End of a long, lazy day

My peppers bouquet, gift of a friend. Love it!

My lazy day ended with good fellowship. Friend Mary was coming for dinner--she wanted to take me out since I often cook for her, but with the TCU game it was hard to find a restaurant without an hour wait. So we ate here. Sue and Teddy came by for happy hour, stayed an hour and the four of us had a grand old time visiting, eating gravlax and cream cheese and a raspberry infused cheddar. Sat on the front porch--the deck was a tad damp--and the cool air and breeze were wonderful, especially in contrast to this morning that greeted me with heavy, muggy air.
No, I didn't watch the TCU game but I did check after half-time and found a discouraging score. Later in the afternoon, after I napped, I checked again and TCU had won by a whopping score. Go, Frogs!
Sophie and I spent most of the day being lazy and quiet--I did some computer work and some reading; she slept. She is, however, grieving for Elizabeth--she lost her house manners in the kitchen, something she hasn't done since Scooby died over a year ago, and then she went and slept on his bed--another thing she did after he died. Mary and I gave her extra love while we ate scrambled eggs with spinach--I thought the spinach overshadowed the eggs, she thought it was just right. Hey, she was the guest. What else would she say?
Now dishes are done--except the skillet--and I'm ready to be lazy again. Reading The Lost Art of Mixing, by Erica Bauermeister, which follows The School of Essential Ingredients, a foodie novel I really enjoyed and admired for the quality of its prose.
'Night all. Sweet dreams.

2011 is off to a good start

Is New Year's Day an omen of how the year will go? In so many ways I hope so. The highlight of the day was TCU's close but decisive win of the Rose Bowl. Who thought a school of 8700 could field a team against a school of 42,000 students and win? Jordan and Christian and Susan and Jay and I watched, while Jacob boycotted us and watched the Disney channel in my office. I'm curious to see what changes this big, national win will have on campus--it can either focus attention completely on athletics at the cost of academics or it can help boost all facets of the university. I'm hoping for the latter--and for a strong university press as part of the deal.
The day was also off to a good cooking start--sort of a no-brainer but I heated a spiral-sliced ham, made mashed potatoes, heated canned black-eyed peas (I never can cook them from scratch so they're any good, but, Barbara, if you're reading this I can still do purple hulls as you showed me years ago). I made a Reuben spread for an appetizer, and Jay brought an amazing array of cookies and sweets that he'd baked over the holidays. Jacob helped me cook--he's suddenly crazy about cooking (if he's in the right mood and has his apron). He helped make salad dressing, dumped the peas into a saucepan, watched me unwrap the ham carefully, and at the table took credit for much of the meal. We all praised him. I wanted him to keep his apron on so we could have our pictures taken but a blow-up over whether the TCU game or Rudolph should be on the TV put him in a bad mood--and he was moody off and off all evening. I know, I know, I believe in discipline but it just breaks my heart when he sobs. The typical soft-hearted grandmother.
And the day was a good omen for writing (I hope)--I submitted my mystery, Skeleton in a Dead Space, to a small press. The fact that I'm going to try a few small presses and then go to self-publishing is indicative of the changes we've seen in publishing just over the past year. Self-publishing has lost it's tinge of disgrace (though some bad books still see their way to at least electronic print that way), small presses are doing gangbuster things, and some people predict the decline of the chain bookstores and a resurgence of the indie stores. All laudable trends since publishing in New York has been sort of a closed circle that it was hard-to-impossible for a beginner to enter. I don't think this is sour grapes because an agent submitted my mystery to the major big publishers without success--I think it's more a recognition of the changing face of publishing. I'm not going to justify the fact that a major publisher wasn't swept away by my book--I know how many mystery writers there are out there. But with my small press background, I'm cheering the new approach to books and publishing.
Technology is changing so fast too--Jay brought over tonight the book Susan made him for Christmas, a chronological record of the dishes he has cooked for them over the last two or three years. She took the pictures with her iPhone, designed it on her computer, and sent it off to some service of Apple to be bound. Result is a quality book, hard-bound, dust jacket and all--and to my eye good color. (OK, Melinda, your eye would be more discerning). I was much impressed, and Jay was sentimental about it. He is, by the by, a great experimental cook and creates some wonderful dishes!
I would happily accept my day as an omen for the new year except for nagging distress over Jacob's meltdowns--I guess that's all part of being four. I hope each of you found as much pleasure in your day and look forward to a great year.

