maybe I should just stay home... nah!

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, why is it that I always take the wrong clothes when I leave home for a few days?  Julie and I just got back from Charlottesville, Virginia, where we spent the night before driving to Monticello the following day.  I read all the weather forecasts, I packed and re-packed my suitcase, but when we got there, I hadn't brought anything that seemed appropriate to wear.

I have never been to Charlottesville before, so I think that may have been part of the problem.  People - people my age, anyway - were way more dressed up and covered up than I wanted to be in humid 80°+ weather.  And that is the other part of the problem, I think.  I still have not learned to dress in an age-appropriate manner.  Oh, I don't dress like my Aunt Joanne or anything - she who always dressed more youthfully than me, and probably still does.  I stopped wearing t-shirts in public years ago - a step in the right direction, I'm sure.  But I don't think I should really wear shorts out as much as I do, and my skort may have been a fashion faux pas, as well.  I feel that if the weather had been cooler, I could have dressed better, but I fear getting overheated and sweaty on my outings almost as much as I fear unexpected rain or bee stings - maybe more.

The good news is that Julie and I enjoyed Charlottesville so much, and found Monticello so incredibly beautiful, that for long periods of time I forgot that I wasn't as beautifully dressed, coiffed, or manicured as some of the genteel Southern ladies in our tour group.  I hope on my next trip to Monticello - and I know there will be a next trip - that I will know exactly what to bring and how to dress.  But I have my doubts.  

laundry day blues over whites

As I was putting the laundry away yesterday, I noticed that I have six white shirts in my closet.  Two of them have three-quarter length sleeves.  Two of them have short sleeves, and two of them are sleeveless.  None of them are exactly what I want.  That's obvious, I guess, or I won't have to buy six of them.  I have a picture in my mind of exactly what I am looking for, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere in the more than two years that I have been in the market for white shirts.

I suspect I could find something looking like what I want on line, but I have not had good results with ordering clothes on line.  Clothes that look great on teeny models look less than great on me.  And I like to try on multiple sizes.  You know, like, this size is okay, but would I look even better in the next smaller size? Or, more likely, do I need the next bigger size?

Maybe what I want is just too plain.  Maybe I am shopping in the wrong places.  Whatever.  Like Bono, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

orzo, hot or cold

I have been on an orzo kick lately.  We had orzo with our homemade marinara sauce, and it was surprisingly good.  I made up a couple of recipes featuring orzo, as well, and, I have to admit, they turned out pretty well.  The first one is a variation on the meal that Julie likes to make that consists of vegetables, pasta, and protein of some kind - kielbasa or pork or chicken, usually.  The second is a variation of the Thai peanut chicken recipe that I make to use up leftover pasta.  Julie asked me for both recipes - which is very flattering - but, of course, I don't have recipes, per se.  I will create some.


Orzo with Summer Vegetables and Italian Sausage

olive oil 
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage
assorted fresh peppers - I used 3 or 4 jalapenos, 1 bell pepper, and 5 or 6 banana peppers
3 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
1 small zucchini
1 small yellow squash
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 tsp. Splenda sugar substitute
¼ to ⅓ cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup uncooked orzo

Heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in large frying pan. Cut the sausage into about 3-inch long pieces (or whatever size you like) and brown on all sides in hot oil.  When sausage is browned, turn burner down, add about ¼ cup water, put lid on pan, and simmer until sausage is cooked through.  At the same time, cook orzo in large pot of salted, boiling water; drain and rinse.

While sausage is cooking, clean and chop vegetables.  I left my peppers about an inch and half square; I slivered the garlic and onions; and after chopping the tops and bottoms off the squash, I sliced them in ¼-inch thick disks.  I cut the disks in half if they got too big.  When the sausage is cooked, remove to a plate so vegetables can cook.  Add another tablespoon of olive oil and the vegetables to the pan.  Make sure the veggies are not wet or you could get burned.  Sauté vegetables, adding salt and pepper, sugar and vinegar.  It is important to taste the vegetables as they cook, and adjust seasonings as needed.  Cook vegetables until they are almost as done as you like them; then add sausage and orzo, and heat through.  Serve with fresh summer fruit.

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This is a seasonal meal, meant to take advantage of fresh summer vegetables. As regular readers know, I am  fussy about my cooked vegetables, and find that I can stand all of these.   If there are other veggies that you like or have on hand, by all means, use them.  This recipe makes a lot, and could easily be halved.

My second recipe was supposed to be a simple, cold pasta salad with shrimp, but I found that I didn't have a lot of the ingredients that I thought I had to make it.  I did, however, have these ingredients, and so that is what I used.


