moleskine love.

I keep a little Moleskine notebook in my purse. More and more, I'm noting random things via outlets like Facebook or my Twitter feed, but the trusty Moleskine is perfect for capturing things with more heft, meaning and significance. And for stashing found objects like wine labels and four-leaf clovers.

I tend to forget about the Moleskine until I'm in the mood to record something for posterity, and then I remember how much I love making notes in it. But really, the best thing about pulling it out of my purse is leafing through and seeing all the good stuff in there: drunken notes, quotes and booze labels from our 40th birthday trip to St. Barts with our dearest friends; pages where I've used a just-pulled wine cork like a rubber stamp to record memorable bottles; recipe ideas and inspirations; garden plans; little poems like this haiku:

On the Equinox
I see that summer's fading
The garden is tired.

Today, as I was jotting some notes as a creative, self-reflective exercise suggested by my friend Colleen (more on that at a later date), I came across this, which I wrote while I was stuck on the tarmac on some airplane somewhere.

Band Names Inspired by Sitting on an Airplane

Armrest Larceny
Airsickness
Upright + Locked
The Exit Row Seats
The Overhead Bins
Bottom Cushion
The Seatbacks
5CD
Aisle Seat Love
Lavatory Funk
Men with Wings
The Beverage Carts
Turbulence
30,000 Feet
The Mini Bottles
Security Jerk
No Step
The Drop-Down Masks

good at.

During a really terrific catch-up conversation with Mom last night, she told me she'd seen my recent post about the "Hello, I'm good at ..." nametags. So she shared her own "good at" list, and I asked if I could post it here:

I am good at:

Being a mother
Making great meals
I matter
Making a small difference for some people
Feeling gratitude
Being a friend
Loving my children
Loving the space I am in right now
Finding out who I really am

Yay!

september 22.

I will not bow
to seasonal wisdom
and trade geraniums
for mums
… just yet

No sense uprooting
tomato plants;
there’s so much potential
hanging clustered, green
on the vines
... for now

I’ll welcome fall’s bounty
into my kitchen
... soon
corn and strawberries
have not yet
yielded that ground

I’ll avert my gaze
from displays
of costumes, candy
… for at least
another few weeks

Today is
summer’s last day
... but not its end.

good.

At a recent conference that HOW sponsored, I again met up with a fantastic woman named Dyana Valentine, who spoke at the same shindig last year. She's a dynamo (perhaps that should be her first name), one of those people who's completely engaging and thoroughly, genuinely interested in YOU.

Among many things, she helps people connect with each other, and she has a cool version of those "Hello, my name is ..." nametags that she hands out. Hers says, "Hello, I'm good at ..." Which is a brilliant way to get a roomful of people talking to each other. Most people tend to write in something business-related: "I'm good at copywriting," "I'm good at design" -- that kind of thing. But at this conference, some people wrote personal things.

This got me thinking.

Hello, I'm good at ...

finding four-leaf clovers
the very detail-oriented aspects of cooking, like planning and preparation
taking care of Wrigley
teaching
being Rob's partner
balancing (physically, that is, not so much the whole work/life thing)
planting
writing
helping
being diplomatic
keeping score at a baseball game
making focaccia

So there.

the garden.

the garden
does not understand
that I am busy

the beans grow
too big and tough
if they’re left unpicked
for just a day

the lettuce bolts
if it’s not harvested
tomatoes split,
red peppers rot
if I don’t pay attention

the flowers droop
if I neglect to water
spent blooms straggle
if don’t take care

the garden
does not understand
that I am busy

the dog needs a walk
dinner needs to be made
the gym beckons
work demands

the garden
does not mind
that I am busy

it is there
when I have time
to harvest
to water
to prune

to breathe

too delicious.

There are two food-related (obsessed?) blogs that I wish I wrote: 100cookbooks.com and smittenkitchen.com. Neither fails me whenever I bookmark a recipe.

So when I spotted this recipe for Tomato and Corn Pie on smittenkitchen.com earlier this week, I made a note to make it this weekend.

Holy Mother of All That Is Delicious!

There is simply no better thing do to with late-summer corn and tomatoes. If you're a food person who reads this (that would be: Mom!), please do yourself a favor and make it while the fixin's are good.

