Yes — that’s my dad, happy — hard to believe from the grumpy look on his face — and he’s happy because I sent him a big box of mac-and-cheese for his birthday. Dad lives in the Czech Republic and he too has a blog, PragueWriter.com From Dad: Post lady stopped by yesterday morning with your birthday gift. Wow, all that comfort food. Your chef friends would crack up if they knew what you sent your dad for his birthday. The really amazing thing is that the box hasn’t changed a bit in 60 years–still all that great Dow Chemical…
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I went out last night, and when I came home — Raymond was missing! He wasn’t in the basement, or in his crate, or in the yard. He was gone! Owen was home, wagging his butt and licking my leg as though to say “I don’t know where he went! He’s gone!” I’m not sure how he got out of the yard — sometimes the front gate doesn’t close properly, but it was closed when I got home. And the back gate was also latched. My hunch is it was the front gate, and then Owen somehow closed it by…
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This photo doesn’t do the soup justice — it is a much more vibrant green — a lovely live-plant sort of green. So, this morning I was confronted with half a dozen spinach plants that really did need to be picked — they’d bolted and well, it was beyond time to do something with them. I wanted soup, but spinach can get tricky — it gets that funny soapy taste on the back of your teeth — wanted to avoid that. I surfed around in the cookbooks for a while, and finally found a soup that sounded good in Rick…
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I have an abundance of mint in my garden — which is partially my fault because I deliberately transplanted some mint from the front garden to the back — I knew I might regret this, since mint is really weedy, but so far, I kind of like it as a ground cover. It’s invasive, and I’ve pulled a lot of it out, but I also really love this mint in particular — it’s somewhere between a spearmint and a peppermint — not too strong and not too sweet. I crush up a big handful in my pot of tea every…
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Reading this article in the SF Chronicle this morning has me wondering, is it gender that separates the show-off chefs from the nurturing chefs? Gender seems like both a simplistic and sexist way to separate out these very different approaches to food — (especially when published in the edition of the Sunday paper dedicated to Gay Pride weekend). Myself — I’m what this author calls a “mama cook” — I don’t cook what I think of as “restaurant food” at home. My cooking tends toward braises, marinated things on the grill in the summer, tarts, cakes … home food. I…
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Forest fires are a huge drag when they’re happening, although I have to say last summer as we watched this column of smoke rise behind Livingston peak, we were thinking of morels. The Jungle Fire was scary — it roared down seven miles of drainage in an afternoon — my friend Scott who was over there covering it for the paper said it sounded like the loudest jet engine you’ve ever heard. And yet, a few months later, here’s what’s happening in the burn — morels. Lots of morels. I went up early yesterday morning and it’s fascinating up in…
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Look what I found at the dog park this afternoon! I’ve always wanted to find a Giant Western Puffball, and I found two! They were a pound or so each, and the size of a grapefruit — growing right there in the long grass in the woods — so I snatched them up and brought them home. Where I cleaned off the edges where the dirt and the bugs were (a few maggot holes, but nothing like the boletes later in the summer). then I sliced them up, brushed them with olive oil infused with the parsley/basil I put up…
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We had several big forest fires here last summer — and while all that smoke and destruction was awful, in the wake of a fire, come the morels. Morels. Yummy, yummy morels. I went up last weekend and only found a few. Eight, to be exact. Here they are: And then on Monday, the MH went up and found the big pile in the first picture. We’ve had three warm days since then, and I plan to go back out on Saturday, when I don’t have to work. It’s a big burn, and if things don’t dry out too much,…
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We’re knackered here at LivingSmall — the Real Job is a little crazy — back soon.
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Here are the first roses of the spring … Therese Bugnet, I think — I’m terrible about putting the markers in the ground. The cranesbill geraniums in the background are starting to bloom and the Iris that my friend Andrea gave me a couple of years ago have finally really come in. They’re huge and gorgeous this year. So, the weather warmed up, and the flowers are starting to bloom, and just about everything survived our little snowstorm. I think I lost one or two cucumbers, but I have plenty and can afford to lose a couple. The peas and…