Saturday stuff

Home! Funny how after even the greatest of trips, it's still lovely to get home. To be home. To settle back in. To look around the place you call yours and be happy to see it. To become reacquainted with your pets. To hear your children say, "we like our house." To know the peccadilloes of each appliance, to know just where exactly what you need is. I love to travel, love to explore, but home is home, and that's nice.

While we were away, my second family (my sister and their daughter became inseparable friends at the tender age of 4 and, thirty years later, are still thus; the four of them and the four of us are besties in every way, including all those who've married into this tribe; my second parents are both extremely talented artists and we once cooked our Thanksgiving turkey in their potters kiln. Utterly delightful. I think we named the bird Evelyn or something along those lines.) hosted a bridal shower for our newest incoming member, here. I was awfully sad to miss it but thought repeatedly how wonderful it is that an entire brood can have a party at your home when you're gone! If that's not the definition of loving closeness, I don't know what is. When we walked in tonight, flowers were everywhere, plates of party food wrapped in the fridge saved us from having to go out to the market, Nutmeg had been adored and cared for, vague semblances of them were here and there. It was a warm welcome back. And none of my flowers had perished in last week's snow. In fact, the ranunculus out front was going great guns. Will wonders never cease!

I need to go pack up the Easter baskets; would have done so earlier but Oliver just couldn't get to sleep after having snoozed (mercifully) most of the flight home. I think he's finally down so now's my cue. Poor T decided that tonight would be a good time to start the taxes. Sounds positively dreadful to me, but at least I'm not the one doing them.

As a last vestige of holiday, we ordered Indian take-out tonight, but I am eager to go to the farmers market tomorrow and get back to my cooking. While in the Quarter, I passed Kitchen Witch, a dusty, creaky, headed-by-a-man-in-a-beret-and-black-plastic-rim-glasses cookbook store selling tomes both new and old/older/vintage! I bought one from 1962, The Art of Creole Cookery, which lists as its fifth requisite, Alcoholic Beverages, and still uses the word Negro. I was delighted by the former and struck speechless by the latter yet am happy to add this treasure to my collection. Written by a seemingly unlikely pair, Sister Mary Ursula, Chairman (jesus, not even chairwoman) of the Home Ec department (Home Ec as a department!) at St. Mary's Dominican College, and William Kaufman, a New Yorker from NBC, the recipes nonetheless look mostly promising, especially the entire chapter on gumbos. Amen!

Off to bunny....