tiny bites (now with photos)

Yes, you are quite borg, Suze! Our cell phones don't even take pictures!

So now that we have moved back into the house for the winter, I've started to clean it again. In summer it kind of goes to hell, except for the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. The upstairs toilet is always clean, too (I hate dirty toilets), but the rest slips away. Occasional vacuumage, but the dust and clutter build.

Luckily (reason for that further down the page) I began some random cleaning last week. By the weekend I realized that I needed to organize my efforts, because I find myself not knowing what to do, there is so much. I remembered that many flylady people work, so I decided to break things up into one-to-two hour daily sessions so there's no excuse to do no housework on days I have to leave. In fact, this blog will probably be shorter than I want, since I've already done nearly two hours of housework and I have to leave for Cumberland in half an hour. Anyway, I think this will work. I've assigned one room or area to each day. When I'm pressed for time, I can do it fast. When I have more time I can be more thorough. Yesterday I spent three hours in our bedroom and the upstairs bath, and now they are ready to maintain. Extra time can go into the extra rooms (the off bedrooms are not on my regular cleaning list) and to my list of "special projects," things like cleaning out my dresser or getting rid of the stacks of stuff in Ben's room. Today I worked in the dining room and the downstairs bath. When I first retired, I had very complex daily lists, but once construction began, that ceased. Now I am less ambitious, but this house is so big, it's terrible to let it get out of hand. I congratulate you on your clearing-out project, Suze. About a year ago I cleared out the area around the piano, and that has not gotten messed up again. A good organization often lasts a long time.

So. The "luckily" in the preceding paragraph is because on Saturday morning some clients of Charlie's (who became our friends while he was working for them) called and wanted us to meet them for lunch in RF. They have been renovating a farmhouse they own near RF with an eye to selling it, and Charlie worked on it off and on for a couple of years. They live in Saint Paul, and since the house (with 26 gorgeous acres) did not sell this summer, they were closing it up for the winter. Anyway, since there's nowhere we like to eat in RF, we invited them to have lunch here. This was at 10:30, and they were to arrive at noon. Minimal housework necessary to make the downstairs presentable, so I was able to cook. I made a pasta dish with shrimp (luckily I had a bag of quite good peeled shrimp in the freezer), garlic, tomatoes, a little wine, and orange zest. Out of a bunch of great pasta recipes in an old FC. Had a complete mise en place done before they arrived, as well as the mise for the arugula and grapefruit salad in the fast section of the new FC. By chance I'd stopped at the grocery store and picked up a grapefruit and some sliced almonds when I went for the mail, with the idea that I'd make the salad sometime during the weekend. Had no raddoccio, but plenty of arugula and some little lettuces from our cold frame.
And I even had dessert: the day before I'd made some boston cream cupcakes (variation on a theme of boston cream pie) from a new cookbook Mom just got and graciously leant me. There were just four of them left, perfect. And since Richard and Finette had never been here, we needed to show them around, so it was good to have everything set up. This was a nice little triumph of a lunch; once we were in the house, it came together in about fifteen minutes. They loved it, took seconds on the pasta. (Richard and Finette are in their late seventies, and some of the nicest people we've ever known.)

So that was my little coup of the week. I've been cooking a lot. My biggest cookup was on Sunday, when I made Mario Batali's lasagna. I'd actually made the sauces (béchamel and ragú) on Saturday afternoon, but it still took most of the morning to make the pasta and put it together. This is very similar to the lasagna in the new FC. Mario uses white wine instead of red, and the meats are pork and veal (I used ground turkey for the veal) rather than pork and beef. Anyway, it's wonderful, and makes five meals. A huge effort, but nice to have in the freezer. I don't know why it puffed like this, but it went down quickly. Here are the green noodles I made out of the leftover pasta:
And how it looked in the kitchen when Charlie had siding boards in to warm up prior to painting. Notice lasagna in the foreground.

Other culinary highlights: fried tofu (if anyone wants this recipe, let me know -- it's wonderful) with a quinoa/arugula stirfry. The next day a shrimp curry using edamame (from our freezer!), with sticky rice.

Although I never mention sports, we were glued to the Series, also disappointed that it was so short. And football of course. I agree that Sunday is Football. Monday night is just extra. We went to bed last night when we knew the Vikes were going to be killed (or shredded, as Suzy so nicely puts it).

I am on disc 19 of S/N; should get through a couple more today.

Oops. I should go. This is pretty unedited, so forgive all solecisms, please.