Tomato Sauce with Bacon and Onion

Tomato Sauce with Bacon and Onion - pg. 265

I made a batch of Simple Tomato Sauce from fresh tomatoes from farmers market. This is great stuff to have in the frig since it can be the base for all sorts of very quick dinners. Tonight I made a TAOS recipe (sort of) with the sauce and some fancy pancetta from the fancy deli/market in Berkeley. The recipe actually just calls for using fresh tomatoes, but I figured the Simple Sauce would do just as well. While the pancetta was certainly good, rather more ordinary bacon would have been okay, too. I used green garlic in the sauce which made a milder flavor. And, I oven roasted a batch of asparagus for something green on the plate.

Yesterday I volunteered at the Central Coast Cactus and Succulent Society's annual show and sale. Wow! I've found my flora niche, so to speak. I can see that my collection will start mostly with agaves. I love agaves and they will do well here in pots.

Oh yes, I saw a very strange movie yesterday. The Good, the Bad and the Weird. A Korean western set in Manchuria in the 30s with decided Tarantino influences.

Best of all? It's true. The bugs are dead. We've got our house back. Yeah!!

67 down and 238 to go

Alrighty Then...

Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper are gone. So are the wood-boring beetles in the library woodwork. None of this happened quickly or easily. The house is pretty much clean, reorganized and back to normal. Yeah!! As you might imagine, I'm feeling a whole lot better emotionally now. Got a pedicure and a haircut this morning. Yeah!! Went, with Randy, to the Central Coast Cactus and Succulent Society's annual show and sale this afternoon after a nice Thai lunch. Yeah!!

In the spirit of Alice's very latest cookbook (theme is techniques to learn by heart), I made a no-recipe dinner. Trader Joe's lemon pepper noodles. Bacon. Garlic. Parsley. Olive oil. Parmesan cheese. Tasty and pretty quick.

Do I have anything remarkable to say? Hell no. Only that I love, love, love having my house clean and organized. It means that I can go on to do more productive things with my time. It's the same way I feel about making the bed first thing in the morning. All is right with the world and I can get on to bigger and far more interesting things. Like cook, garden, play with our cats, read, bead, sew. You get the picture.

Life Is Weird, But Peas Are Good

Green Pea and Asparagus Ragout - pg. 316

Clearly, life has been unsettled of late. And I've been depressed about various things. And sidetracked. Between the last new-recipe cooking entry on May 5 and today, I only made sweet tart dough. Which was intended for a lemon tart, but that didn't happen. I ate the dough. Raw. Does that tell you I've been miserable, or at least distracted?

Somewhat better now, although it's been 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Maybe more like 2 and 1/2 steps back. But, I managed to crank out a meal tonight. Just some Trader Joe's chicken sausage ravioli with the very last of the Simple Tomato Sauce. And (ta-dah!) Green Pea and Asparagus Ragout. Tasted good, although I'm not sure I'm much into ragouts -- all that stuff whacked up into little tiny pieces. I guess I like my veggies a bit more chunky. But, it was nice to chaw on fresh green peas and asparagus. Yah good love fresh veggies.

66 down and 239 to go -- must pick up the pace since this pace is pathetic

Up to Our Ears in Animals

Dinner tonight was swell. Chard frittata slices sitting in pools of simple tomato sauce. Oh yum! And there's plenty of frittata leftovers. Maybe for breakfast tomorrow?

For lunch, I made some liver, potatoes and onions. And a blood orange balsamic reduction for the liver. Good grief. Talk about gilding the lily....

Our local bobcat paid us an extended visit this morning. I think it's a girl. She's a doll. We enjoyed watching her so much.

Then our project manager came up with the Ecola bug-killer-guy to investigate what can be done about the wood-boring beetles that are continuing to eat the woodwork in the library. Heat treatment. Which means I have to take EVERYTHING out of the library. And then, of course, put it all back. Oh thrill. These animals I could live without.

There's a lizard in the garage. Cute little guy. But he belongs outside, not in the garage. I think he left this afternoon, but I'm not sure. If he gets into the house, he's cat food. So let's hope he leaves. Soon.

On the way home from our late-afternoon coffee date, I saw our local doe-and-2-fawns. The babies are growing fast, and learning about life around roads very quickly, thank heaven. But still nursing if mom stops for a rest and look around!

After dinner? Lots and lots of swallows showed up. Wow! What a show! Today, life is good.

Quick Catch-Up

Saw a good movie-- The Secret in Their Eyes. Good murder mystery, even though --nah, probably because of the fact that --we know the killer half way through the flick. Argentine; I was surprised how little I needed the subtitles. Won the Oscar this year for best foreign language film. Read a crumby book-- A Reliable Wife. I read it, but don't bother. Believe me. Don't bother. It's a highly unreliable book.

New plant!! Euphorbia tirucalli. It's my new baby. I love this plant. Won it at the raffle at the monthly meeting of the Central Coast Cactus and Succulent Society. Mine was the LAST ticket drawn and I still won the plant I'd had my eyes on from the moment I walked into the room. Yippee!!

