Spring gardening

Welcome, basil. Glad to have you here.

Yes, it is officially spring. I have planted the basil.

Normally, I would not have waited until mid-May to plant basil, but this spring weather has been so screwy — the heater on? in MAY? — that I was afraid to do so. Everyone else out there can handle a chilly night or two, long as it’s not a hard frost, but basil — it gets much below 50, and that stuff is gone.

Surely it will not get below 50 now that it is May 11.

She said, hopefully.

Weather, keeping cool, working late

All the above add up to not much cooking going on at Chez Brockwell. Plus, shee-it, folks, it’s freakin’ HOT!

It is, allegedly, ONLY 93 degrees outside right now, a couple of minutes short of noon. That would be in the wake of five or six straight days of triple digits, up to and including 109 on Friday. Combine that with 16 feet x 72 inches of south-facing windows in my den and dining area, and an a/c that runs constantly and can’t get the living room/den area down below 78 degrees, and you see my problem.

Sous vide success succeeds sous vide failure

Yes, Lord. Nothing wrong with that dinner.

You and y’mama ‘n ‘em may recall that, back before The Move, I was dipping my toe into the world of sous vide. I did a couple of dinners that way this week, mostly because it’s relatively easy to set the stage (season and vacuum seal the meat, get out the cooler and circulator) the night before, and then fill the thing with hot water, add the packet from the fridge, plunk in the circulator and let ‘er rip before you leave for work in the morning. Come home, finish things off, and Boom, dinner.

Heeeeerrreee’s the kitchen

I am in love. I may not have found everything yet — my kitchen shears would be one good example — but today was the day I finally got the kitchen organized, and I celebrated by doing some significant cooking in it.

And there's Herb the Flamingo, gracing the table.

And it is a joy. My back and hip are killing me because I’ve been on my feet all day after being on my feet a fair part of the day before that, but I’ll deal with it. Because, well, the kitchen.

Garden report

There they are. Greatest thing for cooking since fire.

I am happy to report the garden survived the move.

From left, basil, mint, chives, sage, rosemary, tarragon. Thyme and oregano in the background on the left.

Whew!

Toimato-mayo-bacon (sans bread; sigh) with an over easy egg for breakfast.

It has been an exceptionally stressful and busy two weeks. My work world always goes in cycles — I’ll be frantically busy for a while, then I’ll have a stretch where I’ll spend a few days playing computer games or organizing files or working on “one of these days when it’s slow” projects.

It seems that I’ve been at the top of the frantically busy cycle for the last three or four weeks. Picture yourself on a surfboard, balanced on top of a wave, and you’re riding the wave and waiting for it to break….and riding the wave and waiting for it to bread…and riding…. Well, you get my drift.

Add that to the stress of having a bipolar teen-ager who’s in an extended period of exaggerated mood swings.

Add to that working until 7 p.m. about three nights this past week.

OK, I’m through whining. Because,while I did bring home some work stuff to do this weekend, I spent last night in total silence, without any human interaction, for two hours, albeit I had to stay up until midnight to do it. It’s going to be a gorgeous weekend, I’m cooking, and tomorow I’m going to take Lucy Lu out for an extended walk while my rendang simmers away in the crock pot.

Oh, and I got my nails done yesterday. That always makes me feel better.

Slow DOWN, dammit!

Sweet potato and pulled pork hash. Quick. Easy. Good.

That exhortation would be to the world at large. Because either it’s speeded up, requiring me to accomplish more in a smaller amount of time, or I am Getting Old and can’t keep up. I prefer to think it is not the latter.

For the past three weeks, things have been falling out of the sky and landing on my desk. I have gotten good at desktop triage — do this now; this can wait; shuffle this one off to someone else; ignore this one; oh, shit, this was supposed to have been done three days ago! I am down, I think, to only two or three things that should have been done three days ago, three or four things that have to be done this weekend, and three or four that must be done first thing Monday morning. And I have sadly ignored my few faithful readers out there.

Sorry ’bout that, folks.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

In other words, I’m still here. I’ve even been cooking. But I haven’t done much photography nor writing to go with it.

However, I feel I must take a moment to share with you some exciting news.

I HAVE AN ICEMAKER!!!

It’s like this. About three years ago, I bought a house, and I bought my very first ever brand-new refrigerator. I measured the spot it had to go in, and I went to Sears, and I told Vance at Sears, “I want the biggest refrigerator you have that will fit in this space, and I want it white, side-by-side, with ice and water in the door. ” So he tried to show me my choices, and I said, “I know what a refrigerator looks like. Just deliver the damn thing and hook up the icemaker.”

On strike

I slid into the driveway this evening at 6:30, earliest I’ve been home all week. Had to do laundry, as I’m on my last pair of clean underwear.

There is no cooking tonight.

I could have eaten pulled pork and something at Magic Springs, where I went and froze my butt off (what happened to spring? I had my a/c on last week!) to hear the concert series lineup for this summer. Lots of country acts, allegedly big names; I wouldn’t know. Couple of Christian rock bands. And Joan Jett and the Blackhearts! On my birthday! Can I get an amen, here? And do you and y’mama ‘n ‘em want to come be my DD that night?

That would be June 25, for those of you who love rock n roll and want to come party with Joan and me.

Milestone

I hadn’t really planned a post tonight, as dinner was grilled cheese for NS and wine and cheese and pickles and olives for me. (It would have been burgers if it hadn’t turned back chilly on us.) But I was looking at my stats and I see that this very post is Post No. 500 for this adventure in logorrhea. And I knew if I didn’t go ahead and post tonight, I’d forget about the milestone when time came to post something else, and the milestone would go unmarked.

Milestones ought not go unmarked. I mean, hell, it ain’t that often I get to 500 of anything, at least that I can document.

I certainly had no clue, when I created this thing a little more than two years ago, what events 500 posts would span. I changed jobs…moved….acquired a new son…acquired a grandchild….acquired a Kitchenaid Pro stand mixer…won an international recipe contest…visited a handful of states I’d never visited….survived the loss of my dearest friend, sometime-love-of-my-life and occasional partner-in-debauchery….and learned to cook a host of things I would never have dreamed of trying. Not to mention “meeting” a lot of new cyber-friends in the foodie world.

It’s certainly opened up some new experiences for me, in shopping, in cooking, in combining flavors, in sampling things I’d never have dared sample, in tasting things I’d never have dared taste. The next 500 posts WILL see me using truffles and foie gras in some attempt to reach a new level of decadence. It will NOT see me hit the other end of the scale with chitlins and turnip greens. I didn’t like ‘em 30  years ago, and see no reason to expect I’ll like ‘em now.

I appreciate you and y’mama ‘n ‘em coming along for the ride. Hope you’ll hang with me for the next 500.