Seasonal music

'Love and Happiness' by Al Green. If there is one song that transcends the seasons, from a balmy, unbearable summer day to be cozy inside while a blizzard descends outside, this song fits anywhere.

The XX, I find somewhat melancholy and I adore listening to it in autumn, as the days disappear faster and give in to the chill that summer could never bring. This is when I read the dark adventure books of Tolkein. This is my time to devour fiction.

Jagwar Ma was fantastic for summer, floating tunes on summer breezes. James Brown tells it how it is to summer, keep working, getting it done, doesn't matter how high the humidity is. You gotta keep going!

Sweet basil pesto

I'm not one for pine nuts: not the taste, not the cost, not the limited use of them.  If I have 1/2 cup leftover after making pesto, I can't add them to chocolate cookies or granola.

But the beauty of pesto is its versatility. After all, 'pesto' is Italian for 'paste'. If I'm happy with the taste, cost, consistency and use of the final product, why follow a recipe?! I'll make up my own recipe in a non-measured sort of way.

And for preserving pesto a la freezer, I never use ice cube trays anymore. I hate having little tiny chunks of pesto, it's never enough. I want to decide how big my chunks are, thank you very much. I use a lipped pan to gather up my pesto and when it's done I pop it out of there and cut it into the sizes I want.  Earlier in the summer (technically, it's still summer) I made five batches of this while listening to Mark Maron interview Iggy Pop. Iggy will always taste like pesto to me now.

Sweet basil pesto

Ingredients
Basil leaves (and the softer top bits of stem seem to be ok too and add more bulk)
Salt, enough to taste (but I guess you could say that about any of these ingredients)
Pepper (I'll use shallot pepper or lemon pepper if I have it to change it up a bit)
Olive oil
Parmesan-romano blend of cheeses (I get mine in a tub from Trader Joes, where the good people have already shredded it. I hate shredding that much hard cheese. Gives me the shivers.)
Almonds, sliced and dry roasted and not salted. Again, from Trader Joes. The land of decently priced nuts.

Directions
1. Swish it all around in your food processor.
2. If you need more oil, because it's too dry, then add another glug of oil.
3. If you need more heft to the pesto, give it another sprinkle of sliced almonds.
4. Etc. with the adding of the ingredients.
5. Line a lipped container with parchment paper. With no lip, that pesto will go floating over the edge. The lip's no joke here.
6. Lay that pesto down in the lipped pan/container/pyrex.
7. Let it sit in the freezer overnight.
8. Remove the pesto by pulling on the parchment paper. Or, if you couldn't find the parchment paper and just put the pesto directly into the pan, run some hot water over the back of the pan and the rectangle of pesto will slide on out. *Remember it will slide on out and be ready to catch it or have a cutting board ready to catch it.
9. Now cut the pesto in the sizes you are likely to use. Ice cubes trays always gave me pesto that wasn't enough. Cut it into different sizes and use the smaller ones to add to soup and bigger ones to cover pasta.
10. Date those freezer bags and throw it in the freezer to take the chill off of winter.

don't stick out your tongue!

I have a six year old who can be rather rambunctious sometimes. He's more physical than verbal. And sometimes he's a pill. He'll stick out his tongue and point, then silently laugh at a person.

This doesn't happen all the time, but I found it happening tonight, at teeth-brushing. After saying I didn't like the way I felt when he did that, I decided to not let myself get emotional over it. So, I sat down right there on the bathroom floor and closed my eyes. Almost meditating, with a peaceful smile on my face. When he noticed I was closing off my sense of vision, pulling away from reacting to his actions, he stopped and tapped me and told me what he wanted.

Hallelujah! Staying calm and straightforward is working more and more often with these lads.

mission accomplished october 1, 2012

this past month (cause it's been awhile):

• oven roasted anaheim and poblano peppers.
• successfully stuffed poblano peppers with tomato, corn, cheese mixture - alas, the end of tomato and corn season!  i can't make these again until next year.
• froze basil in olive oil & herb mixture in olive oil to start out soups or pasta dishes over the chilly seasons ahead.
• made a rather large square pillow for the kids' room.
• successfully installed a 20" zipper into the aforementioned rather large square pillow.
• made lotion via sonoma garden's recipes & i really love the beeswax lotion (i hadn't made that one before).
• been biking to work on fridays - this week it was tuesday - and having a marvelous time.  can't believe i didn't think of this until now.  moron.
• entered a local photo contest.  not so proud of the finished images.  but very proud of following through with a promise to myself & of seeing through a vision to the end product.  high 5!
• patched some kid trousers that will see, maybe, one more season of use.
• made, ate and froze tomatillo sauce.
• read 'Wild' by Cheryl Strayed.  i'd like to move to the pacific coast trail.  i'm now in a reading rut, nothing could be as satisfying as her book to me right now. come on library, i dare you to find me a book that could hook me like that so soon.  (please, i hate finishing books that are that good because it means no other books can live up to those standards of honesty and connection.)
• came up with some more photography ideas.  maybe a portable light studio for taking pics of things on the trail.
• performed cpr on my little canon camera by giving it a good whack!  phew.  i nearly lost it.
• leisurely weekend trips to the library
• kids helping with meals, creating their own recipes, we all bounce along in the same space, in our own space.  
• finally re-connected to American Routes - and this last weekend was a very strong show.  in fact, it was perfect for cooking alongside the kids, as we bobbed and weaved around one another, dancing along to the mighty fine tunes.