Catchup Catchup
(I wrote this around May 1st and forgot to hit post, oopsies.)
I've been just hammered with sleepiness and flareups since I got back, so I haven't done much more than tread water. I'm keeping up on morning walking and fixing Brad's bento, and that's about it. I've also started fixing myself a dinner bento as well, which means I'm a LOT more likely to eat a real dinner because I don't get too exhausted to fix myself dinner in the evening and it's right there and everything. (Sometimes I am too tired to eat it in a timely fashion, but Brad will poke me if he finds it uneaten and me sleeping.) I'm also better at taking my vitamins, though not perfect, and I've actually been very good at taking my pills since I'm waking up at the same time every morning and it's easier to stick that into my routine. With all of the sleeping it's very hard to track on anything else, though, and I can't do much of anything else including reading because I just doze off in the middle of whatever, or if I'm out and about I ache and ache more and more until I get back home and can collapse into bed.
We went to see the Morris dancers dance up the sun on May Day, which was neat if COLD. We watched until the dances started repeating for the dancers who'd showed up later or hadn't gotten to be in the earlier ones, and then we had to leave as my hands and feet were numb despite the long underwear, gloves, etc. It was so impressively cold that Jack was also complaining about it. The dances are really neat, though, and everyone looked like they had fun, and hey, it worked! The sun rose! Brad noticed and I remembered how very fast the sun rises. We don't actually see very many dawns, despite walking around at dawn, because of all of the buildings. It was nice to actually observe one.
aelfsciene and I also managed to go to the Pottery Seconds Fair, which was nifty. We got there early and there was a line, which probably shouldn't have surprised me but it did. Sadly the dancing teapot guy wasn't there this year, but there were plenty of other favorites including people I already have a few pieces from. I'm slowly building a kitchen around this fair! We also saw a sign for ANOTHER pottery sale happening at the winery in Soquel, failed to find the winery, decided to turn around and I'm really pleased that we did, since I found some gorgeous huge mugs that admittedly I could have gotten anytime by just going to the pottery store down the street, but hey. I couldn't decide between the glazes so I got some that are glossy dipped blue and some that are matte green with lighter green splashes on them. They actually harmonize and now I'm tempted to get plates from the same potter to match them, to update our old plates. My favorite find there was Jeannine Niehaus, who does Japanesque style pottery with an amazing relief over earthenware. The site doesn't really do her work justice because the raised relief is a joy to feel. I got a set of teacups, one for each season, that are perfect for green tea.
Brad has been doing most of the cooking because I've been so very tired, but I'm still managing to go shopping, and I am usually able to bash out a soup or something. I'm probably not going to get to a real cooking post, but this week we're having black beans done New Mexican style (subbing black beans in for pinto as we like them better), a chili flavored very basically with New Mexican chili and garlic (not the usual tomatoes and onions we put in), and green shallot soup. At some point I will think of something to do with green shallots other than make cream of shallot soup with them, or cut them up and add them to things raw, but every year that seems to be the first thing that springs to mind. I also FINALLY got to the quite venerable beets and made soup out of them. So as usual there is oodles of soup.
I also candied some kumquats in honey successfully, and tried to make kumquat toffee and it was an edible failure, in that it came out more like caramel, no doubt due to the moisture content of the kumquats. I was going for something a lot more like what happened when I over-caramelized the topping on Brad's pineapple upside down birthday cake, where I'd used sliced kumquats instead of maraschino cherries and I ended up with some topping stuck to the pan that hardened nicely and had a lovely burnt-caramel flavor contrasting with the cooked/candied kumquats. I ended up with weird kumquat caramel, not the same thing at all. I can't find a base recipe for toffee or brittle that uses fruit at all, no doubt for the excellent reason that it can't be done, but I know it *can* be done under some circumstances, so it's tempting to try again. But I probably won't have the spoons to do so until next year, and kumquat season is more or less over anyhow, so....
I've been just hammered with sleepiness and flareups since I got back, so I haven't done much more than tread water. I'm keeping up on morning walking and fixing Brad's bento, and that's about it. I've also started fixing myself a dinner bento as well, which means I'm a LOT more likely to eat a real dinner because I don't get too exhausted to fix myself dinner in the evening and it's right there and everything. (Sometimes I am too tired to eat it in a timely fashion, but Brad will poke me if he finds it uneaten and me sleeping.) I'm also better at taking my vitamins, though not perfect, and I've actually been very good at taking my pills since I'm waking up at the same time every morning and it's easier to stick that into my routine. With all of the sleeping it's very hard to track on anything else, though, and I can't do much of anything else including reading because I just doze off in the middle of whatever, or if I'm out and about I ache and ache more and more until I get back home and can collapse into bed.
We went to see the Morris dancers dance up the sun on May Day, which was neat if COLD. We watched until the dances started repeating for the dancers who'd showed up later or hadn't gotten to be in the earlier ones, and then we had to leave as my hands and feet were numb despite the long underwear, gloves, etc. It was so impressively cold that Jack was also complaining about it. The dances are really neat, though, and everyone looked like they had fun, and hey, it worked! The sun rose! Brad noticed and I remembered how very fast the sun rises. We don't actually see very many dawns, despite walking around at dawn, because of all of the buildings. It was nice to actually observe one.
aelfsciene and I also managed to go to the Pottery Seconds Fair, which was nifty. We got there early and there was a line, which probably shouldn't have surprised me but it did. Sadly the dancing teapot guy wasn't there this year, but there were plenty of other favorites including people I already have a few pieces from. I'm slowly building a kitchen around this fair! We also saw a sign for ANOTHER pottery sale happening at the winery in Soquel, failed to find the winery, decided to turn around and I'm really pleased that we did, since I found some gorgeous huge mugs that admittedly I could have gotten anytime by just going to the pottery store down the street, but hey. I couldn't decide between the glazes so I got some that are glossy dipped blue and some that are matte green with lighter green splashes on them. They actually harmonize and now I'm tempted to get plates from the same potter to match them, to update our old plates. My favorite find there was Jeannine Niehaus, who does Japanesque style pottery with an amazing relief over earthenware. The site doesn't really do her work justice because the raised relief is a joy to feel. I got a set of teacups, one for each season, that are perfect for green tea.
Brad has been doing most of the cooking because I've been so very tired, but I'm still managing to go shopping, and I am usually able to bash out a soup or something. I'm probably not going to get to a real cooking post, but this week we're having black beans done New Mexican style (subbing black beans in for pinto as we like them better), a chili flavored very basically with New Mexican chili and garlic (not the usual tomatoes and onions we put in), and green shallot soup. At some point I will think of something to do with green shallots other than make cream of shallot soup with them, or cut them up and add them to things raw, but every year that seems to be the first thing that springs to mind. I also FINALLY got to the quite venerable beets and made soup out of them. So as usual there is oodles of soup.
I also candied some kumquats in honey successfully, and tried to make kumquat toffee and it was an edible failure, in that it came out more like caramel, no doubt due to the moisture content of the kumquats. I was going for something a lot more like what happened when I over-caramelized the topping on Brad's pineapple upside down birthday cake, where I'd used sliced kumquats instead of maraschino cherries and I ended up with some topping stuck to the pan that hardened nicely and had a lovely burnt-caramel flavor contrasting with the cooked/candied kumquats. I ended up with weird kumquat caramel, not the same thing at all. I can't find a base recipe for toffee or brittle that uses fruit at all, no doubt for the excellent reason that it can't be done, but I know it *can* be done under some circumstances, so it's tempting to try again. But I probably won't have the spoons to do so until next year, and kumquat season is more or less over anyhow, so....