Full Tilt

My walks home from work have changed from a time for quiet contemplation to thoughts racing through my brain at high speed. Typically accompanied by the appropriate high-octane-righteous-noise-more-guitar-is-good music I have a fondness for.

It feels like I just chugged a bottle of Pepsi and some Pixi Sticks.

There have been changes on the work front of my life, all for the best. I'm now at DEFY HQ full time  adding the new hat of production manager to my craftsman work. Which means for the first time since graduating college ages ago I use a computer for my job! And oh man have I missed making lists and putting things in piles and filing. It's sick really. I really shouldn't be paid for being borderline anal retentive. But I am. I will bring order to the chaos and it will be beautiful.

But it is a change and sometimes all I do is pick up a steak burrito and a Radler for dinner and lie on the floor for a while. A delicious reward for actually using my brain for 8 hrs. But I rally on the weekends and tend to cook up a storm. And create a massive amount of dishes I have the luxury of ignoring for as long as I please.

I've discovered a delightfully easy fancy dinner menu of Roast Root Veg with Balsamic Glaze on a bed of Arugula to start and Chicken Roasted with Lemon for the main. Throw some veggies in a hot oven to roast, make the glaze, then clean your house while the veg is roasting. And please don't be an dunce like me and be wary of the fumes coming off the vinegar while you're stirring the glaze! It could singe the hair out of your nostrils.

For the chicken preheat the oven, and in a dutch oven brown the thighs for about 10 minutes in oil on the stove. Then toss the lemon slices and red onion slivers over top, pop in the oven, and take a nap before your guest arrives. You can follow the recipe and reduce the leftover juice etc but I've found it to be just fine as is.

This banana bread was the dessert, and whoa man is it a dense loaf! It's really chocolate cake/bread masquerading as banana bread. Very tasty but I will tweak it a bit next time...and you need a glass of milk to wash it down. Or tea if you were watching Foyle's War like Miss Ashley and I were.

It's lovely to be able to entertain guests with a couch to sit on! I'm on the hunt for a small side table that can double as a dining table but no luck yet...and my friends are obliging with balancing their meals on their knees.

Plus it makes a great shelf for books and tea and charging phones.

I'm taking advantage of the farmer's market as much as possible before it goes. Roasted zucchini with sweet tomatoes over egg noodles. A pinch of lemon zest and cheese finishes it off nicely.

Beets,  greens, kale and quinoa salad with toasted pine nuts, basically this but lazier. And a leftover pumpkin pie slice for dessert. 'Tis the season! I already have two kinds of apple cider in my larder. Soon there will be applesauce and other spicy goodies. And socks! And scarves and crisp leaves and oh gosh I love it.

But really the most important thing you need to know about my life, my thoughts, and what I've been eating...it's these beauties. Banana pancakes. Two ingredients. One spatula and one fork. It's sheer genius and have revolutionized my weekend mornings.

Cut off a bit of butter and put it in a frying pan to melt over medium/low heat. Put a banana in a bowl, smash it and crack in two eggs. Whisk the eggs and banana together and pour half into the hot pan. They need to be well browned to turn since they are  prone to crumbling...but who cares really? While waiting for the other side to brown pull out your maple syrup and slice up some strawberries or whatever else you want to dump on them. Ooh Nutella would be divine! Totally doing that for tomorrow's bananacakes.

They're just the ticket for a special breakfast after a week of hard work. Add a cup of tea, good book or something British on Netflix and it's really all one can ask for before being back to full tilt on Monday!

Shadow and Light

I've taken to dozing on the couch these summer evenings. Things have finally slowed down and sprawling with limbs in all directions on a horizontal surface is glorious. The cicadas and birds (and construction workers) telling me things I can't comprehend though the window. Watching a drop of perspiration slowly build then dive headlong down the side of a glass. I'll leave the lamps off until I can't read anymore and maybe then only turn one on.

It's a different dark than in the winter, when you need a warm flicker in the blackness to feel cozy. Summer dark feels shady, catching the glints of water or sheen of metal (or if you're very lucky the pile of silky prosciutto you're about to drape over slices of melon so juicy I had to lick down my arm).

But the summer days are bright. When I eat lunch on the rooftop it's so bright I can barely see. Reflecting off the tin and trains and clouds so I have to cover my eyes with my hand and peer at my phone or at my friend's face.

Sometimes if the clouds are too few or the sun too hot and I retreat inside to sit in a sunbeam.

The weather has been cool enough that I can roast my bounty from the farmer's markets. Onion with bright yellow tomatoes in couscous.  Roast corn and tomatoes with queso fresco and avocado. Marinated eggplant with halloumi. Toasted quinoa with roast tomatoes and onion with parsley. That last one teetered on the edge of disaster due to my lack of supervision but my luck held and it was delicious. Though my apartment still smells like burning. Well it did until I made trout tonight so now it smells like fish. And burning. Bother.

