I am the Walrus of Michigan

I hate to say this out loud, but I read a lot of poetry that makes me want to read less poetry. But when I find someone I really adore, I am loyal. Perhaps even stubbornly loyal. Yesterday on Poetry Daily, www.poems.com, Bob Hicok's poem, "Watchful" reminded me of why I am a loyal reader of poetry. It's like listening to music on a radio station you know might have some good songs, but for some reason hasn't been playing any of them. Sure, you could turn on your i-pod or put in a CD, but you don't. You just stay tuned and just about when you tell yourself you really are silly to still be listening to this station, something finally plays. And you want to stop the car, even if you are driving on the expressway. You want to savor the music and you want to savor the moment you are having savoring the music. Such is this poem or most poems by Bob Hicok. Please check it out. Check him out, he's from Michigan and didn't have a degree until after he had four books of poetry. He's both stunningly funny and stark in his insight. I'll say it again, I am a loyal fan.

With this said, I feel shy to post a recent poem I've been working on, yet perhaps under the tall balding shadow of Bob Hicok the Michigander, I too can try to be a poetic voice for Michigan. Maybe someday, Bob and I could bring back the ever popular campaign our home state had so aptly titled, "Say Yes, to Michigan!" Frankly, I am not sure what we were suppose to be saying yes to? Say yes to the Great Lakes, sure. Say yes to Vernors, double sure. Say yes to the U.P. yup. Say yes to unemployment and shadowed Detroit, not so sure.

You see, my feelings of poetry are very similar to how I feel about Michigan. I am loyal, stubbornly loyal to writing poetry and to the state where I was born, raised and educated in. Yet I find myself not fully able to "Say Yes, to Michigan" and well to say yes to poetry, all the time. For now, in Montana with a lot of flat grass and rock between me and Michigan, I long for lakes and the light of spring in thick birch-oak forests and the smell of wet earth unfolding. But sometimes you just have to write a lot of bad poems to work at one good line of poetry just like maybe you have to live a lot of places to work at your loyalty to where you were born. As I live far from Michigan and write poems about my home, I find myself finally being able to adore the state.

I've never been one for watching sports and I truly don't understand rooting for teams on television, but it is how I feel when I hear of any positive news about Michigan. As if I am cheering from the sidelines for this state that seems to be making headlines as Hicok has said as, "the poster child for our recession." And maybe it has been, with a 24% unemployment rate and a long list of disappointments in the auto industry, Michigan could be photographed on your milk carton. But in the Michigan of my mind, it is beautiful, broad in changing landscapes and there is always water, a "water winter wonderland" ( another more poetic campaign slogan).

And so, I give you this poem, Michigan. I am sure there will be plenty more, I hope. And maybe this is just a clumsy poem to hopefully get closer to writing a good one someday. But I give this to you as a token for all the time I spent staring at your water and dreaming of myself as coming from another state, somewhere not so in the middle. But I thank you, Michigan, for teaching me to accept what we are. We are middleWest. And even if we see ourselves as walruses, may we be beautiful in our seal suits.

(Please note: there aren't any walruses in the Great Lakes. Despite the questions I used to field from tourists who would ask, "Are these shrimp fresh from Lake Michigan?" Sorry, just lakes of fresh water.)

Enjoy the poem.

The Walrus in Us

Winter houses gulp people whole

like a broad mouthed whale, curtained teeth

and chimneyed tails, beached in drifts of snow

and stale forced air. Most days, not even mail

brings relief, just pages of catalog-fresh strangers

smiling barefoot on a distant shore. You forget

your feet on sand, now slippered fins you walk

as horse whale. Your body, walrused in months

of winter, sinks in the ocean of your youth.

So you build a raft from scraps of summer,

where you want to live as winged instead

of pinniped. No longer couched to routine, you float

and crest over waves of middle age, sprouting

grey hair, until you hear a choir barking

in tune and find yourself comfortable in a seal suit

looking zoo cute, even with long whiskers.

Som Tom For Spring

Last week, we had spring. It was a lovely day. I spent it with a shy crocus while I ate lunch outside jacketed out of the wind and under the budding sun. I think the crocus was smart not to bloom quite yet for winter returned and suddenly spring went white again. That nature, it sure is smart.

