The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Pilau

...is another word for rice pilaf, which is one of the first things I can remember learning how to cook.

Mom always made it in her big old flame orange Le Creuset French oven, which I always assumed was called a "rice pilaf pot." I really don't remember her making much else in it. She still has it, I think; the enamel is nearly worn off the bottom of the pot, the insides are permanently darkened, but it still produces damn fine rice pilaf.

We had sirloin steak in the refrigerator (thanks, Mom!), and Jim wanted to make steak au poivre, so I decided to make pilaf to go with it in my own Le Creuset French oven (again, thanks, Mom!).

I love making pilaf, because (a) it's so ingrained in my mind that I don't need a recipe, and (b) it's a uniquely sensual thing to cook. Getting it right depends entirely on listening for the sound of the butter hissing in the pan, looking for the edges of the rice grains to turn translucent as they saute, smelling the onions as they slowly soften into unctuous goodness. It's not a bit hard, and it's entirely rewarding.

Here's how I make it (and yes, I know there are probably as many variations on rice pilaf as there are cooks who cook it):

Rice Pilaf
2 Tbsp butter
1 onion, cut into eighths and thinly sliced--you can also just chop it, but I kind of like the larger onion pieces
1.5 cups long-grain white rice
A handful (probably about 3 oz.) of thin pasta--vermicelli is nice; what I had on hand today was spaghetti--broken into roughly 2" lengths
About 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
2.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth--if you don't have homemade on hand, as I didn't today, it's nice to make it with Better than Bouillon with water from an electric kettle so it's piping hot when it goes into the pot and doesn't take forever to boil
A couple pinches of salt
A few generous grinds of black pepper
2-3 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (optional--I didn't have any this time)

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. When it's hot enough that a bit of onion dropped into it sizzles, add the onion, rice, and pasta; cook, stirring frequently, until pasta begins to toast, onion becomes limp and edges of rice grains turn translucent. This will probably take about 5 minutes. Somewhere in there, sprinkle the crushed red pepper into the pot and keep stirring. If you're making the broth from Better than Bouillon or another chicken base, take advantage of this time to heat up the water.

Add broth and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 15 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to sit, lid undisturbed, for 5 more minutes.

Salt and pepper to taste; stir in chopped fresh parsley, if you like; serve forth. Good with pan-seared steak, baked chicken, roasted vegetables or just about anything else, really.

Variation: Replace 1/2 cup of the chicken broth with 1/2 cup of dry white wine. Mmmm.

Bake, braise, roast

A few months ago, I decided that I need to develop my skills (a la Napoleon Dynamite). And one skill I decided to focus on was baking: specifically, I wanted to begin baking all the bread that our family ate by the end of winter.

To this end, I picked up a book with a promising title and some very promising endorsements: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. (Mimi had a great post about it too.)The book's premise is simple but intriguing: by mixing a very wet dough and allowing it to rise, unkneaded, then storing it in the refrigerator for up to 14 days, you can have the makings of an easily-shaped and supremely delicious loaf of bread on hand at all times.

I read the first few chapters of the book through several times, then invested in the necessary hardware. An oven thermometer--our newish crappyish stove is notoriously unreliable in most ways. An all-wood pizza peel--the loaves are shaped on top of the peel, then slid deftly onto a preheated pizza stone. I already had the stone (Alton Brown recommends an unglazed quarry tile), so no bucks out of my budget there.

Then almost two weeks ago, I went ahead and mixed. The result was rather unpromisingly gloppy. I didn't have time on the first day to shape & bake, and the book recommended letting the dough rest at least overnight before baking anyway. One thing led to another. Life got in the way. The dough languished for almost a week.

And then on Friday, Joe, Karan, Jac and Mike arrived at our house for a visit. I went into full-on cleaning orgy mode all afternoon (and was duly mocked for it by our so-tender friends). The house was completely clean; I still had an hour before they were due; what to do, what to do? So I dug the well-aged and bubbly dough out of the refrigerator, shaped a rather amateurish-looking boule out of a grapefruit-sized chunk of it, let it rest on a cornmeal-dusted peel, preheated the oven for a full 20 minutes and grinned in glee as the loaf, far from sticking miserably to the peel as I'd expected, glided into place on the pizza stone and proceeded to bake up into quite a delicious and satisfyingly sour end result.

