A Reprise

  Nathan made this delicious dish, pureed and spiced chicken fried in mustard oil with green peppers. It was very good and spicy. We had it at about 10:30 on Saturday night. So much fun. The chicken is supposed to “blossom” when it fries. You can sort of see it cracking open.

I'm reading Twilight with all the satisfaction of devouring pie with whipped cream on top, and I have a strange desire to pick up the Harry Potter series next. Life is too short not to follow my heart. Whenever I realize what I should do I become filled with this remorse that I wasn't doing it sooner. I regret that I didn't have the desire sooner. I can't do what I do without the desire. Today I started Twilight, and today was the first day of a whole week in which I am totally convinced that whatever I have been doing spiritually for the past several years has been empty and suffering. I'm going to follow my heart now. I'm going my own way. When my life is at an end, there won't be anyone around me to criticize me. I won't have to face accusing eyes or listen to tiresome arguments. When life is at an end, there will be only me, and I thought this morning, life is too short not to pursue what has been burning in my heart since I read a literary criticism...

I believe that religion/spirituality is different for each person. I believe that it is hard. I also believe, after studying various religions and their timelines that it is blatantly obvious religion evolves, and what I have been reaching toward is what I see society reaching more and more toward. I don't think I can accept the religious beliefs of anyone else any more than I can wear their clothes. But it isn't something I can pick out myself. It's something that's already within me. Time and again I have found names of beliefs or philosophies and discovered that I practiced those myself, albeit crudely, and a more expansive account of the belief helped me. Then there have been things I have researched only to find they fit me as badly as someone else's shoes. My faith is my faith alone. Christianity blanketed what are now known as the Old Ways. Yes, I have felt called to the Old Ways and have researched them for a while. What I can't help but feel is that the...

I was amazed by these switch plates. They are everything I want in a switch plate. I want them in the music room and parlor. Their golden tones will offset the warmth of the floor and contrast with the wall color I have chosen "Spanish Bluebell." Other rooms will have subtle switch plates, but I actually want to replace everything, including the telephone jacks, which we won't use, because the plastic is so old they have yellowed and become dingy. This weekend I weeded one front bed but didn't dig up the bulbs. I think they are amaryllis because I saw amaryllis blooms earlier this year. They need to be thinned out and replanted elsewhere because they have migrated randomly and are really on top of each other. For the front of the house I best like a color scheme of blue and yellow. The side yard will be white flowers, and an accent of red won't hurt. I also see them looking well near the gates. I still don't know where to plant a rose garden. There's no ob...

My favorite outing in New Orleans was to The Kupcake Factory. It was a small, uncommercialized-type establishment with many different flavors from which to choose. We actually went for the gelato – mine was a mixture of cake batter and rosewater champagne. However I loved the sight of the cupcakes behind the case.  

  The thought of going out after work felt hollow, but I desired a treat so much. This is my new Folger’s Vanilla Biscotti coffee topped with cream whipped with powdered sugar. I once had a quantity of leftover heavy cream and so whipped it for our hot drinks. Once I tasted it I couldn’t go back to half-and-half or flavored creamers. Today on impulse I dumped a healthy quantity of powdered sugar while I was whipping. Mmmm… I’m so glad I didn’t go out for coffee after work but came home, did the right thing and put some laundry in, then this… We find it turns out better if you sing “You must whip it” while you whip your cream. In the shadows are my “thrift cookies,” my first cookie salvage recipe. I am definitely putting this one into my recipe journal. I made some chocolate chip cookies after we came home from vacation, still don’t know quite what went wrong there! The dough looked delicious, but they spread like wildfire all over the cookie sheet once baked and tasted… off...

Saturday afternoon we drove out to the house to see how renovations are coming. The kitchen looked like this! I was so surprised to see all the flooring ripped up. It was formerly linoleum, apparently over a different linoleum, over plywood, over hardwood which had rotted in places, over these pine beams, and beneath these pine beams are air and dirt.   Later in the afternoon I met our floor person for the first time and he mixed a couple different stains for us. We are going with a medium tone to hide scarring and staining in the original flooring. Above is the sanded floor. It’s hard to believe the floorboards are sixty years old. Once they are sanded, they look like new, although when the floor person stained an old board and new one side by side it was easy to see the difference between them. Older boards take on a lot more stain than newer ones. Here’s our new carpet upstairs. Our style is “Harvest,” our color “Pebble.” I feel most comfortable in these upper rooms....

After finishing up at the house we went over and toured the local nursery, which grows plants particularly suited to the North Texas climate. I found a lot of inspiration there. I want to have a multitude of pepper plants for our vegetable plot. The side of the house near the kitchen is shady. I visualize that as a good place for a gothic/medieval garden, with blackberry vines, various herbs and spices and the more delicate, night-blooming plants. Everything I liked had either white or purple blooms. This is a Bella Lugosi hibiscus, which is definitely on my want list. There was also a butterball hibiscus which was appealing, as well as the candy lilies below. I would love to have a more Candyland-type garden to the side of the sewing room where I can derive inspiration for my clothes and doll styles. I am trying to keep my cotton candy-colored hydrangeas alive long enough to make it to the new place.   I would like to put the vegetable plot a little further away from th...