Jenny was here

Our beloved Stew visited us over the holiday weekend. What a blast--it's just a ton of fun to have our friend come to see us. Not to mention that our dogs are over the moon when their "Aunt Jenny" comes to see them.

We kept a low profile overall--no visits to Athens, and in fact no excursions whatsoever except to the grocery store. We had a grand dinner with L2 and her houseguests (two delicious vegetable dishes made by one of the aforementioned houseguests, plus leg of lamb, pitas and tzatsiki, sangria, and crabapple pie) and laughed and talked.

Jenny taught me some crocheting and I taught her some knitting. And astonishingly, she crocheted this gorgeous, cozy scarf for me in a mere hour and a half...



...which makes me wonder if there might not be something to this hookifying business after all. ;-) Seriously, crochet seems a lot more versatile than I had previously understood. It's not as intuitive for me as knitting is, but I can definitely see myself working up the occasional crocheted piece.

Jenny birdwatched a bit, although the weather was less than cooperative, so most of it was done through the kitchen window. This is truly a paradise of chipping sparrows.

After Jenny had to leave (snif!), the s.o. and I watched American Idol (hooray! new season!) and I finished knitting a blaze orange hat I've been making for him.



Even when it's not hunting season around here, it's never 100 percent safe to walk in the woods without a touch o' the orange, so I've taken it upon myself to provide day-glo garments for all of us, human and canine. The s.o.'s hat is a huge success; it fits him perfectly and is already much loved. Next comes a dog sweater.

How is it...

...that I was a vegetarian for 16 years, yet never managed to learn to make simple baked tofu?

The Rebar cookbook has three recipes for baked tofu, the simplest of which I used in a stir-fry last night. It's very good, and it's this quick and easy: Press the tofu (i.e., weight it down with something heavy for an hour so that the water drains out), cut it into 1/2-inch cubes, then toss with 1 Tbs. sesame oil, 2 Tbs. soy sauce, and 1/4 tsp. black pepper. Bake on an oiled tray at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

That's it. And it makes quite a difference in the finished product. I feel that until now, I've been going through life ill-equipped!

In other news, did you know that some people buy pre-baked tofu at the grocery store for a premium price? Did you know that I've done it, too?

Anyway, I've been knitting like crazy and should have two finished objects to show you within the next several days. My Neiman sweater will take a bit longer, but at least I've managed to knock out nine and a half inches of torso. I think it's going to be beautiful, but hey, next time I decide to knit a sweater on tiny little #2 needles, will someone please give me a reality check?

Speaking of Neiman, is it my imagination, or does Ann have pet hair on her sweater in the photos? I'm grateful for that, actually, because it gives a more accurate portrayal of how the finished piece will actually look on me. :-)

Perfect, perfect, perfect!

Remember my "eh" muscadine cobbler from last week? The cloying, goopy one? And how I said I thought the grapes might do better in a clafouti?

I made one, and I was right. It's one of the best things I've ever eaten. WOW. If you have access to muscadines (this means you, my fellow residents of the south), grab your copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Vol. 1 and follow the basic clafouti recipe, substituting halved, seeded muscadines for the cherries. Use brandy (which is, after all, made of grapes) instead of vanilla.

I could eat this whole thing. Mmm.

Really, really unfair

Jacques Pépin was making omelets in my dream. And then my wretched alarm woke me before I had a chance to eat one.

*sob*

I.O.U.

Sorry I've been so tardy about this. Last week after my One Local Summer post, a couple of you requested recipes. Here they are, with my changes noted:

. . . . . .

FRESH CORN CHOWDER
adapted from Molly Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

2 Tbs. butter (I omitted this, because I fried up a few strips' worth of bacon and used both the bacon and the grease in the chowder)
1 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. chopped celery (I omitted this because I didn't have it, and it wouldn't have been local if I did)
1 sweet red bell pepper, minced (I used green because we had it)
4-5 cobs' worth of fresh sweet corn
1/2 tsp. salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. dried thyme (I used fresh, so I used a bit more)
1/2 tsp. dried basil (ditto)
1 c. stock or water (I used water)
1 c. evaporated or whole milk (I used whole)

Cook the onions in the butter or grease until soft, then add peppers and corn. Add seasonings, stir well, and cover. Reduce heat and let cook 5 minutes.