That first loaf took all of a quarter of an hour to disappear after our guests arrived. The second loaf went just as quickly. I wanted to make more dough, but didn't have enough flour; Karan and Joe went on a special grocery run to get more flour.

Anyway, I've now mixed up a second batch and sent Joe and Karan home with half of it.We had a loaf of bread with dinner last night and will probably make another tomorrow. My boules are still not perfectly shaped, but I'm feeling comfortable enough with the basics to start venturing into more complicated (and more whole-grain-oriented) territory.

So. Breadmaking for those with little interest in either bread machines or hand-kneading. Sourdough without fussing with a starter. Real homemade bread with no dough conditioners or preservatives or high fructose corn syrup or what-the-hell-ever. Chalk me up as a total convert.

Also: I bought a special issue of Fine Cooking yesterday... all about roasting! And I put a cookbook called All About Braising, as recommended by Bitten, on hold at the library. Stay tuned for updates!

Also also: the authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day have a blog. RAD.

Kitchen puttering and the gift of time

It's Saturday night on a holiday weekend. You have some potential upcoming projects brewing in the wings (how's that for a mixed metaphor?), but nothing super-urgent that needs to be handled RIGHT NOW. You have most of the leftovers of a Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes, partially demolished turkey, various odds & ends of tastiness. And you have an absolute bounty of winter vegetables, leeks and beets and carrots and an utterly gorgeous organic butternut squash, all of which you picked up at the farmer's market thinking you were going to use them for Thanksgiving... but then a couple hours later your T-day plans changed and the veggies were left to languish.

So what do you do? You putter, of course. You start by cutting the greens and ends off the beets and tossing them into a 400-degree oven. Then you peel and cube the squash, consider the carrots, wander upstairs to mess about on the internet and discover that not only can you roast leeks, but that they're reputedly fabulous that way. So you return to the kitchen, wash the leeks well, and cut them into tempting little concentric rounds. Mixed with the squash, they're now plopped onto the baking sheet next to the beets... but you know they'll need a little boost of flavor, so you drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and gently mix together with your beloved silicone spoon-ula.

On to the turkey. You discover that, far from being an onerous chore, cutting every conceivable scrap of meat off the bony carcass is actually sort of relaxing... sort of Zen. The rhythm of the knife against the cutting board is soothing. All is well.

It occurs to you that when you mix the vegetables and turkey together, the beets are immediately going to stain everything a lovely but frankly unappetizing sort of reddish-purple. You ponder this, and wonder if your children will turn up their noses at anything of such a hue. You decide this is likely.

A plan starts slowly, tentatively, to take root in your mind. You get a little excited, but try not to show it. Visible maternal excitement is often a cue for unwarranted filial misbehavior.

You dig through the freezer. There it is! A quart-sized zip-top bag, brimming with frozen chicken broth you made yourself on a previous leisurely cooking adventure. You pull it out, run hot water over the bag to loosen the icy goodness within, slide the yellowish mass into a saucepan and start reheating it gently on the stove.

You toss a chunk of butter into a large soup pot, let it start melting and pop the container of mashed potatoes into the microwave for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, you scatter flour over the butter and cook up a roux that, while delightfully aromatic, is probably not going to be enough to thicken the whole sauce. No problem. You measure out a little over a cup of half-and-half and whisk a couple tablespoons of cornstarch into it.

Now the broth goes into the roux; it all comes together in a bubbling golden whole. You top it off with the cream-and-cornstarch mix, bring it to a boil and let it simmer, thickening slowly. After a bit, you season with salt and pepper, then dip your spoon in for a taste.

Oh. My. That is good, isn't it? You call over a passing child and offer him a taste, too. He approves wholeheartedly--so much so that he's almost double-dipped his spoon into the sauce before you can stop him. Clean spoons only for tasters, buddy!

