A trivia day

 

So lovely to have a daughter who fixes lunch. Jordan saw a picture, maybe on Pinterest, and recreated it—taco salad in an avocado shell. Delicious and healthy, and it made me feel spoiled. Who needs tuna fish every day?

Actually, our menu is tending toward Tex-Mex this week. Wednesday in honor of National Fajita Day we ordered fajitas from eatfajitas.com, which is the website connected with Lanny Lancarte’s restaurant, Righteous Foods (I still think it’s the wrong name for a restaurant, but I like their food a lot). The chicken was absolutely out of this world—flavorful and moist. And the queso will now always be a favorite of mine. Then tonight, Reatta was offering an enchilada special to benefit the local Boy Scout Troop, so Christian ordered it. Jordan and I are declining in favor of sirloin patties and salad. My mom cooked really good ground beef patties in a skillet heavily sprinkled with salt, no grease and that’s how I’ll do mine. Jordan doesn’t want all that salt and wants her pattie cooked more.

We had sunshine today, but the temperature was still mid-nineties. I admit it’s a bit cavalier of me to say it wasn’t hot—I didn’t stick my nose out the door, though I work much of the morning with the French doors to the patio open and the a/c off. About noon I turned the a/c on but still keep the doors open. Love the feeling that I’m bringing the outdoors inside. Also there’s a practical consideration: with a flexible screen on the door, Sophie can come and go at will.

Of course, I must lock her out when I want to do my exercises, such as they are. I walk a circular route—down the bathroom hall, into the bedroom, then the kitchen and back to the living area—five times. It gives me about a hundred feet each time. And then I do prescribed chair yoga exercises. But the whole routine drives her wild. We haven’t figured out what bothers her—is she protecting me? From what? Does she think there’s something the matter with me? If I sit down at my desk and behave myself, she calms right down. Maybe I need a dog psychiatrist.

This has been a busy desk week for me—lots of little tasks, most of which don’t mean much to non-writers. But I wrote a blog to boost my forthcoming title, The Most Land, the Best Cattle: The Waggoners of Texas. It contains a recipe, so I have to fix it and photograph before I can send the post off. I’m sure it’s from the eighties—calls for a can of tomato soup and then fill the can with milk. How many remember making tomato soup that way with good old Campbell’s®? This is a chilled soup that Electra Waggoner Biggs called “Crunchy Soup.” After the post is published, I’ll share it.

But I also updated an entry for the Handbook of Texas, put together the Berkeley Place Association newsletter, the Poobah, for September (well, mostly), and wrote a newsletter. Those of you who read Judy’s Stew probably feel you already know way too much about what I’m doing but if you’d like my newsletter, please write me, with your email address, at j.alter@tcu.edu. This newsletter describes the projects on my desk, offers a recipe (Christian’s potato salad), and has a giveaway—three copies of Saving Irene to the first three people who write me, promising to write a review for Goodreads or Amazon. Remember, a promise is a promise.

Tomorrow I’m allowing myself a cooking day—it’s almost like a vacation day.