Hellooooo, Bubbleland! What's been going on? It's been much too much long! A little bit of this and a little bit of that has been going on here my end. Gotta give a mention to some wonderful called THE GRIZZLIES that happened in the playoffs and games were an uber-blast.
Everybody hands go up...
And they stay there
Let's see, what else? My sinuses/allergies have been insane. So instead of blogging, I just sit around and blow my nose. Sorry. Too much? What-evah... This is MY LIFE. And it's a lot of blowing. Ha. Anyhoo... Let's talk food!
I've been super into egg salad lately. I've made several batches and I tend to make it and then just stand in the kitchen gorging myself on it. I'm definitely into curry. Not so into the green olives I tried. Next time might do some pickles.
Is it smiling at you too?
So that was fun times. Hoping for more fun times, I gave brisket a whirl. I was in the grocery store & it gave me the eye. Somewhere over the years I've become less disgusted by raw meat. The opposite, in fact. Chicken used to seriously weird me out. I've never been bothered by eating meat on the bone, but just raw and hanging out was blech. But now, it's become beautiful and I just creepy-love a beautiful cut. So the brisket called my name... And I answered. I slow cooked it in the oven per one of my favorite sites. And it was... Chewy. Flavor was ok. Once I added more BBQ sauce. It was just really disappointing and I couldn't touch the leftovers. Which is odd because I love nothing more than a leftover lunch. Usually so much better than a Healthy Choice meal. Sigh. Oh, well. At least the pics were nice.
Smokin' & beautifully cooked... Or so I thought
With honey carrots & parmesan taters
It's always disappointing when you buy and expensive cut of meat, spend a lot of time on it, and it doesn't work out. Eh, gotta just chalk it up to experience right? I'm not sure what I'd do differently next time. But I will continue to analyze & get back to you with my findings.
So after that, I decided to give chicken cassoulet a whirl. I've tried a couple recipes off this site and they've all been winners. This was no different. Leftovers were great and the turkey sausage was surprisingly "sausage-y" tasting.
With broccoli & a salad with the first good tomatoes I've had in a long time
I do believe that's about it. I haven't done a ton of cooking since we met last. But that doesn't mean the eating stops. The other night we went to The Happy Mexican where I get this shrimp salad all the time. It's simple but fantastical. They always give you way more shrimp then the 16 advertised. And I don't know that I've had it the same way twice. This last time, it was especially like, ahhhh, sun-like? Octopus-like? Flower-like? I don't even know how to describe it...
Other than GLORIOUS
And sort of like a Mexican food hug
Ok, gonna switch gears for a sec. But it will tie back. I swear. Have you read Jen Lancaster's My Fair Lazy? If not, you should. She's fantastic. And funny. And snarky in all the right ways. In the book, per an Amazon review, Jen "decides she needs more in her life than reality TV and hamburgers; to that end, she sets out on an Eliza Doolittle-eque project of cultural self-improvement to expand her knowledge of art, fine dining, and all the attendant trappings of "high class" life". She called it her "Jenaissance". And I'm giving it a whirl myself. I eat at the same few places all the time. They're good but it's not much of a stretch. I watch a bit of the mind-numbing reality TV as well & it just seems like a little culture wouldn't hurt me. And I'm fortunate enough to live in a city where there's ton of stuff to do. And eat! (Speaking of, BBQ fest just happened and a big shoutout to my friends, The Beef N' The Chicken! Great BBQ – mmmm, ribs! – and a beautiful booth-tent things.)
A couple of my girl friends are joining me for our own personal "Jennaisance". It will include trying different food, going to plays, and new smarty-pants things in general.
All that to say, last night... It began! And it began with excellence. We went to India Palace to get our Indian food on. I've only had Indian food, like, once. It was in college & I liked it but, for some reason or another, just never went back.
We ordered a bunch of stuff and shared. If I remember correctly, we had:
- Raita – Cool whipped yogurt with bits of cucumber, tomatoes, potatoes, and spices.
- Vegetable Samosas – Two crisp patties filled with potatoes & peas, mildly spiced, deep fried.
- Onion Bhaji – Sliced onion deep fried with garbanzo flour.
- Chicken Tikka Masala – Mesquite broiled chicken-tikka cooked with onion & bell pepper in a a tomato sauce.