Random thoughts on the Super Bowl, dieting and cooking

I am not and never have been a football fan. I don't understand it, it seems brutal (I hope none of my grandsons play), and it seems, as someone famous once wrote, a little silly to see grown men fighting over a piece of pigskin. (It reminds me of when my children were little and we would drive by the local country club while the PGA golf tournament was going on. "Look at the silly men chasing the little white ball," I'd say. The one year my ex and I attended we didn't know about keeping children quiet near the green and got a lot of dirty looks!). Needless to say the Super Bowl doesn't interest me, although I am, like many others, sometimes tempted to watch just for the commercials. Yesterday I called my friend Charles and said I'd come visit him Sunday. "Don't come during the Super Bowl!" he said in dismay, so I said well, maybe I wouldn't come at all. "No, come ahead, we'll work it out." So I went to see him about 4:15 and was out of his hair by 5:00 when the pre-game stuff started. Since he normally goes to sleep by 7:30 I said, "You know you're not going to last the first quarter," and he said,"I'm going to watch every minute. I'm really excited about it." I left, amazed.
But tonight I've noticed how quiet the internet is.On Sundays, I monitor messages posted to the Sisters in Crime listserv (this is only my second Sunday) but late this afternoon the list went dead. Facebook had a similar absence of postings, and I've had no email except from one SinC member who must feel as I do about the game. I guess everyone else is watching it.
Shhh--don't tell them, but I've decided to give up on Weight Watchers for a while. I was flat tired of being so obsessed with points and then gaining weight in spite of it all. I exercised faithfully--bicycle and yoga--and watched what I ate. Still I gained (after an initial and good loss--I just can't lose that last 5 lbs.).When my oldest son, Colin, had a severe flare-up of his Crohn's disease, he got down to 120 lbs. and looked heartbreakingly like a survivor from Auschwitz. He could only eat little bits and no nutrition was getting through to his body (turns out the camera they had him swallow was stuck in there for several months). Anyway, after he had surgery and could enjoy food again, he shot up to almost 200 lbs--his body couldn't get past the notion that it was starving. He had an elderly dog and had to get up two or three times in the night to let the dog out--every time he did, he ate a peanut butter sandwich.
But it occurred to me, in a theory probably as hare-brained as many of mine are, that my body might know it was always hungry and was trying to store up. So today I ate a piece of bread with lunch, about 2 Tbsp. of potato left from Jacob's dinner last night with my dinner, and--oh, sin!--a quarter of a piece of my neighbor's carrot cake with that rich cream cheese frosting. I can still eat sensibly and watch what I eat without worrying about the blasted points. I'll give it a couple of weeks--if I balloon, I'll go back to rigid adherence. If I hold my own, I'll take Sue's advice that life is too short to worry about five lbs.
I mentioned the other day I was experimenting cooking with all that parchment I have on hand. Tonight I fixed salmon with green beans, lemon zest, and capers wrapped in parchment and baked in a hot oven for 15 minutes. Delicious--the salmon was moist and flavorful and the tang of the capers was a great touch. I'm going to try that egg dish again, except with spinach rather than asparagus--I decided that "bargain" asparagus I got was rather tough, though I stir-fried it quite a while last night and it was better. Anyway, all that's healthy eating--and I rode the bike today.

Miscellany on a cold evening

TCU is playing Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix tonight, and I actually have it on the TV, though I don't know enough about football to follow it except when they flash the score and quarter along the bottom. Jean tells me it's a good game, so I'll believe her. I share the antipathy of many humanities scholars toward athletics--they get all the money and we get our programs cut. But I realize this triumphant football season has brought much national attention to TCU and, as our mayor says, to Fort Worth. So today I wore a lilac sweater--closest I could come to purple. And of course I really really want them to win. But every time some loyal football supporter raves about how much money we make from a bowl game, I want to ask about the trickle-down effect to academics. Really, why do we send kids to college: to cheer for a football team or to learn?  I do keep watching the crowd shots to see if I recognize anyone, but so far none.
It's a cold night in North Texas, and I am happy to be inside. Windy and cold even in mid-day today and predicted to get colder as the week goes on. Jordan was right. There is a difference between everyday cold and vacation cold--in Colorado, vacation cold is drier and doesn't seem to bite your bones like this does.
One of my dilemmas is that I have too much good food in my fridge. Tonight my dinner choice was between hoppin' John, which was so good as a leftover last night, and a tuna cake. I chose the tuna cake because it won't keep as long as the ham/pea dish. When I was a child my mom made salmon croquettes, and I adore them to this day. She used ground up saltines to thicken them--never the mashed potatoes recommended by some. All you do is put the canned fish, egg (1 for a 7 oz. can, 2 for a 14 oz. can)  in a bowl; season with salt, pepper, dry mustard, onion, and Worcestershire. Add enough ground crackers to give it substance, shape into patties and saute. Now I do it with that expensive and good tuna I ordered from a small fishery--I think I mentioned it before, but it's a family operation and the dolphins swim alongside their boats, are never caught in their nets. They pack the tuna and it is only cooked once when it goes through the canning process (most tuna is cooked, canned, and cooked again). Pisces tuna (that's the brand) is albacore in water, though the small mom-and-pop operation also offers salmon and other goodies. Tonight I accompanied my tuna cake, liberally doused with lemon, with a huge batch of stir-fried asparagus, mushrooms, and sugar snap peas. Of course then I broke down and ate two chocolate chip squares left in the freezer--I will soon have them finished and out of the way! Though I'm constantly watching my diet, it will be easier with those chocolate bars gone!