Just What the Doctor Ordered

So a few things have changed since July 27 (ahem). I packed, I moved, and I am slowly unpacking. I was so exhausted from the pre-move frenzy that I haven't forced myself to rush to get everything unpacked. And then I got distracted. Not long after the move my Mom went in for knee-replacement surgery. The surgery went fine, recovery not so much. Ten days after the original surgery they did a second surgery. Then she went back to the rehab facility. Finally, finally, just last Friday she was released to return home. Everything's going well now, but it's been a hectic three weeks that has left me getting home at 10 p.m. many nights. That wouldn't be so horrible if the alarm clock wasn't set for 5:15 a.m.

Friday night I joined two girlfriends for a little knitting and a lot of chatting. It was a great way to end the week. The rest of the weekend I spent holed up in my house. From Friday night through Sunday night, I didn't leave for one minute, and I loved it. I cooked chili, unpacked a bit, cleaned a bit, did a lot of laundry, and took care of a pet who was under the weather. I also watched football and read and knitted some more. It was just what I needed to recharge and refocus after several months of good but time-consuming distractions.

For the Love of Books

(Picture from http://www.julieandjulia.com/)

Last week I finished reading "Julie and Julia." Bought it forever ago, started it and was smitten, and then somehow it got lost in the shuffle of life and I never finished it. But I knew I had to read the book before seeing the movie, which I definitely want to see. I loved, loved, loved the book. Loved the humor and the crazy scenes, loved the various characters, and shuddered repeatedly at the idea of following some of Julia's recipes. It probably doesn't help that for all of my love of food and cooking, I'm not a huge fan of French food. I know, shoot me. But man, oh man, the enjoyment I got from the book just makes me even more eager to see the movie!

It also made me realize that I never mentioned that I did manage to accomplish a few things on my birthday list that I created a year ago. Some of it I failed at, much of it is still a work in progress for this year too, and some things I accomplished. I read three "classics," and surprised myself by picking two nonfiction classics. I tend to gravitate towards fiction.

My first choice was an easy one: Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." Okay, a very easy choice! Especially since I have the BBC mini-series version practically memorized, and it stays very true to the text of the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it in written form, though I do believe that I had read it once before. I didn't remember that until I was deep into the story again, so I'm counting this one. I also purchased Austen's "Mansfield Park," but didn't delve into it after reading the foreword and learning that it's one of her most controversial works, and not quite as light-hearted as her others. I've picked it up again this weekend, and plan to tackle it for this year's classics.

Next up I chose Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." I've not seen the movie (of the killing or the author's biopic), and knew just the bare bones of the story. I was enthralled and couldn't put it down, in the "accident on the side of the road" way of horrific voyeurism. I enjoyed it, as much as one can a story where you know 'who dun it' and what's going to happen, but the gruesomeness was hard to think about.

You might think that my third choice followed in the same line, and I did read them back to back, mostly because I'd procrastinated and time was short. But I don't connect Capote's telling of the murder of a family with Elie Wiesel's "Night," which is his autobiographical account of surviving a Nazi concentration camp. I've had the book for over a decade, buying it at a time that I was reading a lot about that horrible period of world history. I could never bring myself to read this personal account, however, because I knew how it would tear at my heart. To be honest, the only reason I finally read it was because of all the "classics" I have waiting on my bookshelf to be read, this was the shortest one, and I was down to the week before my birthday. It was a gut-wrenching, horrifying, and terribly beautiful story. I'm glad I read it, but oh how it has haunted me.

So, at least I can check that task off for my 35th year, though I want to match it for this year as well. Possibilities include the aforementioned "Mansfield Park," "All the Kings Men," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "The Picture of Dorian Gray." There are probably others on the bookshelf as well, but these come to mind.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Love this color, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

I took this picture probably a month ago. Back when I still owned a camera separate from my iphone. Sigh. I hope whoever found it enjoys it thoroughly. But other than the fact that the flowers have raindrops caressing the petals, it has nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was pretty. Oh, and it's. still. raining. here. Daily. But also horribly hot and humid. Talk about the worst combination of summer.

Anyway, despite the heat, I found myself making French Onion Soup on Saturday evening. I had four Vidalia Onions that needed to be used. I had beef stock. Like always, it was a match made in heaven. I had to get a little creative with the cheesy toast, however. All I had was a dense oatmeal wheat bread sliced for sandwiches. But I wasn't deterred. I broiled it with provolone cheese on top, and it served as a successful substitute to the typical French bread.

