Tomatoes 2006

every winter i say to destiny's tot

one more tomato season

please

2006 may be the One

wherein everything i have learned about growing tomatoes comes to full bloom / comes to fruition / comes to

Amazing Mojo for this year in tomato jam potential

details forthcoming

KitterZ the Perfect Cat*

when i was looking for a mouser someone was looking for a temporary home for his beloved

pearl grey with light markings / she has big eyes

how can i count the ways ?

she only eats kibble
only kibble / no other
human food item / oh
maybe a 1/4 sq of bacon
or ham / tempted by pork
products / but nothing else

my former cats never ate cat food / they ate raw meat
chicken livers greasy roasted chicken backs and necks

mice
rats

they loved warm cream on cool mornings / salmon / tuna / trout heads

KitterZ will have none of it
kibble makes her purr :
pricey wild caught salmon
"treat" turned up her nose

stinky she sez












*tempted by Purr.fect Kat / resisting

Skaterina ponders what to do with all the gin bottles

VVVVVVV

other topics include "

Caterina perfects her personal method of making ricotta

with a test run of ricotta made from half and half

thick rich creamy

we are having a cake of half and half ricotta set on a slosh of olive oil / this ricotta cake is about the size of a tennis ball squashed down a bit / strew with chopped fresh herbs like lemon thyme / sage / rosemany / chives

drizzle more olive oil

surround the mound of ricotta with variously sliced fresh zucchine / green and yello and a red pepper to boot / season with more drizzles of olive oil / sea salt and coarse ground black pepper

warm in oven to the degree of cookness or warmness or brownedness or overdoneness

feeling cheezy

in the box

cheddar / colbyJack

wedge of parmigiano

gob of port salut

amish blue cheeze crumbles

lurking about down below / not in the box

available at all times

a creamy mozzarrelllllllloooobufalo cheese

oh some mascarpone

homemade ricotta / made with half n half

Mrs Foley considers her future

when you no longer remember the past

everything else is the future

Caterina thinks we are not eating enough butter

she sees a recipe for an Indonesian spice cake that has 3 and 1/2 sticks of butter plus 3 more tablespoons of butter which is essentially nearly a half another stick

there goes your pound of butter

here's the curiosity : the batter is built of butter and flower and sugar and 7 eggs / 4 large and 3 large yolks

this is an eggy projcect but see here we have a lot of extra eggs this week and two of them are mighty duck eggs

and then the cake is baked in layers but not in different pans / first you pour a layer in a pan and bake for 20 minutes and when that is done slather on a TB of butter / pour in the next layer of batter and so on

cool a little before turning the pan over to let it out onto a plate then turn it over again after cooling so more so that the first layer you poured is on the bottom at serving time / cant wait to see what the texture of the different layers is like

oh first you must butter of course the pan and sprinkle a little flour on it so the cake wont stick

sooooo

we are curious to see the tekneek of making this cake / how it works out

stay tuned

mrs foley sez its fun getting old

its the other side of puberty, she sez

like you can feel it coming but you dont know what it gonna be like <.>

go
for
it

this blog needs a new theme

maybe like this :

A.J. Jacobs decided to read all of the Encylopedia Britannica in a quest to Know-It-All

he then wrote a book called The Know-it-All (of course) One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

(it would be more interesting to actually read the Britannica oneself than read about someone else reading it so, no, i have not read his book, only skimmed)

this would be more like it : a young woman named Julie decided to work her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe by recipe one day at a time

she blogged the experience to the great delight of cooks and foodies everywhere / me one of her readers and admirers and oh shoot envied her for thinking of it first

so what will be our new theme ?

stay tuned

another blog ?

skaterina has a new blog somewhere else
there is a general hubub hubbubb ?
over who is going to be in charge of it ?

Mrs Foley reminds me that she is in charge of wardrobe as well as in charge of dementia

and that if she can go off by herself to another blog venue it would be good for her development / she has lots to report on walks about town dressed right / you know ? / not naked or in a bath robe / she doesnt own a bath robe / plus compressing or dissolving time is in harmony with .......

sunset collecting
view inspecting
cloud surveying
food purveying

but wait :

Caterina della Cucina is in charge of the kitchen / the purveying (smile) the foodiness and the EAT ART

now that Miss Tickle / she stays close to my heart

PEAS

i never grew peas before / kay planted them / two kinds / one with white flowers and one kind with cute little purple flowers / will the peas be purple ? asks the son.out.law

they are green / i harvested them all / shelled them as i did when i was a kid in the forties and sat on the stoop shelling big fat pea pods

cooked them quick / one minute / blanched in icecube water / dry on towel / pop into vacuum bag and seal 'em up

we only eat peas in my famly when we have Special Ocasion Mashed Potatoes / this will be some organzied (sic) holiday involving Big Meat

turkey / duck / roast pork / beef / you knowb
so we have enough peas put by for 5 Special Potato event

kay did the planting this year / although taken aback at first / bc i thought i was going to be in charge of the planting this year again / i restrained the snark

heh

well i never would have planted peas so i am glad kay did / reminded me of when alison came down from up north and planted the fava beans in the Happy Trail garden

those were my first homegrown fava beans / now, see, had i been planting this year we would have fava beans / oh yeah ?

at first i just picked a few tender young peas to have piselli funghi with linguini and cream and parmesan and pancetta / a dish i loved when i lived in Rome

so day by day i harvested the peas / they are a variety of sizes / i ponder sorting them by size / are you kidding / you did that once with little pearl buttons and then when your daughter was getting rid of stuff in your happy trail house she dumped ALL the jars / hundreds of buttons in each jar / five jars / each jar carefully and obsessively sorted by size from tiny to little to small to not so small and the

nevermind

Miss Tickle

~~~~~~~~~~

"~" is ethereal
without substance
a flicker of form to attract
the eye of the visionary
and that is all

"~" beyond imagination

"~" the UnKnowable

introducing MRS FOLEY

mrs foley is in charge of dementia

she knows how to dissolve time

she'll be here any now

you cant miss her

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this is an excerpt from an Adventure in Controlled Schizophrenia

what began as a vision quest became a way of life

write something write anything

i was on an email list / one of the members wrote

write anything if you dont have anything to say

just write something

any.old.thing.........................................................

who cares

when i first read personal journals on the internet i thought
who cares if you are still in your pajamas and on your second cup of coffee

the minutiae of trivialitea

yeah who cares if i decide to rough chop the vidalias in the food processor
instead of chop by hand for the chutney syrup that awaits impatiently ????

killer belly fat / update

the trick with killer belly fat if you are not prepared to walk five miles a day or forgo 500 calories of something to get rid of it is to keep it from working its way up to your neck and strangling you in your sleep

you need to keep it in the Life Preserver area

hint

not a killer / a floater

heh indeedy

but i digress

is that

-but i digress-

one of the most overworked cliches in the universe ?

if you will (a Cheney-ism currently picked up by Wolf Blitzer)

blogger hAs been on a n d off and so have we

hence fragments from other potential posts / yet to be

there is a little flurry of interest in the blog among the girls / skaterina / caterina / miss tickle and mrs foley

some competition over who is gonna pick up the slack and furthe the blog

stayed tuned