I woke up this morning thinking about a comment that Leah, over at Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen posted on her website. Apparently, by blogging about domestic life, and in particular, blogging about cooking a nice dinner for her husband and young son on Valentine’s Day, she called down the Voice of the Disapproving Feminists upon her head. Apparently, choosing to love one’s family, and to think about the ways one cares for them, and to blog about this “does next to nothing to promote woman as a healthy, vitally aware, culturally meaningful being in the world.” Clearly, something about…
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How did I live to be this old before realizing what fabulous television this is? I dropped the dogs off this morning to be cleaned up — it’s been a long winter and they were shaggy and dirty — and Barb, the dog groomer, mentioned that tonight was the sporting dog division (as my boys were, uncharacteristically, sitting and being attentive). So this afternoon, I checked out the USA network, and last night’s dog show was on during the afternoon. Who knew? I LOVE the dog show. The dogs are so fabulous (although the handlers, as a group, need a…
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… that I live in this particular small town. Because tonight there were four, then six, then ten of us at the local bistro for dinner. Because on Sunday nights they’ve started doing all-you-can eat dinner with a big bowl of salad on the table and then a parade of their fabulous wood-fired pizzas. Because dinner conversation was all about Brian Schweitzer’s inaguration as the first Democratic Governor of Montana in 20 years, and about how when the Governor came into the Ball, it was the Plains Tribes drummers who drummed him into the ballroom, not something anyone ever saw…
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I have a very long, narrow garden bed along one side of my yard. For the past couple of years, I’ve been using those cheesy coated-wire fences to keep the dogs out of them, and suddenly, today, I couldn’t stand them anymore. Also, there’s a random patch of grass at the far end of the bed, beyond the plum trees, that I’ve been meaning to get rid of — it was about six feet by six feet, and mostly the dogs just seemed to use it to poop on. On the far side of the grass patch, is a long,…
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Fire up the rice cooker with rice and water and a wee bit of salt. Preheat the oven, with your marvelous cast-iron skillet inside, to 425 degrees. Put a hunk of lovely wild salmon caught by your friend Chris Beaudin (who promised to scope next season’s crews for a husband for yours truly) in a piece of tin foil with some leftover fennel fronds, a few rinsed salted capers, a splash of white wine and a little butter. Seal up the tinfoil. Snap the ends off some asparagus, and roll them around in some olive oil and sprinkle with salt.…
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This morning my friend Nina called and asked, with that sort of tense tone in her voice, what I was doing. Why? I said. Do you need a rescue? Turns out, she was in the car with the twins, who had a pediatrician’s appointment, and her husband (who is writing for TV trying to support them all) had a sudden deadline at eleven. She needed an extra set of arms. Well count me in. There’s no cure for a case of low-level January depression like a two month old baby that needs a snuggle. I did have to check my…