Time to check on the veggies. Ooh. They are just about perfect at this point, about 40 minutes after first going into the oven; your testing fork slides easily into one of the beets, releasing a gush of flavorful (and very red) juice. You pull the tray from the oven, set it aside to cool a little, then rub the beets with a paper towel until their skin comes off in chunks (in the process, staining your hands a brilliant but transitory purple). You decide to go with your gut feeling and serve the beets separately from everything else; it's the work of a minute to cube them, toss them in a bowl with salt and pepper, garnish them with a little balsamic vinegar. They'll rest, coming to an even-more-delectable room temperature, while you work. No telling how many beet morsels will end up popped into your mouth before dinner is ready, though.

Now you fold the turkey, squash and leeks into the sorta-velouté sauce. Let that simmer for a minute, just until the turkey is heated through. Then scoop it, bit by bit (because there was just a tad more sauce than you wanted) into a greased baking dish. Spoon the heated mashed potatoes delicately over the top, spreading them out just a little so that potato meets dish-edge all the way around.

Pop the whole thing into a 350-degree oven. Bake for twenty minutes; during this time you'll amaze yourself by summoning up the energy to clean up a startlingly messy kitchen. Then sprinkle the top with a handful of shredded cheese and a light dusting of paprika; return to the oven for a final five cheese-melting minutes; and prepare yourself and your dinner companions for a really astonishingly tasty meal.

Yes, they'll even eat the beets. And be disappointed that there aren't enough for seconds.

Serve with a glass of cold Portland tap water and a generous helping of Spirited Away.

Thanksgiving: the aftermath

So you cook and you cook and you cook and you cook, and then you eat for like 15 minutes and 10 minutes of that is spent remonstrating with your children about their abysmal table manners (though, in their defense, Papa did say they could pick up the turkey legs and tear at them a la Renaissance Faire), and then you clean and you clean and you clean and you clean.

At least we had good company at Jason & Lucy's house, though. (That's Lucy with the stuffing leftovers up there.)

The turkey was fantastic this year, as it was last year. I think we've officially nailed it:

JIM NEWMAN'S GUARANTEED FOOLPROOF ROAST TURKEY
(AND MOLLY'S FLAVORFUL GRAVY)

You will need:

• a turkey (we're assuming here, for the sake of argument, that you are using a 12-pound bird, which serves 6-8 nicely and provides adequate leftovers)
• a large bucket or other receptacle, with a lid
• kosher salt
• brown sugar
• a generous pinch of whole cloves, and another of allspice berries
• water
• butter
• an onion
• some celery
• herb sprigs (rosemary is nice)--optional
• flour--probably about 3 Tbsp
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 cup chicken broth/stock/liquid
• 1 more Tbsp butter (because hey, it's a party!--but if you leave this out, it's not the end of the world)
• roasting pan, rack and whisk (I like the flat-bottomed spring sort, as shown up there on the right, because it lets you get into all the little fidgety corners of the pan)

The day before you plan to serve the turkey, make the brine: boil 1 gallon water, dissolve 2 cups kosher salt and 1 cup brown sugar in it. Cool to room temperature-ish. Place the turkey in the bucket/receptacle. (Make sure all giblets, necks and other miscellaneous bits of anatomy are removed BEFORE you do this.) Pour the brine over it; sprinkle in the cloves & allspice berries; add cold water until turkey is completely covered. Put lid on receptacle and refrigerate (or, if you live in the Great Frozenish Northwest as we do, you can find a cool spot outdoors to stick it... the temperature didn't go above 45 the whole time we were brining, so we figured it was safe). Leave until 3 hours before you want to eat.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove turkey from brine; pat dry inside and out. Rub inside and out with softened butter. Peel and quarter the onion; cut the celery into largeish pieces; stuff vegetables and herbs into turkey cavity.

Place rack in roasting pan. Make obligatory joke about "nice rack." Place turkey on rack, breast side down. Put turkey in oven and roast, undisturbed, unbasted, for two hours.

