Christmas eve lights...

INA!

YES!  Stood in line for three hours today at South Coast Plaza to see Ina Garten and have her autograph her new book "how easy is that?".  It was worth every minute.  She is as precious and genuine in person as she is on tv.  (Who is that guy standing next to me?)  Please invite me to the Hamptons Ina!!  I'll do the dishes!

AND... saw Marc Cohn at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight!  AMAZING!  Love him even more than before...awesome concert.

Heat wave...

SOOOOO hot today all we could do was conserve energy.

How To Be Alone

Stumbled across this video on another blogger's site (Matirose).  Like it.

just taking a break...

...uninspired to post anything more than a picture.  this little guy makes me smile every time i see him...he's a funky piece of garden art my sister gave to my mom.  

no words necessary...

Nelder Grove outside of Yosemite.

nothing to say...

just realized my last post was one month ago...so i have to post something.  no new photos since i am still on the search for my next real camera (translate:  non-cell phone camera)...so, i'll post one of the photos of the benches from our precious hotel in pessac, france...

wow.

yeah.  checkin' out one of my favorite blogs today (the bottom of the ironing basket) which always has beautiful things to look at it; yesterday's post caused pause for thought.  

cooking class collage for rachel

the artist...Michael Stearns, who opened his studio in Long Beach, for our cooking class.  He LOVES color!  Some of his paintings and a hanging sculpture can be seen in this pic (he was working on a painting during our class)...

Elizabeth Whitt (Le Cordon Bleu trained chef)...love her relaxed, educational style...filled with awesome dishes and complementary wines and champagnes...

mushrooms and asparagus for the roasted mushroom and asparagus tart...

the tart in process...

loved the colors of dinnerware...they matched his artwork...

crostini for the goat cheese crostini with strawberries, basil and balsamic reduction...

yum....strawberries for the crostini...

flank steak grilling for the grilled flank steak with sun dried tomato pesto with goat cheese crumbles on crostini...oh yeah...i guess there was crostini for this too

okay...this might have been my favorite...marinated shrimp with thai dipping sauce...wonderful!

me and diana...knowing you would have loved being surrounded by art while cooking, Rachel.  :)

sunshine.

i let the puddins out the back gate to snack on this tall grass.  i always love how the sun shines through the tall blades of grass and the wind gently blows the whispy stalks before the seeds are ready to fly.  

everything is illuminated..

finally watched the movie "everything is illuminated" (with elijah wood)...  loved it.  thank you, rachel...it is now among my favorites.   :)


http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3936682265/

Summer in April...

even though I prefer overcast, drizzly days to typical sunny California days...I have to admit, it was a beautiful California day...clear, sunny, warm.  Lovely.

rhubarb strawberry crumble

Finally made some rhubarb strawberry crumbles with the rhubarb from Mom's garden.   I made individual crumbles with my precious new creme brulee dishes, instead of one jumbo crumble.  I used a modified version of a recipe from the Food Network Magazine.   They were tasty hot out of the oven.  The crumble part was 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup quick cooking oats, 3/4 cup sugar, pinch of salt.  Mix that together and add 6 tablespoons melted butter and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts.  Mix it to form crumbles.  For the fruit, the recipe called for 2 pounds of rhubarb, but I used 1 pound of rhubarb and about 12 oz. of fresh strawberries (because that's all the rhubarb and strawberries I had).  You add 1/2 sugar to that, 2 tablespoons of corn starch (the recipe called for 1/4 cup flour), 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon orange zest and 1/4 teaspoon salt.  

Put the fruit slightly mounded in the little creme Brulee dishes and pile the crumble on top (if you do this over the bowl of crumble topping, you don't have to worry about spilling it all over the place--like I did with the first one).  Anyway, the recipe said to cook for 45 minutes, but it didn't give a temperature, so I cooked it at 350 degrees as other recipes suggested.  The finished product was a nice blend of tart rhubarb and sweet strawberries.  Delish!  I think I'd monkey with the crumble next time...maybe use a mix of brown and white sugar and just a bit more butter...and I might cook it a bit shorter.

spring flowers...

I think these babies are gonna find a place on the Easter dessert table.   Evil Lofthouse cookies!  Why do you taunt me so?!

B'fast

Nomnomnom.  One of the nice things about being on vacation...fixing and sharing breakfast with my Mom.   I loved the light and shadows on the fruit.  I also really need to get a camera!

name change...