Thai Shrimp and Orzo Salad

1 cup uncooked orzo
1 lb. medium-sized shrimp, cooked, cleaned, and chilled
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large celery stalks, chopped
½ green pepper, chopped
⅓ cup roasted peanuts, chopped
10 - 12 basil leaves, chopped (cilantro would be good here, but I used it all in the salsa)
1 tsp.salt
½ tsp. pepper
1 tsp. curry powder
½ cup good mayonnaise
1 tbsp. lime juice
Thai peanut sauce
canned coconut milk

Cook orzo in large pot of salted, boiling water; drain and rinse.  Combine shrimp, vegetables, peanuts, and basil in a large bowl.  Add orzo.  Add salt, pepper, and curry powder; stir well.  In a smaller bowl, add lime juice, peanut sauce, and coconut milk to mayonnaise and whisk until smooth.  This is where you will have to taste frequently and use your own judgement as to how much of each of these to use.  This "dressing" that you are making should be soupy - the orzo will absorb a lot of it.  When the taste is to your liking, pour dressing over salad and mix well.  Spoon into a lovely bowl and refrigerate until well-chilled.

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I am very pleased with how both of my new recipes turned out, but shall I tell you how I like the orzo best of all?  Piping hot with butter and salt on it.  It reminds me of the spaghetti I ate when I was a child.  I wouldn't eat tomato sauce, so my spaghetti always had butter and salt instead.  It tasted great.

what I think about when it is too hot outside

Ben and I talked about it this spring.  This year will be different, we said.  We will definitely get to the beach more often.  We'll go on a weekday.  We'll make sure of the weather.  We'll get an early start.  This year for sure.

Then Lucie died.  And we got a new puppy.  A puppy who has made great progress since we brought her home two and a half months ago.  But still, a puppy.  A puppy who cannot be left at home for eight hours without going outside or eating.  Mainly, without eating.  I feed Katie every four hours during the day.  She eats each meal like she hasn't eaten in days.  And, really, it takes us three hours each way to get to the beach. A nine or ten-hour day away would be more what we need.  Not that it matters because we can't do it anyway.

I love Rufus and Katie.  I don't know how I would get through my days without them.  When I took them to the groomers last week, I had to call and see how they were doing after several hours had passed with no word.  But they definitely tie us down.  Ben and I are tied to the house in a way that is absolute and depressing.  And it looks like we won't get to the beach at all this summer.  Just like when we lived in Ohio.

what do YOU think?!

So, yeah, our power went out.  And stayed out for four and a half days.  We could never have imagined that would happen.  It just didn't seem like that big of a storm.  We heard thunder in the distance that night.  It got louder and louder, and the lightning strikes grew closer and closer together.  The wind blew in.  Then the wind really began to blow, and I was glad we no longer lived in a house surrounded by tall oak trees.  In the midst of that, the power went off.  It didn't falter.  It didn't flicker.  It went off and it stayed off.  And the storm blew by.  I swear, it was here for a half hour.  Who could have dreamed it would do so much damage?

The next morning we still didn't have power, but when we went out and looked around our neighborhood, we didn't understand why.  All our utility cables are buried, and the only downed tree we saw was a large branch down from our neighbor's tree in their back yard.  Still, the power did not come back on.  Because I am terrible during power outages, I drove up to Bel Air to spend the day (and possibly the night, if, unbelievably, the power wasn't restored by then) at Julie and Andrew's apartment.  As we watched the news there, I began to understand that something major had happened.  But I still didn't understand why our neighborhood didn't have power.  No downed trees.  No exposed power lines.  But still, no power.

After many hours, I realized that all the food in our two refrigerators was a lost cause.  It would all have to be thrown out.  Oddly, it was a relief to know this.  The only things I was really sad to lose were the homemade things in the freezer.  A tub of chicken stock.  Some grape pie filling.  A little tub of pesto that I had made only the week before.  And here's the thing I was saddest about, and still am - my Ziploc baggie full of chopped parsley.  It's not the parsley, per se, that I mind losing, though, it's the bag.  I brought the bag with us when we moved here from Ohio.  I emptied it, washed it, dried it, and brought it along.  Why did I do all that?  Because of how the bag was labelled and dated.  I know it was dated December 26, and I think the year was 2001, but I don't quite remember that.  I never had to remember.  It was on the bag.

And what did the label say?  Well, it said, "What do YOU think?!"  in Tom's handwriting.  I must have been working in the kitchen while Tom was home for Christmas break.  As I washed and chopped parsley, I asked him to label a Ziploc bag for me to put in the freezer.  That was how he labelled it.  And, without fail, when I took that bag full of bright green, chopped parsley out of the freezer, I smiled to think of Tom's response to being asked to label the obvious.

So now that bag is gone, along with all the other jars and bottles and tubs full of food that Ben emptied out of the refrigerators.  And that bag is what I miss the most.  Everything else is replaceable, you know?  But some things just aren't.

don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

I never think of myself as a child who grew up along a river, but, you know, I did.  Its proper name was "the Black River", but it was just "the river" to us.  My parents told me that when we moved into the big, old house on West Sixth Street, the riverbank cut right behind our garage. But I don't remember that, and the earliest memories I have are of a steep, green bank some distance beyond the garage and the huge old oak tree that grew next to it.  The river curved around and cut off the end of our street, as well, and was narrower and deeper there. 