Add water, cover, and simmer 10-20 minutes (Molly says 10, but that's pretty bare-bones if you ask me). Using a blender, pureé half the soup and add it back into the pot.

About 10 minutes before serving time, add the milk. Don't actually cook it; just warm it gently until it's hot enough to eat.



PEACH COBBLER
adapted rather loosely from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

6 to 8 c. sliced ripe peaches
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. flour
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 c. flour (I prefer a mix of soft wheat and all-purpose, but in this case I used only the former)
1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
6 Tbs. cold butter, cut up
1/2 c. buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter an 8x10-ish oval or rectangular dish.

In the dish, toss together the peaches, brown sugar, cinnamon, 1/4 c. flour, and lemon juice.

In a bowl, mix the 1 1/2 c. flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Rub in the butter with your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in the buttermilk until dough clings together. Scoop up large spoonfuls of dough and "cobble" them onto the top of the fruit.

Bake about 30 minutes, or until fruit is bubbling and topping is golden and has lost its doughiness underneath (you may have to stick a spoon in near the center to ascertain this). Serve warm.

. . . . . .

By the way, what are your favorite fresh fig recipes? They're in season right now and I've just bought a LOT of them from a nice elderly gentleman at the farmers' market, so I need your help. I already make that classic delicious salad with the fresh mozzarella and basil and prosciutto (mmmmmm). I eat a lot of them plain, of course. I have been known to make fresh fig ice cream, but I'm not in the mood for heavy creamy stuff lately. What else should I do?

The world in mid-Georgia

I think my international cooking craze started when we moved out to the country. Because we were no longer surrounded by restaurants, I got it in my head that if I wanted to eat decent world cuisine, I was going to have to Iron Chef it myself.

About that time, my cookbook collection--already a couple of U-Haul boxes in size--truly began to explode. Now it is all we can do to find places for the new entries. Major collections began to accumulate, especially when I discovered how frequently volumes from the justifiably renowned Time-Life Foods of the World series showed up in thrift stores. (I think I have almost all of them now, both hardbound cultural studies and spiral-bound recipe books. And, as with almost all my cookbooks, I got them for a song.)

For a long time, Asian food has been a weak spot in my repertoire. But a couple of months ago I started learning spoken and written Mandarin, and it seemed as good a time as any to whip my Chinese cooking into shape. So far, reviews have been mixed: I loved my tea-cooked eggs, but the s.o. thought they were "funky" and my friends looked askance at their goth-style cobweb markings. A batch of bitterish almond cookies satisfied no one.

But there's one recipe that has produced a fantastically snackalicious addition to my repertoire. From the Foods of the World China volume, I present...

CUCUMBER SALAD WITH SPICY DRESSING

2 medium cucumbers
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1 Tbs. sugar
2 tsp. sesame oil
1/4 tsp. Tabasco
1/2 tsp. salt

Peel and seed the cucumbers, and cut them into 1/4-inch slices. Toss with remaining ingredients. Chill.

Easy, eh? Don't blame me when you eat two batches of it per day. Remember, I said "snackalicious."

That salad, along with the tasty Fish Fillet Soup Noodles from Stella Lau Fessler's Chinese Seafood Cooking, made up this week's One Local Summer meal. Neither the noodles nor the seasonings were local, but the dishes made such excellent use of our homegrown and home-caught foods that I decided to go with it.

CUCUMBER SALAD:
Cucumbers - our own
Seasonings - elsewhere

FISH SOUP:
White bass - caught in Oconee River (20 miles)
Fish stock - frozen from fish caught at local fishing creek (12 miles)
Green onions and jalapeño peppers - our own
Noodles and seasonings - elsewhere

What's goin' on

• After years of making do with a percolator, we bought a new drip coffeemaker. It is programmable, so it can make coffee all by itself and have it waiting for me when I get up in the morning. Needless to say, this represents a huge jump in Quality of Life.

• The s.o. completed an outdoor chickenwire-and-netting aviary for Chicken House #2--a porch-covered vestibule area that will later lead to a number of separate pens--and today the young chickens and turkeys ventured into the great outdoors for the first time. Bravery is definitely breed-specific: Barred Rocks were the first out the door, followed by Red Star boys (remember them--the padding in the shipment? they are nice guys and we will be rather sorry to eat them, but there's nothing that can be done, because we all know the problems associated with Too Many Roosters), then Speckled Sussexes. Cornish boys were curious, but very flighty and scaredy. Ameraucanas were so docile that they would stay outside if placed there, but they took no initiative. Brahmas, Langshans, and Mille Fleur banties wanted nothing to do with the strangeness, and only ventured out after everyone else had been happily pecking grass for quite a while.