All my children have paws, you know. They sent a card and had their dad take me out for breakfast. They got me a cool new octopus-themed apron from Anthropologie. They cuddled with me on the settle at the end of the day to read and enjoy the fireplace.

Haven't cooked anything interesting, but I did have some wonderful Gliddon Point oysters at Pier 46 Saturday. For lunch. That's my idea of lunch. A diet Coke and 6 oysters on the half shell.

Day 89 - Pasta Alla Puttanesca! Ah Naples!

Spicy Tomato Sauce with Capers, Anchovies and Olives - pg. 266

You may recall that I now have a small stash of salt-packed anchovies. Today, I filleted 3 of them. I am now qualified to do brain surgery on goldfish. The things I'm learning to do!

Really, I love this dish. Plenty of garlic, olives, parsley, olive oil, capers. Fishy, spicy, olivey. What's not to love. And since I first had to make up a batch of Simple Tomato Sauce, I now have enough sauce to tackle something else new. It was all pretty easy, too. Even the filleting, although I did tackle that one when I was certain that all the cats were sound, sound asleep this afternoon.

It was a good day for deer sightings. One was nose-pressed-to-the-glass outside the foyer this morning. And this afternoon I saw the first fawns of 2010 -- 2 tiny babies out with their mom. So small! So cute! And just dumb as boards as their mom herded them out of the middle of the street.

I'm taking a break from Homer, reading a rather trashy page-turner from a recent best-seller list. I think the list is called Trashy Page-Turners. Sometimes a reader just has to have a little fun.

65 recipes down and 240 to go (blows me away that I'm cooking all these new things)

Not By Alice Alone

Well, I suppose one COULD live by eating just from TAOSF, but I'm also now working from another new (to me) cookbook: "Healthy Eating: Use the Glycemic Index for Optimal Health." Now THAT'S a title that should send any normal person running in the opposite direction! But the great color photos sucked me in. That, and the fact that I knew this would be a lot of protein and veggie dishes. Plus, these recipes are pretty easy and quick to make for dinner. Seriously, as I thumbed through the book I just wanted to cook and eat everything! It's my kind of food. Alice would approve, I'm sure.

I started tonight with Vietnamese Beef Soup. Had to make a couple substitutions, thus yielding Atascadero-Vietnamese Beef Soup, but we got the basic idea. I don't think I've ever cooked with rice noodles before. It was just delicious! Tasty. Loaded with veggies. A little beef.

My Big Accomplishment for the day was to hang Tibetan prayer flags outside above the garage door. Last fall we hung them between 2 oak trees, but one tree lost a major branch in a storm, thus bringing down the flags. I decided to wait until the winter storms were over before trying again. The project moved ahead nicely, except for the huge bee swarm that came up the draw and past the house in the middle of things. First I heard them. Then I saw them. Then I got into the house, closing the garage door behind me, as fast as I've ever moved before in my entire life. Didn't want to get in their way....

Such is my life these days. Boring, but low-stress. One out of 2 isn't that bad. At least I'm not getting into trouble and not pissing anyone off.

The Iliad

I'm tired. Got up way too early this morning to get out of the house before a crew came to test our house for air leaks. Sort of. More or less. Something like that. We are a test site for all kinds of weird stuff. New passive-solar strawbale house and inability to say "no."

Anyway, last night I finished The Iliad, the first reading in The Lifetime Reading Plan. Yes, it's a good read, if you're into that sort of story. War, murder, pettiness. Great art reaches across centuries and cultures. However, it reminds me once again that mankind is still little more than a power-hungry, egotistical, murderous savage. And that we always have made our gods and goddesses in our own image. We don't know today why "God lets bad things happen to good people." In ancient Greece, even the gods could not control Fate. Same thing. I'm further amazed at the graphic nature of the killing in The Iliad. Makes modern media look nearly tame -- certainly no worse. Maybe The Iliad speaks clearly to us today because we haven't changed one iota since that time, nor has our arts and entertainment. I couldn't care much about any of the characters no matter how hard I tried. Well, I guess I'm a better person for having read The Iliad. We'll see. On to the next item on the list.

Day 88 - Remember Shelling Peas??

Spring Pea Soup - pg. 238

It's been a jillion years since I've shelled peas. I didn't even know you could get them at our local farmers' markets. It was fun to shell peas. Meditative. Getting back in touch with your food and all that. "What do you mean green peas don't come out of plastics bags and cans???" The soup was wonderful. Very Alice. Butter, onions, salt, peas and water. Delicious. I just served it with a loaf of fresh-from-the-machine bread, butter, and olive jam. Oh yes, big dollops of creme fraiche on the soup. Gotta have a little luxury.

This weekend I've been doing the ings. Shopping. Cleaning. Washing. You know the drill. But we did go out for breakfast this morning at a little local cafe that makes great biscuits. Yesterday I checked out the new T. J. Maxx in SLO and found 2 little saucepans, one a Calphalon (my favorites) to replace 2 seriously old and beat-up ones. And saw "The Art of the Steal," a documentary about the sad theft of the Barnes art collection. The more I see money and power in action, the more I hate it. Which reminds me that I'm within 14 pages of wrapping up The Iliad.

64 down; 241 to go