Yup, it's Fall.

The geese are gone; I did not hear their racket this morning. We live near a pond and they are quite noisy. They are also really messy, their poop is disgusting and it's everywhere around the pond--even sometimes in my fenced backyard (since they can fly). The only sad thing about them being gone is that I need to accept that Fall is really here--not the early sunny Fall days with pretty leaves and visits to historic sites. No, it is solidly mid-Fall and that means winter is coming. We have managed to avoid putting the heat on so far, but today might be the day. If it is sunny, the house warms up nicely. And it helps if I bake some pumpkin muffins (well, this batch will be squash, but they taste at least as good if not better). Right now, it's 64 in my house and the sky is a little cloudy. I might hunker down in my library (it has one wall of books) and turn the electric heat on just in here. Or I can take a nice warm bath and see if the sun has done its work when I come down again. I have a nasty cold, although I'm past the worst part. We went to the Topsfield Fair a week ago and I bet that is where I caught it. I usually wear a mask when I'm in a crowd, but didn't do it. Of course, I had to eat some funnel cake and French fries and drink Coke, so would have had to take the mask off then. I love the Flying Wallendas. We have seem them almost every year when we go. The grandfather is the announcer, probably in his 70s and still standing on his head on the wire, and riding a bike. His son carries the 4 year old on his shoulders across and then the daughter-in-law. I often cry at the daring of it. There's a clown poised to catch them on the ground. "What could he do?" I ask, and Ray says, "try to keep them from landing on their heads." There's a 2-year-old as well, but I think she is not going to be joining the family business. They juggle together, too. There was a crowd, as usual. No screens, no special effects, just a traditional family act, maybe 8 generations of practicing from an early age, starting on a low wire, I presume. Tuesday evening at yoga class I felt great, no back pain, able to do everything the teacher suggested. But Wednesday morning i had a cold, starting with the drippy nose. I take my Dayquil and my Nyquil and drink lots of tea and eat a million Ricolas.

Seriously rainy today, been threatening for a few days. So gray, too bad I'm not good at sleeping in! It is cozy and dry inside, but dark unless you turn the lights on. We are delighted to finally have a working upstairs bathroom, although it is a tub only and really too low. I have tried it a couple of times, you just have to be careful not to fill it too full or splash. Now that there is a new floor, I feel a little better that some water won't seep through to the floor below. Hopefully the guys who installed it caulked around the edge well enough. The old floor was curling up by the tub, sheet linoleum. This is kind of cool fake marble vinyl tiles--yes, I am afraid it is not made of anything sustainable. If people would stop burning the petroleum, we could use it for things like flooring many more years. Although it is cooler without the sun, it is not cool enough to bake, and we don't really want to open the windows and let the dampness in (and the heat out). But I can mix up some cookie dough and put it in the freezer for another day. There are still some things in the storage unit that I need to deal with, unless I want to become one of those people who pays for storage indefinitely. I could fit everything in the basement, which is quite dry, thanks to our dehumidifier. Ray empties it every day. I think it was our painter who said, "Just dump it into the washing machine, it's clean water." Before then, he was carrying it up the cellar stairs and dumping it outside. This is a win-win. A funny thing (kind of): we were not able to get the box spring upstairs for our guest room bed (a queen). It's sitting in the library until we decide what to do with it: find someone who wants it, store it indefinitely, trail it to North Carolina...I think we can pay the city to take it away. Tamara got a new bed and Molli and Michael brought us the platform bed she was using. They brought it upstairs and Ray put it together; it was kind of a pain, but looks pretty good. Imagine our surprise when we tried to fit the mattress on it! It was a full or double bed, not a queen! So now we are in the position of having to buy a frame for it, even though we already have three other beds that we don't need.

The best laid plans

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry--I believe Mr. Robert Burns said it first, although in Old Scottish...and many others have said it since, including me, many times. Like the plan to walk every day or the intention to detail my meal prep ideas... the meal for today involved eggplant, but since I had leftover spaghetti for lunch, I can't have pasta, which is my favorite thing to have with eggplant. I also don't have any peppers or mushrooms, needed for the excellent Eggplant Scallopini. Or zucchini, which could make some variation on ratatouille, which I would then eat with rice instead of pasta. There is an eggplant curry I haven't made in a while, but it calls for peas and I don't think I have any in my freezer at the moment.

There's a paradox about cooking in the summer. I don't want to heat up the kitchen, so it would be good to grill outside. But it's really hot and standing over the grill cooking makes people miserable. So I think I will cook the chicken indoors after all. Just briefly, on top of the stove, with some vegetables and serve with couscous. Couscous cooks with boiling water, so doesn't add much to the heat in the kitchen. Sometimes, when it was hot, we might walk to the beach and swim. Now we have to drive (sad face). Even worse, the beaches have high bacteria counts so we can't swim anyway. I think maybe we'll drive a little further today to swim.