• We are harvesting the first Sungold tomatoes. There is a small Lemon cucumber on the vine, and green beans are starting to roll in in quantity.

• My back is getting better.

• My chores--the ones I can do with a delicate back, at least--have recently been made more interesting by heavy use of podcastable language lessons. I'm taking three languages at once, something my mom did one semester in college. "It won't screw you up," she reassured me. Which is a good thing, because I am enjoying all three. The Mandarin is the best by far, and I have actually plunked down money for a basic yearly subscription so I can download the pdfs. That same company also offers Spanish, but I wasn't crazy about the hosts, so I went with this one instead. It's clear and sensible, and kind of quirkily fun because it's taught by Scots. (I hope I'm not picking up an odd accent.) Lastly, I'm doing French. I already read it pretty well, but I speak it quite badly, so I'm using this for review and reinforcement. I recommend podcast language lessons to anyone; they're great for keeping your mind busy when your body has to do the dishes.

• We have bees again, magically. A while ago our hive swarmed, and half the bees absconded to the top of a 60-foot pine tree, from which we were unable to recover them. We watched the remaining bees closely and were horrified that no brood appeared--they seemed to have been unsuccessful in raising a new queen. The colony began, predictably, to die out. And then...inexplicably...there was a healthy hive again, full of young fuzzy bees that are now busily pollinating the garden. We are extremely puzzled, but have decided not to look a gift bee in the proboscis.

• Lately I am all about this recipe, made with shrimp instead of avocado. I love avocado, but trust me when I say shrimp rocks all over it in this particular instance. I suppose one could use both. Hmm.

I think this means summer's here

That's about a 14-inch colander, by the way, if it helps you get the scale. The Tondo Chiaro di Nizza zucchini got rather large overnight!

Tonight I'll cook one of my favorite recipes: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's pasta with creamy zucchini sauce. For those who don't own the River Cottage Cookbook, all you do is slice a couple of pounds of zucchini very thinly and cook them quite slowly with a couple of good glugs of olive oil and some minced garlic, without browning, until it all completely breaks down. This removes the wateriness from the squash and turns it into a sauce. Then you season it, add a few tablespoons of cream, and grate in some Parmesan cheese. Serve it over any kind of pasta you like.

Don't tell anyone, but...

...our dogs are hippies.

Inspired by my copy of Dr. Pitcairn, I have taken decades of vegetarian and carnivorous cooking lore and blended them together to create a seriously communal canine concoction: Dogaroni and Cheeze. Note the spelling, which indicates that it is not actually cheese-with-an-S. However, unlike most "cheezes," (see The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, Laurel's Kitchen, et. al.), it does include dairy.

The dish is made of the meat from a pound of chemical-free chicken thighs, a cup of mixed carrots and peas, some leftover mustard greens, and a pound of whole-wheat pasta. It is sauced with a bechamel made primarily of goat milk, whole-wheat flour, and a quarter-cup of nutritional yeast.

Cheezy. It's actually not bad, although it has the characteristic unsalty blandness of dog dinners.

There is no photo because we destroyed the evidence

Yesterday, in baking for the farmers' market, I knocked two recipes off the list for the Nana Project: A batch of date-nut tartlets (which Nana called Chess Pies, even though they aren't; and which the s.o. calls Nutjobs) and a batch of no-bake peanut butter bars.

The recipe for date-nut tartlets is one of my favorites, ever. They are basically muffin-sized pecan pies, only made with walnuts and dates. They are positively decadent. And mine are actually better than Nana's, I have to say, because I use real butter instead of margarine and put them in a sour cream pastry crust. I split one with L2 and, when she said it was her favorite of all my baked goods, sent her home with the two that didn't sell, too. Why don't I make these more often? They're easy.

