Music and Cats

Lyra has a favorite spot in the bed, right up against Paul’s pillows. This spot is available only when Paul isn’t in the bed, and Lyra often nabs it as soon as he gets up in the morning.

She likes to have that spot all to herself, but sometimes she’s forced to share.

Usually, when there’s a kitten pile, Lyra has her back to the pillow. How Sasha and Sergei got between Lyra and the pillow is a mystery to me.

You should see the kitten pile aboard the Friday Ark! (There are other animals there, too.)

1. I have seven pairs of reading glasses. I use only five of them regularly, as two older pairs are +1.00, and I now need +1.25 to read small print clearly. I keep one pair in my car, one on my desk at work, and one pair in my purse; the others are scattered around our house, depending on where I put them down when I’m done with them. Often, several pair end up in the same place. My current favorite pair has bright blue and lime green frames.

2. I don’t have a middle name. My parents figured that my first and last names were long enough. The combination was too long for quite a few of those one-letter-in-each-box forms I had to fill out as a child. I could have acquired a middle name by taking Paul’s last name when we married, but I’d had my name for almost 38 years by then, and felt rather attached to it.

3. I love children’s books, particularly picture books. While I love a good story and evocative writing, what I’m looking for in a picture book is gorgeous illustrations. I have a small collections of picture books, several of which were presents from my mother (and not when I was a child).

4. I’ll take chamber music over a symphony (almost) any day. Sometimes a wall of sound is wonderful, but in general, I prefer performances by a few musicians, be they instrumentalists or singers, to those by large groups. I like to hear every voice or instrument individually.

5. I am a fan of adverbs. You know, those words that often end in -ly, that modify verbs. I’m saddened by the loss of adverbs in much of the English that I hear spoken. EDIT: I am a fan of the proper use of adverbs. “Slowly” is an adverb; “slow” is not. (It’s an adjective. Use it to modify a noun.) I am saddened by how often I hear adjectives used where adverbs belong: “He walked slow” rather than “He walked slowly.” Paul and I yell “-ly” at the people on TV a lot. Sadly, the TV people do not learn.

6. I love brussels sprouts. If you are fond of the sprouts, I need say no more. If you’re not, nothing I might say is likely to change your mind about them. OK, one thing. Brussels sprouts need a good shock of cold weather to become sweet and nutty. Get some fresh, local sprouts after the first cold snap, and you might find that you love them, too.

7. I do not decorate for Christmas, or play Christmas music, before December 1. I love Christmas decorations and music, but for me, the Christmas season doesn’t start until December. Some years the first Sunday in Advent falls in November; that has always seemed somehow wrong to me. Of course, the twelve days of Christmas extend the season into January by six days, but that’s the limit for decorations. That said, we are getting our tree this weekend!

Why this post? (more…)

Did you know that November 28 is National French Toast Day? If any food deserves its own day, French toast does. Of all the breakfast foods, my favorite is custard-soaked bread grilled in butter. Yum. I was planning to make French toast for dinner tonight (I love breakfast for dinner), but when I got home Paul was already cooking, and not French toast. Maybe we’ll have French toast tomorrow…

Did you know that today is also the birthday of Jon Stewart? Happy birthday, Mr. Stewart! Oh, how we miss you! Weeknights at 11 just aren’t the same without you.

In September, when our farmers markets were exploding with amazing produce, I bought some green beans at the Ballard Farmers’ Market. I can’t tell you the name of the farmer or the farm; I can tell you that the stall was right next to Skagit River Ranch’s, that the farmer had a smile that lit up his broad, tan face, and that his green beans were remarkable: slender, sweet, tender and peppery.

The following week, I bought several pounds of those green beens. I spent a good part of the following evening standing over a large pot of boiling water, blanching beans: three minutes in boiling water, three minutes in ice water, several minutes draining, then into a freezer bag. I watched handful after handful of beans flush bright green as they cooked, and I confess that I couldn’t keep my hands off of them; I may have eaten my five daily servings of vegetables as I worked. I used a drinking straw to suck as much air I could out of the plastic bags before sealing them and consigning them to the freezer.

I’d earmarked one bag of these green beans for Thanksgiving dinner. I was a little anxious about how the green beans would stand up to a couple of months in the deep freeze, but I needn’t have worried. When thawed, the beans had the same squeaky crispness that I’d tasted when processing them in September. I’d filled the Thanksgiving bean freezer bag assuming a larger crowd than we had for dinner, so we had green beans left over. What a treat! I’ve been eating them with other leftovers for a few days, but we’re now done with leftovers, except for some green beans.

The first time that I lived alone, a few months after I graduated from college, I discovered the pleasure of cooking just for myself. What did I want to eat for dinner? That’s what I’d cook. One of my favorite dinners during the summer was a big bowl of fresh green beans, lightly steamed, topped with black pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, and crumbled feta cheese. Tonight, that impromptu green bean dinner sounded like just the thing, but we had no feta. We did, however, have Seastack.

I remember the first time that the folks from Mt. Townsend Creamery showed up at the Ballard Farmers’ Market, a little over a year ago. I stop by to taste their cheeses every week, and buy them perhaps more often than I should. I can’t say that I have a favorite, but I am quite fond of the buttery, soft (to the point of runny) Seastack.

Tonight, I subbed in a runny wedge of Seastack for the feta in my green bean dinner. Its slightly sharp, salty creaminess enrobed the tender beans. Perfect, and just exactly what I wanted for dinner.