Self, with gin

Almost summer here, and hot hot. So...


...naked baby hammock swinging.
...gin and tonics.


...lounge pants the color of a cold cold Southside.
...barbecues of lamb kabobs and flatbread and tzatziki that I enjoyed without the camera.

When I'm not in the kitchen...

I used to spend my time reading, but now I’m teaching myself to sew—a process my mom started oh, about 30 years ago, when I was too much a perfectionist to deal. Crooked seams didn’t seem far off from end of world back then.

In fact, it took having a child to realize that the process is the point. And that I’ll never, ever be perfect.

Nothing like a colicky infant to hammer that home.

So lately, the 1943 Singer and I have been collaborating on outdoor curtains with buttons along the hems, a reupholstered chair rescued on the San Clemente trash day a decade ago, the famous Amy Butler lounge pants…

Kitchen window

Orchids, my coddled flowers.

Rose starts, an experiment in free flowers.

Spring sunshine on a wide windowsill.

White and green and white again. Suddenly, I don't miss winter quite so much.

Overwintering

February was stark, in the best way. Simple meals—stir fry, burritos, pizza, salad, in rotation. Not much writing, not much doing, but lots of waiting, thinking, becoming...

Connectivity restored, for now

The election, over.

History, made.

Work, beginning.

Deep breaths everyone.

***

Our month of DSL hell seems to be at an end. Not in time for NaBloPoMo, which I likely would have spared my few loyal readers anyway. Imagine, an entire month of posts with time stamps of 9:15 pm (bedtime for those woken by toddler at 4:30 am) and content like this: "Hi, I posted" plus a few choice swear words.

I really timed an outbreak of potty mouth perfectly. The newsletter of our CSA just linked to my blog. (Sorry, Cheetah, more than you bargained for!) From now on, fewer four-letters, more food.

(Obamabat courtesy of Jeff Domke.)

Pad Thai, with or without ketchup

This was our lunch, leftovers. Looks good, doesn't it? It's Pim's pad Thai, old, old news but so, so good. This one with tofu and no bean sprouts (just poor excuses for noodles as far as I'm concerned). We have garlic chives in the herb garden and eggs from the farmers market. And it was just awesome.

That said, I think it's strange that bloggers all over are apologizing for approximating a pad Thai with ketchup before trying this recipe. Sure, that's just not the same. Sure, it's not authentic. But for fuck's sake, sometimes you just want some rice noodles and sauce--salty and sweet and grocery-store easy. I don't see why we all feel compelled to wallow in our previous inadequacy for--gasp!--making something that isn't perfect.

It's fun and satisfying (for some of us) and more often than not very, very tasty to do things the "right" way. I cure my own olives, make my own pasta from scratch, boil chicken carcasses for a full day to produce a rich broth that makes soups jump off the spoon...sometimes. I just as often open a can, shop at only one store, buy things in packets and jars. Because sometimes I just don't want to spend time pressing tamarind concentrate through a sieve, or driving all over town for the tiny Asian market that occasionally stocks the ready-to-use paste. (And we're one of the few rural-ish towns lucky enough to have an Asian market.)

Sometimes I want to throw four servings of noodles in the wok at once and call it good enough.

I love my Nina Simonds recipe for rice noodles with ketchup-and-fish-sauce-based sauce. I've made it a zillion times, and I'll do it again. And I'll even call it pad Thai. Without apology.

I read

I read so many beautiful blogs. On the good days, these amazing, talented people inspire me to try new things—small things like fabric-covered thumbtacks and big ones like changing the way I talk to my child.

On other days, when I have been up every hour all night with a teething baby, when I am on deadline at work, when my to-do list runs off the page… On those days, they make me tired. And jealous. And a little bit sad that I choose a nightly cocktail over sewing cute baby pants with adorable patches or hewing logs for our own ceiling beams.

But I realize that these blogs are highly edited selections of a life—the “best of,” often. The brief moments of perfection that punctuate all our lives.

I hesitated to start a blog. So much to live up to. Would I find myself engineering lovely little photographic vignettes in lieu of living? Or would I not be perfect?

But I soon realize that I’m too lazy and too tired to want perfection. I don’t want having friends over for dinner to set my teeth on edge as I turn out courses of intimidating food. I want to let the baby unload groceries into the dog bowl. I want to sit on the couch with a cocktail and read—even as pet hair wafts in the breeze at my feet. I am striving and doing and living and failing and succeeding and (not really) sleeping.

This is real. And this is what I ate.