The no-bake peanut butter bars are really good--they're candies along the lines of Reese's Cups, except they're padded out with a little graham cracker, cinnamon, and nutmeg in the peanut butter part. They remind me of Christmas because they used to appear seasonally, like clockwork. They are not, however, ideal for farmers' market sales. For one thing, any size that's big enough to charge money for is big enough to be really cloying. They ought to be cut into the tiny bite-size morsels we always used to snack on over the holidays. And for another thing, the coating of melted semi-sweet chocolate (Ghirardelli, in this case) melts at a temperature remarkably similar to yesterday's ambient one. I had to keep the bars in the cooler with the radishes and baby bok choy, and even then, they turned to goo as soon as they came out into the open air.

26 recipes to go!

A completed challenge, and a new personal one

Well: The Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge is over, and I'm kind of glad, really, because we eat approximately 75 percent local all the time, and it's kind of nice not to have to think too hard about that remaining 25 percent. The temptation is to cook something really spectacularly unlocal tonight as a reminder of all the wonders the modern world makes available to us (at the expense of petroleum usage and general wastefulness), but actually I'm just going to step outside of the frugal part of the challenge by heating up some local smoked brisket (a special treat at about $8 a pound). There's no need to range far afield on the veggies, either--I'm thinking slaw and sweet potatoes.

At any rate, here's how we wrapped up the week:

Breakfast yesterday was my Nana's rice pudding, made the previous night with Carolina Gold rice, South Carolina milk, and (yes) a dab of white sugar. Soooooo good. For those who didn't write the recipe down last time I mentioned it, that's:

Mix together 1 qt. milk, 6 Tbs. sugar, and 4 Tbs. rice. Bake at 325 degrees F for 3 hours. Do not be alarmed at caramelizing/ballooning action.

If all recipes were that simple, people might actually cook! Heh.

At dinnertime, we rounded out the challenge with a quiche filled with eggs, milk, a little bacon, purple sprouting broccoli, and garlic-basil goat cheese. I had never put soft goat cheese in a quiche before, and OHMYGOD it's the best thing ever.

So now that it's all over, the s.o. and I are talking about setting out a new challenge for ourselves. We thought of it when I was making the rice pudding. Before Nana died, she compiled a cookbook of family recipes for all us grandkids. Many of the recipes in it are as familiar as the back of my hand (her pie crust, which I use more than weekly; the abovementioned rice pudding). Others I know, but it's been years since I tasted them (broccoli salad, strips-of-beef casserole). Still others are downright weird--is that WINE I see listed as an ingredient in zucchini cake? And what exactly is a potato chip cookie like? Have I eaten that, at some Christmas past?

We are going to make them all. All 30 of them--or rather, 28, since we've just made the pie crust and the rice pudding. No time frame is imposed, but I'm hoping we can knock it all out in a couple of months. All mentions of "oleo" will be reinterpreted as "butter" (this, at the insistence of both of us). All "Crisco" will be read as "organic palm oil" (a very good substitute, if I do say so myself, and full of healthy monounsaturated fats). Brazen usages of corn syrup, cream, and MSG-laced chicken noodle soup mix will be replicated faithfully.

Hmm. I can see already that I am going to have to buy some sour cream.

We will report on our progress. In the meantime, does anyone know the best way to grind raisins?

You sank my battleship!

So we were doing really well at the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, and then...

What to my wondering eyes did appear at the farmers' market, but small $5 bowls of tiny unsprayed strawberries, grown by my Hmong friends!

I bought two bowls. I am weak.

This doesn't cause us to exceed our monetary limit for the week. But I still feel that I'm doing something most people couldn't do. See, every day I cook in a super-frugal way that, realistically speaking, is not practical for most working people. For example, last night I dug two chicken breasts out of the deep freeze (unusually cheap because they were part of an unneeded rooster, which we had previously parceled out into several other meals), thawed some pureed tomatoes from last summer's garden, simmered it all with onions and garlic and a bit of frozen basil, and at the last minute tossed in a few handfuls of freshly homemade egg tagliatelle. Who does that?! Well, a few of us do. But not most folks. Not everyone is privileged enough to work from home and be able to intersperse cooking with typing.

Most of our meals cost very little. This leaves us room for occasional wild splurges...such as $10 worth of strawberries at a time. I love that, and I think it's very important to my quality of life, but I don't know if it proves anything about whether "normal" people can eat locally on a budget.

Your thoughts?

