I Spoke Prematurely

Upon describing my symptoms to my beloved, and he being someone who has suffered much from his respiratory system, he diagnosed me as suffering from allergies. I'm not very familiar with allergies, so this was useful. A dose of loratidine (the generic version of Claritan) and I was doing much better. It does pay to have friends, and to share one's troubles with them.

I am really enjoying the weather. However, the cloudy overcast made sleep in today. I only woke up because my dreams were just getting silly and I was tired of them. Upon seeing how late in the morning it was, I trotted around the house briskly, pulling myself together. Later in the day, after having gone grocery shopping, which never fails to make me feel like an entirely plausible adult, I was seized with a strange "wrath," to turn on the oven and fill the house with warm savorous odors.

So I proceeded to spend a good chunk of the evening making delicious vegetarian casseroles, three entirely different ones, and I tossed a stray eggplant into a shallow dish and baked it to a pulp, just because it was there, and I fired up the glorious new convection toaster oven my excellent sister sent as a wedding present, and really did bake all the sweet potatoes it could hold in about 2/3 the time it would have taken otherwise. I'm not quite sure about what I will do with the eggplant, but a roasted vegetable is no variety of hardship. I may just heat it up and dress it with a dollop of yogurt and hot sauce. The sweet potatoes I will probably mash, and cover with some kind of sausage, vegetarian or meat, and eat as a very satisfying and simple dinner for a cool evening.

I am not so very much given to "emotional eating," but I am inclined to emotional cooking. Well really, any creative endevor will do, but the ones with a brutally practical result hold a particular satisfaction. Cooking is great, because everyone needs to eat, and after venting, I have a fridge full of delicious food, to eat myself or feed to others. Back in the day, I would have packed this into bento boxes to take to work for breakfast and lunch. Maybe for the whole week. Now, I can feed my beloved, and my roommates as well as myself. It all still lasts for about a week.

Julie and Julia

Well go see the movie if you haven't because parts of it are just glorious.  I don't know about you, but back in the day, I became aware of "blogs" by hearing about the Julie/Julia Project.  My dad had learned to cook by starting on page one of *Mastering The Art*... and working his way through to the end.  In his case it took more than a year.

So anyway, once the book version of the blog came out I snapped it up, as this looked like the new "overnight success story" as well as the subject matter looking good.  (I started it and for some reason never finished it.) I'd looked at some delightful knitting books that had also started as blogs.  That looked like the new thing--we'll all write blogs about our cunningly particular circumstances and hordes of Internet surfers would discover us and gasp as Anais Nin reported of her readership, that we had expressed exactly their experience beyond their wildest wishes of ever having discovered a voice. No, really.

One of my thoughts upon leaving the movie was a stinging sense of shame about blogging.  As though the faster and easier we can "communicate," the less we have to actually convey, until we are down to this form of shrilly screaming into the electronic ether to hear our own tinny echoes.  Being old and cranky and familiar enough with magic tricks to not be so very easily lead about by media, I am still writing here.  I would like to engage in some conversation with people who like the stuff I like.  Since 9/11, no one can afford to hide any light that they might be able to contribute.  That is worth the risk of a few tinny echoes.

So before I completely wander off topic and into what needs to be another entry, go pick up the book.  This is one of those situations where you really do want to see the movie before you read the book.  The book will fix anything wrong with the movie, and then the movie that *you* think should have been made instead of this one will be so freakin cool to imagine that you will have a lot of fun and think many, many thoughts.  Now all this goes only for *Julie and Julia*.  I have not read *Our Years In France* yet, although I have perused *An Appetite for Life*.  I will rashly commend them to you too, just because Julia Child is that freakin cool, and just about anything connected to her has to spur a person to think and to do. 

Candy is Classic

A shop in Claremont sells loose candies without being twee about it. Five saltwater taffies for 25 cents, stick candy for 20 cents a piece. So 65 cents will get me five taffies, in liquorice, cinnamon, and peppermint, and two sticks--one sassafras, one clove. All old-fashioned flavors I like; they have horehound, but I really don't care for it. The best part is the bag.

It is a little white paper sack, maybe what, eight inches tall, four wide? The candies rattle satisfactorily in it as I parade about the streets of Claremont swinging it just a bit. I may be gaining a little dignified grey at my temples, but the sheer pleasure of having a little sack of picked-out candies to walk around with is eternal.

Sitting Quietly at Home

Last week, not feeling quite my best, but not out and out sick, I sat quietly at home for longer than I have in a long time. From waking to sleeping, I stayed put. Some reading was done--Francis Hogson Burnett exotica, *Square Meals,* where in I found a recipe for a fig-and-crystallized ginger spread for tea sandwiches that I think would be good to try. I'm not huge meat eater, but a pot roast sounded intriguing. As has been pointed out by L.A. writers of note, few dishes are quite as cravenly exotic as a nice pot roast out here. To be fair though-- there is very little call to eat pot roast in this mild and balmy climate. There are reasons why seal blubber is not craved in Miami, and Inuits live quite nicely thank you without an endless supply of mangoes. But as the false chill of the June Gloom sets in, I dream of the savourous warm brown smells of a roast.

I finished reading Verne's *Around the World in Eighty Days* too. The part where they sped across the prairie in a wind driven sledge was particularly exciting--I have a degree of familiarity with the area described. Sometimes I really miss Nebraska. It was a far more mystical and alluring spot than plenty of people might think. Willa Cather could not have come from anywhere else.