Assemble on a serving plate or put them directly into your mouth.

What I’ve been Reading

Mountains of The Mind, Robert McFarlane

After serious reading in February and March (How to Stop a Conspiracy: An Ancient Guide to Saving a Republic, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Waging a Good War,) I needed to unwind with my favorite landscape writer, Robert McFarlane.

Nothing is more soothing to me than reading stories about men losing all of their digits to frostbite or falling through a glacier. Mountains of the Mind was just what I needed. In it, McFarlane takes us on treks into the icy heights while exploring the idea of mountains. He walks us through the history of that idea and its evolution in Western thought, from mountains as permanent, inopportune obstacles to mountains as living, moving, temples of the sublime.

More than poetic, it’s also a dose of natural history. I enjoyed following along as the sciences of Geology and Palentology were wrestled into being, beginning with The Sacred Theory of The Earth. From Victorians pillaging cliff faces for fossils to Pandits, the Indian cartographer-spies employed by the British Empire, the book is littered with explorers, adventurers, naturalist, vacationers, and their frozen corpses.

This is what I love about McFarlane's writing: he takes me into awesome natural spaces while sharing morsels of history, fragments of poetry, and descriptions of art in Pulp Fictionesque flashbacks. I live vicariously through his books and learn a lot along the way. Underland and The Old Ways are also great, with Underland being the most terrifying. McFarlane goes where I definitely don’t want to go, but I do love reading about it.

“What makes mountain-going peculiar among leisure activities is that it demands of some of its participants that they die.”- Robert McFarlane, Mountains of the Mind

What I’m Watching

I love this video so much. I hope you do too.

Harvesting Heirloom Corn & Making Tortillas (Wood-ash Nixtamalization) by Homegrown Handgathered

They wrote a book: Homegrown Handgathered: The Complete Guide to Living Off Your Garden by Silvan Goddin and Jordan Tony

And Now For Some Vintage Jelly

Jelly published elsewhere in 2024…

EARTHED

When I close my eyes, I see dandelion leaves, the starburst of jagged green blades spread over the bark-covered earth. I dream about the roots of clover, long and white, delicately furred, covered in mycorrhizal fungus. They are so beautiful to me, these unwanted plants, the strange things I unearth with their roots.

The chore of weeding is a pleasure, actually, a joy so intense that the image of these things is emblazoned on the insides of my eyelids afterward. The dreamscape of my sleeping mind is built upon a branching mass of roots, cool and delicate. There is the tree of life, and then there is this: lace of life, underground, soft, web-like, understated. Understory is a pretty word for it, but stories have heroes and travel in one direction. This branches out in many directions.

There is no point. This pointlessness is mesmerizing, holds me suspended, both in waking as I work with my spade and later in dream. When I turn the bark over with my spade, I find mysterious white furs and flakes. Caterpillars crawl away from me. I spy mushrooms here and there. I have become Alice. Certainly, this is a wonderland of tiny live things, things that ask me pointedly, “Who are you?” As I decide their fates, I wonder. Then I know. I am the gardener.