Reduce oven heat to 350. Remove turkey from oven; perform complicated flipping maneuver, best handled by two chefs, that results in turkey resting on rack, breast side up. Make obligatory joke about "flipping the bird." Return to oven; roast for another 30 minutes.

Take turkey out of oven; remove rack and turkey from pan and place on carving board. Tent lightly with aluminum foil. Place roasting pan on stove so that it covers two burners. Set both burners to medium-low heat. Heat up turkey drippings slightly; fish out any large onion/celery chunks.

Sprinkle flour into roasting pan. Whisk madly until drippings and flour coalesce into a pleasing roux, flour loses its pale color and the whole thing starts to smell fabulous. Whisk in white wine and broth; cook, stirring constantly, until you have gravy. At this point, you can whisk in the last bit of butter, or you can just forget about it. The gravy will taste fine without it.

Pour gravy into a gravy boat (or, as we did, a fancy porcelain creamer), straining out the dark bits if you're fussy or leaving them in if you're not.

Carve turkey; serve with gravy.

Also: just because you're married to a photographer doesn't mean you're going to get any actual, you know, family Thanksgiving photos. Just saying.

Obsessions old & new

Jim: having our friend Mike build him some frames so he can pull together a photo show (location TBD; anybody know a gallery owner?); his new basement photo studio (pics coming)

Fisher: the Pour le Merit medal (coming his way this Christmas... shhhhh); Rosetta Stone German

Rhys: making dinner all by himself (night before last); Elephant and Piggie; Mr. Putter & Tabby Pour the Tea

Me: the Persian Empire (don't ask); budget cookbooks (I love the More-With-Less Cookbook and just picked up Miserly Meals at the library)

The cats: eating all they can hold, and more, of Atta Cat, the new dirt-freakin-cheap cat food we've been buying (contrary to our expectations, they seem to prefer it to the marginally more middle-class Meow Mix)*

Isn't that the most majestic Photoshop work you've ever seen? What do you suppose that cat is looking at?

Also: interview tomorrow afternoon for the position of moderator of the Portland Junior Spelling Bee. Tell me that would not be the bestest job in the whole wide world.

* I have just learned, via the magic of the Google, that American Nutrition, makers of Atta Cat, also makes a bargain-priced dog food called "Maintain Chunks." Is there some sort of naming award for which I can nominate this product?

$20.79

That's how much I spent at the grocery store today. I wanted to keep it under $20, but we were out of both conditioner and toothpaste.

Here's what that buys you:

• 5 pounds of potatoes
• 2 pounds of flour
• 2 pounds of navy beans
• a pound of pinto beans
• a 90-pack (I know!) of corn tortillas
• 2.5 pounds of rice
• 4 cans of diced tomatoes
• ketchup
• 0.75 pounds of coffee (yes, it's an addiction; no, we won't be quitting it; we already gave up wine)
• a dozen eggs
• aforementioned conditioner (the 97-cent kind... mmm, delicious)
• aforementioned toothpaste (a splurge at 98 cents)

Here's what it doesn't buy you:

• milk
• cheese
• meat
• bread
• fresh veggies
• fresh fruit

Fortunately, I've got most of a two-pound bag of carrots, about a pound of celery, a couple pounds of broccoli and a pound of green beans left over from last week. Just under a half-gallon of milk; just under half a pound of cheese; four or five apples; two pears; plenty of onions. Frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen chicken breasts & thighs, frozen pork chops, a couple pounds of frozen ground beef. Dried pasta. Two-thirds of a jar of salsa. Cornmeal; yeast; two cans of Italian Wedding soup; a little less than half a container of Better than Bouillon. Canned tuna, canned tomato paste, canned beans. And, thank goodness, plenty of Frank's Red Hot Sauce.

Oh yes, and a chuck roast from the Used Meat bin at Fred Meyer's. That is going in the Crock-Pot tomorrow, and we'll stretch it to three meals if it kills me.

Tonight I think I'll make refritos and we'll have them with corn tortillas and salsa. Maybe a little cheese if I'm feeling flush. Chicken with white beans on Saturday. Lentil soup and corn muffins on Sunday. Sounds downright delicious, doesn't it?

