Spilling Blindness on the Seat of a Bus

Excerpt from My Journal – May 16th, 2009.

Tucked into these sheets everything feels more comforting.  Spilling over into this beautiful book with French white-lined paper receiving my feelings, my frets, my fears.  I am releasing, reliving, and relieving.  All I wanted was a serene, semi-elegant life of creating, contemplating, and finding my calling.

Instead I feel like I’m walking through a storm of sheets of paper that are flying helter-skelter in the wind’s force.  The driving gale batters me with these pages. They’re blank and they act like moment to moment barriers blocking the way to my long range vision.  I can’t see ahead, movement is slow, and interference is never-ending.

I was dreaming when the phone rang this morning.  Bailey (my soft-coated wheaten terrier b.1986-2000) and I were on a bus together.  She had her head in my lap and someone near me was with us; sort of. Someone further up in the bus criticized my having a dog on the seat.  Inwardly I replied, “Dogs are perfectly clean.”  Then Bailey and I were standing at the edge of a solid green lawn that could have been the perimeter of a golf course and it had an underlying coldness to the atmosphere and a darkness and it wasn’t a golf course and it was daytime.

Bailey was so real and yet I could feel the light weight of her skeleton confirming my knowledge of her passing in 2000. ‘The End’

Things didn’t seem so rough when I had “Snuffer” (Bailey).  I’m crying a lot and Rand gives me a hug standing beside me as I sit here.  He then brings me a big roll of toilet paper as I fill up a cocktail napkin and as if that isn’t enough he reaches for my Hermes scarf draped over a nearby chair and that brings up a laugh.

Bailey always took an interest in me:  it was perpetual.

Maybe not being able to see where you’re going is a blessing.  In our culture it is the norm to make plans, set out goals, and say what it is you’re going to do; not be buffeted about by the winds of change.  Do I anchor myself, or do I set sail and observe the view. The latter I guess.  I’m a romantic looking for adventure.  I am???  When did this happen?? I wrote it, I must be feeling it.  Now to try it.

Note:  The exterior of our apartment building is being pressure-washed pre re-painting. Our glass enclosed solarium has lots of windy leaks and I have insisted we plasticize the inside of the glass walls and tape them securely in place.

The solarium has a plastic drop sheet taped over every window right down to the floor. It’s quite attractive the way the thin sheets diffuse the daylight.  ”I’ve put up my sheers!” I tell Rand.

Having left the sheets up to protect us from water and fumes from paint, we saunaed as we slept in the solarium  for twelve weeks during summer’s premature arrival.

Question:  Why don’t you sleep in a bedroom?

Answer:  Because it’s tied up as a studio?

Email letter to a friend in late 2009:

Hi Judi,

“It’s exciting to hear the way our lives have somewhat paralleled each other’s.  You’re right, it’s the freedom to lock up and go out the door that is most appealing about condo living. And yes, being near water is just as you’ve described it.  Before we moved in I brought a friend over to see the space and as Katherine and I stood looking out to the enclosed glass balcony I suddenly shrieked, “I’m going to put our bed out here.”  She laughed but she knew I meant it.  I ordered an extra-long double bed, bought a funky chandelier at Jim’s Hardware across the street, placed 6 candles in it, and set 3 of Rand’s stone sculptures and my dead eucalyptus tree with tiny Christmas lights at the end of the room and I was done: all happy.  I tend to open the windows wide before getting into warm covers.  The one next to my head sometimes spits rain in.  The mixture of mountain and sea air is gorgeous. The ‘best’ is the sounds of the waves throughout the night.  Lots of freighters pass by with a long row of lights along the top of the hull and it can look like a necklace illuminated in the dark.  The cruise ships that have passed (very likely with you and your husband on them) look most magical in the early morning light.

"Room with the ocean at our feet."

Three years after I did this I picked up a design magazine and saw an article displaying interiors with a bed as the focal point of the livingroom.  YES!!  It’s enjoyable, functional, and decorative when played up with textiles, pillow jungles, throws, books, mags, your dogs and cats.  Tucked into these sheets everything feels more comforting.

