the gregarious homebody

Monday, August 2, 2010

The Harvest

The tomatoes are coming!
The tomatoes are coming!

I'm so excited. Tonight's dinner, with the exception of the pasta, the olive oil and the salt, came from my garden! I love that. The basil plants have been bursting and the tomato plants have had a crap-load of green ones for awhile but tonight I could finally pick a few and a cucumber. *Squeal!*

Behold, the mighty harvest:

Okay, so it's not exactly "mighty" but any gardener will tell you that the first of anything is downright thrilling. Especially for the novice gardener who not only cannot remember what the heirloom tomatoes are called that she is growing but is also still astounded that seeds grow into what is usually bought in the supermarket. Amazing.

So this is what I made:

No, that's not *skin on top of the gnocchi...it's shaved parmesan

It's practically a non-recipe but here's what I did anyway:

Gnocchi Pomodoro

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves minced garlic

a huge handful of fresh basil, chiffonade-style

2 large tomatoes, chunked

Salt and pepper

Gnocchi that has been boiled in salted water and is about to float to the top

Saute the garlic slowly over medium heat until good-smelling. Add tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Simmer until the release a good amount of juice and then add basil. Simmer for awhile until very mushy. Puree in a blender if your annoying children refuse tomato chunks. Season with salt and pepper. (I would also add a dash of crushed red pepper if said children were not eating with us).

Add cooked gnocchi to the mix, letting it simmer awhile together.

Add some cold cooked chopped broccoli from last night's dinner to add some more veg.

Then, to top it all off, use a vegetable peeler to shave some parm from the hunk.

Mr. Romance Gets a Bug

Not my son...although IT COULD BE

After walking around like a snot factory for a few days, with a fever for a few more days, and then finally saying that it hurt to eat. HH took [the boy (aka, Mr. Romance)] to the doctor today. He has [MONO]!! Now, when I was a teenager (I can hear a collective snoring of all present teenagers when I say this), mono was commonly called [The Kissing Disease] and that,combined with the fact that people I "knew" who had it stayed home from school for months, made me want to get this disease. It was a disease that CAME FROM KISSING and made you MISS SCHOOL. How much better does it get than that?

Well, while it's possible that the boy could have contracted this virus from kissing--because in addition to being King of the Video Game Nerds, he also also a stud (shiver)--it turns out that not only is the kissing thing a fallacy, but there also is no reason to quarantine anyone with the virus past 48 hours of being on an antibiotic (which I thought wasn't any help for a virus, but whatever). How long someone stays home and away from society convalescing is dependent on (shocking!) how crappy or noncrappy they feel.

So, hopefully for everyone concerned (a bored 14 year old is NOT FUN FOR ANYONE), he will be feeling better by Monday and ready to hang with his nerdy buds and plot his next girlfriend move.

This, my friends, is not just a public service announcement about The Truth About Mono, helpful as it surely is. This is actually the chance to show you THIS...(click my cool new "read more" widget)

Let's GO

I am a confused person. I loooooooooooove being at home (read the name of this blog--it's true!). I revel in having my stuff all around me. My comfy couch is by favorite place in the world. And nothing makes me happier than when a plan to (gasp!) go somewhere gets cancelled. For the most part, I like my people to come to me. But I also long to travel to places that are decidedly different than my home with an ache inside that feels very real. I want to see how other people live. I want to eat with them and talk with them about their families. I want to GO.

In short, I want to be [Anthony Bourdain].

I started traveling at a young age when I was lucky enough to be best friends with a girl who was an only child and who also traveled every summer with her mom and godmother in a de-lux motor home. Because she was an only child, her mother thought it would be much more fun for her to have a friend along. ME!

So, three summers in a row I traveled for the better part of a month with them. Across the US to California. Up New England and down South. It was awesome. I did go through bouts of homesickness (one time calling my mom from a pay phone in South Dakota and snotting myself crying so much I threw up) but mostly I loved it. I was seven years old when I started traveling with them and I still remember so much. Remembering the traveling was almost as fun as the traveling itself. And no American kid should get to grown-up age without seeing the [Corn Palace] or the Badlands. This country is awesome.

That, on the outside of the building, is corn. I shit you not.

Now I want to travel abroad. I've been to Europe once, on a whirlwind trip in high school (5 countries in 9 days!), but it was only a taste. A tease, really. Standing on the street in [Verona, Italy] I thought oh yeah. I could get used to this place, this feeling of being foreign and interested and excited about everything around me.

There is almost no place I don't want to go. Of course I'd like to hit the hot spots like Paris or London. I would love that. But I'd also like to go off the beaten path. To go to places where food is cooked over a fire or cars are a luxury. I want to really get a feeling for where I am with the people who live there.

Okay, maybe not here. Yeah, I think I could do without a jungle experience because the idea that something alive could drop off of something above me onto me is waaaay too freaky.

That, my friends, is Madagasca TREE boa. That hangs in trees. *shiver*

But here. YES. I would love to go [here].

Is it Russia or is it China? It's more like BOTH. Feast your eyes on Harbin, China.

Or [here...]

Or, holy crap, [HERE!]

In my fantasies I have a [fixer] like Tony or [Ewan] do on their adventures. A fixer would make the most foreign places a teensy less scary simply because he/she would know the local language and be able to speak to me in English. Tell me which meat-on-a-stick in Harbin, China is the chicken and which is the ["baby butterfly."] Paying for a fixer would be money well spent.

But I'm not going to let not having a fixer stop me from going. My husband can talk to ANYONE. I'm hoping that his talent for gabbing and mine for making-the-most-of-it will translate to good traveling when these damn kids move out. And the we'll come home to talk about it.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Completely Gratuitous

I'm stealing the title of this post from [this guy] because it says it all. Did I need to buy some way cool markers for my chalkboard wall? No. Was there a rational reason I couldn't use Actual Chalk even though it made [grody] dust and didn't look "perfect"? Of course not. Did they make me a teensy bit happier in this, [The Second Summer of Sad]?

You bet.

It's hard to tell but the tea green in the **[Earthy Colors pack]
that I picked matches my kitchen wall perfectly.

*swoon!*

love that!!

thanks for the tip, [Finny]!

**I found out about these from Finny, but I found them online for a bit cheaper than she did. Click the Earthy Colors link above--first time buyers get free shipping! Now you have to buy them.