I am the Audience

Seasons

October 28, 2020

a day in this life, home

My friend, Michelle, wrote a poem about the joys of putting summer abundance up for cold weather consumption. I am about it, too. I don’t have a pressure cooker and I’m intimidated by the idea of using one. It isn’t something anyone has shown me how to use and it feels like a big deal to ask a friend for training. It seems to be a Big Project tool.

So, I put up small things that don’t require it. Fruit preserves get hot enough to seal the lids that come with adhesive already on them. The vinegar solutions I use for pickles is boiling. So, that works, too.

And we have a chest freezer.

I have a gallon bag of summer tomatoes in there. On December 21, I will thaw those and make a Tomato Pie for our supper on the darkest day of the year. I might find a way to use some peach preserves for dessert.

I enjoy small celebrations of seasonal change. Watching my yard bloom and fruit as the seasons cycle past is very satisfying to me. I don’t ever find myself longing for a season to speed by so we can get to the next one. Living in North Carolina means we usually get all 4 seasons. Though, last winter was pretty stunted.

I won’t lie and say I don’t look forward to temperatures dropping when days have been near 100ºF/38ºC in the summer. Or that I delight in cold rain in the winter. And the erratic behavior of weather that has gotten out of hand as the byproducts of the Industrial Revolution run amuck doesn’t inspire joy.

But, I do enjoy looking out of my warm house at the snow. And I love seeing the flowers in my yard blooming in sequence as the seasons progress. A tomato sandwich and fresh fruit in the summer is happiness in my mouth. There’s satisfaction in the winding down of autumn. Especially knowing there are pickles and preserves waiting for me in the pantry.
Proust Questionnaire

October 8, 2020

a day in this life

Shamelessly lifted from Vanity Fair. I don’t intend to answer these questions here. I don’t think my answers are useful to anyone but me. And they change. I don’t even have coherent answers for a couple of them. But, I do think the questions are interesting to consider as we muddle along.

__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?

__2.__What is your greatest fear?

__3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

__4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others?

__5.__Which living person do you most admire?

__6.__What is your greatest extravagance?

__7.__What is your current state of mind?

__8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

__9.__On what occasion do you lie?

__10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance?

__11.__Which living person do you most despise?

__12.__What is the quality you most like in a man?

__13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman?

__14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

__15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life?

__16.__When and where were you happiest?

__17.__Which talent would you most like to have?

__18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

__19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement?

__20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

__21.__Where would you most like to live?

__22.__What is your most treasured possession?

__23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

__24.__What is your favorite occupation?

__25.__What is your most marked characteristic?

__26.__What do you most value in your friends?

__27.__Who are your favorite writers?

__28.__Who is your hero of fiction?

__29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with?

__30.__Who are your heroes in real life?

__31.__What are your favorite names?

__32.__What is it that you most dislike?

__33.__What is your greatest regret?

__34.__How would you like to die?

__35.__What is your motto?
Esme is a little weirdo

August 7, 2020

a day in this life, food & drink, pets

A while ago, I realized that if I buy plain yogurt and add my own jam, I always get to have the flavors I want. And it wastes fewer containers. Also, I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream when I’m cooking. It’s a habit I developed ages ago after ready that 0% fat yogurt tastes and cooks the same but doesn’t have the crap in it that low fat sour cream does.

I tend to use a particular bowl when I stir up my yogurt and jam.

Esmerelda loves yogurt and she loses her mind waiting for me to put my empty bowl down so she can have her turn. Sometimes I give her a little dab of plain in her wet dish just to shut her up until I can finish my concoction.

Last week, our tomatoes started coming in. We have 3 plants in our garden (red, purple and yellow cherries) and we have been getting a farm box. And they have been including tomatoes. That’s been lovely. I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches with mayo and with pesto. We’ve cut them up in our salads. Fresh, flavorful tomatoes make enduring the heat of summer worthwhile.

We’d gotten a glut, though, and I couldn’t eat them as fast as they were ready. So, I had Chuck pick up some feta when he went to the grocery and I made a tomato salad. It was 8 oz of feta, 2 pints of cherry tomatoes cut in quarters, a small bell pepper, a handful of fresh basil rolled together and cut very fine, equal part olive oil and apple cider vinegar and a little salt and pepper. When I fix a serving, I add some Kalamata olives to the bowl. (Do you notice that there is nothing resembling cat food in that recipe?)