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

Don’t Think Small-Think Big: The Biggest War is Yet to be Fought!

"Monsanto's Seeds of Distinction will Cause Our Extinction"

Genetically Engineered GMO seeds and foods have been a source of misery for my soul for a very long time.

But even if the GE-seeds did deliver what was promised, the real problem with them are the patents they come with. “The biotech companies are monopolizing seeds themselves, actually privatizing the DNA of life.  They sell the GE-seeds at many times the price of normal seeds.  In India, where Bt-cotton farmers have been committing suicide in huge numbers because of debt, Monsanto sells Bt-cotton seed at 1000% higher than normal seeds”.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html.

Please check out this short and direct explanation of how Monsanto is Round-ing up alfalfa and systematically eliminating each individual’s right to choose between conventional and organic foods.  Alfalfa is a main source of cattle feed and as this GMO mutant rapidly pollutes organic fields people who are fearful of, “mad cow disease” will no longer have the option to buy organic beef. Three comments (and ‘Moi’) follow this post at the link below and they contain excellent information.

http://dcprogressive.org/2010/01/25/food-reg/

Do we want to find our hands bound by losing ownership to the seeds of life?  Will we tolerate one publicly traded company to control whether or not we’ll eat, how much we’ll eat, how much we’ll pay to eat, and whether our grandchildren and beyond live or die because just maybe the GMO experiment fails because its mutations even to date cannot be controlled or predicted.

Read:  Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

“Oryx and Crake explores developments in science and technology.  This society, which not only tolerates but promotes such extreme commercialization and commodification of life, has also produced an exacerbated gap between rich and poor, as well as the commodification of human life and sexuality. Oryx and Crake does not depend on imagining new scientific or technological discoveries; the novel merely extrapolates on the basis of technologies that are, in principle, available today and carries current social and economic developments and their attendant ethical choices to their radical conclusions.”   (Wikipedia)

I seldom post an alert for my viewers yet I believe the underbelly of Monsanto needs to be exposed as the out-growth of impending catastrophe gains momentum.  Shun GMO products and let your circle of influence know about Monsanto’s determination to become the one-party ruler creating the world’s monstrous reign of terror and domination.

Thank you all for making February my best month since I began blogging last year in mid-November.  XXOO   My family’s happy: less harping, more blogging.

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

Checklist: Get Blog Done Before 3:00 A.M.!!!

Get dishes done before 3 days.  It was inevitable, a fully booked week leads to “Mount Dish.”  Did you know yoghurt left out even just overnight bonds or becomes part of the surface of the bowl it’s been eaten out of. I know now that I can use it for grout.  The bowls were not washed and I asked Rand if he would like his yoghurt on a dinner plate just this once.  It only takes once to set a precedent so I heard a polite refusal.  Darn!

Have you noticed when a cup is only rinsed after tea and used repeatedly over a number of days you can count the rings inside like the growth rings in a tree trunk.  3 rings = 3 days. Gently used means:  something was served today and later the bowl was whisked over with an organic paper towel (“There, that should be alright!”) and the next dish was served in the refreshed bowl.  Out of clean knives?  Not to worry, just use the handle of a large spoon or fork and the butter doesn’t know the difference.  Trust me. These little secrets are taken from my collection of short-cuts; fast lanes to by-pass a full sinkboard and go directly to the new post, to interview, or photograph a subject, or sneak in a solitary game of Lexulous.  Could it be possible, I wonder, that the dishes are behind because I have 3 games going with partners online…Nah!

The prompt to write:  All Feelings Must Be Put into Action! That’s why I keep Jack Daniels and chocolate covered marshmallow domes at my elbow.  They help me push in the opposite direction to see how far and where I can go.

Successful writers write every day.  Write every day even when you don’t want to! Chocolate Blogs are stellar for this purpose.

Writing can be a collage…small pieces arranged beautifully. Back to the blog where small daily posts become large volumes that speak in a rich tome.  I recently found a good idea: a collection of poems, when burned to a CD, become a “disk-book” instead of a “chap book”.

