Monthly Archives: September 2011

A Bit Tired of Lemondade

You know, that saying “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”…well, I’m kind of tired of the lemonade.  And the marmalade.  And the lemon curd.  And everything else these annoying lemons bring.

Last night I came home and was getting ready to reheat some pasta that Bill had cooked earlier.

I didn’t want sauce, I just really wanted butter and grated cheese.  Sometimes, super simple is best.

So I reached for a stick of butter…and it was soft.  Inside the fridge.  Now, I know the door is somewhat “warmer” than the rest of the fridge, but it’s still normally cold enough to keep sticks of butter firm.

Lovely.

I stuck my hand into the middle of the main part of the fridge and just felt the air.

It didn’t feel all that cold, come to think of it.

Oh crap. 

(Please excuse the language.)

Webs in the Windows

Okay, I know, it’s not even October yet, but we’ve started putting up Halloween decorations anyway.  For whatever reason, we felt the urge earlier than usual.

Alex and Julia scattered skeletons and skulls throughout the house, and I made spider webs out of nylon cord for some of the smaller windows.

As I was struggling with my project – it’s not easy to make a web – I kept thinking of the illustration in Charlotte’s Web of Wilbur leaping around with a bit of rope in an attempt to show Charlotte he could weave a web. 

He failed, of course.

And while I don’t have spinnerets, at least I have fingers and opposable thumbs.  That helped somewhat.

I don’t plan to use nylon in my next web-weaving endeavors – it’s slippery and doesn’t hold a knot really well.  But still…I think they look kind of cool.

I’ve put them below the jump, just in case webs (with fake spiders dangling in them) creep you out.

Red Curry Macaroni with Five Cheeses – and Bacon!

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My fridge is packed.  And not in a good way.  It’s stuffed with neglected containers of meals past, with foods that need to be chopped and cooked and canned…with feta in brine for another couple of weeks, with jars of salsas and jams and pickles that we cracked open just to make sure they had turned out okay.

I needed to do some cleaning out.  And part of the clean out resulted in this version of macaroni and cheese. 

Roasted Garlic Jelly Two Ways

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I wasn’t sure if I’d like this jelly. 

I love roasted garlic.  I roast big batches of garlic periodically, then puree the softened cloves with olive oil and freeze it all in ice cube trays.  So good added to pasta sauces, or gravies, or dips, or smeared on sliced baguettes and topped with thin wedges of brie….

I could go on and on.

So at first the idea of a roasted garlic jelly was very appealing.  But then I read that you have to strain the roasted garlic, so all you get is the juice (there are other ingredients – I’ll get to those).  Which makes sense – it’s a jelly, not a jam.  But I was trying to imagine a clear jelly smeared on a baguette, and it wasn’t happening for me.

But I figured I’d give it a try anyway.

And I’m glad I did.

Man With Kale

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Bill pulled one of the kale plants out of the garden the other day.  It was shading the spinach.

That’s some damn big kale.  Actually, there were three or four smaller kale plants around it as well.  They got yanked out too.  I was in the middle of canning stuff (as evidenced by the jars to the left of the picture), so I just told him to put it on the dining room table until I could get to it.

So then the dining room table looked like this:

A Look at My Morning, So Far

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This was my dining room table at 6:55 this morning.

Please ignore the bags of potato chips.  In this house we only eat homemade potato chips, of course.  Those were…for………the neighbors.

Anyway. 

On the table I’ve got some canned crushed tomatoes, other canned stuff that’s buried and you can’t see it.  Bowls of basil, sage, and kale, a little plastic container of cookes, a bowl of tomatillows, some apples, peaches, garlic, tomatoes, a few jalapenos somewhere, 6 ears of corn, that bag of shredded coconut…which is also……for the neighbors, because of course we only travel to tropical islands, climb up trees, harvest our own coconuts, and shred the flesh ourselves….