Unlike me, who quickly found my feet again and boxed up my boots and found my flip flops to click around the house. But that was that one day last week and now we are back to slippers and warm oats for breakfast and a drizzle of honey instead of the sun.

And so we March on in March where we have time changes and spring dated to arrive, but the flip flopping of winter to spring and back again continues. It's as if we are in seasonal limbo when we get these glimpses of green, a bold mud puddle pushing away ice and even the faint smell of earth under melting snow. And yet we must carry on, still layered. We tell ourselves we love oatmeal and woolen hats after all these months while catalogs start to arrive with tanned people all dressed in their catalog-fresh beachwear on "holiday." Maybe you even pass people at work who find it cute to say, "Aloha". No, not so cute.

So perhaps you are like me and you're not going on vacation to some palmed destination and cannot seem to muster a love for anything baked or roasted while you tell yourself you are not deep in cabin or suburbian fever. No, you are simply bored with even your favorite late winter recipes and cannot seem to muster a sense of cravings. You know you want something fresh, something with a pale shade of green. Something with the hint of coconut on your tongue. This Thai salad might not solve any seasonal limbo malaise, but it certainly helped me.

Last week, the day spring came, we also had Thai week at our cooking school and this salad developed from some ingredients we special ordered; however, I'd like to think you too could find some of these even if it isn't Thai week in your world. Perhaps you could invent some type of week for yourself and come up with something even more creative such as a week dedicated to the coconut. Or maybe "everything has gone galangal". Instead of the adage of when in Rome for a week of Italian food, why not make it "when in Cambodia?" Something off the mark, but close enough.

For example, I taught a group of Indian priests, who told me that they didn't have Valentine's day in India, but a day loosely translated as, "The Day I think of You as my Sister." Frankly, I don't think anything got lost in translation, rather a better idea developed. Such is true with this recipe. It calls for green papaya, but if you cannot find it you could use cucumber instead. The important part is to get the flavors of the tangy sweet well deserved vacation in your mouth from anything melted or mashed.

This simple dish called Som Tom in Thai is, according to one food blogger who traveled through Thailand, a favorite among Thai ladies. Maybe I should call it, "My Spring Salad I would serve to my Sister if she could come over for Lunch." Whatever you call it, I hope you make it. Enjoy.

Simple Som Tom

1 Thai chile (these are really hot, you could use a small red chile for color and they are a bit milder in heat than the green ones)
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup lime juice, freshly squeezed limes
2 tablespoons fish sauce
4 tablespoons palm sugar (you could use brown sugar instead)
1 pound green papaya, julienne
1/4 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup toasted coconut
1/2 cup toasted peanuts

1. In a small bowl, add the chile, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and mix well until the sugar dissolves.
2. In a large bowl, add papaya, bean sprouts and coconut and mix well.
3. Add dressing to papaya mixture and blend to coat. Add peanuts last and mix well.

Enjoy your food vacation.

The Citrus Among Us

No matter what form they sprout into as satsuma or pomelo, citrus satisfies during the gray days of January. I'd like to claim that I only eat seasonally but due to the fact that I now live in Montana, I have more than just an earnest interest in eating only beets. Although I have a fondness for these sanguine and hearty veggies, I do have a dwindling root cellar that I have been currently avoiding. Even my strong Irish taste for potatoes seems subdued. Currently, I am boycotting anything boiled and mashed. All I want are blood oranges as an afternoon snack, grapefruit juiced with carrot and ginger and backpacks that hold southern reminders of warm days to come. While out skiing in the cold, the perfect fruit--snug in it's down jacket of rind and pith--manages to keep shape, perfectly sweet in the winter sun. I love to watch the peels curl on the snow. Sometimes I imagine that even birds find the thrown rinds as a treat to store as incense for their nests. Here's proof of the heights I will climb to eat an orange in the cold sun.

There's something about the smell of citrus in winter that makes me feel like I am holding some token of warmth, some reminder that somewhere someone might be sweating not under just layers of wool. This past week we received a package of such a reminder thanks to my aunt Jan, who sends boxes of Honey Bells to her northern family members. We've been devouring them to say the least and finding ways to integrate them into meals in salads, but mostly they've simply become a coveted dessert.