If it helps, summarize what you’re doing in one descriptive sentence.

Observe what’s going on around you – eavesdrop.  A swell practice for collecting dialogue to mine later.

Think about who your audience is and be specific.

There are turning points in writing and living.  There comes a time, often a death or a discovery, when you hear yourself say: “This is what I really want and now I’m going to get it.” Here is the way to grasp the writing life in the form of a writing tiger:  let your audience hear you purr and growl.

"Tiger Juice"

"...and you thought it was full!"

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

What Jeans are You Wearing this Season?

The first question is: "What jeans are you wearing this season?"

It’s the beginning of the question session at Vancouver College of Art and Design.  I have been invited to talk to Fashion Merchandising students about my art and process by Jannette Maedel who is teaching these students fashion writing.

• I wear Acne jeans!

Is the beginning of your design process the same every time?  Describe your process.

• My process is always changing and evolving; fueled by my emotional nature.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

• From nature, lucid dreams, the history of art and design, cultural – visual milieux.

Do you ever fear that you will run out of ideas?

• No – never!  I fear I’ll run out on my life’s timeline.

Who do you do your art for:  yourself or an audience?

• I do my art for myself because I can’t not do it:  it’s pervasive and permeates all that I am.   I like others to see the work and experience it.

How long does it take to complete a piece of art?

• From 27 minutes all the way through to no boundaries of time (infinite).  Every project is unique.  Each one depends on process, and process depends on the following factors:  money, research, support, supplies, environment, market, resolution, time sensitivity, and the ‘Artist’s Zeitgeist’.

What was the last book that you read?  Did it influence your work?

• ‘Second Sight’ by Judith Orloff, M.D.  Orloff is a psychiatrist and psychic who tells a compelling story revealing her courageous journey to embrace her psychic gifts.  All of us are born with psychic abilities and this ground-breaking book will show you how to recognize psychic experiences in your everyday life.  The book is hard to put down.  It’s had a powerful effect on me and I’ll likely see its influence on me as my work evolves.

Do you keep some of your art or give any of it away?

• I donate at times to fundraisers.  Some has been given away.

Do you listen to music when you work?

• Usually I have music playing.  I listen to jazz – sometimes blues or classical.

What do you mean by, “Harmony is a velvet universe?”

• Years ago when I first said this, I believed peace could be universally achieved.  More recently I feel my belief to be purely utopian.  Warring parties have existed for-ever and my words are my wish, they’re my divine dream, my intent.  I want to fell weapons with mindfulness and love. Wesley, a student in yesterday’s class, has written: “As hard as we all try to make the world a perfect place it will never happen.  I once heard that angels need demons…and it’s true; how do we know we’re doing good if there is no bad to compare it to?” www.wesleyjbarisoff.blogspot.com February 17th, 2010 ‘is it just me or is it harder to breathe‘?

What specifically in the natural beauty of Vancouver inspired you with your work?

• Mountains, the sea in all its moods, trees, flowers and flowering shrubs.  I have invented a color called: “Vancouver Grey.”  It is a distinct color I see all around me in our atmosphere.  This perfectly balanced neutral shade needs to be manufactured to compete with “Payne’s Gray”. “Vancouver Grey” weather makes an outstanding background for photographs; it reflects detail and adds extra depth.  Shoot when it’s overcast.

Who are your favorite artists?

• Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Hannah Hoch, Alexander Calder, Edouard Manet…too many to list.  I used to sit for hours in the fine arts section of the Library at the University of British Columbia in the late nineties and pour through every book, over and over, page by page until my head was reeling with colors and lines and tangles of inspiration.  This old building that housed the library designated a large concrete room to visual arts.  I very much felt like I was below ground. The few windows were inside and small.  The glass was frosted and all the panes had chicken wire fastened over them.  I loved moving a stool along the aisles and sitting hunched over under flickering fluorescent lights dreaming of all I could construct.  I could hear the dark. The cold weather rained on the other side of the walls and this was like music to mentally create by. Strangely, I seemed to be the only one in there late at night which added another dimension to time and art absorbing me and taking me in fully.

