"After Visiting Hours" by Leon Weinmann

All unnecessary weight is eliminated. . . . Even the brain cells needed for song are lost and replaced seasonally in some birds.
—All the Birds of North America, p. 63

At midnight, in the sunroom of the ward,
when you’re locked in your pajamas, stupid
with heartbreak, and your throat a frozen stream,
you’ll read how birds in winter lose their minds,
or lose that part that urges them to sing—
each glad cell dying in the blood, until
they know no love but the sparse, sterile seed,
the bitter pills that fatten and preserve
their hearts against this thoughtless cold, this dark.
And yet they seem at peace with this: they love,
they turn away from love, they wait for love
to come for them again, and trusting, sing
the song they knew was gone for good—I knew
you’d come back, I knew it, I knew you’d come.

farro risotto with rancho gordo beans

For my birthday, my incredible friend ordered five pounds of Rancho Gordo beans for me, along with the Rancho Gordo Heirloom Beans cookbook. While I put the beans in their awesomely packaged bags on display in my kitchen, I couldn't decide what recipe merited the addition of these spectacular specimens. Four months later, it hit me, thanks to Smitten Kitchen (one of my all-time favorite blogs) and my love of risotto. 

I took Deb's recipe for barley risotto with beans and greens and used that as a base with a couple twists of my own. First, same incredible friend who gifted me the beans also bought each of us a bag of farro. We had been looking high and low for that elusive grain and once I had it in my hands, I knew I needed to do something with it as soon as possible. So instead of barley, like the recipe originally called for, I used farro.