Jag End

I declare that today is the last day of my (latest) cooking jag.  Not because I've decided to

stop eating, although I need to decide to stop eating sweets like a sugar famine is on the horizon (can you say, "weight loss sabotage?"), but because I haven't found any more recipes that I'm burning to make.  Besides, I'm out of grocery money--until tomorrow.  Today's recipe came from "You" magazine which is a monthly or maybe quarterly "women's" (ugh, don't you hate that?) mag put out by our local Gannett newspaper.  It's Lentils & Brown Rice that's loaded and garnished with four cups of sauteed onions.  This is my taster bowl.  I couldn't resist peeling and grating a nice big carrot and putting that in when the rice got stirred in.  I thought it needed more veggies.  Anyway, it's very tasty and may cure the yen for lentils I've had this week.

Instead of sewing or knitting this afternoon I went to see a movie with friends.  I think the last movie I went to see was the last of the Hunger Games series.  We saw "The Post" with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.  It was good but I wanted Katherine Graham to have more of a backbone and not be so wishy-washy.  She probably didn't in real life so Meryl couldn't play her with one but she grew one when it counted.  My friends and I thought they should have run "All the President's Men" as a bonus film.





It was so cold today.  Look at the morning sky.  Pretty, yes, and then look at the birdbath.  The glacier is back better than ever.












Getting dressed this morning I put on a long-sleeved tee and a cotton sweater.  Big mistake.  When I got home from the grocery I stripped off the cotton sweater and put on the Red Marl sweater that's my warmest and put chemical toe warmers in my shoes.  I wasn't going to be distracted from the movie by cold feet.  Oh, the movie was in the comfort seat theater which meant we had leatherette recliners with cup holders to sit in.  Tres luxurious.  So luxurious that the guy next to me started snoring about 2/3 of the way through but his wife elbowed him and he woke up.  My redo of the neck of the Red Marl sweater is a success.  It lays nicely around my neck, doesn't crawl up into my hair, or make me look like I'm being strangled.  *pats self on back*

January 14--Stoplight Parrotfish.  Daria never saw a fish like that before.  It was turquoise, yellow, green, purple, and pink.  No, really, it was a real fish, not a little one either, swimming right below her munching on coral.  She could hear the crunching as it bit off pieces of reef.  Its mouth was like a beak, she figured it had to be a parrotfish.  There were fish I.D. books on the table outside the dive shop across the street where she left her clothes and purse when she went snorkeling.  Yesterday it had rained like crazy just as she got there so she sat looking at the books until the rain stopped.  When she thought about that she realized how silly it was because as soon as the rain stopped she would cross the street, go down the steps to the beach, and get into the ocean to get wet.  Rain water, sea water--what difference did it make?  Either way she'd be wet.

I'm listening to "Driving Miss Norma" about a couple who take his 90 year old mother on a road trip around the country.  Just before I turned it off he was talking about them sampling the signature food of each state they visited.  The guy is from Upper Michigan but it's obvious that the male narrator isn't.  He just called the quintessential UP food "paste-ies" (which are the things strippers paste over their nipples or used to anyway) instead of "past-ies" the Cornish meat pies the miners took for lunch.  Tsk.  That kind of screw up really takes me out of stories.  You?
--Barbara