I am gladder than glad that I asked my LDS friends nosy questions about their food storage systems and tried to build up a pantry over the last several months. We certainly don't have enough to last a year--we've been eating out of the pantry a lot lately and some of the shelves are already looking a little bare, but we're in so much better shape than we would have been if this had happened to us a year ago. Bright side, baby, bright side.

And I would be totally remiss if I did not mention this amazing sale for a very good cause. Royanna Fritschmann (Studio RA Designs) had a major financial setback this week--her family discovered that the house they've been renting is being foreclosed on, and they have three days to move. So she's selling everything in her store... yes, one of every lovely digital design... for both commercial and personal use for only $29. Seriously, if you digi-scrap even a little, or even if you don't but think you might like to try it, you should check this out. Help a nice lady! Get cool stuff! And if you have any questions about getting started digi-scrapping, I might know a couple of people who know a thing or two about it and suddenly seem to have a wee bit of time on their hands...

November Rain

It's a cold, drizzly day here in Paradise City.* Yesterday was, too, and so I decided to make some bean soup. And because I was feeling unaccountably ambitious (and thrifty!), I decided to start with dried beans rather than the canned variety.

According to Mark Bittman, it is not in fact necessary to soak beans before cooking, either overnight or via the "quick-soak" method (which in practice always leads to my forgetting about the stupid things and letting them boil over). Just pick them over, rinse well, cover with water and simmer away. He even recommends salting them halfway through cooking, rather than waiting to the end to salt as many authors suggest (apparently they believe beans toughen or fall apart or something if you salt them before they're finished). But Bittman says that beans salted before they're completely cooked will absorb the salt better and end up more thoroughly seasoned. If it's good enough for Bittman, it's good enough for me, so... OK.

I had a bag of dried "bean soup mix" from the bulk bins at Winco, containing everything from lentils to split peas to kidney beans to black-eyed peas. After reading Bittman's wisdom on all things leguminous, I sort of wished I had just one type of bean to deal with, since each of these beans takes a very different length of time to cook. But oh well... there was nothing to be done about it.

So I tossed about 3 cups of beans into a pot with plenty of water (I've scorched more than one batch of beans in my time), brought them to a boil, turned the heat down and simmered them, covered, for about half an hour. Then I tossed in a teaspoon or so of salt and simmered them for about 10 more minutes while I did the following:

• chopped 2 peeled carrots and 2 ribs of celery into 1/2" pieces**
• chopped 1 onion fairly finely
• sweated the above for about 5 minutes over med-low heat in 1 Tbsp of oil
• cut 12 oz of smoked sausage into 3/4" pieces
• minced 4 cloves of garlic
• tossed the above into the pan with the veggies and cooked, stirring frequently, until the sausage was beginning to brown around the edges and the whole thing smelled delicious

When the veggies were suitably sweated (wow, that sounds so appealing), I drained the beans and combined them with the veggies and sausage in the Crock-Pot, along with the following:

• a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles
• a can of stewed tomatoes
• 2 cups of chicken broth
• a sprinkling of red pepper flakes
• a few generous shakes of Frank's Red Hot sauce
• a pinch of salt
• a solitary bay leaf, added on top like a little Polynesian raft

The beans, as I had suspected, were cooked to varying degrees of doneness. The kidney beans and black-eyed peas were just tender, while the lentils and split peas were already starting to disintegrate into mush. But I soldiered bravely on anyway...

So I turned the Crock-Pot to Low, put the lid on and got about the business of the day (including wrapping Rhys into the "toga" of his Caesar costume 3 4 5 times, and the last time included pinning the damn thing to his shirt in three places). We trick-or-treated, returned home with a daunting load of candy, and made biscuits to go along with our soup, which was smelling very very tasty by this time.

Rhys wanted to help. "Of course you can, Sweet Child o' Mine,"*** I said. He stirred the cheese into the biscuit dough and helped me "blop" the dough onto the cookie sheet in appropriately-sized blops.