I just finished having a second helping of my soup, along with a salad featuring veggies from my community supported agriculture half of a half share for dinner. At work. With no end in sight. These would be the Mondays when working for the state legislature doesn't seem nearly as great of a career choice. I think I'll be here for several more hours while the legislators debate. I just love special sessions.

At least the soup was good. And the air conditioning is working.

Green Week 2 - Ripening

Well, I'm shamelessly copying Sarah, sort of. Her avocados were homegrown and shipped to her. Mine come from...somewhere much more tropical than Kentucky in March. And mine are definitely not ripe yet.

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I stopped by the store on the way home and knew I had to pick these up, along with all the ingredients for a great salad. I've been craving salad, which I don't believe is a sentence I've ever thought, much less admitted. I'm not a huge salad fan. Don't get me wrong, I like my veggies. I don't usually prefer them raw, but I eat them that way a lot, just not all mixed together in salad form. But all day yesterday, that's all I wanted. I thought I'd get one for lunch, but that was a no-go. I wasn't able to grab lunch until 2 p.m., and by then I was afraid of what might be left on the cafeteria salad bar. So I knew I had to remedy that last evening, and after buying lots of green goodies, I came home and cleaned, chopped, and packaged up a ton of good things to take with me to work today.

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Good thing, too, as I'll probably be eating three meals there, at least until Friday (and maybe even then). It's the time of the long days, every day, as the legislative session reaches its fevered pitch.

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Maybe the avocados will be ripe by the weekend. Something to look forward to! In the meantime, here's the flickr link for Green Week. But also check out the blog entries, listed here.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!*

So, what's in a muffuletta?, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone! My only form of celebration will be a work pot luck where there will be no jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice, crawfish, benets, or muffulettas! This is the educational sign that hangs in the French Quarter grocery that supposedly created the wonderfully delicious muffuletta. No matter how you celebrate, eat, drink and be merry!

* Let the good times roll!

Yellow 3 - Tonight's Dinner

I've decided to go Moroccan for dinner, so here are some of my ingredients for my take on the Squash and Chickpea Moroccan Stew from SmittenKitchen. When I add the saffron threads, even my dinner will remind me of yellow week! As the picture shows, I'm going with a fresh lemon instead of the preserved lemons called for in the recipe. I'm not sold on them enough to go on an expensive search. A little lemon juice, some zest, and a little more salt added to what's called for will be just dandy for me.

Tea Time - Yellow 2

A mug of lemon tea was a welcome respite to a stressful day. Made all the more so because my computer and/or internet has been giving me fits for days now. Just when I commit to uploading pictures daily for Yellow Week, my computer doesn't want to let me link to pictures on my blog or upload them to Flickr. A borrowed computer was the only way to solve the problem!

This and That

If I had blogged last week, as I intended to, the title would have been "Snap, Crackle, Pop" as the perfect description of living through the snow and ice storm that shut down large swaths of the state. It snowed all day on a Tuesday, then that night the ice started, and you could hear the tree limbs creaking and snapping under the weight of the ice. Finally, by Wednesday, lines started snapping and transformers popped as the power went out, at our house and throughout the state. Here are my pictures from the front porch and back door of our house.

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But this weekend has been about puttering around the house, cooking, laundry, knitting, and listening to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on CD. My second attempt at bread from this book was much more successful than my first loaf (the rest of that dough went into the trash after the storm). Seriously, is there anyone out there that doesn't have this book yet? Everywhere I look, someone is blogging about baking something from it. I've had it for several months now, but peer pressure finally got me to start trying it. This could be very bad for my health goals for the year!

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The mushroom barley soup I made to go with it on Saturday tasted great, except for some of the mushrooms were too woody to eat. This is rather disappointing, since they came from a "gourmet" dried mix of mushrooms I bought at Costco. I love mushrooms, but they have such horrible shelf-life that I like to use dried mushrooms. These looked like a good deal, but if half of them aren't palatable, it doesn't do me much good. The broth and the rest of the soup is great, though. The recipe is definitely a keeper. I just have to find a better mix of dried mushrooms.

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Today I indulged in one of my favorite meals. I made a "hearty" breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, hash browns and bacon. I adore breakfast. I adore hash browns. And I love, love, love bacon. So much so that this is the first time I've bought bacon in over a year. I have a hard time saying "No," so it's better if it just never enters my house. But I'd been craving this kind of breakfast for about a month now, so I finally gave in on a lazy morning. It was a very nice treat. When I was in law school I'd cook this kind of breakfast once a month or so, for my roommate and I. It's the only kind of luxury I could afford back then. It's a good thing I don't indulge in this habit too often, however! The bread is going to be bad enough.