My favorite use of the Honey Bells--besides eating them out skate skiing--was with a salad I adapted from this month's Bon Appetit. I turned it into a rice dish and added a vinaigrette. Also, thanks to my brother in law's salmon we brought back from Alaska, this meal felt like something we truly should bow our heads in thankfulness. Enjoy.

Salmon, Fennel, Mint with a Hint of Sun

1 cup rice, rinsed, cooked & slightly cooled
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 whole star anise
4 cups of water
1 one pound salmon fillet with skin
2 Honey Bells or navel oranges
4 cups fennel, thinly sliced
1 cup fresh mint, chiffonade

1. Place sugar, vinegar, star anise and four cups of cold water in a large deep skillet. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Bring to boil over high heat and stir until sugar dissolves.
3. Add salmon fillet, skin side up, cover and turn off heat.
4. Let stand for ten minutes, then turn salmon over. Cover and let stand for five to six minutes or until salmon is opaque in center.
5. Remove salmon from liquid and cool.
6. Meanwhile make vinaigrette:

Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon juice from orange

7. This vinaigrette is really just a template, play around with sweet and sour and yes, fish sauce is a key ingredient here even though there is a small amount.
8. Segment your oranges. First cut the bottom 1/4 inch off each orange. Stand orange up on flat end and using a sharp pairing knife, cut off peel and white pith. Hold peeled orange in one hand over a large bowl and cut between membranes, releasing segments into the bowl.
9. Add fennel, mint and flank salmon into bowl and toss with vinaigrette.
10. Season with salt and pepper and first place cooled rice on a plate and place salmon salad on top.

I seriously thought about taking a photo of this because it was so lovely, but by the time I went for my camera, both my husband and myself had devoured this dish.

To The Waterfall

I've met few people who've vacationed to Mammoth Cave in March. Most Midwesterners head to Florida or the Texas shore for spring break, but one year our family headed to the hills, the Kentucky hills with a stop off at the state's National Park. I might have been seven or eight, I don't remember, but what I do recall was being hesitant of the smell of wet earth and the quiet of all that darkness so far below the ground. Sure, I recall the folklore and some stories of the caves discoveries, but mostly I remember a hike we took to a waterfall outside of the park.

It was gray and slightly raining. We cloaked ourselves in parkas and started heading towards the trail map. I was fumbling with my jacket and fell behind, I recall passing another family debating to hike or not. Their voices were calm, but concerned and the debate was about their young daughter and if she could handle walking over all the wet rock and slippery earth. She looked my age, my height and she too had heavy glasses. I recall listening and wanting to interrupt and tell them that they could come with us, but I didn't. I just stared. The little girl stood between her parents saying nothing. The parents decided against the hike. The girl didn't argue, she followed suit and watched as her mother helped her take her jacket off and climb back into the car.

I caught up with my family and really, I cannot tell you more details of the waterfall other than the cold wet rock layered in moss was dotted with spring flowers. While I stood with wet tennis shoes and damp socks all I thought about was that little girl, somewhere in her warm car looking out the window. I thought that if I knew her, I would send her a picture, a letter or some detail about the waterfall. I didn't want her to feel like she was missing out.

This past week, my book was rejected yet again and this time I was given comments in regards to my poems. I am beginning to think I would rather have a sterile letter simply stating the rejection in polite business English. No, not this letter for this editor found it an opportunity to be more personal and to tell me that my poetry is arbitrary. I responded in polite business English myself, but found her word choice a bit harsh.

And what does this story of the girl at the waterfall parking lot and being rejected have in common? Frankly, I write poems for that girl. I think and hope I will always write poems for her. In my mind, she's my audience or the person who maybe didn't go along with me and I want to do my best to show, explain, share and hopefully give her an opportunity to experience too.

I'd like to think that this desire doesn't come from my ego as much as it is from a belief that if you want to write than you need to have a story worth sharing, a poem with a point. Something to give to this world as an offering and not as some absolute. So here it goes, a new poem for a new year. Enjoy.

Sirens at 31o

Clara hangs blank CD’s from cherry trees,

to blind hawking magpies, while her daughters

wait for wind to turn the silver in sun

to catch seconds of rainbows without rain.

