Red shoes

Dancing shoes

Spring has me looking toward bright things...green, of course, for new shoots to plant, admire and serve up, and red, for shoes to step out in, hereabouts and abroad.

Planning menus and trips is my fun these days.  First, menus to sort out and invitations to send. Wherever I've lived, it's been sort of a hobby to invite people over for brunch or dinner or tea or something...holidays, birthdays, anytime...why not?  Though I'm glad for the company and its always illuminating conversation, I enjoy as much the strategy.

Here's how it happens.  Hmmm, I think while a new season entices me.  I grab a white square of leftover art paper (the thick kind, 60#cardstock or better) and begin to scribble, heading the paper with some upcoming or imagined theme, like "Thanksgiving" or "Brunch for Newcomers".  Headings next: APPS, MAIN, DESS, DRKS.  Lots of crossouts, lots of rewriting. ("Or" is a frequent caret.)  I have little pieces of such tucked all over the house, ready to be revised, ready for who's company and a date.  (The one above hasn't been tied down yet...want to come for dinner?)

In Spring, the greener the ingredients, the better.  And so many to choose from:  fresh peas, spinach and chard, butter lettuce, arugula.  In the pots outside the kitchen door herbs are showing their bright sides...parsley, mint, rosemary, a speck of thyme...still too cold for basil.   

These days are ripe with possibilities:  Besides Friday night dinners (last week, we had a great crowd), there's a few which had me happily flipping through cookbooks. First, Joseph's birthday in a few days, for which company and menu danced in tandem.  Then, needing another excuse, I thought that PORCH, our local hunger relief organization, could use a fundraiser, so I'm trying to arrange that, I hope, at the Dead Mule.  Even more fun:  the other day my friend Jim and I put our heads together to do a small New Spring/New Friends dinner for later in the month, because we are always saying, "You need to meet...", so we are inviting people who can invite people they know whom they want us to know, and vice versa.  

Nope!  Sorry, I'm not disclosing any of those menus, as two are a surprise and one has still to be negotiated.  But I will give you a list of dishes I'm imagining and you can set your imaginations on those:

   Beet hummus.  Orange and saffron rice with fresh peas and pistachios (I've been using pistachios a lot lately).    Breast of duck (organic) with citrus and chinese five-spice.  Avocado and mango salsa.  Blueberry shortcake with lemon cream and mint sprig. Ricotta and spinach puff bites.  Spiced shrimp on arugula. Asparagus roasted with lemon zest.  Lemon pudding. Halibut with persillade. Peruvian chicken drumsticks (and other parts) with green sauce on the side.  Cole slaw, the green fresh kind with carrot.  Baked beans with zucchini (a recipe I concocted in a pinch long ago and, being successful, stayed around).  Ina Garten's easy chocolate mousse with macerated strawberries..

 Enough for now.  Anyway, this post is entitled "Red Shoes", isn't it?  So on to that.

I'm planning for trips, too, but this year domestic.  The first will be to see Aunt Sadie in Hershey in a few weeks, and the next soon after to revisit South Texas, where friends and a little business await.  As usual, I woke up one morning with that idea, and in an hour or two confirmed arrangements.   A little more thought (but not much) went into the third trip, in June, to a photography workshop in Santa Fe.  It's called the Haiku of Photography,  teaching a different way to focus when I'm pointing my camera phone.  (You, readers, will be glad of that.)

Oh, San Antonio in April...and Santa Fe in June, I thought.  How lovely it will be, wearing light clothes and sandals again.  But a glance up the shoe rack made me order a new pair.  Red ones, called something more exotic (I forget what, now).  They arrived yesterday; I walked around awhile on the bedroom carpet, and liked the feel.  So, whatever the lower closet comes up with in the way of spring garments, I'm set.

The thing about red shoes began last September, when packing for that "get out of town" adventure...you remember.  I needed a pair of walking shoes that les rues de l'automne in Paris would tolerate, so Mary Ellen and I stepped into SAS in the mall (I'm not a mall-shopper, but we were close by), and there in front of me were these slipons on the right...comfortable, pretty sturdy, and easy to wear.  They came in tan and black, too, but why would one go to London and Paris in those dullards?  I chose the red.

I'm not much of a clothes horse or shoe fanatic.  Or a shopper.  I race through stores (or online) as fast and infrequently as possible.  Necessity calls the shots.  But a few lucky times, I've run in and found not only the necessary, but the enticing..  Some years ago, I came across a pair of back-strapped Riekers in orange (or apricot, or desert sienna, if you paint); I have worn them to a scuff, but will not part with them.  Later, when I saw a pair of Campers in the same color, I knew they were fate. Clearly that orange experience got me from safe neutral to high color.

It may actually have started in my subconscious, this red-shoe thing.  I'm calling up a memory of me at four or so, at the shore, leaning into the rails of the stairwell while a movie, The Red Shoes, is playing.  My aunt has to take me back up to bed, because, quite frankly, something in the frenetic, despairing dance has frightened me.  I didn't remember the story itself, only the emotion; but watching it as an adult, I found the premise scary enough.  Nonetheless, here I am, 75 years later, ordering red shoes that take me off somewhere.

In fact, I'm wondering why, in London last fall, I didn't buy those black Clark's in red, instead.  Though the shoes fit and fit well...they are my everyday staple now...they could use a little pizzazz.  Maybe I should buy them a pair of red shoelaces. 

Happy Spring, my dear readers. May all your colors be bright and new.

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*Ah!  Here's a sobering turn of mind:  On my way to order those shoelaces just now, I discovered that there is another, quite serious, side to Red Shoes, which needs mentioning.  One artist, Elina Chauvet, does large international installations of painted red shoes to bring light to violence against women. Can we hope that her work helps the world recognize that abuse and begin firmly to intervene against it?   

Elena Chauvet, Red Shoes

In this installation in a Mexico City Square, the women who have been harmed by the abuse against them and their children are represented by all these shoes, painted like blood...life and death together.