Cream of Unbought Merchandise

Week two of our tiny nascent farmers' market has come and gone, and we're really happy with the way it's going. There are only a few vendors, and there aren't a huge numbers of customers, either. But there are customers--and they buy very enthusiastically. And thanks to L2's husband, we're getting some free local newspaper coverage. We can't wait to see how things shape up as tomato season kicks in.

Yesterday as we were packing up our tent and table, I joked to the s.o. that we were having "Cream of Unbought Merchandise" for dinner. And that's sort of what we had. There was a gorgeous bunch of chard that hadn't sold, so I chopped it up and sautéed it in olive oil. I thawed a few slices of our home-brined ham, and I poached two duck eggs to serve on the greens. The total cost is extremely hard to judge, but let's estimate 1/2 lb. @ $3.50/lb. for the ham (the pork was only $1.50 per pound in its raw state, but the brining ingredients--including a veritable sea of hard cider--increase its cost considerably), $2 for the chard, and 50 cents for the duck eggs.

This morning, already kind of tired of cornmeal products, I opted to make a batch of whole-wheat pancakes. I used locally milled spring wheat flour, chicken eggs, raw milk soured with a dash of vinegar, honey, and leaveners. I served it with about a quarter-cup of south Georgia-made fruit syrup, which, at $4.50 per smallish bottle, might have cost more than the pancakes. (I think we used about a sixth of the bottle.) In retrospect, I could have used my own jam and been much more frugal.

I'm wearied by all the calculations I'd have to do to figure out an actual price for the 'cakes, especially because I only used about a third of the batter today (the rest is in the fridge for tomorrow morning). And not all of what I used was consumed by humans; nearly half went to our dogs, who are gradually being switched over to a home-cooked diet.* So the math is beyond me. After all, I am only on my first cup of coffee.

Oh! Coffee. Whatever that total might have been, let's add $.50 to it.

By the way, I trust you all remember that I am also blogging about this challenge elsewhere?

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* Is anyone else considering home-cooking for their dogs? The recent contamination issues have been a big part of our decision, although to be honest, I've been uncomfortable with the filth that goes into dog food for a very long time. So this was more of a catalyst. We've ordered a few of the top books on the subject (Dr. Pitcairn's, etc.), have done a ton of internet research, and are planning a consultation with our vet just to be sure we're doing it right. From what I can gather, dogs mostly eat like people on the Zone Diet. They get protein and carbs and veggies--they are true omnivores.

I think home-cooking for pets might be unwieldy for a lot of people, but considering the way we cook and eat, it seems like a good fit for us. It doesn't really add any work to my day to put some stew in the crockpot and some rice in the rice cooker. And there are a lot of things we can share with them...we just have to be careful about certain ingredients they mustn't have, such as onions and raisins.

Dog pancakes for everyone!

A weekend in pictures

The weather has turned absolutely gorgeous--a little hot, even. It's like the Mediterranean. I am basking in it, even though somewhere inside the logical part of my brain, I know it needs to rain a LOT more than it has been.

Friday was L2's birthday, so while I was in the kitchen knocking out pies and cookies for the farmers' market, I made her this:



It's a plain spongecake roll (from the recipe in Fanny Farmer) filled with a mixture of whipped cream and Meyer lemon curd. I gather from the phone calls we got later that it tasted good!

Saturday morning was all about fun and friends and springiness. While I was at the opening day of the Oconee Farmers' Market, the s.o. went fishing with his friend B and B's son. The white bass are spawning, and apparently male fish are like all of us: when they are occupied by matters of the heart and loins, they lose their mental edge. There are now 18 fish in our fridge!



So we are going to B's house this evening to grill some fish. Excellent.

We then attended the Saturday night auction. Most of the recent auctions haven't proven very interesting, but last night was back on form. I got an honest-to-gosh Bedazzler (careful clicking that link; annoying celebrity testimonials will ensue) for $4 and a Bundt-shaped unglazed earthenware oven dish for $3 (any ideas what I should do with it, fellow foodies? my first thought is an Italian cheese bread ring). The s.o. got a couple of items, too. And unrelated to the actual auctioning that was going on, I bought this:



Stew, J, and my mom will recognize this as one of the many pieces of inexplicable folk art that decorates the walls of the auction hall. We've loved this one for months; it certainly poses an interesting question, but it is a question that I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone around here posing. So while I was talking to the cashier last night, I finally asked how much it was. The answer, my friends, was $5.75. How could I say no to that?

