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…