Allow me to back up just a bit for a seasonal musing. Around the Fourth of July, I sink into a midsummer melancholy, sad that my favorite days are passing while I'm chained to a desk 9 to 5, mournful that I can't manage (even with summer's blissfully long days) to accomplish all I want to do.

Then, sometime in early to mid-August, when the days start to shorten perceptibly and the sounds from the swim club across the street stop a bit earlier in the evening, I recognize that summer isn't waning ... it's beginning. There remain weeks and weeks of 70- and 80-degree temps, summer produce and bouquets of zinnias that last until, around here, the end of October.

So I feel better.

Now, as the farmer's market kicks into high gear, really, and tomatoes and corn are still in full bounty, recipes like the Tomato and Corn Pie really resonate. There's something fall-ish about making any kind of pie, and the fact that it's packed with summer's best vegetables is just, well, a double crust.

Heaven.

Seriously, make this recipe. It doesn't note how many servings it yields, but Rob and I polished off nearly half the thing.

in the media.

I was happy to be interviewed by local food columnist Polly Campbell for a story on Cincinnati-area farmers markets in the Wednesday Cincinnati Enquirer a couple of weeks ago.

“We go to Findlay every Saturday with a list to do most of our shopping,” said Bryn Mooth, a devoted farmers market shopper from Mount Lookout. “Then we go to Hyde Park to socialize and see what they have – it’s a little more serendipitous.”

Here's a link to the full article.

And then today, there's a fun Q&A that I did with Justin Ahrens, a designer who runs a studio called Rule29 outside of Chicago. I've gotten to know Justin through the HOW Design Conference and the magazine; he's one of those folks I'm glad I've crossed paths with in my professional life. Here's a link to the interview.

company in the garden.

Just found this bad girl on the lantana in the garden: she's a black and yellow Argiope, She's probably 2.5 inches toe to toe, and her coloring is very impressive. The website says we should also see her mate (he's responsible for the zigzag patterned web). It also notes that she's not harmful to humans -- in fact, she keeps all manner of pests away -- but frankly, she scares the pants off me.

in a nutshell.

These two images from an illustrator in London named Freya pretty much sum up how I feel about Rob (and Wiggy) and the life we've created together:

we're just saying.

I don't think there's a better place and time to be than outside at 9:30 on the evening of the longest day of the year, absorbing the residual late-evening heat, watching the lightning bugs and listening to the last sounds from the swim club echoing across the street. I just think this is the best. Ever.

more wrigley love.

Things are much improved on the Wrigley front, a full week after we picked him up from MedVets in Columbus. Last Saturday, he kind of laid low; he was full of meds, tired and discombobulated, and he was wary of eating much. Through the weekend and into the week, we saw marked improvement every day in his energy level, appetite and ability to sleep through the night. All was looking good ...

Until ...

On Wednesday, I came home at noon to let him out and discovered on the kitchen floor the handle (only) of his doggie toothbrush and the plastic cap and shards metal from the tube of chicken-flavored toothpaste. Seems our not-so-smart friend, honked off at being locked in the kitchen all day, raided his toothbrush and toothpaste from the box o' dog accouterments by the back door and ATE them. As in, ingested.

After a frantic call to Dr. Bev (again) I drove him up to her office for a quick X-ray. Sure enough, there was the bristle head of his toothbrush. The X-ray didn't reveal any brain, however. Keep in mind that after about 6 weeks of intestinal inflammation that we'd just finally gotten ahead of, having abrasive material in his GI tract was NOT a good thing.

So we waited.

Sure enough, Wrigley urped up the toothbrush and larger bits of the metal tube overnight Wednesday night, and then rid himself of the smaller shards of tube over the past couple of days. I think we've cleared things out of the system at this point.

Regardless, we took Wigs to Findlay Market today, where he charmed the crowd as usual. One lady we'd met before said, "It's a good day when I get to say hi to this dog." Yesterday on our walk, a gal told us she sees us walking in the neighborhood all the time, and that Wrigley always makes her smile.

This is Wrigley's job: making people smile. And our job is taking care of Wrigley.

he's scrumptious.

