-
Wordless Wednesday
-
First Day
In my last post, I mentioned that Maya was interviewing for jobs. I haven’t heard anything about the employment agency sending her anything, but she DID really like the law firm, and accepted a job offer there. Today is her first day. I’m thinking of her and hoping it turns out to be a good fit and that she excels there and makes friends and so on, all the things you wish for someone on their first day. She left to catch BART at the same time that Puppy Boy and I were leaving for our walk, and for some reason seeing her in her business clothes (skirt, hose, pumps,…
-
Friday Randomness
Birthday, Part 2 Though my birthday was in December, tomorrow we are doing the things I wanted to do then, but couldn’t. After our vacation last summer in France, I was excited to see that one of our local art museums has an exhibit on Monet’s later years, a time when he was painting his garden, over and over again. Trouble was, the exhibit didn’t open until recently, so we couldn’t go in December. My stepmom, Julie, gave me money for my birthday, which I used to buy a membership to the fine arts museums in San Francisco, and I reserved tickets tomorrow to see the Monet exhibit. So excited!…
-
Chicken or Fish with tomatoes, capers, onion, and butter
Last week, we received a flyer in the mail for Whole Foods, which included a picture of some delicious looking fish served on tomato sauce. Pretty, isn’t it? The fish was on sale, and so were the tomatoes. They did not have a recipe for the dish as shown in the flyer, but they did have a recipe for the sauce, which you can also find here. I decided to splurge and buy the fish (sea bass, spendy), and I added some capers to the recipe. I just made the sauce, added capers, and then when it was about finished, added the fish and simmered until it was done. It…
-
Lentil and Tuna Salad
I was trying to decide on what to make for dinner the other night, and looking at what we had in our kitchen. We had some lovely French lentils and some good quality tuna, so I went looking for a recipe that would combine them. I found this recipe at NYTimes cooking. I couldn’t see why you would buy tuna in water, then use olive oil in your vinaigrette, so I used the olive oil that the tuna came with, and it was delicious. I mixed it with some baby spinach to give it greens. When I had some the next day for leftovers, I bought some arugula, and it…
-
(Not) Wordless Wednesday
I hope you have all been well, and that you have had a lovely Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or whatever. Ours has been lovely. One gift I received is a new iPad, which is SUCH a relief, my old one, while much adored, was so out of date that it could not take new updates, and thus pages would freeze and reload and freeze and reload, and it was a nightmare to do anything more than a text or facebook on it. Now with my new iPad, which is all up to date and happy, I am hopefully going to manage to find more time here. We shall see.…
-
Wordless Wednesday
-
Giving Thanks
As always, there is much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful…better grammar, but sounds awkward). For those of us in California this year, we are thankful for the mixed blessing of rain. Mostly good, because look at the difference in our air quality from last Saturday to today. I’ve never spent so much time looking at air quality indexes before. At some point the air quality was over 300, which is extremely hazardous. In the picture above, it is likely about 185 or so. The lower picture was good air quality, maybe around 20. It felt so good to go out and take our first long…
-
Ode to Sancerre
I adore California Chardonnay, and haven’t found a lot of French Chardonnay that I enjoy. I wish this were not true, because I feel less sophisticated for preferring a big oakey wine to one that is more subtle. But I live in California, and buttery and oakey wines are very popular here. While we were in France this summer, I decided to steer away from French Chardonnays, and instead went with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre. When we came home and found ourselves longing for France, we stated looking for Sancerre around here. You can find fairly decent selections of wine at your local Safeway, and even CVS and…
-
Wordless Wednesday
-
Cooking with Aunt Flo
My Great Aunt Flo (Florence) has a hoarding problem. She LOVES recipes, and has them all over the front of her house. They cover the dining room table, the coffee table in the living room, the card table in the living room (where my Grandma used to do puzzles), and the coffee table in the family room. She sorts them and looks at them and worries about them. It is her overwhelming passion and hobby at this stage of her life, when she doesn’t have my Grandma to look after anymore. It has taken me awhile to figure out that she loves them and wants to keep them. I had…
-
Fun at a French Laundry
There is a VERY expensive, 3 Michelin starred restaurant around here, The French Laundry. That is NOT what we are talking about, because while I would certainly go there and enjoy a wonderful meal and invite all of you to join me IF I WON BIG IN THE LOTTERY, my current circumstances would not allow $325 per person without any wine even. No, this is a cautionary tale of washing clothes in a laundromat, which occurred in France, but could have happened anywhere. Our first day in Paris, I woke up before Ted and Maya, and I was ready to go out into the world far earlier than she would…
-
Pomegranate, Orange, and Avocado Salad
Ted and I were out walking the spaz (aka, Mulder the Puppy Boy) the other day, and we passed a house we often pass, and I happened to notice that an ordinary looking bush that borders the sidewalk is a pomegranate bush. How did I know? Because I happened to spy a beautiful pomegranate buried deep inside from the corner of my eye. See how lovely it is, hidden in there? Backtracking a bit, Ted’s mom came to visit last weekend, and she brought me a beautiful pomegranate and some avocados. So for Halloween, I was trying to decide what to make, and found a recipe for stuffed peppers where…
-
Paris
Oh Paris, why did we shortchange you? When planning our trip, we were tight on time. We only had so much vacation saved up, only so much $$ to spend, and we wanted to go when we wanted to go. We wanted to see more of France than just Paris, and of course, we wanted to see Jean-Marc, which meant the long drive to the West Coast. I do not regret any of it, but I do wish very much that we had had 3 or 4 more days in Paris. When you’re looking at your calendar and planning, you don’t really realize how much time gets spent getting from…
-
Wordless Wednesday