When you were a child, did you dream of being who you are now?  How did your dreams and expectations shape the person you are today?

• When I was a child I was skittish; abrupt noises, adults, energy fields…often caused me to experience anxiety, moods, and sometimes fatigue.  My dreams were relentless, aggressive toward me, and saturated with color.  I’m passionate about continually learning and doing new things; this has kept me shape-shifting as life unfolds.

What are your favorite styles in photography?

• Still Life, Social Landscape, Street Photography, Milieux of Cities and People, Reflections, Fashion and Nudes.

What tools do you have “on-the-go” for inspiration?

• Color always, and a jillion beads, trinkets, buttons, drawers full of saved paper, dried bones and flowers, one dead bird, photographs, magazines, books everywhere, my Maternal Grandmother’s Love Letters, rivers of sentimental clutter and a narrow path to navigate through.  Sometimes I feel “crazy overwhelmed” with it all, yet I know I would be depressed and despondent without it. These papered boxes, tablescapes, and shelves are reminisces of people, places, times, and everything in my life.  Even the insides of the cabinets look like collage.  As a full-time artist, I cannot relate to all my clutter as a conglomeration, when I can “legally” call it an “assemblage”.

When you write, do you prefer writing in a quiet place or do you write anywhere?

• I write anywhere, everywhere; sometimes even as I walk. I always tuck a few index cards into my pocket or purse when I go out so I can make notes and record observations.

I love your poem about the pair of jeans.  What inspired you to write about that?

• ‘A Pair of Jeans’, came through while I was sitting in a group at Emily Carr.  We had been meditating and doing warm-up exercises when this flowed through the tip of my pen.  Poetry comes through me at odd times.  I don’t sit down to write poems. Someone said the poem reminded her of Rita Wong’s voice in ‘monkeypuzzle’.

Wong’s poetry often addresses her relationship with her environment. Her poems show a close connection with nature and a support for local product, while expressing distaste for genetically modified foods. In forage, her poem ‘the girl who ate rice almost every day’ encourages the reader to look up Monsanto in the US patent database, and see how many patents there are for genetically modified foods, including the type of foods affected. There is also a poem, ‘canola queasy’ dedicated to Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer sued by Monsanto because genetically engineered canola blew into his fields. Her work challenges the reader to think about how they effect their environment. ^{(Wikipedia). I see now from the excerpt above that Wong and I share the same sentiments regarding seeds as life and death.  Over the weekend I will post an image with text I’ve created Re:  Monsanto.}

What advice do you have for young artists and designers?

• Be 100% yourself!  Be authentic, explore, read, be curious.  Delve into photo and art history for inspiration, then put your own twist on it.

Having written this up as a blog, I noticed these questions could be used to draft an Artist Statement.  Go for it!!

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

The Sound Coming Out of Flowers

"French Cinema"

"Powder Pink"

"Millionaire"

“Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose.”

Turkish Proverb

"Gold Shoulder"

"Dahling"

“Because it is sure of its beauty, the rose makes terrible demands on us.”

Alain Meilland

"High Key"

""coup de grace"

“Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.”
Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

Victorian Primrose Pressed Between Heavy Volumes

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote:

“To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”  Well, guess what!  ”To blog is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”  Now ya know!

My journal has gone into therapy. It accuses me of not speaking to it for long periods of time.  Throughout this time my nails have grown so long (no manicures please, just unpolished so I can use my hands without squealing: “Oh, I chipped a nail!”) it’s becoming difficult to type as they slide and skitter across the darn clumsy keys (some of which stick). Once typing is too tough, I’ll pick up my pen again and snuggle into the sheets.  I probably need a change of color having used rubine red ink for some time now, a transfer to deep purple would add a royal glow to my remarks.

Dickinson wrote and sent this poem, “A Route of Evanescence,” to Thomas Higginson in 1880.