The three trees weight heavy in late summer

like Clara’s girls grown, still living under her

eye and locked screened door. A window opens

at dusk lifting hints of radio to fill the orchard

with pitched notes in the off key of dance halls,

tight jeans and slow smiles from boys under hats.

The girls sing louder than a meadow starred

with flowers. Louder than drown out owls.

As if their song were a car filled with gas

each chord a knitted feather to lift the past.

The Warm Room

Until not so recently, I spent a lot of time around the holiday season waiting in train stations, bus stations and I even camped out for four days, (yes, four days ) in an airport terminal waiting for a storm to pass. Luckily, the four day hiatus was post-Christmas and it did not look like this train station. Most people I know find waiting in random locations tiresome and annoying. Franky, I miss it terribly. Yes, I miss even places like this train station in Poland where the task of traveling sometimes felt more like an act of faith than an activity. Traveling in Poland was more of a crap shot as to where you might really end up, but even more improbable to predict was the duration of time it would take to go anywhere. Thankfully, a lot of places I ended up looked like this.
This is the place I wish all trains would end up. Maybe they do. Maybe in the locomotives of our minds we each have some preordained destination where one day at random like the Polish train system we will crank open the doors and find a spring field and one bold poppy, waiting. Just like us. Just like us.

And this is why I like waiting at stations, somehow it's like a democratic purgatory of sorts where everyone is alike, everyone waits just like everyone else. No one can out wait another or one up someone's ability to wait. Although I recall watching a group of Serbian men one New Year's try to out wait the world by singing the longest song that latest seven days. They seem to have been seated in a warm room of an Austrian train station for a entire week or seven bottles of vodka which ever came first, just waiting. Perhaps they were waiting for a train that would take them to some other time and not just some distant town.

I've also witnessed people who think they can out wit waiting. A cellphone in hand and one in a protected pocket and laptop in tow, shouting into one of their cellphones to some poor customer service person at an airline company. I've heard sentences shouted, such as, "Do you have any idea who I am," while not so secretly purchasing a ticket on sidestep.com. These people are amazing to watch and I cannot believe their hasn't been a coffee table book of photos taken at airports, to show the agony of defeat or the triumph of home comings. I guess there are just some moments of vulnerability that are just too much to see.

And odd as it might sound, maybe it is just the vulnerability of waiting that I like, the fact that people will strike up conversations with you and openly discuss their views of politics or hope to exchange personal philosophies and all with or without knowing each others first names. My fondest of conversations happen when both parties were speaking different languages and somehow, something got communicated. I recall getting relationship advice once by a man who only spoke Hungarian, I don't speak Hungarian. But somehow, we managed to find ways to learn about each other. It's amazing what you can only learn from hand gestures. I'm sure if any of you who are reading this are mimes then you can really back me up here. I quietly applaud you.

But sometimes, all it has to be is a phrase, a simple gesture that you hold on to. So I send this poem to you as a reminder. If you get stuck somewhere this holiday season, look around, take off your i-pod and maybe you'll have your own moment in limbo that feels surreal and thankfully a gift from the warm waiting room. Happy Holidays. I hope all of your travels end up in a field or as least may it feel like it. Enjoy.

Stop Request

You wouldn’t mistake your mother

for a woman who walks through glass

and sits beside your book.

So you pass the time and frame

the woman’s face, the one who

isn’t your mother. She’s like a Budapest tram

ticket you carry in your wallet

next to the taste of oranges

shared with a boy whose name

you don’t remember. You watch her hands brush

a bit of hair away from her brow while she opens

a can of beer. Not cheap beer either

and rinses her teeth. The warm yeast fills

the room like the smell of sex on cotton. She spits

on the floor. In that moment you love her

more than your mother, who would never spit.

When you leave the room, she shouts

Happy New Year in German. And you believe her.

SkiJøring for Sissies

I've never felt bad about using the word sissy. Sure, I've been known to enforce word restrictions in class, but sissy has never been one of them. Perhaps it says more about me and my desire to be willing to jump into any physical test or at least try--even if it is badminton. I cannot say I was born an athlete, nor would I say I was born a poet, but it's surprising how little talent you need to actually feel good about just giving something a try--be it writing or flailing your body. Even if it is as odd as being pulled by a small dog in arctic temperatures around a snow-filled golf course, attempting a sport directly translated from Norwegian to mean "ski driving," Skijøring, I must admit, is very inspiring. Plus, you get to use such strange letters as the sliced o to make you feel better about your linguistic skills if you aren't that sporty.