(**Sorry for the stars...for some reason I keep having trouble getting new paragraphs to format correctly. This at least keeps the entire post from being one very long block of text!)

Dinners and Desserts

I've been on a cooking binge, at least by my standards. When people ask me about my interests, I almost always mention that I like to cook, but the irony is that I don't often actually make what I consider "real meals." My friend Nancy actually makes fun of me because I can happily eat popcorn for dinner (or breakfast, I hate to admit). Mostly this is because, as a single person, there's always so much extra food whenever I follow a recipe that it doesn't seem worth the hassle. That and the fact that I also have to clean up. I hate doing both.

For awhile now I've been trying to think of ways to incorporate my love of very spicy food in healthier ways than my go-to Mexican dishes, since they so often include at least cheese, if not also fat of several kinds. I know that there are lots of spicy Asian dishes, and Indian food is some of my favorite. So I've bought a few new cookbooks and set out to acquire all the necessary ingredients. In and of itself, this is a change for me. I have a lot of cookbooks, and love reading them (like novels, in fact), but I am rarely organized enough to have an idea of what recipes I want to cook and have a list when I go to the grocery. Too often I just rely on my easy standbys.

My new plan worked out well, because on the day that I was shopping for the many ingredients, my friend Maria called me up looking for some company that evening. We happily made plans for me to bring the groceries to her place, and that night we cooked two great noodle dishes. For closer looks, click on my flickr page. Since then I've also made some yummy tikka masala and even baked - which I really don't like to do!

Life List for the New Year

Today is the big day where I turned 35. It feels a bit momentous, though I don't really think it is. But because of that feeling, I started working on a list of things I wanted to do during my 35th year on this little planet of ours. The following isn't everything on the list (I do have a few secrets to keep) but it's representative of my whole list:

1. Learn to sew, using the brand new - to me - sewing machine Chrissie sent to me. Just awesome. I am sew excited! *groan*


2. Learn to play chess.


3. Use the Cuisinart my mom gave to me, on "loan."


4. Plan meals and take advantage of the farmers' markets in the area.


5. Prepare for yard sale this fall and pack along the way for move next year.


6. Get back to walking regularly.


7. Stop using the TV as "background noise" - get up and move, listen to music, or just enjoy the silence.


8. Ride the van to work daily so you can save on gas.


9. Clean out paperwork and files; take stuff to shredder at bank.


10. Walk the labyrinth regularly and become more attentive to my prayer life.


11. Blog and Flickr more frequently.


12. Take more pictures.


13. Read at least three classic novels a year.

There are several other things on the lists, like projects around the house and more detailed ideas about some of the above, but this is a start. One that makes me feel good about myself. I have already put a few of these ideas into practise: I've read The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, have been good about getting to the van pool on time, been to the farmers' market, and am carrying my camera with me everywhere I go.

Catchin' Up

Whenever I get into a conversation about food, I always tell people that I love to cook, but I don't bake. Not that I can't bake, I just don't like to. Mostly because I'm the only one cleaning up after myself in the kitchen and baking requires getting a lot of stuff dirty. Add that to the need to precisely measure ingredients and all desire flies out the window. The only thing that really has ever interested me in baking is bread. And by bread I don't even mean bread-machine quality bread, but artisanal quality bread. Suspecting it takes a lot of know how and talent to achieve that kind of bread, I kept going back to local shops and purchasing rather than trying my hand at it in the kitchen.
Then I came across the No Knead Bread recipe that's been storming through blogs for two years now (I never claimed to be cutting edge!). Flour, yeast, salt, water. That seemed simple enough. In the back of my mind I kept hearing this voice that said "Surely you could do that." And so I finally got up the nerve and tried. This loaf was my first attempt. It was delicious! I was so impressed with myself, even though it obviously is a pretty easy thing to do, given it's popularity. I've since made one other loaf, adding in some wheat flour to make it slightly healthier.
I've also recently purchased this book, again on the advice of multiple blog gushing (like this one) over its wonderfulness. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet. I'm doing what the book asks, which is that you read about why it works and how it works before jumping and with both feet and doing normal bread baking things that won't work with this basic recipe. Oh, and I also checked out the website along with the errors page that explains the mistakes in the book. Key things, I think, for making it work. I'll report back soon!