Playing Catch-up

Oh my goodness, have I been delinquent about keeping up with this blog. My intentions are to get better – I’ve been taking photos and have ideas for posts, but they keep piling up in my to-be-written list … and then never get written. The more I have in my to-be-written list, the further behind I seem, and the less likely I am to just do it.

So today I’m going to clean house. There is no earthly reason I have to write every idea I have so I’m just going to clear the decks with some summaries:

1. I did finally make the egg-yolk ravioli. Thoughts: the homemade ricotta a definite improvement over store-bought, the brown butter and excellent accent, the yolk … didn’t add much
2. Early in the summer I bought sunflowers at the farmer’s market, after first assuring myself they would last and I could care for the cut blooms by talking with the booth manager. She said they would last a week. They lasted 4 days. They were beautiful, but I’m not buying any more.
3. I love peaches, but am very allergic to them raw. When it was peak peach season in New Jersey, I bought loads, grilled them (on my George Foreman, we’re not permitted “real” grills where I live) and froze some and put others in yoghurt.
4. On Saturday I went into Philly on a brilliant day – blue skies, puffy white clouds, clear air … the kind of day children draw in kindergarten but seldom occur in real life. So I took some lovely photos of the freshly painted Ben Franklin Bridge
5. In peak tomato season, I went hog-wild. I was disappointed by the tomatoes I bought at the Farmer’s Market, which were mealy and tasteless and, if anything, worse than those found in a winter supermarket. So I bought heirloom tomatoes from Whole Foods and gorged.
6. A co-worker had been swamped by the over-abundant generosity of his neighbor’s bounty and brought me a pile of excellent home-grown tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, and bonnet-peppers. I made SPICY gazpacho. Yum!
7. I drove up to Rensselaer (yay RPI) but not to Troy, for a proposal site walk – at one of the New Jersey Turnpike rest stops, the women’s restroom was beautiful!
8. In late September I attended the National Geographic Traveler’s photography seminar, “Putting the WOW in Your Nature & Outdoor Photography” with Michael Melford and Eddie Soloway. It was fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, the Beineke library (which I’d remembered from when I was touring potential graduate programs) was closed ☹ 9. And last weekend I went to Trish and Chris’s wedding! Gorgeous weather and it was beautiful. Ate too much though.