Some of my most favorite things

often come out of the garden or kitchen of my sister.

Let's just say fresh, beautiful, half-inch brussel sprouts, halved and fried and tossed with a touch of parmesan and seasoning salt--- mmm, mmm, good.

Oeufs en Cocotte

A very simple, decadent pleasure that I have somehow missed before this. Being a lover of eggs-- fried, scrambled, in an omelette, on a bagel, sunny-side up with toast, poached, even occasionally in a quiche-- I have somehow missed ever trying these. Or even knowing about these. (Although supposedly they were discussed in Julie and Julia.. a favorite book I now need to read again.) Until this week, when I went searching for ways to use up creme fraiche.

I love creme fraiche with grapes. But there are really only so many grapes with creme fraiche I can eat in a week. Thus... the search for recipes and my discovery of my new favorite food. Oeufs en Cocotte. Tonight marked the third time in a week I have made one for myself, and the week is not over.

I started with the recipe from the blog Chocolate and Zucchini and have been trying different variations. My favorite so far was made with ham, a dash of seasoning salt, and parmesan over the top....

Dancing With the Anemoi

The winds of fall are, thankfully, not as brisk as they were here a few weeks ago. This was brought home especially after a drive through Spring Grove Cemetary over the weekend. Everything was cleaned up and as beautiful as ever, but the number of trees that were missing parts of themselves was incredible.... Instead, the winds seem to have taken up residence in my mind, blowing this way and that with my current NaNoWriMo story. In fact, the working title of my current story is "North Wind."

They have even taken over my knitting. Here are a few of the winds trapped in my version of Ann (from Crossroad Knits)'s Anemoi Hat...

Lantern Walk

Well, after how many years of living in Cincinnati, I finally made it to the Clifton Lantern Walk!!! With the change in time, it was dark by six. The walk was lit with hundreds of paper sacks filled with sand and candles, and we were able to walk on the road. Perhaps 150 people or so showed up. Maybe more. I'm never a good judge of crowd size. There were many beautiful and colorful lanterns. Everything from old style tin-punched cans to colorful moons to paper stars to stainglass windows (cutouts with colored tissue paper). Here is a photo of my own low budget lantern.







And a more well-lit photo to see the detail. (cut out with an exacto knife in about 2 minutes...)







Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera, so no photos of the sea of lanterns bobbing fore and aft.

The Intrigue of the Familiar Essay

Essays have never really been something I've been all that interested or excited about, but that may have changed this week. On my way through the library last week, I stumbled across a small book titled At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman. It is a book of something called "familiar essays." So far, I have really been enjoying them.....

Apples Galore

Several Saturdays ago now, I went apple picking with a friend and her kids at a nearby apple orchard. To be out in the crisp air amid all the trees, picking apples, drinking apple cider...was memories of fall all wrapped up in one day. It also gave new meaning to my reading of Robert Frost's After Apple Picking. I ended up with 20 lbs of apples, and my friend picked close to 100 lb of apples. Here is my bag-- a mix of melrose, golden delicious, and law rome apples. There are also a few winter banana apples somewhere down underneath all the other apples.

Small Treasures

Not so long ago, I had the pleasure of stumbling across damsom plums (I think) at the local farmer's market. So deep blue, they were too special to leave there....

They were a deep blue, like a blueberry, but about the size of a large grape.
A photo to get a sense of the size-



It took a bit of doing to slice these up, but I ended up with lovely tart (based on a recipe from the blog Lucy's Kitchen Notebook). It was tart enough to make your mouth pucker, but vibrant and flavorful, like the crisp air of fall.

In the spirit of anti-procrastination....

I have finally found solutions to a number of things around my living space which have been bugging me for quite some time. For starters...witness my new "closet" --an Ikea rolling rack special



This is to replace my previous free-standing, plastic framed closet which was really not comfortable with all the weight of my clothes and had developed a distinct, rather precarious lean much of time...even after adding lifts to the front of it and counter-balancing weights to the back of it.


I also discovered those picture hanging strips to use in place of nails and have been happily walking around my space hanging up all the pictures and posters that have been sitting around along the walls and on my shelf waiting for me to get around to hanging them..... So nice to have them up on the walls!

Add to that the two boxes of paper recyclables and one box of give away items I finally carted out to the car and drove to their respective delivery points (they've only been sitting, waiting to go, for two months now), my space is feeling a little lighter and a little more like it is breathing easier.

In which a lonely blog gets a face lift

So today was the big day this poor little neglected blog got a face lift and a new name. The real trick, of course, will be for it to find itself a regular recipient of new blog posts. It is a new year after all. Anything could happen.

Knitterly progress on my with a twist scarf...




Hmm.... I think I've been hitting the Winnie the Pooh books a bit too heavy. Reading those sentences back in my head, they had a horribly butchered British sounding accent about them.