One of my summer pleasures is driving home from my daughter's just before dark. It's about a twenty-minute drive, and I put the top down and blast out the Alex Beaton tape (see how old-fashioned I am? No CD player in my car!) of Scottish ballads. I go back roads, through residential districts shaded by trees and then through the park. Lovely. No hat--don't care what my hair looks like.
Jordan has instituted a new tradition for the summer--Friday night potluck. Tonight between fifteen and twenty people in their late thirties and early forties--and me. I've known some of them since they were in high school, and I am so blessed that they always seem glad to see me, hug me, and start conversations. We talk about books, dogs, jobs, whatever. Pure pleasure. And the food is good.
Now I'm home, looking forward to spending much of tomorrow cooking. I seem to have an overcooking problem lately. I was to make Italian/cheese pinwheels (out of crescent rolls) for tonight--somehow I made them smaller than the directions but cooked them the same amount of time. They tasted okay but sure were crisp. I added a round loaf of Parmesan bread, which Rob told me was great--Rob is one I've known forever and he now works with Jamie.
Today I tried to make a curry sauce for a complicated chicken salad recipe I'll make tomorrow--and burned it. I've never been good at reduction sauces, I think becuase my patience quota is low, and this one has apricot jam in it, so in the process of reducing it, I scorched it. Threw it out and made it again late this afternoon, paying much closer attention to it while it reduced--at a lower heat.
Went to pick Jacob up at day camp midway through the sauce preparation--and he announced he didn't like the smell. I thought it was the curry sauce--which does linger even tonight when I came home. But it seems he thinks my car smells bad--we won't go into his description of the bad smell. 'Nough said.
I'm reading Susan Schreyer's Bushwhacked and ready to get back to it. Susan is one of my heroes--she got tired of the agent/traditional pubishing game and became a self-publisher. This is her fourth mystery, and I'm captivated by her characters and plots. We hear complaints all the time about the poor quality of unjuried self-publishing with no gatekeepr. Susan stands out as a shining example of the best of the new opportunities for writers.