"A Graphologist's Puzzle"

I have read very little on Graphology even though it fascinates me.  This looks intriguing; from the wee drop of knowledge I have, I notice “sad lines” with a slight downward slant. There are also generous gaps between the letters and this might unravel as…well…trying not to come unravelled. When letters don’t  join and are this far apart angst likely lurks within the writer.

Dickinson also wrote:

“A word is dead /when it is said, /some say./    I say/ it just begins/ to live that day.”

“This rings true for me:/ I set the word free”.(N.R. Rigets)

Emily and I are playing our own ‘Haiku’ games with these quotes.  Feels like hopscotch. Emily goes first:  4 / 4 / 2 and 2 / 4 / 4.  Now it’s my turn: 5 and 5!!  I’m one of Emily’s ‘new’ friends; having recently begun to pay attention to this reclusive Miss.

“Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.  The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.  Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends”. (Wikipedia)

“Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson.” (Wikipedia)

It is Thomas H. Johnson’s collection that interests me.  I don’t agree with original poems being censored with splotches of ink, or by strikes of a nib, or uninclusion.

Dickinson’s words have lived to tell. “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” This “predictive” quote comes alive when we acknowledge her niche in the temple of fame.

“Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, she has become widely acknowledged as an innovative, pre-modernist poet.  As early as 1891, William Dean Howells wrote that “If nothing else had come out of life but this strange poetry, we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world, and could not be left out of any record of it.”  Twentieth-century critic Harold Bloom has placed her alongside Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Hart Crane.” (Wikipedia)

Writing – Dish by Dish

"Ready to Roll-Rite"

I’m discovering I can take all day to do the dishes.  It works this way:  whenever I’m in the vicinity of the kitchen to get a snack or a hot drink, I add a small pile of dirty dishes to the soapy water waiting in the sink.  While the kettle boils I can wash half a dozen dishes, and while the tea steeps I can rinse them. It’s all done by hand because the building I live in is fifty years old and it was back then that women were well-dressed, well-aproned, dishwashers themselves.

Dish by dish, or “Bird by Bird”, as Anne Lamott would say in her book about the writing life, the process becomes more digestible, freer and easier to do when we break it down bit by bit. In Lamott’s words:

“I know some great writers; writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much…Very few writers know what they’re doing until they’ve done it.”

I identify with the quote above and many of the subjects that are dear to Lamott’s heart. The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness – and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books for me are medicine.”

“If books are medicine, then libraries are drugstores”. (N.R. Rigets)

Books have always comforted me.  Answers to my inner questions have been revealed page by page to provide me with wisdom I was lacking.   There would be times when I was desperate for a way to dissolve confusion, or to find a proven method to eradicate fears and anxiety. In each instance the library’s shelves offered many voices for me to choose from and a feeling of relief would result from knowing others had experienced similar feelings. I would become very excited by their printed words offering me new perspectives on life itself.

Books introduce me to new people when I read about artists and designers, coaches, anthropologists, writers, cooks, photographers, DIY experts, and individual biographies.  A lot of my reading is non-fiction so I can learn to do what others do that I haven’t tried yet.

This is how I came to learn about blogging.  Co-authored by Chris Garrett and Darren Rowse, “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income” caught my attention.  I was dissatisfied with my website:  I found it incomplete and static as many websites are.  The book explains that a blog is a particular type of website and that many blogs began as personal journals.  As an unrelenting journaler, and “a woman of the sheets” that’s all I needed to hear!  I began learning all I could about blogging and have reaped the satisfaction of conversation, community, and invitations to meet other bloggers at distant destinations in the future.

Many female bloggers feel endowed with a smooth sense of personal power from “owning” a blog.  It’s enriching and liberating.

• There is a potential to get noticed in your business, and in community.  Fame is always a possibility.

• A well-read blog puts you in touch with a wide variety of people; you can make contacts and network.

Noticing a relationship between books and blogs I can see why I feel great delving into either one of them, or both at once which happens most often.

"New Shoots"

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

Colors of Halston’s 1978 Runway Show

Like Coco Chanel, Halston began his career as a milliner.  His international fame began when he designed the “Pillbox” hat worn by Jackie Kennedy to the Presidential Inauguration.  From then on Halston became the First International Fashion Superstar.