- Lamb Curry – Traditional dish cooked with boneless lamb, onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, & curry spices.
- Palak Paneer – Fresh spinach cooked curry style with homemade cream cheese & seasoned with aromatic herbs.
- And some sort of bread that you could dip.
I think that's right. It's pretty close, anyways. We asked our waiter for suggestions and just ate pretty much whatever he brought. I think I got the spinach dish wrong though because I don't think there was cream cheese and I do believe there was tofu. At any rate, whatever we got was absolutely fabulous and delicious. AND I liked the lamb! I've never really enjoyed lamb. I don't know if it's too gamy for me or what, but it's not my favorite. And it always looks so pretty. But I reeeeeally liked it. 'Course, didn't hurt it was in a delicious curry sauce. I forgot to take pics of the appetizers, but I did manage to get some of the mains...
Ok, this wasn't a main but dipping sauces for pretty much anything you could wanna dip. The green sauce was sorta like a verde salsa & the darker sauce was sorta spicy
One of my friends isn't into the super-spicy stuff so they brought us a red hot sauce to put on things to add a little heat. It was guh-reat! And very spicy. Similar to a Louisiana hot sauce. Which I like to put on everything. I mean, if I don't have any crushed red pepper handy. Either one will do me.
The chicken dish & yogurt dip in the background
The lamb curry dish in the front & the vegetarian spinach dish in the back
I believe our next forte will be either Vietnamese or Thai. Both of which I eat on the somewhat regular. Ok, maybe not as much Thai. But with both, I get the same things all the time. Saigon Lee lemongrass tofu, OBSESSED. It's time to branch out and try some new things this time around! Although maybe not as exotic as the eyeball soup from Chinatown. I still gag just thinking about it...
More to come on this! I know we're all excited, aren't we?
I believe in my last post I mentioned that I would have gardening news soon. I had huge plans.
Said plans
I planned to till up a large portion of the back yard. My dad gave me his beautiful tiller to make it happen. And after putting gas, oil, & a new spark plug in it, it wouldn't start. I'm going to take it to Sears in the immediate future but, until then, I wanted to go ahead and get my 'maters going. Hit one of my favorite places, the Home Depot, and picked up a Big Boy, Beefeater, and grape tomato plant. Also, a jalapeno plant. So we'll see how it goes!
Not quite what I originally planned but, hey, it's got a white picket fence and it's closer to the hose. So that's ok.
Also, my back bed is getting rowdy in a nice way and my begonias are getting some deeper color. They were pale-pale pink when I got them and I didn't love them once I got them into the planters. I mean, I liked them. They ARE flowers. And I love flowers. But anyhoo, the light pink with our light house wasn't enough contrast. Which I totally didn't think about when I bought them. But they're getting some darker pink and it tickles me pink. Ha, tickles me pink... Didn't even mean to do that.
Gettin' rowwwwwdy
Although the parsley seems to be a bit of a hall monitor about the noise
I don't know that the pic does the color credit... Just take my word for it
Oh, plants. I love them so!
Ok, we've almost covered all of my favorite things – Food. Cooking. Plants. But there's one more! BOOKS. I've got my stack of summer reading and I'm pretty excited about it.
June's Book Club Pick
Following conviction for bank fraud, White spent a year in a minimum-security prison in Carville, La., housed in the last leper colony in mainland America. His fascinating memoir reflects on the sizable group of lepers living alongside the prisoners, social outcasts among the motley inmate crew of drug dealers, mob types and killers. Narrating in colorful, entertaining snapshots, White introduces the reader to an excellent supporting cast in his imprisonment: Father Reynolds, the peerless spiritual monk; Mr. Flowers, the no-nonsense case manager; Anne, the sorrowful mother with leprosy whose baby was taken from her arms; and Ella the Earth Mother, with wisdom to spare. Brisk, ironic and perceptive, White's introspective memoir puts a magnifying glass to a flawed life, revealing that all of life is to be savored and respected.