Ten minutes later, dinner was done! The lentils and split peas had vanished into the mass of soup, but they had thickened it very nicely--I think the texture was much better than it would have been had they all hung together. The soup was tasty enough that Fisher and I each had two bowls, and it made enough that we're having leftovers for lunch today (my favorite--yay!).

So the moral of the story is that you don't have to presoak dried beans. This liberating revelation is sure to lead to beans, with their humble but hearty and nutritious character, appearing on our table more frequently. And since I know you're wondering... no, no, I have not noticed any increase in flatulence among the members of our household today. Thank freakin' goodness. There's enough methane toxicity around here as it is...

* Sorry, sorry, sorry. I solemnly swear not to make any more gratuitous GNR references. It was just sort of irresistible.

** No, I didn't measure. Shut up.

*** Yeah, I lied. Sorry, again.

Cheapskates, cheap thrills, and cheap eats

How to save money:

1. Don't turn on the heater until November. Can you make it? Sure! Just buy everyone in the family a suit of long underwear and button up. Make your shivering a point of pride. (And don't tell anyone about the heat pad you're hogging on your side of the bed. 'Cause, y'know, your baaaaack hurrrrrts. Oughtn't you to go have a lie-down about now?)

2. Inform your kids several months in advance that you will not be doing typical Christmas presents. Keep an eye out for an Xbox instead (they're going cheap on Craigslist these days!), and save your pennies for when Guitar Hero World Tour comes out. Because the family that rocks out together... uh, stays together?

3. Make this soup. Be surprised when your kids don't turn up their noses at it. Be astonished when they each polish off the first bowl, inhale a second and ask for thirds. (Sorry, kids... we gotta save some for lunch tomorrow.)

Cabbage Soup
1 Tbsp cooking oil or butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium head green cabbage, chopped (about 10 cups)
4 cups chicken (or veggie) broth
1/2 lb smoked sausage (or not... but the sausage is pretty good)
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
Black pepper & red pepper flakes to taste
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce (which the kids delight in pronouncing "Whirr-cess-ter-shyer")

Heat oil or butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add cabbage and cook, stirring frequently, until it has wilted down a little. Add broth; bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, 10-15 minutes. (Probably more like 10.) Add sausage; heat through.

Whisk together flour, milk, salt and pepper until smooth. Stir into soup; cook and stir about 2 minutes, until thickened. Whisk in Worcestershire sauce. Serve it forth with thrifty gusto.

Serves 8 or 10, depending on how much your kids eat at once; and I added up what I spent on all the ingredients (well, sausage, cabbage, onion, broth & milk anyway) and came out to less than $3. Poor People Power!

Note that you could also use bulk sausage, if it were cheaper than the smoked variety, and just saute the onion and cabbage in that instead of using oil/butter. Flexibility is key.

Fall has fell

Ch-check it out:
 

No more temps in the 80s. Not much more in the way of temps in the 70s. This makes me happy.

It also makes me hungry for soup, which is what we had for lunch today:

Red Pepper Soup

3 red bell peppers, seeded & chopped
1 large-ish carrot, scraped & chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small celery rib, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
1/4 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1 Tbsp minced fresh (or 1 tsp dried) thyme
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
A couple pinches of cayenne pepper
A couple pinches of red pepper flakes

In a soup-making vessel, saute vegetables in oil until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in broth, rice and all seasonings except red pepper flakes. Heat to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20-25 minutes until rice is done and vegetables are tender.

Let cool for about 15 minutes (or a little less, if you have an immersion blender). Puree in batches with a regular blender, or puree in situ with an immersion blender. Return to pot; add red pepper flakes; heat through gently.

We didn't have this with it, but I think a little swirl of crème fraîche on the top would have been just lovely. Even without this lily-gilding, however, the soup was delicious enough that the boys polished theirs off straightaway and Jim and I went back for generous seconds.