It's still late summer and I'm mentally cataloguing all the things I would like to do before fall truly arrives. Will I make it to the lake once more? Boat down to Chinatown? Sit in the grass and listen to music? Eat gelato on an evening stroll? Stand over the sink barefoot trying not to drip while eating a peach or melon? Ride my bicyclette to a park and read? We'll see...there's always next year.

One adventure that has been finally crossed of my list is an architecture boat tour. Miss H and I spent a delightful day on the river before she left and we had fun playing tourist. The shift of perspective makes the buildings I've seen a hundred times look completely new. The clouds were being dramatic which made the shots I got even better.

But that was a while ago, and it's not time for any adventures at the moment. Just reading next to the light with a cup of tea thinking about what to do tomorrow.

Deluge is a fun word to say. Especially when you're not in one.

They say that when it rains it pours.

And that is certainly true this summer. More than once I've dashed under some overhang to escape the deluge and it's a fitting metaphor to describe my doings at the moment too. Lots, all at once, leaving me a little bedraggled but grinning ear to ear.

Has your summer been the same? Or is is full of long lazy afternoons of books and iced tea?

There have been few lazy afternoons so far but I have been drinking lots of iced tea...and recently discovered the magic of a Thai iced tea. Which is lovely for fueling hot summer days running to and fro having adventures. You should drink one too.

And of course I've been eating. Duh. The start of the farmer's market season brings me soooo much joy! Fresh bread (that I didn't have to bake and feel guilt free buying), lovely and cheap veg and fruit, and the odd homemade thing like those portobello ravioli above. Smaller trips if any to the grocery store and lots of little trips to bodegas, just picking up a few things like milk and cheese and cereal.

Lots of quesadillas (mozzarella and asparagus), fish tacos, Greek salads, brie on toast, and hummus on pita.

My new favorite summer dish is one I had while visiting my Big Sister Lyndsey up in Milwaukee a few weekends ago. There's a cantina there we love and I craved their tostada salad so made a version of it to eat while working Pitchfork for the lovely Miss Natalie:

Spread a layer of fresh or frozen corn on a baking sheet and roast in a hot oven until golden (you can skip this if the thought of turning on your oven makes you break out into a sweat, just go to Trader Joe's and buy their pre-roasted frozen corn or if you're feeling dangerous roast an ear of corn over your gas stove).  Chop up half a red onion and let it sit in lime juice to tone it down a bit. In a big bowl combine the roasted corn, one can of black beans, crumbled queso fresco, chopped avocado and chopped lettuce. Add the onion and more lime juice, S&P and whatever else you feel like adding. Tomatoes? Chile? You can crumble up some tortilla chips if you want more crunch. Wrap it up in a tortilla if you need to go mobile!

Instead of the bus I took the Amtrack to Milwaukee and despite a long delay on my way home it's now the only way I'm going to Milwaukee!

I had forgotten how much I loved traveling by train. It's just...better.

I sped into the sunset on the way there and watched rivers and fields on my way back. I only had two songs on my iPod about trains (I Was Young When I Left Home covered by Antony and Bryce Dessner and Monster of Folk's Sandman, Brakeman, and Me) but they are lovely and I fully intend to make a playlist for my next voyage.

Because there will always be a next time to Milwaukee, it's just too much fun to see my siblings!!

This time there were festivals, beignets, polka,

fries with aioli and pints, tiny things to buy,

beer and brats at 10 AM, and the new Much Ado, and most of all Sister Lyndsey's new house! I can't wait to see it grow!

While I wish I had as much space as she now has to play with I did make a change to my own little place recently! I bought a wee couch! It's all the fault of this kid...

...oh yeah. Twin times AGAIN.

We were hitting up the thrift stores and I had to sit down or fall down. And realized the couch I was reclined on was very nice and small and only $75...so I bought it! It was professionally reupholstered in the 60's (with the hideous fabric to prove it) but I've already taken the skirt off to show it's lovely legs and am happy with the Ikea douvet slipcover for the moment since it came with a granny-tastic slipcover I can pattern off of in the future.

But I had to wait a few days for it to be delivered so we ate pasta salad on the floor. It was very tasty pasta salad too! Two kinds of pasta (occasionally two Aries cannot agree over what type of pasta so get both), peas, snap peas, asparagus, mint, parsley, cilantro, parmigiano-reggiano, and ham. Followed up by French Yogurt Cake to ways:

Anwen had hers with mint on top and I had mine with berries on the side. It was the Fourth of July so it was a big show of national pride through baked goods on my part. A nod to Lafayette with the French yogurt. Add a patriotic themed episodes of Murder She Wrote marathon and I say Yankee Doodle is your uncle.