Yesterday, we picked Our Hairy Friend up from MedVets, a specialty clinic in Columbus that Dr. Bev had referred us to. Wrigley stayed there Thursday and Friday nights after having been hospitalized at Dr. Bev's place Wednesday. We were all glad to get him home.

What we're learning is that Wrigley's illness is going to take time and patience to manage. That, plus a whole pharmacy worth of meds. Including a weekly injection of Vitamin B-12, which I am too squeamish to give. It's all very confusing: some things are given once daily, some every 12 hours, some with food, some on an empty stomach. Some things make him queasy, so we're trying hard to manage his food intake.

Fortunately, he's hungry, but we're figuring out what, when and how much to feed him. Carrots are the new Jump And Sit Bits: The new restricted diet (low-fat food, no table scraps) allows carrot, which he loves. So last night, as he was scarfing down carrots, I kept feeding them to him. Bad idea. Half an hour later I was collecting barfed-up carrot from the lawn. This morning, we've gradually given him about a cup of crunchy dog food, which has (knock wood) stayed down. Our task for today is to eat well without barfing. Baby steps.

We drove up to the Coffee Emporium this morning and spent a lovely hour outside with some good java and the NYTimes. Wrigley charmed the other patrons, most of whom asked if he's a puppy. Some folks noticed the shaved patches on his forelegs where he's had IVs this week. We simply said, "He's had a bit of work done." One person referred to a 30,000-mile tuneup. We laughed.

A pleasant older woman in a preppy-pink skirt said, "He's scrumptious!"

As he lies here next to me, napping comfortably, I have to agree.

our hairy friend.

"Oh my gosh, what kind of dog is that?"

"He's adorable!"

"He's like a party in a dog suit."

"Wrigley is God's own ambassador."

"He's a person."

We often get friendly compliments on Wrigley (and he takes them graciously) when we're out and about, whether it's here at home or somewhere we're visiting. There's something about this dog that's just, well, magical. I know that all dog people think theirs are the best, but I have to argue that Wrigley is The Best. He stops traffic. He makes people smile. He attracts little kids (and is endlessly patient with the ear- and tail-tugs). He has a mission to bring a little bit of joy into the world. And he's certainly changed our lives.

Which is why we are working so damn hard to get him healthy again.

life dreaming.

Over the weekend, in a fit of wine-induced nostalgia, I dug out a list that I'd made back in the day when Rob and I were dating -- it's a list of things that I imagined for our life together. Like, that we'd have a dog we'd walk together, that we'd drink wine together, that we'd cook together, that we'd leave each other sweet notes and comfort each other after tough days, that we'd live in the city (which, at that time, meant Chicago, since we spent a fair amount of time there).

I'm amazed at how prescient that list has turned out to be. Thinking about it now, I see that many of the dreams I had for the two of us were really just grown-up versions of the stuff we liked to do at the time.

I didn't have to dig too deep to find that list; I'd included it in a scrapbook that I made for Rob in 2000 in celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary. As the 20th anniversary of our engagement comes up this summer, I find myself thinking of what I imagine for the rest of our lives together. Truly, I can't envision it getting any better than it is now.

my assistant.

I'll take a quick timeout from the work projects I'm tackling at my home office this afternoon to note that it's nice to have a hairy executive assistant keeping me company. No matter that he's sleeping on the job and that he smells funny. Neither of these things is his fault -- he's been under the weather for a full month, and I'm guessing he's tired of feeling (literally) crappy. But we're working with our friend Dr. Bev to figure out what's gumming up the Wiggle Works (actually, quite the opposite is true) and get him fixed.

In spite of not feeling good, Wrigley has maintained his cheerful outlook, hearty appetite and interest in weird smells. After the doggie equivalent of a colonoscopy last Thursday, Wrigley had a big weekend, making his season debut at Findlay Market to much fanfare, treats and queries of, "What kind of dog is that?" We also took a big walk up to Hyde Park Square on Sunday morning to bark and cheer for the runners in the Flying Pig Marathon -- especially Rob, who ran a leg of the relay.

In spite of my concern over his health these past few weeks, I am decidedly NOT worried about him. Which surprises me, but also tells me that I know something about this dog. I feel bad that he feels bad, and I am impatient to treat him. We're inching toward a diagnosis and, most important, a plan to get this boy back in full swing. I'm sure all three of us will feel better when that happens.

picking our dinner.

My intention of keeping a record of my garden's early progress in photos and text basically blew up over the past couple of weeks, and I haven't posted about what's going on. Spring sprung early (and rainily, if that's a word), so here we are at April 27 and EVERYTHING is in full bloom. The 80-degree weather over the past four days has certainly helped.

I picked the first leaves of arugula and lettuce from the coldframe just over a week ago and dressed them simply with lemon juice, olive oil and cracked pepper. That's the new standard for salad Chez Mooth; we've enjoyed that a couple of times over the past week.

Funny: The mache seeds I planted when I first set out the coldframe, the ones that never did anything, the ones I thought were duds ... well, they've just now germinated. Just goes to show you: patience is a virtue in the garden. (As an aside: I'm not entirely sure what mache is; it's also called lamb's lettuce or corn salad, and it's supposedly kind of sweet and a nice addition to the salad bowl. It looked pretty in the seed catalog.)

The coldframe will probably retire from the garden this weekend. Three weeks ago, I planted four rows of arugula and lettuce in the other half of the vegetable bed, and those rows are all coming in nicely. I'll need to thin them well (I was rather heavy-handed with the seed, and I spilled a bunch).

Yesterday, I transplanted the small nasturtium plants from the coldframe into a terra cotta pot for the herb garden (later, when it gets really hot, I'll move them to the porch). I told Rob, "I think this is the first time I've ever started flowers from seed and transplanted them." Wouldn't you know: when we came back from golf that afternoon, the plants had literally wilted in the sun. I hope they make it!

spring springs tomorrow.

Perhaps Rob was right after all (and he usually is): Spring will actually come. It will. In fact, it's due in tomorrow.

After a couple of warm days, today surprised me with its sunny sky and cool temperature. Given what I see out my office window, I was expecting the air to be toastier than it was when I went out for a lunchtime errand.

Things are just now starting to pop around our house and neighborhood: The backyard forsythia began to open up on Sunday and now is in what qualifies as full bloom. Daffodils have flowered everywhere. A few plum trees up the street are flowering, and some star magnolias, too. Grass that was hit with a dose of spring fertilizer is greening up. The snowdrops I see on our morning walk have already faded.

I guess he was right.

coldframe: week 1.

I'm impressed: The coldframe has created the perfect environment for our early spring seeding. This is after just one week; the arugula is going gangbusters and several other varieties are also sprouting nicely.

the coldframe.

Rob is the Best Guy Ever ... among many reasons, for the fact that he built me a coldframe. I am very excited at the prospect of getting a super early start on my vegetable gardening. He built it last weekend, and we painted it over several evenings this past week. Yesterday, we took advantage of the near 80 degree day to bring it outside so I could plant it. It seemed sort of silly to be planting a coldframe on such a warm day, but Rob was quick to remind me that this same weekend last year saw a blizzard with about a foot of snow, which scuttled our plans to go to Louisville for a concert. We will have plenty of cold days to come.

The coldframe is basically a wood-framed, portable greenhouse that takes up about a quarter of the vegetable bed. I planted three rows of lettuce, one each of arugula and mache, and a row of nasturtiums that I'll transplant to a pot later. The coldframe has two plexiglas lids that can be propped open or fully closed depending on the weather. This week, I'll keep the lid partway open, as it's supposed to be warmish for a few days. On cold days or nights, it gets shut up tight. If it gets well below freezing, I can place votive candles inside the frame and let them burn all night to prevent a hard frost.

If all goes according to plan, we'll have a crop of spring greens about 2-3 weeks early. As it warms up through March, I'll also plant greens on the other half of the garden so we'll have a succession of crops. I plan to take pictures and post them every week to chart our progress.

today's yummy lunch.

Last week for lunch, I brought a tasty salad of farro, roasted butternut squash and red onion, spinach and goat cheese; the recipe from 101cookbooks. It was super delish ... but I quickly realized in the early afternoon that it lacked protein, and we know that a bit of protein goes a long way toward Keeping. Bryn. Awake.

