Thursday, 12 June 2003

bike

Two 3.8-mile city rides.

I've wondered, over the past few days, why a house had chain-link fence around it. I discovered on the way home because it was barely there any more. It was only a 50s ranch without particular personality, but I'll be curious to see what goes up in its place.

i'm surprised too

I cooked. Again. Baking cookies doesn't count--that's dessert. I made the soup on Saturday, though it went uneaten until Wednesday. Tonight I made something from Almost Vegetarian, which I have to say, as a cookbook featuring allegedly healthful recipes, falls well short of its intention. Everything is packed full of dairy.

I made asparagus tips with a leek and scallions and parsley and orteggio (a circular, shallow dish of dime-sized pasta) and a dallop of yogurt (!) and some wine and muenster to melt into it at the end. Melting the muenster was the bad part; RDC was scornful of so primitive a method of adding cheese and thought it was going to be melted in wine first.

Sticky and too rich but I cooked it fine. Hey, I was proud.

I want to know--maybe not to learn, just to know--how to get a week's worth of food out of a set of ingredients. Two thirds of the leek and chives went into the compost--can you use leek leaves for stock? I still have a cup of leftover chopped onions from the soup that I didn't put in tonight's dish because it was already oniony enough.

bleak house

As someone said recently of Can You Forgive Her? too much fun to get Serious Litterachur points for. Soap opera and all that Dickens interconnectedness. Way too much fun, even with the brickmakers' plight and Jo.