cicero's Profile

I feel like a grown up home to me means that I am comfortable in it, and I expect to stay, and I invite others in because I feel so good about it. I live in an old farmhouse rental, with no children, and I sometimes catch myself looking around and realizing that this is the adult version of me that used to be comfortable with a lack of permanence...and it's funny that I should feel that way, because at age 40 I am still a renter...but I do. I'm not afraid to commit, and not afraid of the implications of permanence. 15 years ago that reeked of boring, no trip to Europe, no nights out seeing good bands. Now, somehow, the exact same things to me mean garden, hosting friends and family, a general different type of internal growth.
We have our linens full of blankets for guests, and a bedroom with an extra bed for friends, and we fix what is broken. To me, this is actually less consumerism than rejecting the ideas above. We happen to have lots of blankets, but a lot of them are from thrift stores, and the furniture is a reflection of many years as an avid thrifter. I don't think that the shift from house to home is really about spending money at all. I think it's about embracing an environment where you I can easily live after coming to terms that I am a more mature version of who I have been in the past.

lovely, lovely work. What a fantastic piece.
I restored a buffet a couple years ago and kept the chipped veneer. It's a hard call, when you're in your basement/carport/driveway/etc trying to figure out which of the 10,000 possibilities to chose from. I live in an older farmhouse, so it fits here, but I can see how a different house or setting would ask for a different decision.
Unfortunately you can only make one final selection for one piece of furniture! :)

Currently looking for a black-bean brownie recipe...if I find one then that's what I'm cooking!
I didn't cook, but my husband did, and made whole rainbow trout stuffed with rice, corn, onion, parsley, baked with sea salt for 30 minutes and served with spinach. Tomorrow is prep for the week day--maybe some lentils, hard-boiled eggs, and smoothies to throw in the freezer.

I bet a dollar that a breed normally raised commercially would taste like a different bird entirely if raised on a small scale farm, and a heirloom breed raised in a conventional manner is probably prone to some flavor homogenization...we got a bird two years ago who roosted in trees, and ran around, and we could tell that the muscle had been exercised more. Their diet made a difference in the flavor of the meat, etc. I'd pick a home grown any day. Don't care what the breed is.

Rack of lamb with mustard coating, served with kale or chard. Also, for lunch and dinner though the week i made a chicken pot pie, but instead of a cream base made a tomato base (fresh tomato, rosemary, white wine, butter, thicker). Today if I need to turn the oven on again like I did last night I'll make something sweet with plums.

I forgot to add--I got a lot of email from relatives, asking for a registry somewhere. Some people I knew would not select anything, and some people I know would be grateful for the direction. Hence our change of heart in having one.

I just made your lunch posting suggestion from earlier this week: lentils, poached egg, and spinach. If I had tomatoes I would have baked those, too.
Delicious suggestion :)

Ahhhhh, if you are ever in Seattle PLEASE go to Senior Moose (in Ballard!) for these. Breakfast will never be the same.

Tofu...you are so cute. Come home with me.

We cooked one last year, and if I could do it all differently what I would do is this: rotate it, or elevate it so that the legs could cook more. The breed that we had (Nargansett--I may have misspelled that) are tree roosters, and they had really sizable legs, and are not bred to have larger breasts--so the body had different requirements than turkeys that I am used to cooking.