Roast beast

I am congratulating myself, because I have managed to get all the ham leftovers into the freezers. It took some rearranging. We ate quite a bit of roast ham at dinner tonight, but there were still three 1-quart bags of lunchmeat, a 2-gallon sack of random bits and pieces, and a meaty hambone.

The ham is absolutely freaking delicious. It was cured for 30 days, give or take, in a hard cider brine. Last time we used Woodchuck, I think, but didn't get quite enough and had to pad it out with apple juice; this time we used Hornsby's in great quantities. I think this year's ham is even better than last year's, but I can't prove it. At the very least there's more of it, which is a very good thing.

I cannot emphasize this enough: I don't think there is any kitchen activity you can do that's more satisfying than curing your own meat. It's absolutely magical. Please, please, please try it yourself. There are all sorts of reference materials that can help you; I'm partial to the River Cottage books and DVDs, but they're by no means the only ones.



This photo is apropos of nothing, except that I was entranced by the gorgeous impracticality of the plants that were sitting in the bathroom sink. They're outdoors now. We had had a couple of very chilly days, with lows in the mid-30s, but now we seem to be rebounding. The s.o. has been busy planning improvements to his flower bed. Every year it gets better. We are known for it.

I am working on a 4000-word writing assignment and am totally exhausted.

Signs of spring...

...are tumbling out like socks from a clothes basket. At times like this, I think the pagan concept of the "wheel of the year," while worthwhile, is not quite faithful to reality. The year has corners--and we are turning one.

The Bradford pears that line our main street are in riotous bloom. The verbena and rosemary have blossomed purple, and the older of our two quince trees is leafing out.

Yesterday we harvested all of our winter spinach (there wasn't much of it; it likes sand, and we offer it clay), our first two florets of purple sprouting broccoli, and our first asparagus stalk. I put them in a quiche with diced homemade bacon and eggs from our own hens. Many months ago Cookiecrumb wrote about the unexpected sweetness of fresh vegetables, and it was this that sprang to my mind as I ate my slice of quiche. It was the sweetest savory dish I can recall eating. Especially the broccoli was almost shocking in its sweetness.

The sun stands higher overhead, and it is coaxing sudden ripeness from brassica vegetables that have grown ever-so-slowly through the winter. If Yahoo! Weather is not toying with me again, we may have had our last frost. However, I am playing it safe with our tender tomato seedlings.

Now all that remains is for Cairo to blow his coat. Tumbleweeds of dog hair are the surest sign of spring.

What a ham

This year's 23-pound ham (which now weighs significantly less than that, I think, now that the brine has driven out a lot of its moisture) is done curing and is hanging in a muslin bag on the front porch. It will air-dry for a day before it is ready to be stored or cooked. It smells divine.

I still haven't made the danged sausage. Is that pathetic, or what? I need to get busy. We have already copped out and decided not to stuff it in casings this year. We use more bulk sausage and patties than links anyway.

She got sauce

For no good reason, I got it in my head that I wanted to compile a list of my top 10 most favorite foods. So I did.

It's meaningless. Tomorrow it will certainly change. Whole cuisines that I am passionate about (Mexican and Greek, for example) are omitted here--and now that I think of it, kataifi me crema or guacamole may deserve a place on the list.* But here it is, for better or for worse, in no particular order:

• French bread with Brie - evidence, I think, that my palate still lives in the 1980s.

• Grapefruit halves with granulated sugar - preferably white grapefruit, because the astringency contrasts so beautifully with the sweetness. Pink grapefruit I prefer to eat plain. Either one must be refrigerator-cold.

• Vietnamese noodle salad with mock duck - with a ton of fish-sauce dressing poured on it.

• Meyer lemon curd - alone, on toast, in a tiny tart shell, or swirled with Greek yogurt.

• Rhubarb pie - or cherry, I can't decide. Must be made according to my family recipe.

• Peanut butter and banana sandwich - either on good grainy whole-wheat bread, or (just as appealing) on thick slabs of French or Italian bread. Not fried. Not even toasted. Banana very slightly underripe.

• Vegetable samosas - spicy, redolent of ajwain seeds, with a side of tamarind sauce.