“At a time when fashion shows were still stiff and formal affairs in which models walked down runways holding numbered placards in silence, Halston had instructed his models to strut down the runway to music, holding up copies of “Valley of the Dolls.” The clothes they wore — casual, free, functional and strangely pajama-like — seemed to instantly embody the feminist and egalitarian spirit of the era.”  (Excerpt from: www.salon.com)

One of Halston’s early Runway Shows in 1978:

Diana Vreeland attended wearing a black cashmere t-shirt, and slacks with a red cashmere scarf tied around her waist and another tied around her neck:  All Halston.

This outfit was accessorized with her own jewelry designs including the “Ivory Tooth” and “Ivory Cuff”.  All was topped off with a magnificent sable coat.

The air had the dryness of black paper taffeta.

The eighteen foot ceiling was paved with mirrors.  Deep oxblood carpets reflected from the floor.

A profusion of potted Calla Lilies adorned Parsons tables and guests sat on chrome folding chairs.

Halston’s color palette included:  purple, lilac, lemon, red, navy, cobalt blue, green, black, grey, and white.

"Halston 1978 Palette"

“Simply Halston” by Steven Gaines (Putnam, 1991)

The fashion world is not nearly as malicious and degenerate–i.e., interesting–as it once was. Today’s designers, ever conscious of the bottom line, are indeed disappointingly sensible and well behaved. In “Simply Halston,” Steven Gaines reminds us of the days when hubris-riddled designers went on cocaine-fueled rampages. “In 1978, Dionysus had hired a press-agent and New York was headlong into an era of staggering permissiveness.” After you read this book, Mercedes Benz Fashion Week will seem like a trip to the Mormon Tabernacle.  (Excerpt from: “The Wall Street Journal” – Saturday, February 20th, 2010.)

Copyright © Nicole Rigets

Micke M. Meets Model in the Cosmos

"Will Micke M. ask Her Out?"

Micke M. is My Favorite Party Mouse!!

Will Miss Model go out with him?

What’s her name, anyway?

What would make the first date great for Micke M. and Model?

Send me the story!

Write a mouse-tale!

Make a comment!

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

CONFIDENTIAL: Unlocking the Secret of Perfect Pumpkin Pie

Many pumpkin pies suffer from soggy crusts.  The secret to making this pie is to cook the filling separately from the crust.  Once both are done the filling can be slipped into the crust and piped with whipped cream around the edge.  The result is professional and the crust is light and  flaky.  It’s as easy as pie.

Prepare your favorite pastry and roll it out to 12 inches.  Lay it in a 9 inch pan and fold the extra over to make a thick scalloped edge. Refrigerate it for 30 minutes and preheat the oven. Prick the surface of the unbaked shell evenly to prevent it from puffing up.  Bake until golden and cool completely on a wire rack.

I hate to admit it, but the secrets are being uncloaked, and I have often bought a frozen pie shell and used it for fillings…ssshhhh!

Set Oven to 350 degrees F. and generously butter the inside of a 9 inch pie plate.

Filling

2 cups canned pumpkin

3/4 cup light brown sugar – packed

5 eggs

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cloves

a pinch (generous 1/4 teaspoon) salt

1 cup heavy cream

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a rotary beater until smooth.

Set the empty pie plate into the center of a large shallow pan and then slowly pour the filling into the pie plate.

Set this on the oven rack and pour water into the shallow pan to measure 1/2 inch deep.

Bake for 50 minutes  Insert a knife near the center.  If the filling is done the knife will come out clean.

Completely cool on a wire rack and then loosen edge with spatula.

Chill for minimum 4 hours or overnight.

Several hours before serving loosen custard all around edges and underneath with a spatula and shake to loosen.

Slip filling into piecrust and pipe a generous circle of sweetened whipped cream around the space left between the filling and the crust.

Top with 8 walnut halves set evenly around the whipped cream.

Refrigerate  (covered).  Makes 8 delicious servings of flaky crust and creamy custard filling.

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets