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 ...