So this week I resurrected a salad of my own concoction. It needs a clever name.

2 small boneless chicken breasts, poached and shredded (grilled or roasted would be good, too)
2 large carrots
1 large fennel bulb
pinch of caraway seed
generous handful of parsley, chopped very roughly
S & P
drizzle of olive oil
drizzle of rice wine vinegar

I thinly sliced the carrot and fennel on my mandoline, then tossed everything together; it makes 3 good-size lunch portions. The caraway is an unexpected flavor, and the rice wine vinegar is a bit less sharp than regular vinegar would be. This has it all: bright taste, crunch, color, protein, yumminess.

what to do with leftover phyllo.

Last weekend, Mom was here for an awesome visit. We had a great time, starting with a wine tasting Friday evening, followed by Chinese takeout. Then she and I stayed up way too late just catching up. It was great.

When Mom's here, we tend to make dinner into a special occasion, particularly since she's fun to have in the kitchen. Rob dug into an old favorite cookbook, a Junior League behemoth from San Francisco, to find something we hadn't tried before: chicken in a mustard cream sauce wrapped in phyllo, bûche de noel-style. It was really terrific. But it left us with half a box of phyllo.

What to do?

This: Salmon Filets in Phyllo. Really, where else would you go for a recipe to use leftover phyllo than Martha? It was terrific, and ridiculously easy: spread salmon filets with a bit of horseradish, do 2 layers of phyllo (with a bit of parsley between), then wrap up burrito-style and bake for like 12 minutes. Delish!

too many beans.

I was thrilled to discover that my seed order from Cook's Garden arrived yesterday: four kinds of lettuces (Butterworth, Oliver, Summer Mix and Lollo Rosa), something yummy-looking called Corn Salad and two kinds of filet-type green beans (well, actually, one is green and the other yellow).

Funny, though ... I don't think I intended to order a HALF POUND of bean seeds. Rob thinks I need to traipse through the countryside scattering them as I go ... Bryn Beanseed!

dear winter.

Dear Winter,

I remember fondly our first meeting in December. You came along at the right time; I'd put the garden to bed after the season and played my last round of golf, so your timing was ideal. It was a blast hanging out with you during the holidays—you charmed me with the light snow flurries you brought, and I loved how your cold, brisk nights made the Christmas lights seem to dance.

And then ... Then I began to see things in you I didn't like so much. Sure, I loved spending a snow day off work with you. And the icy tree branches were lovely shimmering in the sun. But don't you think the widespread power outages were a bit excessive? And that snow squall was an unexpected surprise—but really? At rush hour?

Now, well, now it's over. You're so cold, you just won't give me space ... we have nothing in common anymore. I'm sorry, Winter, but it's over between us.

It's not me, it's you.

ever the girl scout.

Bear with me for a little lunchtime rant. I'm hormonal and a bit bothered, so deal with it.

As I've written about here and here, I am hardwired with what I call my Need for Order and Correctness. Which means that I have fairly high standards. Which, in turn, means that I'm usually disappointed.

Simply because I try to be considerate, courteous and helpful, I assume that the rest of the world will, too. Doesn't work that way.

(Note: If you're reading this, consider yourself among the friends and loved ones to whom these broad generalizations do not apply.)

And I end up getting frustrated by the dumbest, smallest things. I'm irate that very few people in our neighborhood shovel their sidewalks like Rob does. I'm beyond annoyed when fellow employees leave their nas-assty dirty dishes in the kitchen sink at work. I fume when I feel like I or my team are the only ones going the extra mile. I want to hit the person who doesn't hold the door open for me, or who doesn't put their weights away in the gym, or who nearly runs me over as I'm standing in a crosswalk. Because I tend to look out for others, to leave a place better than I found it and pitch in willingly, I'm always let down when others don't act as I would.

I recognize that I'm somehow still living by the Girl Scout Law:

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

I understand that here lies the path to madness. I'm aware that this is my problem and that this frustration is of my own making. Self-awareness makes you only marginally less pissed off.

today is edgar's birthday.

Today is Edgar's birthday. Edgar, if you don't know, is the Big Bear; Henry is the Little Bear. We figure Edgar is probably 13 years old (Henry is maybe a year or two older) and came to live with us in St. Louis.