...I need a nap.

So there. Lots of doings!

And now I have to go do laundry and more things. Not nap. Sigh. O to relax with a book and glass of wine!

Hopefully the radio silence between posts won't be as long as the last one. Especially since Lizbeth informed me that every day I don't blog a fairy looses it's wings. So apparently I'm a fairy killer. And have horrifyingly hilarious friends.

But it will be a while as I'm trying to savor my last few weeks with this lady, Miss H, before she moves back to Ohio and leaves me a blithering mess of tears and woe.

But I will be back, I always am.  I don't want to kill fairies.

Halves

It was a quiet Sunday last Sunday. Which is the best type in my opinion. The soft light was coming through my curtains casting shadows.

I dozed.

I was halfway through my laundry. Halfway through Shadow of the Thin Man. There was a chicken, half cooked, in the oven.

I wish I could say I was halfway thorough that book but I'm not.

Lots of halves all over the place.

(These roasted apricots were the tastiest though)

The trick with being only half way is often you blink and it's over. Or it gets lost in the haze, never quite as clear as the beginning or the end.

So I'm putting it here, just in case I want to remember some day what it was like to be halfway on a Sunday.

The Twins Take Manhattan (And Parts of Brooklyn)

Have I mentioned that I had a birthday over a month ago?

NO!

Which is insane as I'm an aries so having a whole day where you're allowed to make everything be about yourself is just the best thing ever. Like eyes glossing over with the sick power of it all best thing ever.

And if you're like me and discovered you have a faux twin your freshman year of college not only did you have a childhood free from the real twin plague of constantly having to share everything BUT you get an adulthood where with your f-win powers combined the two of you can commandeer a whole week ALL ABOUT YOU.

So we did.

If you've never met my twin this picture pretty much sums her up. The Peanuts. Captain America. Kandinsky. Wonder Woman. Star Wars. Scarlett O'Hara. Degas. Disney.

Clearly this week was going to be insane.

I arrived in NYC sleep deprived and totally zonked but my darling twin fed me Chinese take-out, propped me up in front of the TV to watch The Avengers and put me to bed early. I love her.

You know how the French just sit in cafes drinking cafe and watch people? Well she's like that but with Dr. Pepper and dogs. It's true. No one dog can come within a two block radius and she's spotted it. And stares. And coos. And makes googly eyes and exclaims.

See that face?? Every. Time. She. Sees. A. Dog.  And I just stand there being all "Yay. It's ANOTHER dog. Can we go now please thank you."

That happened a lot.

We also rode a lot of trains. Someone in NYC has a deep love of Tolkien and a good sense of humor.

We had an epic day of shopping on my Birthday in which we took about 8 trains to get from her apartment in Coney Island to Lower Manhattan and then all the way up to the Upper East Side and back down again. It was epic.

We also rendez-vous-ed with my Fairy Godmother to see the Lion King which was hugely epic. Especially the back stage part where we got to TOUCH STUFF. I managed not to hyperventilate but it was a close call.

Luckily my twin is just as prone to excitement, this time it was about Abraham Lincoln in the Brooklyn Museum. She's be happy to live in that room forever. I'd come visit and tap on the glass. 

She even bought me a plate with his name all over it. Because I live in his land. Somehow I feel like she arranged that to get closer to him. Creeper. 

The rest of our museum day was spent taking turns freaking out over things.

I got excited that my shoes matched the tile floor.

And about some stairs.

And I booked it across the grand hall shrieking "OMG gilt!!" to salivate over medieval art. They even had my favorite martyr, St. Lawrence of Rome, asking the Romans to turn him over as he was done on that side. Cheeky.

Meanwhile Twin was across the hall staring at Russian art and later entranced by creepy South American death objects.

Other trip highlights include me insisting we buy buy flowers from a street vendor as Chicago has no flower stalls and it makes me sad. And Birthdays always need flowers!

We had a date at Lincoln Center a la Moonstruck...

...and had tea afterwards at Alice's Tea Cup.

Someone makes a very good Red Queen. Off with your head!

Or she would have been yelling that if her mouth wasn't stuffed with scones and tea sandwiches. I need to hold another tea party soon, they're just such fun!

But I think the best part of the whole mad week was here, eating a bagel with lox next to my Twin watching dogs on a quiet sunny street in Lower Manhattan. She's decided that we're on the cusp of great things this year, and I'm excited to see what life brings us. 

Hopefully more bagels.