Too hot to cook: Pasta Salad for supper

Today's main ingredient is corn. We were lucky enough to get some early corn on the cob Thursday and somehow didn't get to cook it until Sunday. It was still delicious, surprisingly. I try to cook it the minute I get home but life interfered with my best-laid plans. I also have some leftover pasta. A recipe called for 12 ounces of pasta, which is dumb. I would rather have 4 oz of leftover cooked pasta than raw, so we cooked it all and reserved some. Fortunately, I have a favorite recipe for Mexican Pasta Salad (thank you once again, Moosewood!). It is even low-fat! It calls for a can of cooked beans--kidney, pinto or black. I usually have a can of beans around, although I did use the black beans a couple weeks ago. When I can, though, I prefer to cook my own, especially if I can do it early while it's not hot out. So, I have some pintos simmering on the stove that will be one and cooled before I need them. There is corn, a yellow pepper, some fresh tomatoes, and scallions--everything I need. I'll chop up some veggies soon and mix the dressing, so it will be nicely marinated before we are ready to eat it tonight. Meanwhile, I am thinking ahead to a quiche I'll make Friday--do I need to buy some Gruyere? We picked up a cantaloupe yesterday, which is really nice with blueberries, coming into peak season now.

What type are you?

Some people like to take on a job and stick with it until it's done. Sometimes that keeps them from ever starting... I prefer to break tasks into manageable bits. I like to cook, but I don't always want to get started. I'm sure you've been there, all of a sudden it's late (5 or 6 or 7) and you're hungry. Maybe other people are hungry too, but they would not ever plan ahead to make sure there is something to eat when they're hungry. Anyway, I usually know what I'll eat when I get up: cereal and milk with fruit, or yogurt and fruit and toast and peanut butter or a bagel with cream cheese. At least one of those options is almost always around. I could make an egg and bacon, but that doesn't usually appeal. Lunch is often leftovers, but there should be bread and cheese and maybe sliced luncheon meat--or a can of tuna if need be. And there are usually some marginally healthy snacks in the pantry if I need something in between times. Dinner is what I mean when I talk about cooking. I love to bake bread or cookies when the weather is oooler and I have the time and energy. But the evening meal (call it supper if you prefer) is the one that takes the most planning and usually preparation. Ideally, I know what that's going to be when I get up in the morning because I've been thinking about it the day before. If not, that's the first order of business, even before getting dressed or eating breakfast. What's the weather forecast look like? How many people will be eating? What's in the fridge? I usually plan around the ingredient that most urgently needs to be eaten. Today it is zucchini, but it is often meat--chicken I bought or thawed the day before, for instance. Today it's hot, so probably not anything that uses the oven, and preferably not a lot of time on the stove. Can it be made ahead, while it's cooler? I decided on a frittata for tonight. I have plenty of eggs and will use up some of the zucchini. I got some chard in my box Thursday and I have a half a green pepper left over from something earlier in the week. Is that pan I like clean? To avoid any last-minute problems and to do the work in small chunks, I check the recipe and make sure I have the ingredients. Maybe I can make it without the marjoram, but if I was out of eggs, I would have to make a different plan. Looking at the list, one of the first things I need is a small minced onion. I can do that. And mince a small clove of garlic and cut up the pepper. I put the olive oil in the pan. Now I've got a good start and I'm committed. I can take a break and do some sitting down "work" or read the paper. Sometime in the next hour or so, I'll be ready to wash and slice the mushrooms and zucchini. I'll get the eggs out so they come to room temperature. And when it's time to eat, I'll have about 10 or 15 minutes of work left to do. Sometimes I make a bigger dish, like lasagna, or rice salad, and then I have it for several meals, in case I'm busy or the weather is not conducive to cooking. Lasagna is one of many options that can be frozen in meal-size portions to keep a little longer. You know the drill, keep track of what you have in the freezer.

the closet monster

Michael's closet had a door in the back. There was another closet behind the door. It was spooky, there were no walls, just boards and the same on the ceiling. Daddy said it was like an attic. It was a place to put things you didn't use very much, like Christmas decorations or suitcases. Michael didn't live at Daddy's house all the time. He used to always live at Mommy's house and now he went back and forth. It was a little hard to get used to. At first, he woke up in the night and called for Mommy before he remembered he was at Daddy's house. He had a bunk bed here and lots of favorite animals to keep him company. Now that he was older, he didn't even call for Daddy anymore. He had Alexis, who would read to him if he woke up early. At 7, he could wake up Daddy and Molli. Molli was Daddy's new wife. It was strange that Mommy and Daddy weren't married any more and didn't live together. But Daddy was much happier. Molli and Daddy didn't fight very much, at least not when Michael was there.