Hoffman's debut, a by-the-numbers Southern charmer, recounts 12-year-old Cecelia Rose Honeycutt's recovery from a childhood with her crazy mother, Camille, and cantankerous father, Carl, in 1960s Willoughby, Ohio. After former Southern beauty queen Camille is struck and killed by an ice cream truck, Carl hands over Cecelia to her great-aunt Tootie. Whisked off to a life of privilege in Savannah, Ga., Cecelia makes fast friends with Tootie's cook, Oletta, and gets to know the cadre of eccentric women who flit in and out of Tootie's house, among them racist town gossip Violene Hobbs and worldly, duplicitous Thelma Rae Goodpepper. Aunt Tootie herself is the epitome of goodness, and Oletta is a sage black woman. Unfortunately, any hint of trouble is nipped in the bud before it can provide narrative tension, and Hoffman toys with, but doesn't develop, the idea that Cecelia could inherit her mother's mental problems. Madness, neglect, racism and snobbery slink in the background, but Hoffman remains locked on the sugary promise of a new day.
A family drama with stinging turns of dark comedy, the latest from Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) is a superb performance and as comic as it is sublimely catastrophic. Golden Richards is a polygamist Mormon with four wives, 28 children, a struggling construction business, and a few secrets. He tells his wives that the brothel he's building in Nevada is actually a senior center, and, more importantly, keeps hidden his burning infatuation with a woman he sees near the job site. Golden, perpetually on edge, has become increasingly isolated from his massive family—given the size of his brood, his solitude is heartbreaking—since the death of one of his children. Meanwhile, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if there is more to life than the polygamist lifestyle, and one of his sons, Rusty, after getting the shaft on his birthday, hatches a revenge plot that will have dire consequences. With their world falling apart, will the family find a way to stay together? Udall's polished storytelling and sterling cast of perfectly realized and flawed characters make this a serious contender for Great American Novel status.
I'm reading this with my friend, Lady B, for a little mini-Book Club
Elisabeth Page is a 30-year-old pastry chef at L.A.'s restaurant du jour whose perpetually knotted stomach has roots in any number of sources: her father, Ben, a two-time Pulitzer-winning novelist and the kind of cultural icon that doesn't exist anymore, with whom every conversation is a chess game; childhood sweetheart Will Houghton, whose globe-trotting as a journalist has stunted their ill-defined relationship; the head chef from hell at her all-consuming job; and her patrician family's way of bonding through blood sport. But relief begins to filter in as Elisabeth's dalliance with beer-drinking, salt-of-the-earth basketball coach Daniel Sullivan turns into a fulfilling relationship and her culinary career takes an unexpected turn. If it sounds chick litty, it is, but consider it haute chick lit; Palmer's prose is sharp, her characters are solid and her narrative is laced with moments of graceful sentiment.
My mama gave me this one –
The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state.
And OF COURSE, just in time for the final movie in July –
In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, no one and nothing is safe, including preconceived notions of good and evil and of right and wrong. With each book in her increasingly remarkable series, fans have nervously watched J.K. Rowling raise the stakes; gone are the simple delights of butterbeer and enchanted candy, and days when the worst ailment could be cured by a bite of chocolate. A series that began as a colorful lark full of magic and discovery has become a dark and deadly war zone. But this should not come as a shock to loyal readers. Rowling readied fans with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by killing off popular characters and engaging the young students in battle. Still, there is an unexpected bleakness from the start of Book 6 that casts a mean shadow over Quidditch games, silly flirtations, and mountains of homework. Ready or not, the tremendous ending of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will leave stunned fans wondering what great and terrible events await in Book 7 if this sinister darkness is meant to light the way.
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
The heart of Book 7 is a hero's mission--not just in Harry's quest for the Horcruxes, but in his journey from boy to man--and Harry faces more danger than that found in all six books combined, from the direct threat of the Death Eaters and you-know-who, to the subtle perils of losing faith in himself. Attentive readers would do well to remember Dumbledore's warning about making the choice between "what is right and what is easy," and know that Rowling applies the same difficult principle to the conclusion of her series. While fans will find the answers to hotly speculated questions about Dumbledore, Snape, and you-know-who, it is a testament to Rowling's skill as a storyteller that even the most astute and careful reader will be taken by surprise.
OK, well! I think that's pretty much everything I've got! Perfect timing too. I've been watching a Grey's Anatomy marathon on DVR. It's the shooting finale episode. It's almost over & I need to cook dinner so I'm signing off, Bubblers! Until next time. Oh! But one more thing before I go! Couple more things I love –
Sleepy Bear
Sleepy Claude
Awww. Until next time. And until then, let your people know you love them. Every day.
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