Late summer reading, resting your eyes and art

Sunday feels like a day off because  one of my (many) pills is to be taken six mornings a week, and I chose Sunday as the day of rest. It means I don't have to time my breakfast, which seems like an amazing piece of freedom. I know, easily amused.

Then I started my day with this YouTube yes2next video.  It's great and you might consider it. 

Mom Aiko used 2lb  weights,  daughter April, aged 60(!) used 8 and 10lbs. I used 3 and 5 at different times.

My library, unlike one of my pills,  does not take a day off, so I went in to return Brideshead and take out the Foyle waiting for me. And I picked up a jigsaw puzzle because I haven't done one in months.

I found I'd skipped over one episode of Brideshead, so I watched the last one, by which time I was glad to be done with them, especially the popeyed Cordelia. On to Foyle!

Sunday lunch was more crisp breaded hake,  roasted potato dice seasoned with long red pepper (relative of black and white pepper but fruitier heat) and basil salt, which I'd ground from kosher salt and dried basil. 

Plus a side of portabella mushrooms sliced and cooked in butter and olive oil, with a peppermint leaf crushed and torn in. It looked like a quiet dish of food, but it was packed with flavor. 

Dessert was yogurt beaten with lime juice and sugar, blueberries added in.

My long awaited Anne Tyler came in Sunday morning and took me less than the afternoon to read, including watching butterflies and hummingbird moths 

and failing to capture them in pictures, listening to the cicadas beedling away, not the deafening ones this time, then resting my eyes, and dreaming, on the deck. Anyway, about the book -- it's very brief but vintage Tyler.

Definitely recommended. 

I returned unfinished the Lily King book Euphoria, set in some exotic part of the world among anthropologists, who, like the climate, are hot, humid and oppressive. 

I disliked it the same way I  dislike Kingsolver,  too green and intense. Which probably means that if you love Kingsolver you'll like this novel. This is a kind of negative recommendation. I'm not designed for the tropics,  even reading about them.

Gary has returned, singing to his dog, talking to his daughter and me  both at once, she on the phone, and looking well but thinner. He finds he's developed a gluten sensitivity. So I need to remember that,  when I bring baked food over. 

I do a nice fruit crumble with an oat flour topping, gluten free. That would work.  His health is less robust than mine these days, so I hope he does better. A nice dish of plum crumble would help.

Happy day everyone

It's worth fighting for. Resist! Read the preamble above aloud.