Sunday I built the Patrick Shrine — or, as I alternatively call it — the Wall of Dead Brothers. Right after Patrick died I ordered a set of those crown moulding shelves from Pottery Barn but I haven’t had the energy to figure out how to put them up. My walls are very old, very fragile, very bumpy but wonderful real plaster and so, putting up these moulding shelves was going to involve a lot of measuring, finding studs, and careful use of the drill. Until Sunday, I just didn’t have the energy. It all seemed too complicated. And frankly,…
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I’m still not the cheeriest bunny on the block these days, but I have to say I’ve been glued to the TV and San Francisco Chronicle website all weekend watching with tearful glee as the city by the bay stands up for Love. Big L Love. As they turned their gorgeous City Hall, truly one of the most elegant buildings around into a great big old wedding chapel and not just married any and all gay people who showed up, but married them with pride and joy and tearful wonder. Mark Morford’s column sums it up this morning, sums up…
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My Apple AirPort base station came today, and in about an hour, I had the card installed, the base station plugged in and configured (including setting up my printer on the base station so I can print from anywhere) and now I’m free to roam the hacienda! And it’s warm enough (42.5 degrees reads my fancy new wireless thermometer) that I’m sitting out on my front porch, enjoying the first late afternoon porch cocktail of the new year. A little buffalo salami, a little cheese, a little glass of lovely Pouilly-Fuisse, the dogs, a cat across the street, some sunshine,…
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I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those fancy-pet-food people, but over Christmas Hope and Matt turned me on to this stuff called the Missing Link. It’s a supplement for dogs and for cats that’s full of omega-3 oils and freeze-dried liver and things. Because everyone was having issues with their coats, I switched all the animals from Science Diet to California Naturals, which Hope and Matt also raved about. Then I bought some Missing Link as well — and I discovered that they also have a formula for cats.The dogs have hair issues sometimes — Raymond is nervous…
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So, I’m starting to cook again, which is a relief. Although the Albertson’s frozen lasagna and mac-and-cheese did see me through the worst of it, I always liked cooking, and not being interested was strange to me. Last weekend I made a soup (I blogged it but then lost the entry in a small snafu) from leftover duck stock I found in the freezer, lentils, sausage and a mix of kale and turnip greens (also from the freezer and last summer’s garden). It was great — the unctuous duck stock is the perfect foil for the slightly bitter turnip greens,…
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Blogging has been slow lately, in part because I’m writing again. I’d been having a really difficult time figuring out how to proceed with this memoir-thing I’m writing. Memoir implies that the writer has some sense of perspective on events, or some inkling of what events “meant”. Since I’m still in the middle of this whole grief thing, I really didn’t feel that I had any idea of what my relationship with Patrick “meant” and hence, I was having a really tough time getting started. So, inspired by Andy Goldsworthy’s method of just going outside and making something every day,…
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The dogs love skiing but we have one little problem — they get snow stuck to the fur between their toes and it ices up in hard little balls that really bother them — and because the ice balls hurt, the dogs stop and lick them, which only makes them worse. Owen, my puppy, also has problems with snowballs adhering to his feathers, especially in the back. He’ll be running along with tennis-ball sized snowballs hanging off his ass, which looks really funny, but doesn’t make him happy. So, what’s the solution? Pam cooking spray! Who knew? They didn’t like…
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Yesterday I went to see the documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides. It was extraordinary. I’ve known about Goldsworthy’s work for a long time — when I was a bookseller, I loved Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, but I’d never seen his work in motion. In the movie, there are these extraordinary images of his art floating out to sea, or a long sinuous chain of bright-green leaves working it’s way out of a pool and flowing downriver. Goldsworthy himself was also inspiring. I’ve been having a terrible time getting any work done these past weeks — my…
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I’ve fallen in love with cooked greens — thank goodness I put so many of them up last summer. But I am running into leftover issues — I made beet greens for dinner with Bill and Maryanne and Jim last week, and had a bunch left over. They’d already been cooked just about to death, so I didn’t want to eat them the way they were again, so I made a sort of crustless quiche with them. I beat three eggs with about a cup of cream and a nice grating of nutmeg, then put the lefotver greens in my…
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I ordered seeds today from Seeds of Italy and Cook’s Garden. I have a lot of seeds left from last year, many lettuces, the beans that never grew because they were eaten by bugs, the melon that didn’t make it, the eggplant that did, and three kinds of tomatoes. This year I’m branching out — I ordered two kinds of broccoli rabe from Seeds of Italy, as well as, gasp, five different tomatoes, some laccinato kale, an intriguing-looking egyptian beet, and a couple of chicories. I can’t say enough good things about Seeds of Italy — last year I ordered…