Domesticity

Domesticity

I'm making progress on the shawl edging, which is rawther exciting (for me. Boring as all get-out for you guys)(except some of you)(who I just love!)(yes, you, Erica). Voila:

The teensy niggling smidgen of doubt here is that I think this may not be big enough. I do plan to block the daylights out of it, but still, there are limits. Ah, well. It's a learning experience. Ignore the sound of grinding teeth there.

Youngest child and dh and I made our way to the Lowell Folk Festival, where we planned to wander and perhaps meet up with people, knitters and homeschoolers and whatnot, like you do. I hadn't planned very well, and I've never been to this thing before, and I thought how hard can it be to find whatever that gallery was? Answer: more so than one might think. Not as humid, 92 F, pretty much baking-on-cars weather, and poor little dude was so badly affected that he threw up his lemonade. Also his lunch. A very kind festival volunteer directed us to a "cooling station", where little dude got misted with water and felt a nice breeze, and was able to make it back to the car. So that was the end of that.

Seeing as it was absurdly hot but not as absurdly hot as it could have been, I embarked on a Fabulous Cookery Adventure. What I did was make most of the meal in the current Martha Stewart magazine "What to Have for Dinner" section. This is one of my absolute favorite things about the magazine-- a complete meal, including a suggested schedule for prep, so I could have the presence of mind to see that some of the fresh lemon juice would go in the crab cakes and some would go in the nectarine shortcakes. Ditto unsalted butter. The timing estimate is laughable - "prep time: 5 minutes" my aunt fanny! - but if I start before it's actually dinner time, I have a shot at having food ready before 9 pm. I checked the cupboard and fridge to see what stuff I needed, made a list, remembered to bring the list with me to Market Basket--ooo, it was t'riffic (spoken a la Anna Russell).

The only thing missing really was some fruity light summer wine, but we managed. The Maine crabmeat at the supermarket turned out to be very good. I made "zesty" (translation: includes pickled jalapenos) crab cakes. I made some weird raddichio kinda cole slaw stuff (look, ma! I actually bought raddichio!). I made nectarine shortcake. I even made a pork chop for little dude, who was not gonna touch no crab cakes, no indeed. There is a LOT left. The instructions say, serves 4, and those 4 would need to be pretty damn hungry. I did not go for the "quick picked okra," as I was born without the okra gene. Hurray, real dinner! I can't remember the last time I made a real meal. Whoo hoo.

I do make smoothies all summer. I save bananas in the freezer (after I take the peels off) when they're past the "kid will eat" stage, which is as you know far too fleeting, and use 'em at will. I keep the same ziplock bag in the freezer being constantly replenished and used. Anyhow, two frozen overripe bananas, some apple juice (the varietal kind that tastes like actual apples), and whatever other fruit I have lying around--frozen raspberries (WAY cheap at Market Basket), mango chunks, strawberries, blueberries, whatever. Throw it all in the blender and go. A splash of rum wouldn't be a bad idea.

One more foodie thing: kid project! Ice cream making! In two ziplock bags! You take a gallon ziplock bag (after removing the sock in progress first), fill it halfway with ice (thank you, icemaker), put a cup of half and half mixed with some sugar and vanilla (2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 t. vanilla) into a small ziplock bag (after removing the stitch markers), put some kosher salt into the bag with the ice, seal up the creamy stuff in the smaller bag, put the small bag into the big bag and seal the big bag, and shake it up for a while! And you're making ice cream! Whee!

And THANK YOU so much for the congrats, Jena (and Dave) and Erica and Lynne and Lucia and Anne (have a good trip!). I feel weird seeing my stuff in print, still, and relieved that they always manage to make the pieces look really good in the pictures (better than they look in the flesh, anyway). Thank you.

Dh has been very busy learning how to blog lately, and being the technical guru that he is, he's set me up with a domain name of my very own (which I have not the least idea how to use yet) and is sampling the various blog hosting things besides Blogger. He is not too keen on Blogger, apparently. He wants to post samples of code and demonstrations of what the code does, and html editors that muck around with his stuff have been making him cross. Ah, yes, the point: I may be migrating the blog to a "crazed weasel dot com" place. The drama just never ends.