And in the history of poetry, you rarely hear about sporty poets climbing mountains or circumnavigating anything but their own brains in search of themselves. The Hemingways of this world seem suited to fiction, riding out their days in Western backdrops along the backs of horses or venturing off for years on end whale hunting, sailing, pirating with nothing but bags of wind and the hope to return to stable shores and typewriters. Their romance with taming nature resembles the task of trying to tell a good story--a long affair of battling odds and time. Included above is my own (failed) attempt to look like I know what I am doing with a gun. I know, I will stick to a pencil.

But poets? We are an odd bunch. We usually work erratically spending long hours of the day or night alone, then sleep it off and go to our jobs that might not resemble anything poetic in hopes that we'll feel like writing again. If we were to be put in some sort of police line-up, a poet might be hard to identify. Minus the tendency towards tweed, poets are really hard to sum up physically. It's not like some genetic disposition like basketball or swimming where the body might guide the path. No, poetry doesn't work like that. I cannot recall hearing someone examine a baby's hands or feet and claiming their destiny, "My that furrowed brow will make him a fine thinker, maybe he'll be a writer?"

Nor is it as mysterious or mythical as some might try to persuade. Actually, if anything being a poet is like being a farmer. Seriously. There needs to be a whole lot of faith in something as temperamental as the weather and a stubborn and sometimes overly prideful belief in your efforts amounting into something, if anything at all. Yet in the case of poets, not farmers, the faith lies in something even more elusive than rain, ( I shyly pause before saying this to not sound too trite), you have to have faith in inspiration and your own capabilities to find it--even in the dark. I like when asked if Faulkner wrote everyday he said, "I only write when I'm inspired, and frankly, I get inspired everyday." Sure, he wrote fiction, but some of the most poetic fiction, so I think it works.

But what works the most for inspiration, isn't waiting for it to come or chasing it across lands and sea, I like to use the analogy of skijoring. Skijoring is a sport based upon a simple principle. You have a harness, the dog has a harness and both of your harnesses are connected and if you move fast enough on your skis and the dog moves fast enough pulling you, you'll find an odd rhythm. Sure, you have sort of forced this rhythm, but it feels somewhat liberating and endless all at the same time.

Now, unlike my husband who holds a world cup in Skijoring, I recently tried it for the first time. I must admit I was oddly displacing my memory of learning to water ski with the idea of skate skiing behind a dog that resembles the size and appearance of a juvenile seal. I had these visions of being pulled into snow banks and being drowned in cold temperatures and arctic winds. Thankfully, I was wrong. I was gracefully given a small female dog, named Mabel, and we were harnessed up and after thorough instruction such as, "Just keep skating. If you fall, the dog will stop." I shyly called, "okay Mabel, lets....um..go?" And that's all it took. Suddenly, this seal leaped and we took off with a short tug and oddly enough some sort of rhythm began.

As I've stated previously, I really cannot claim any physical talent in sports, but I can occasionally keep rhythm and in the bitter cold and still skies of Fairbanks, Alaska little Mabel and myself started moving, together. Yes, I did fall. And yes, Mabel did stop. But we got up and kept going, kept trying to tap into that feeling of some closeness to breath, beat and bray of our hearts pounding under all those layers, skating away from all that disbelief. I wanted to keep doing laps around that golf course or really I felt inspired despite all the doubt and darkness.

And that's what poetry does or tries to do at its best. It can take the simplest of situations and turn them into moments you keep as coveted memories, to tap into, to get close enough to feeling your heart and head aren't at odds, but simply a harness connecting them, moving together in hopes your efforts might just move or inspire. But the real task? It isn't just feeling this, it's trying to put this rhythm into words in the hope you can do it well enough to also inspire someone else. I hope I am not too much of a sissy to keep trying myself.