When I made a tomato sandwich yesterday, I cut the bits that didn’t fit well on the bread into bites and added it to the tomato salad. When Chuck cut up a tomato for our green salads at dinner, instead of overwhelming the lettuce with tomato, he did the same with the surplus.

So, I have been eating tomato salad like a fiend for days and the container is still full.

This morning I decided to have a little dish of it for my breakfast. And I used the yogurt bowl.

When I finished and headed for the sink, she lost her mind. She knew she needed what was in that bowl. I told her that I don’t think cats like tomatoes and set it down to prove it to her.

She licked every last scrap/drop/morsel out of that bowl. I couldn’t have looked cleaner if it had just come out of the dishwasher.

I don’t know that I’m ready to start sharing my salad with my cat.
Joys of parenthood

August 6, 2020

a day in this life, family

My 2.5 year old child could see me in the gas station as I was paying. And had been told, “I will be right there I am not going where you can’t see me. Wait right here for just a minute.” Got out of the car seat, cranked open the sun roof, climbed up and out, slid down the windshield and hood and ran across the parking lot cheerfully calling out, “I finded you, Mommy!”
Apero!

August 4, 2020

food & drink

I have been exploring the joys of aperitifs. I read an article about the European habit of a little snack with a cocktail before the dive into preparing dinner and it really appealed to me. I’ve been having fun creating the little snacks.

One day, I boiled 3 eggs and deviled them. Another day, I used a spoonful of Chuck’s home-fermented sauerkraut with about an ounce of Cambozola cheese and 5 Kalamata olives for each of us. Yesterday, it was 5 cherry tomatoes and a Babybel cheese each. I cut the tomatoes in half and the cheese into 5 pieces and drizzled the plate with balsamic vinegar and Tuscan herb flavored olive oil. A baguette that Chuck picked up for part of my birthday celebration has been cut into pieces and frozen. So, I can pull out 4 pieces to thaw, along with a portion of smoked salmon. Cream cheese and capers live in my fridge. So, that’s an easy one. Or just pickled cauliflower in a dish with a couple of cherry tomatoes alongside it. Or hummus and crudites. I think Chuck’s been getting a kick out of seeing what’s going to come out of the kitchen when I start stirring around at 4:00.

My grandmother set 4:30 as the cocktail hour and that has been my “it’s not too early” time forever. She did, once, say “It’s 4:30 somewhere in the world” when she wanted bourbon and Coke at 3:30. But, I generally reserve that attitude for vacations. And, for the record, in order for it to be 4:30, we would have been at sea.

Our summer cocktails are usually wine, gin and tonic, a gin rickey (if I’m feeling lazy), a lemon drop martini or a non-alcoholic shrub. And I only make my own drink. Chuck gets to decide what he prefers in that instance for himself.

We discovered shrubs last year. Chuck decided to give his liver a break about the time there was a little explosion of bartenders in better places creating interesting concoctions for designated drivers, (or anyone else who didn’t want to imbibe). It’s usually a flavored syrup, vinegar and soda water. We already had a SodaStream for the fizzy water and we have been keeping a small bottle of apple cider vinegar and a collection of flavored simple syrups in the fridge. The syrups we keep around are homemade vanilla, lavender, ginger, mint and a couple of berry flavored syrups I found at IKEA. A shot of syrup, a shot of vinegar, top it with fizzy water and we’re set. More fun than just a glass of water with a twist of citrus.

I’ve been trying to decide on the word that describes how it feels for me to make a little taste of something lovely as a mark of the shift from day to evening. I think “gracious.”
gra·cious /ˈɡrāSHəs/ adjective:
1. courteous, kind, and pleasant.
Similar: courteous, polite, civil, civilized, indulgent, magnanimous, beneficent, benign, friendly, pleasant, amiable, affable, cordial, hospitable

Seasons

Proust Questionnaire

Esme is a little weirdo

Joys of parenthood

Apero!