Eating well and beautifully

I haven't the slightest idea what season it is or what season the season gods think it to be. Burning, cold, drenched, parched, hide the jackets, find them, confident blooms, meek ones. I desperately want to be able to count on temperatures north of 65. Want to be able to plant basil and tomatoes with assurances of growth. And yet.

There is, as a dear friend told me today, always room for practice. 

She told me that after I called her in tears, a tough morning having primed my ducts before she left a loving message that pulled the boy's thumb from the Netherlandish dike, and after I forced myself to pilates which was great minus the overly chatty women in the rear corner and the individual who farted stink bombs continuously throughout. 

Indeed. There is always room for practice.

For me at least, one balm for such trying times is a mealtime well spent. With friends or alone, cooking or dining out. I have told you many times that I hate wasting the opportunity granted in all of the three daily meals but especially lunch and dinner. Snacks are lovely, and I am a snacker, but a proper midday sup or after-a-long-day dine is sublime. It heals, sates, restores, and offers a new focus, even if for only a brief time.

Do you know of Molly Yeh? She writes My Name is Yeh and also has a recently-released cookbook, Molly On the Range. She has a megawatt smile, an affinity for backyard chickens, a loved one known as Egg Boy, and a real gift with marzipan. It is rare that I make her recipes and wish I hadn't doubled them. (Well, the funfetti cake was a bit much, but otherwise...).

Hers is one of the few blogs I subscribe to, and I recently received a missive about a carrot salad with feta, pistachios, and an orange blossom toss. OMG. That is so up my alley. Simultaneously, I rediscovered the recent New York Times Dining section in which David Tanis -with whom I have a real love-disappointment relationship- shared a gorgeous charred asparagus salad with chimichurri. 

In my opinion, both of those dishes plus some steamed new potatoes to dress in any leftover chimichurri seemed like a dreamy dinner. And so it was. 

Ribbons of freshly shaved, freshly plucked carrots. Just torn mint. Season's best asparagus. Chimichurri. Pistachios. Cardamom. I gasp at the memories (although I like my regular chimichurri recipe better). 

a beauty from my yard

A week in photos

This was a long week but a good one that saw the rain finally give way to sun, time spent with friends and family and tending my Nutmeg, and some good food thrown into the wild mix. I'm now on the bus to New York to meet up with my parents and enjoy a thirty six hour getaway. 

I've been wrapping Nut's cast so he can enjoy some outdoor time. 

This earnest little fern in my yard makes me smile. 

Jack and I enjoyed going to a mother-son dance.  

Fava bean purée is the ultimate show of spring.  

Can you even with Columbines? 

Oliver's first section of The New Fart Times,   a section on fart inventions. 

Ailing fur baby, truly hysterical "article" on birds

For starters, because the world really feels awfully grim on the regular these days, it is important to laugh. As such, I beseech you to read this Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America. Now, I actually love birds and enjoy watching them every day. But this is HILARIOUS. It's like the Williams-Sonoma Hater's Guide but for birders. It took me about five tries and more than twenty minutes to make it the whole way through because I was laughing so hard I was wheezing and crying. I am not kidding! It really picks up on bird 3, the white-breasted Butt Nugget, so don't sell yourself short by quitting early. 

It is also important to share love and peace in all ways possible as often as possible, because doing so is a helpful counter to wanting to make targets from approximately twenty politician's photographs each day and then play many rounds of darts. I present my love and peace pie. We ate it in less than a day which says something both about how much we needed such positivity and also about how good pie pretty much always is.

Nutmeg came home with a bloody paw earlier this week, and after a limp emerged a couple days later, I made an appointment with the vet. Poor love got his paw stuck somewhere and ripped a nail clean off in getting free. Because cat nails grow directly from the bone, the trauma of the nail loss broke or fractured his toe. You would never have known by how composed and wonderful he continued to be. I swear he feels this cast is worse than the limp. :(

Look at his whiskers shooting forth from the cone of shame. Sad.

Fortunately, he hasn't even tried to sniff his bandage so he does not have to wear his cone anymore. It's really the saddest, most pitiful accessory. He could not access his food with it on and obviously felt his balance was terribly off.

We have taken to calling him Peg Leg Nut, and I have carried him like a baby pretty much exclusively since the cast was put on because his hobble is too depressing to watch. I even slept downstairs with him last night as I didn't want to worry about him trying to get upstairs to find us. And what if he needed anything? 

I have taken to calling myself CAT LADY.

My heart just breaks for him. I'm thankful we have good veterinary care, can afford to access it, and that Nutmeg will be ok. Poor babe.