Reset review, food and other good things

I'm finding my new less-filled schedule is so much better for my current energy level. I'm learning to dodge the kneejerk response and it's so much better.  I'm not doing All the Things.

But I have got back into daily exercise with yes2next, which is reviving my energy, oddly. My doctor would say what did I tell you? Move less it's harder to move, move more it's easier.  

The heat and humidity have hit my walking, and yesterday I got in half the distance then was so fatigued and hot I turned back. But indoor movement is good. Back into strength training, too.

My neighbor I haven't seen in a while, gardening expert, came out as I passed on my walk, to  chat plants,  and exchange Gary updates(!). She commented that he's trying to live in two places at once, too true.

Then, great news, my contractor artist friend came Thursday to measure and decide the bathroom work, yay. He's very apologetic about having me wait so long, but this year he's been slammed. 

Not just work, his faraway widowed mother needed a visit, he's the only child, more health issues. He also got involved in fostering, retraining and rehoming a dog for someone who couldn't cope (pause for phone search for pictures, cavapoo, beautiful).  

This ended up in driving the dog to Florida, many hours, to rehome the dog with his own daughter, great choice. He will not fly with his own dogs, airlines terrible with animals, so he wouldn't fly with this one.

Then various work issues including rescuing Gary more than once, and more Gary updates.

This is the nice thing about a small town with friendly neighbors. Contracting is not just a commercial transaction, though he did leave with decisions and paint and tile samples, it's a local verbal newspaper.

And I'm still getting flowers, probably a couple more weeks yet

The yellow ones are from a seed mix, not sure what they are, but likely black eyed susans.

And Misfits arrived in the midst of the bathroom caper

This involved one of my least favorite tasks, chopping onions, yellow and red. I use a lot, chop them into eighths, freeze, and they work in every recipe. Sometimes I chop further when I cook, but cutting semi thawed onions doesn't make a person cry. It's a chemistry thing.

I cooked the strawberries and apples together, with diced fresh ginger. I'm really liking these fruit combos with apples.

And of course the potatoes are now parboiled and great for dicing and roasting. My orders are smaller just now, doing catch-up with the freezer, read on.

Lovely shrimp with baby bellas and scallions, both cooked down in butter, over rice flavored with Better than Bouillon.

More for two more days, too. I posted a little video of this but YouTube really distorted it and it displayed without the veggies. But it still got hundreds of views, search me.

And I'm reading several books at once, what else is new, a Horowitz, a Worsley and a whole lot of Thirkell. 

I love Horowitz for his first person narrator. We know about the omniscient narrator and the unreliable narrator, and he introduces a new one. 

The aggrieved narrator, always mad at his character Hawthorne and how he gets better deals everywhere than Horowitz does, from hotel rooms to contracts.  This one is set partly in Yorkshire, many familar scenes to this North Yorkshirewoman.

Lucy takes me back to the world of the Tudors 

And Thirkell to the early twentieth century, and the world of the pre-Raphaelites, as the  granddaughter of Burne-Jones, all bases covered

And handsome Son continues, with my fervent encouragement, to declutter.

I bought this calligraphy from the artist long ago, had it for several years, passed it to Handsome Son, who asked me after several more years, to Freecycle it.

Several competitors for this including two who could read it. That was an easy placement.

Then more miscellaneous stuff -- there's more in the can there -- all of which was claimed in short order.

The cutlery tray is now in my junk drawer, all the junk organized and why didn't I think of this before, the others all gone to various destinations.

Happy day everyone, as Handsome Son routinely says in his morning text, all's good here!

New Year, new pizza

This pizza has to start the day before. By taking the baby bella mushrooms and hot Italian turkey sausage out of the freezer. Look at the internal shapes, like rock formations.

The crust can come out of the freezer the day of.  Misfits organic crust, not my own make, but very good anyway.

So today seemed like a good day, a snowstorm in the offing, to make a pizza.

First cooking the mushrooms in butter and olive oil, until the liquid is almost absorbed and they smell lovely. 

Then removing the mushrooms and putting the chunked up sausage meat to brown in the same pan, so mushroom flavor adds to the hot sausage spice.

I wouldn't call this cooking, so much as assembly. Two views of Mt. Stovetop.

The base is  spritzed olive oil, then basil tomato pesto, which was accidentally packed into my Misfits box recently and is working out well. Maybe it was a sideways form of marketing.

Then a quarter of a fresh beefsteak tomato, and the mushrooms and sausage, I could have made two pizzas with this amount of topping, and Parmesan and cheddar cheese strewn about. I don't like too much cheese on pizza. Just enough to know it's there.

If you want fresh herbs, you have to do it yourself. Here's the pot of curry leaves in the living room, a gift of neighbor Amitha.

And the Thai basil plant in the kitchen. 

I've been growing this from saved seed for several years, since a friend, Lakshmi,  moved away and gave me her plant.

Curry leaves, despite the name, are not spicy. They have a lovely pungent flavor depth, and I replaced bay leaves with them years ago. Indian vegetarian friends use them a lot for flavor. You can freeze them.

Thai basil has a licorice type of flavor. A bit like fennel.  So a few curry leaves and basil leaves torn and tossed on.

And this all worked out nicely. 

One slice was plenty for lunch. 

Three more for future meals.

And now for an afternoon of tea and Angela Thirkell, The Old Bank House.

No snow yet. 

Rebuilding, comfort food, reading plans

Ready for the holiday, I've stocked up on reading and viewing.

New Year's Eve viewing is a Wallace and Gromit feature

which I haven't seen before. Aardman have produced some of the funniest animation videos ever, and this will be a nice finale to an iffy year.

Then peaceful reading, Angela Thirkell, a writer I used to have no patience with, thought she was snobbish and Not Funny. 

Now I get her better and really enjoy her sending up of snobbish people. I understand she's not poaching on Trollope's settings or characters, but respectfully extending them. So I'm set for a marathon

And I'm revisiting Watts Towers, the solo work of visionary folk artist, Simon Rodia, now a national landmark. 

Created from scrap materials, broken dishes, glass, shells, wire, over years, it was his dream to make something big.  

I like to go back and revisit his ideas now and then, and this book, intended for young readers and perfectly fine for all of us, is a great way to do it.

Talking of building, remember the fire I missed over Diwali, which wiped out the dumpster enclosure? 

Today is the rebuilding. Just a day's work.

Nice to watch a crew working flawlessly together, knowing what they're doing.

And comfort food is important to close out a stressful year. I've been vaguely thinking about milk puddings, as in childhood, and since I didn't have macaroni, my first thought, it having all gone into soup, I remembered my mom used to make vermicelli pudding. 

I sort of remembered how it went, looked up the time and temperature, and went from there.

So, I have some good Italian pasta, and next thing, this was happening. 

Cooked pasta, added into a milk, egg, sugar, golden raisin,  vanilla mixture, knob of butter, then all baked for an hour at 350°f.

I love food baked in glass dishes

Pretty good. The new napkins in action already.

That should round out the year. Laundry done, bed changed, next,  garbage out, and I'm set. I won't be too sorry to wave goodbye to the old year.