I had one more the size of the biggest one but I gave it away. And look, two acorn squash volunteers. There were a couple more out there but they didn’t have enough time. Everything really came on at the end when it was too late.
Some of these guys are going to make the big sacrifice so we can have pie for Thanksgiving.
I’ve come to the realization that I’ve lost my enjoyment of cooking. I’m not sure when it happened. There’s a food blogger whose cookbook finally came out — I’m not a cookbook collector but I love this blogger — but I realized it was pointless to get this cookbook. I don’t even use the cookbooks I have.
I can’t remember the last time I tried a new recipe unless I was visiting family or Kira.
On the week days I’m always tired and in a hurry. On the weekends I almost always would rather be doing something else. I only want to make things that will make leftovers to make weekday meals easier.
I don’t think the situation is fixable unless I change my priorities and I don’t want to do that right now.
I decided I would pick three new recipes to try and was already overwhelmed.
I picked one. I’m going to try the chicken marsala in the latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated. I’m not sure when, though.
Years ago these flowers magically appeared in my yard. I liked them and encouraged them. I had a big patch in what had been a sorta ugly corner of the garden. Then they wanted to grow in the lawn, which I discouraged. Then they ditched the sorta ugly corner and now have sprung up in the middle of the garden.
If this was a story about magic flowers, I would be anxious about the next chapter, are they friendly flowers or are they up to something?
I noticed I’ve been getting mixed up with homonyms. I suspect my brain is starting to get dry and curl up around the edges.
For awhile I was keeping a list of some of the words I mixed up:
airfairs
reigndeer
scene / seen
chord for the alarm clock
staff infection joke
peek peak pique — Every time I want to use one of these I have to sit there and think it through to make sure I’m using the right one.
stalked up / stocked up
profit prophet
I know I’ve written before about my thing with gas stations. I prefer to use the same ones over and over.
If I were driving around and low on gas it would never occur to me to stop at the first gas station I saw. I keep an eye on my gas level and fill up at my usual spot as soon as it gets close to 1/4 tank. Or, sometimes my sweetheart tanks it for me.
When the grocery store tells me I have a bunch of points and I can get cheap gas at their station, I’m like, who cares? I’m never going to go there.
You’d think this would be more problematic for me than it is. I’ve gotten so good at managing my anxieties.
On trips to Orleans, I always stop at the same places.
One of my favorites was a gas station in Roseburg. The last time I was there the attendant very chatty and charming. In case anyone reading this doesn’t know, in Oregon you can’t pump your own gas. He told me he was 83 and lived his whole life in the area and didn’t travel much because he cared for his 83 year old blind wife.
You can imagine how awful I felt when my next trip, barely a couple months later, the gas station was closed.
When I had my last eye exam I mentioned that I have trouble with my eyes being dry. This isn’t a new situation but it bothers me when I spend a lot of time at the computer. (Surprise.)
He did some horrible test which I would describe as scraping a wooden stick around my eye.
He suggested that every night I put a warm pack on my eyes for 20 minutes and then wash my eyes with baby soap and massage around my eyelids. That might not be the exact instructions because I put the sheet at the bottom of my bathroom drawer when I got home that night and haven’t looked at it since.
Twenty minutes to sit with an eye pack? Every night? Yeah, sure, if he told me my eyeballs would fall out if I didn’t do this I would probably be motivated to make the time. But I’m already brushing and flossing and cleansing and moisturizing and fluffing my neck pillow and getting all my stuff ready for the next day because I get up at such an ungodly hour. I can’t bear the thought of adding 20 minutes with an eye pack to the equation.
The bread is in the oven so no photo. This is a strange plant at Mom’s in August.
Most of the time when I bake, I make the No Knead Sourdough loaf. Today I decided to do a different recipe, the Cook’s Illustrated Sandwich Loaf. (That recipe is not exactly the same, but close enough.) There’s also a Buttermilk Bread recipe that I like a lot.
This recipe has the instruction to knead until the dough is satiny. Which reminds me of some other recipe instructions that I have that tell me to do something, like stir sauce, until it’s silky.
I can’t relate satiny and silky to food. I don’t know what that means. Also when the instructions tell me to knead until the dough is soft.
Soft compared to what? It all seems soft to me. If it started out like concrete I might have a better frame of reference.
Actually, my all time favorite recipe instruction is to cook until done – which is both obvious and useless.
Raise your hand if you had a bright white poncho to go with your denim pantsuit when you were a girl.
It’s finally happened. I was in a hip diner having lunch the other day and I leaned over to my dining companion and said, “This music sounds awful.” It was modern music and I’m no expert, but I don’t think that girl could sing.
I had to share this terrific photo of me and my sister with my Grandpa, probably my first gardening influence.
It might be hard to tell in the photo but those red things around our necks are neck kerchiefs. I love that even at that young age with not a worry in the world, I still have giant bags under my eyes. I’m still always trying to find a product or treatment to minimize my eye bags.
You’d think looking at family photos showing generations of women with eye bags at all stages of life would convince me, but no, I keep thinking I can do something about my eye baggage.
This is a swimming hole on the Salmon River in N. California. The water was low and the skies smokey when we visited this year. I’m not a great swimmer but we brought a floaty cushion and paddled down to see a waterfall. While we were out, some people came to swim a big long lap back and forth. It’s a good swimming hole.