Henry and Edgar are best friends, inseparable. Henry is to Edgar what George is to Lennie, what Jim is to Kevin, what Greenberg is to Golic (seriously, where else do you get cultural references to "Of Mice and Men," "The Office" and ESPN's "Mike and Mike in the Morning" radio show??). Henry is wily, sharp, cynical and a bit of a critic; Edgar is big-hearted, friendly and encouraging. Edgar isn't dim, he's just unsophisticated, and he thinks more often with his belly than his brain.

Edgar has trouble grasping the concept of coincidence, so he's pretty convinced that the Super Bowl is a giant, football-laden celebration of his birthday. We haven't had the heart to correct his thinking on this.

What else do you do for a bear's birthday than bake a chocolate cake?

snowy day.

Just last week, Rob and I were commenting that we'd made it through almost the end of January without a significant snowfall. We should have knocked wood ...

... today, we got a pretty good dump (5 inches, maybe) with more to come tonight and tomorrow. Interstates are shut down in various spots so I'm working from home, with a cup of coffee within reach and a sleepy dog curled up on his pillow across the room.

We took our regular morning walk about 7 a.m., when it was dark and still and quiet. It's been cold, so the snow is the light, powdery kind that doesn't pack (no snowman-making for us), which made walking uphill quite a workout. Wrigley had a bit of trouble with snow-packed paws, but we got through all right. It was pretty, a good start to the morning. Off to work now ...

crunchy granola.

A few months ago I was disappointed to learn that the homemade granola I'd been buying at the market was no longer available. So today I made a batch that comes close ... almost. The only thing I need to figure out is how to make it more cluster-y, if that makes any sense. But it tastes great.

Crunchy Granola

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup mixed nuts & seeds (I used sunflower seeds, walnut pieces and slivered almonds; if I had sesame seed I would have added that)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
generous pinch of salt

Mix together thoroughly (so all the nuts and oats are coated with the sweeteners), then spread on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment.

Bake 10 minutes; stir. Bake 10 more minutes; stir. Again, 10 minutes and a stir. I gave it another 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the granola was a deep and even brown (total baking time 30 to 35 minutes). When you stir, be sure to gather the well-browned bits on the outer edges of the pan and scoot them inward so it all browns evenly.

Remove from oven; cool. Stir in 1 cup of mixed dried fruit of your choice.

a cold winter's day.

Not as cold as yesterday, but still really cold. As we drove down Columbia Parkway to the market this morning, the sky was a brilliant pinkorangegold and it made me think it might get sunny, but not so much. We'll brave the elements later to take Wigs out for a spin. We all need to get outside.

These winter days I always hold out a bit of hope: We've hit the coldest stretch of the year, yet the days are growing perceptibly longer; there was a sun delay on my way home. So there's that.

Doing chores today, I was thrilled THRILLED to see a cluster of buds on my beloved olive tree. It has never borne fruit, and now there are two tiny bud clusters. The tree drops leaves in the winter just as it hits a growth spurt (old making way for new, I suppose). Here's a blurry photo:

please, enough with the pears already.

In the Mooth household, we have a serious pear problem: three -- count 'em, three -- deliveries of Harry & David pears within the space of about three weeks. We have 14 pears, and two people. Clearly, too many pears.

Pears are fine (and truly, these pears are delicious), but we're not huge winter-fruit eaters, and with only two of us, we just don't go through them quickly enough. (Plus, Rob has a little, erm, issue with them, which I won't go into here.)

So, what to do with all the freakin' pears?

Cocktail maestro that he is, Rob found in the Diffords Guide a recipe for a cocktail made of pear puree. So into the blender will go several of these blushing beauties. I'm a fan of sliced pears wrapped in proscuitto for a nice snacketizer. So that'll take care of another one. A recipe for salad of grilled chicken, blue cheese, red pepper, diced fennel and diced pear in a spicy cayenne-pecan dressing will no doubt be on the menu for Monday. And perhaps a pear crisp might need to happen.

Please, Harry & David, do not send any more pears. Ix-nay on the ears-pay.

roasted olives recipe.