The Souffle in Each of Us

It has been far too long. Far too long since I've written and I bet far too long since you've made a souffle. Now I am sure you can come up with a variety of reasons why you haven't made a souffle in awhile or if ever just as I have a variety of reasons why I haven't written. It doesn't matter. Now, you are here and I am here and so, let's be thankful for being present. But really, let's really be grateful for butter and eggs. Regardless of what you find to bind these two sentient creatures, such as chocolate or cheese, butter and eggs do their modest magic to create the true showmanship of any souffle.

Let's get it straight. Souffles are rather existential creatures. Seriously, they demand a lot of attention to make and they aren't intended as a dish to sit alone in the fridge as leftovers. You make souffles to be eaten right away. Despite their French origin, I tend to think of souffles as being more Italian in personality especially in their completion as if they come out of the oven all puffed up and wanting to grab the recognition of everyone in the room. Saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me. Tell me how wonderful I already know I am." But let us not forget their humble beginnings, especially this souffle that I send to you. It is far more pilgrim than pomp.

This souffle hails from perhaps the most solemn and least showcased vegetable, the carrot. Please don't expect this souffle to puff itself like Napoleon on a white horse nor will this be a dish that you might want to make for some hot date. This is Middlewest where we honor the quiet and stable creatures of this world. Here in Middlewest, the carrot is king. Yup, this carrot souffle comes off as not even the supporting side dish on Thanksgiving, more like the gaffer, the electronics guy who makes all the others shine, letting even the one hit wonder brussel sprout roasted in balsamic accompanied with dried cherries take a moment to be the Turkey's coveted sidekick. This carrot souffle is more of a mediation than a simple side. It's more of a dish to make while you are married than dating.

But for me, this carrot souffle symbolizes Thanksgiving in tastes and cultural texture (if that could be a term) For now, just roll with it. Thanksgiving is a time to be gracious, slow and mindful. To feel comforted in all that you presently have and have achieved. For years, my father would place five kernels of corn on each of our bare plates as a reminder that actually after the first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a period of great hardship and starvation. The five kernels symbolize how for days some Pilgrims were rationed just five kernels of corn, like some poorly dealt hand of even worse luck, to survive a whole days work of toiling on frozen soil and cold pews to pray. Don't get me wrong, my dad wasn't trying to make the day a real downer as much as a time to remember how little you can live on and still be grateful.

Thanksgiving is a such a modest holiday, a time to just eat and perhaps nap and read a book and slowly let the warmth of the room allow you to slip into memory or mediation. Perhaps one of my favorite Thanksgivings took place in a kitchen the size of a shoe box, seriously, I am sure most of you have larger closets than this kitchen. I was teaching in Poland, living with a British vegetarian and for some odd reason I wanted to bake a Thanksgiving meal in my Russian oven that sometimes worked.

What did work that year was the carrot souffle filling our apartment with the foreign smell of America, a whiff of what I wanted to try to show my roommate, that America had a quiet side, a humble beginning of sorts and that once a year our culture actually remembered and rejoiced. As if our own pomp could be dulled at least for one day in honor of the tastes of rosemary, turkey, cranberries, cinnamon, onions and juniper berries. Somehow these smells communicated more than my stories or family photos of what I wanted to try and share or show about being American.

I recall my roommate, Anna, walking into the kitchen confused yet drawn by the smells I had somehow managed to conjure up from bartering at markets. That night despite the fact that Anna hadn't eaten meat in over three years she ate her entire plate clean. I had a few Poles over and listened to music on our cassette player and tried to explain national holidays to each other, but mostly we talked about food.

How Anna would only needed to smell the faintest hint of an orange to be in her nona's (who lived outside of Rome) garden, Tomek said if he smelled warm strawberries in butter, he knew his mother was filled with spring and happiness, while she made berry pierogies. Each of us had some flavor that wasn't just a national dish or icon rather some memory of humility and grace. And food is like that, a little bit of attention and care and you can recreate something to fill a distant room far from your home, your family, your culture to share something as simple as carrots. Without translation.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

Carrot Souffle

2 cups carrots, peeled & diced
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup sugar ( I don't add sugar b/c the carrots are sweet enough)
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook carrots in boiling water. Drain carrots and let cool for about five minutes.
3. Place carrots in blender and add butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt and eggs.

4. Add flour, baking powder and milk. Blend again.

5. Bake for 45 minutes or until fork ready, like a cake. Remember this won't puff.

6. Share and enjoy.