Last night I made a good dinner. I sauteed leeks and garlic, then mixed that up with cubed potatoes and cauliflower florets and oregano and thyme and pepper, and roasted all that for about 45 minutes. Then I made a feta cheese sauce, poured it all over the vegetables, baked it for another 30 minutes and then I said yum yum as I ate it up. It seemed like a daunting amount of work when I got home tired and a bit depressed last night, but that 45 minute roasting period was just enough time to get in a yoga practice, so it ended up feeling very efficient. Between the yoga and a good meal I felt much, much better about life at the end of the evening.
The last time I made a roux for a cheese sauce it was disastrous, but this one turned out perfectly, even using olive oil instead of butter. I absolutely credit the silicone-coated whisk I got at Ikea.
Looking forward to apple picking tomorrow, though I will be showing up late as I have a massage scheduled in the late morning. Don't you feel sorry for me?
Back when I was in grad school, I ended up reading rather more than I would ever have intended to about Iceland's history and ethnography, because an anthropologist whose theory I was interested in did her fieldwork there. The current news about Iceland reminds me that the island nation's economy has periodically collapsed throughout all its recorded history, generally due to the fishing stocks collapsing or to consecutive poor harvest years or to plague, or occasionally war. It's really no wonder that Iceland shifted the basis of its economy off its own land into other people's, in a way. But in the long view of history, collapse like this is nothing new, and probably nobody will starve to death in little hovels this time around.
A blue jay in a green and yellow leaved tree festooned with shiny red berries is a beautiful sight to see.