I'm not a huge olive fan, though I do love olive oil and tapenade. I guess really I'm a very picky olive eater -- I only like the ripe ones (green = ick!), and I like to nosh on tiny Arbequino, Nicoise and oil-cured black olives with a glass of wine before dinner.

When Dad & Ellen were here for a Christmas visit a couple of weeks ago, we hit Lavomatic, a delightful French-style wine bar/cafe, for an afternoon pick-me-up. We ordered a dish of roasted olives to snack on -- I'd never had roasted ones (and these were served cold, which didn't seem ideal), but they were tasty and I resolved to try making them. I sort of made this recipe up:

assorted olives of your liking
a sprig of rosemary (fresh thyme would work, too, maybe for a spring or summer variation)
1 clove of garlic, smashed
a pinch of red-pepper flakes
a glug of olive oil
a splash of red wine
a piece of orange peel would be nice, too

I warmed the olive oil in my small Lodge cast-iron skillet (any oven-proof skillet would do), then added the garlic, rosemary sprig and pepper flakes and warmed them until they were fragrant. I added the olives and stirred them around for a few minutes, then added the red wine. Then I shoved the pan into a preheated 400-degree oven for about 12 minutes, until everything bubbled and smelled delicious.

These improve greatly over time -- I made a batch for New Year's eve that were much better when I finished them off on Friday evening, more than a week later. Yesterday's batch will sit in the fridge until next weekend, when I'll scoop a few into a small dish and let them come to room temp for a little snacketizer.

the fun list.

Last weekend, as our extended holiday time off was waning, Rob cheered me up by proposing that we create The Fun List -- a bunch of places to go, restaurants to hit and things to do during these short, dark, cold days of winter. I think his suggestion was mostly an act of self-preservation, as I can get sort of grouchy as I wait for the days to get longer, sunnier and warmer. The Fun List is a welcome distraction.

First up on the list: a trip to Jungle Jim's, a crazy food emporium (six acres under one roof!) on the way northwest side of Cincinnati. Yesterday was the perfect day for this Bit of Fun, as the weather was simply disastrous. So we trekked up I-75 and hit JJ's; an hour an a half and 130 bucks later, we emerged with a really random assortment of things. Our receipt shows:

-- 3 boxes of DeCecco pasta and a bag of my favorite, Fregola Sarda
-- 1 bottle of Verjus (a variant of wine vinegar that I've been interested in trying)
-- a liter of imported olive oil
-- bananas, zucchini, carrots, garlic, avocados
-- 2 cans of San Marzano tomatoes and a tube of imported tomato paste
-- 2 different kinds of fancy butter
-- 2 Spanish cheeses: an aged Manchego and a stinky-as-feet blue Cabrales
-- assorted fresh olives
-- 2 kinds of imported sea salt (coarse and fine)
-- a gorgeous piece of Sockeye salmon which, with the red lentils we also bought, was the centerpiece of last night's dinner
-- Cafe du Monde coffee
-- 4 additions to Rob's Pez collection: the Riddler, the mom and baby from "The Incredibles" and Linguini from "Ratatouille"

It was great fun!

a dream of mine.

If we won the lottery and could build a second home, this is exactly how I'd want it: a modern box, a kitchendininglivingroom with a loft bedroom above and all surrounded by glass. I found a picture of this house (who knew someone had been reading my mind?) on NYTimes.com. I would not like my house to be in Idaho, as this one is. But the structure is just right.

Photo below is by Stuart Isett for the NYTimes.

tree, you've been lovely.

Sadly, though, it's time to carefully remove all the beloved ornaments from your branches, take off the garland draped throughout your boughs, unwrap the strings of white lights, and pack it all away for the year. I hope you've felt like a star, all dressed up in the glittering painted-glass ornaments that I love so much -- the ones that first hung on my little artificial tree in my room growing up, even a few that probably came from Grandpa's flower shop and hung on Mom & Dad's tree when they were starting out. The ones that I picked up at the Herb Barn every day-after-Thanksgiving when Mom, Grandma and I would go out together. The ones that Rob and I have collected over the years, including the one that looks like a seed packet that I purchased just a few days ago.

You've been a gorgeous and welcome addition to our home these past few weeks, and we're glad we found you that cold night.

Thank you.