***

I've always liked spring and fall better than either summer or winter--they're seasons of moderation, pleasant times, not too hot or too cold. But since my limited Portland experience seems to indicate that we have crap springs here in the great Northwest (rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain), I guess I'll have to content myself with fall alone. (At least the summers aren't so hot that they can't be enjoyed.)

But weather aside, there's something about fall that seems to invite both introspection and a sort of coziness the other seasons lack. The crisp mornings invite you to snuggle a little longer in bed; the sun warms up the afternoons just enough to beckon you outside for some leaf-raking or maybe some last-chance tomato harvesting. The evenings fairly cry out for my favorite kinds of dinners: hearty stews, roasted vegetables, good rib-sticking meals that leave you feeling pleasantly warm & drowsy after eating them. And once fall shows up and starts sniffing around, Thanksgiving's not far behind... my favorite holiday of all, I think. (Who can argue with a day devoted to cooking and eating in the company of family?)

Then there's the creative impulse that seems to blossom in fall--maybe creativity is a member of the winter squash family, or perhaps some sort of a cruciferous vegetable? After weeks (er, months) of neglecting The Book, I feel new ideas and details and bits & pieces of narrative structure finally opening up in my mind, sending tendrils of excitement down long-dormant neural pathways. Who knows? Maybe this year I'll not only sign up for National Novel Writing Month, but actually accomplish something during it.

So even though there's always something a little melancholy about fall, and I know winter with its long stretches of dreary grey blahs won't be far away now, I'm always excited for the first days of digging through dresser drawers for sweaters, the first sight of a turning leaf.

I need to make sure we get a few more hikes in before the rains come and the trails get too sodden to walk.

The boys are back in town

And not a moment too soon. I was getting awful twitchy without them.

Tonight we returned to our regular routine. Jeopardy!, Simpsons, dinner. Except usually I make dinner while they're watching Simpsons but tonight it was the one where the family goes to the Frying Dutchman restaurant and tells tales of nautical adventure while they're waiting for their food to materialize. So I had to hang out and watch that one, 'cause it's freakin' hilarious.

Anyway, two things of note. Well, three.

1. We had all-Oregon pasta for dinner tonight. Cherry tomatoes and zucchini from our garden; hazelnuts from some local grove. All sauteed in butter, tomatoes slightly squashed so they'd lose their structural integrity and thicken the sauce thereby; hazelnuts roughly chopped and stirred in at the last moment; the whole mass served over capellini with plenty of grated Parmesan. (As Fisher helpfully pointed out, neither the pasta nor the Parmesan was technically from Oregon, thereby spoiling the all-local conceit somewhat. Thaaaaanks, Fisher.)

2. Fisher soliloquized during dinner tonight about his favorite bands. "I like Mastodon, and Black Sabbath, and Dethklok, and the White Stripes, and Metallica..." Me: "So you mostly like hard rock and heavy metal." Fisher: "Yeah, except for Of Montreal. Oh, and Abba. Money, money, money/ Always sunny/ In the rich man's world."

3. Speaking of music: we saw Radiohead night before last at the White River Amphitheatre located on Muckleshoot tribal land in beautiful Auburn, Washington. If you're thinking of seeing a show there for any reason: don't. A Citysearch reviewer summed it up perfectly: "I'm not sure if this is the Native Americans' way of getting back at the general public for past wrongs, but if it is, it's ingenious." There was no tailgating allowed in the parking lots, and this policy was enforced by uniformed cops patrolling the aisles; the "beer garden" offered the opportunity to pay $8 for a can of Budweiser and drink it while standing around in a doubly-fenced-off cattleyard-style environment; the post-concert crowd management consisted of packing hundreds of people into a narrow concrete alley and not letting us move--of course, no explanation was offered for why we were being forced to stand there and when we would be allowed to go; the hordes of local cops who were unavailable for crowd management proceeded to direct us into a random detour that resulted in us inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes before rejoining the same traffic-clogged two-lane road we'd been on originally. Fortunately, Radiohead themselves were freakin' awesome and put on a super-swell show; that said, I'd tear out my own toenails with pliers before I'd go to another show at White River. And I made a set list, which I'll post tomorrow along with photos. Maybe.