We were strictly forbidden to go "down to the river", of course, but every summer when the water was low, my dad would take me down the bank and we would step across the exposed stones in the riverbed to the island in the middle of the river.  I remember the island mainly as overgrown and buggy, but exciting simply because it was off-limits to us for most of the year.  Over the years, dump truck after dump truck left their loads behind our house, altering the course of the river, and gradually creating a parking lot for the high school across the street.  The island became a peninsula, jutting out into the widest part of the river.  Easier to get to, but not as appealing.

Our neighborhood was defined by the river.  Because the bank cut in sharply behind our house, there was not room for a West Fifth Street or a West Fourth Street. Third Street and Second Street had bridges.  Heading away from town, the river curved away, and Riverside Drive ran alongside the river for many blocks.  Sometimes my dad took us for hikes along the river, and we were amazed to learn that we could walk all the way to Eleventh Street, where our elementary school was, and beyond, along its narrow banks. 

I was thinking about the river today because I learned that the derecho that knocked out our power for five days this week was actually the second one I have experienced.   Don't know what a derecho is?  Neither did I, of course.  Wikipedia defines it as "a widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms". Got that?  A really big storm that comes really far, really fast and is really windy. 

So, the first time I experienced one, as it turns out, was the famous 4th of July storm on July 4th, 1969, a storm that I remember more for its aftermath than for the storm itself.  It was a summer storm.  A bad storm.  One where all the windows had to be closed, and we sweltered in our hot, airless house.  The usual, really.  But the next morning when we woke up, we heard a sound we had never heard before.  The river.  We heard the river.  Although we lived quite close to the river, the banks were tall, and we had never heard it from our house until that day.  The river was rushing and swirling.  It was higher than I had ever seen it, and it was opaque and brown and very, very deep.  It was fascinating and frightening and I couldn't look away from it.  The distant, friendly river that my dad and I threw stones in from the tall bank was gone, and in its place, this new river raged.  The toddler I was babysitting that summer had developed a fascination with water, and I was warned to watch him closely, as he had already jumped into the Vermilion River earlier that summer.  His mother jumped right in after him, but I wasn't going to do that.

So, yeah, I grew up by a river, and I have always lived by rivers, until now, and, boy, do I miss that.  You just never know the things that truly matter to you until you don't have them anymore - you know, just like the song says.

pesto, pesto, pesto!

I have a startling confession to make.  Before I made it myself last summer, I had never eaten pesto.  Oh, sure I had heard of it, with all its basil-y, garlicky, oily goodness, but then it got so trendy and self-important that I just didn't even want to try it.  Years went by, and I didn't miss it.  Then, last summer, we finally had a wondrous crop of basil, so I thought to make some pesto with it. 

I got on line and read a few recipes, then felt that I was ready to try it for myself.  I will tell you what I did, although I hesitate to call it a recipe, really, as the amounts are sketchy, at best.  I went out and snipped off about one-third of the leaves from my basil plants. There were a lot of them - more than I expected.   I washed the leaves, still on their stems, thoroughly.  I picked the leaves from the stems, and rinsed them again.  I dried the basil leaves very thoroughly on old kitchen towels.
 
I gathered my other ingredients, which included fresh garlic, walnut halves, extra virgin olive oil, salt, freshly-ground pepper, and grated Parmesan cheese. Most recipes call for pine nuts instead of walnuts, but I almost always have walnuts on hand, and they are cheaper and healthier than pine nuts, so walnuts it is.  I put a big handful of basil leaves on my cutting board, and also eight or ten walnut halves.  To the top of this pile I added one garlic clove.  Then I just started chopping.  All of it.  Together.  It seemed to me like chopping it all together made it easier to do, so that's how I did it.  I chopped everything as finely as I possibly could, then I chopped it some more.  When it was very fine, I dumped the mixture into a waiting mixing bowl and covered it with olive oil. 

I repeated this process until all of my basil was chopped up.  I added too many walnuts, I think, the first time I made pesto, so have used them more sparingly since then.  I added about a half cup of the grated Paremesan, then added salt and pepper.  You don't need as much salt as you might think, as the cheese is very salty.  Glug in some more olive oil.  Seriously.  A lot of olive oil.  I don't think you can use too much.  At least I never have.  And that's it.  The pesto is finished.

That's the way Julie likes to eat it.  Just spoon that over some freshly-cooked pasta and enjoy. I prefer to make a sauce of it, however by adding a small amount of white sauce (one cup of milk's worth) to the pesto.  Do you see what I did there?  Instead of adding my pesto to the white sauce, I add the white sauce to the pesto, thereby controlling how much the pesto is diluted.  Heat through, but do not boil.  Serve over freshly-cooked pasta. 

Did I mention that I had never tasted pesto before I made it that first time?  I loved it!  What's not to love?  The ingredients are fantastic.  You eat it over pasta.  I couldn't get enough.  I don't know how many batches of pesto I made last summer, but it was a sad day when I pulled the last little container of pesto out of the freezer last winter. 

Today is a correspondingly happy day, however, as it is the day I made my first batch of the 2012 pesto season. Boil some water!  Prepare the white sauce!  Let the celebration begin!