• BBQ pork shoulder sandwich - with pickles, slaw, and a good dribble of hot, vinegary sauce. Not just anybody's, of course; there's a wide gulf between the best and the rest. My favorite is from Cantrell's in Nashville.

• Bratwurst - grilled, on a bun, with sauerkraut and relish and onions, washed down with the first, coldest sips of the s.o.'s beer at a baseball game.

• Lightly sugared fresh strawberries - just enough so that their juice comes out. Excellent over warm buttermilk biscuits and/or with whipped cream, but equally perfect slurped up alone with a spoon.

I think we can conclude a few things from this list: (1) I like fruit, (2) I like bread, and (3) I have an iron stomach. All true. What's on your list?

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* L2 recently called me and asked if I needed anything from the grocery store. "Avocados!" I replied. "I've been craving guacamole for days." She obliged--brought me corn chips, too--and I ate almost the entire batch in one sitting. I really, really love guacamole.

Whose desk is this, and why is it on fire?

In the last couple of days, almost every person I know has called me. The only people who haven't are people I ought to call. Yikes! So much to do.

I am sad to report that one of yesterday's phone calls was to tell me that this weekend's Knit-In has been cancelled. Apparently very few of the knitters who encouraged the yarn store to host the event actually signed up. Very poor follow-through on their part.

I am desperate to make the Calorimetry headwrap that simply everyone is making, but I am looking for the perfect yarn. I've already swatched almost everything in my stash, and nothing has the character I want. It's a simple thing, so it needs to be cool yarn. Any ideas? It must be cheap.

In other news, I've made a batch of banana jam in anticipation of the coming farmers' market season. I've been out of commission, canning-wise, because during the recent brining of various pork products, my already dodgy enameled canning pot sprang a leak and had to be thrown out. (Oops! Salt + exposed unstainless steel = hole!) But luckily, our friend D has a gorgeous 22-qt. Mirro pressure canner that she is prepared to part with for surprisingly little money. I gave it a test run today--unpressurized, for now--and liked it a LOT. So the cash is on its way, D!

This weekend is the time to start seedlings for our summer vegetables. It is probably a good thing I will not be spending 15 hours at the yarn store.

UPDATE:

Literally 15 minutes after I hit "Publish" on this post, the mail carrier showed up at our house with a box from Jenny. I opened it, and lo and behold, it was full of gorgeous skeins of wool--all kinds! She had decided she was unlikely to use it, and sent it to me. Wow--what a friend, eh? Not only is she generous, but she reads my mind!

So now I will be swatching some brown wool/mohair and some flecked oatmeal Irish superwash wool to see if either one is suitable for Calorimetry. The yarn is all GORGEOUS. There is a heart-melting skein of bulky Lopi that has "mittens" written all over it. *sigh*

A dinner for sweethearts

I seem to have gotten away from publishing foodie things lately, so I decided to take a photo of the delicious, rosy little dinner that the s.o. and I had last night. Clockwise from the top, there is:

• A bowl of homemade cranberry applesauce, brought out from the freezer. I made it in the fall, during Georgia apple season--I think after our first trip to Ellijay.

• A bottle of Cava.

• A pork tenderloin (from our half-pig) brushed with University of Georgia Entomology Department honey and crusted with cracked mustard seed, kosher salt, and pepper, then seared in a cast-iron pan.

• Boiled rutabaga (from our friends down the road) with butter and salt and pepper.

• A tart of fresh Florida strawberries.

There is a lot going on here. The s.o. has dug the holes for the new fruit trees which should be arriving from Trees of Antiquity at any moment. He has also built a new potato bed. Meanwhile, I have planted arugula and radishes and peas and tendergreen mustard and bok choy. I have also started some seeds in flats: sorrel, mint, Greek oregano, nettle, purslane, mache. Some of my earlier plantings, such as the peas I put in a couple of weeks ago, seem to have been eaten by some kind of animal. Par for the course, I guess.

The farmers' market is humming along pretty well. J and I had a strategy meeting two nights ago, and I am working on the legal hoo-hah that must be ironed out. This week I placed public service announcements in a few newspapers and radio stations, and this morning when the local paper came out, I had a call from a woman in town who would like to sell vegetables and peaches. She was really nice, and I am shocked and appalled that I haven't met her before. Whew! So now I hope I can put to bed my recurring, insomnia-causing anxieties about being the only vegetable vendor...