On days like today I often lean into the significance of these hellebores, also known as Lenten Roses. Flowers bursting out of the ground before the death of winter has faded. It’s like they protest the long winter and refuse to let it linger. No doubt they are fitting symbols during the Lenten expectation for spring and resurrection, but they often find their way into any day or season where I long for life to replace death or for hope to shine into darkness. These little flowers do nothing really, in the grand scheme of the world or the darkness, but they do bloom and they do protest that hopelessness. That, in its simplicity, is what draws me to them. Little humble lights. It’s what draws me to most works of art. It’s some sort of beauty or some sort of word in the middle of all the noise. It pierces through, or even simply stands in the peripheral sidelines, softly speaking or sparking a sense of hope.
The original Hellebore painting actually has a whole bunch of blue ballpoint pen scribbles in the dirt portion of the painting. In a moment of inspiration, 2-year-old Florence added her own artistic mark to this painting, and I love it all the more because of it. How fitting for these hopeful flowers to take the treasured artistic input of my daughter. No artistic endeavor is lost on me, and these scribbles certainly are not.
Time for Some Hearty Food…
This Hearty Stroganoff is something I’ve been making for almost 6 years now. It brings home the comfort and has those warm savory flavors I always come back to and crave. The term stroganoff is used lightly, as this really is a stew-type dish, but a dollop of sour cream really does transform this from a homey stew into a flavor punch. Sitting the stew atop a bed of egg noodles really amplifies the nostalgia, and the fresh herby parsley adds just that bit of fresh that a stew like this needs. Try this one on the first cool day of fall, or on any rainy day and get ready to inhale the smells of flavors of homeyness and heart.