Decided to change the name of my blog today.  Just because I can (and because my niece Rachel liked the change too).  I live in what this planned community calls a "cottage home" and the street I live on is called Sweet Rain.  That's right.      :)

I do love my little cottage home.  I fell in love with it (her) when I first saw her (for some reason...she seems like a lady).  She had just been put on the market and the real estate agent was showing it for the first day.  I lived in a condo not far away and happened to drive through the neighborhood because I always wanted to live in one of these little cottages.  I took the tour...called my girlfriend Cheri who came to take a look and encouraged me to go for it!  The agent closed up shop, Cheri went with me to sign the papers to get the purchase going and here I am...seven years later.  Whoa...time flies.

I took this week off from work to spend it at home doing all the little things that often get ignored.  Puttin' some love back into my home.  I'm hoping to give her the care and attention she needs this week..kind of a spring cleaning, I guess.  My Mom is coming up to be with me and help; she usually works in the small yard and it always looks well-tended after she clips and trims and turns and weeds.  It makes such a difference when someone else shares the routine chores with you.  It gets old doing it all by yourself.

Anyway, for now 'sweet rain cottage' it is.  :)

earthy lunch...

I've been eating very simply lately for a couple of reasons...to save $$ and to get healthier.  It's working.  It's amazing how little you can spend on food when you aren't buying all the prepackaged meals that we often rely on for convenience.  I have been enjoying making lentil soups, garbanzo bean curry soup and my Mom has supplied me with farm fresh citrus, avocados and now...beets.  They have to be one of my all time favorite root vegetables.  Their earthy flavor is wonderful.  Fresh baby beets, boiled and popped out of their skins are about the best!  So...today I boiled a beet and added just a bit of  butter a touch of salt/pepper/garlic blend.  I sauteed the beet greens with butter and a little  salt.  The potato was boiled with the beet and tossed while hot with olive oil, red wine vinegar, yellow onion, garlic and herbes de provence.  Beautiful.

[Yeah...the photo looks a bit weak, but my camera has been out of commission and I'm reliant on my cell phone for any shots I want to capture!   M u s t   g e t   n e w   c a m e r a   s o o n ! ]

Daniel Boone was a man...

Fess Parker died today.  He was 85 and he died at home with his wife of 50 years...on her 84th birthday. From all that I have read and know about him...he was a good, honorable man.

As soon as I heard the news on the radio, I remembered a trip we made to Utah when I was a little girl.  Travelling across the desert in our 1960-something pale yellow Ford station wagon, we came to some little town where the town folk (hahahaha -- sorry, couldn't help myself) told us they were filming the popular Daniel Boone televison show.   We were on it!  We rambled out to wherever it was across the hot-as-hootsville desert...wearing our swimming suits to keep cool.  (!)  Did air-conditioning in cars even exist in those days?   (Oh, for the days when you weren't self conscious about wearing a swimsuit.)  Anyway...we were able to actually talk to Fess Parker when he was on a break from filming and I just remember that he was genuinely nice to us little kids.  Very cool.  He had starred on the television show Davy Crockett and was now Daniel Boone in the show of the same name.  I can still remember the song and lyrics...[Daniel Boone "original" theme song.]

When I heard that he passed away today, I immediately thought of that trip and these photos (that Sandi had recently scanned)...there is just something that I love about them.  The contradiction...random attire, obscure setting, TV star, pig-tail wearing little kidlets, 1960's...gotta love the whole thing.

Thank you for the memories Mr. Parker.

From left...Joyce, Fess Parker, Sandi on his knee, my mom, and me (look at those knobby knees...loved that red, white & blue suit with a little skirtlet!)  The hair style was three pig tails (braids)...one on each side and one on the top that was swirled and pinned to our head.  Ya' just don't see that style  much these days.  :)  How cute is that though?

Awesome.  One of the other actors, me and Sandi.  (Seems like I remember the other actors kind of teasing /laughing at this guy for having to pose with us.)

cherished memories....

Sometimes....we are fortunate enough to capture not only the moment,  but the mood.  This, for me, is one of those photos.   Emily (my youngest niece) and Zorro (also known as Mr. Cow Kitty---the ranch cat at my parent's ranch) had a special connection.  He was old, independent, scruffy, nearly blind, non-demanding...she was young, reliant, sweet, wide-eyed, and loving.  He melted in her presence...he allowed himself to be pet, brushed, sweet-talked and adored.  I recently resurrected this photo and was touched again by the memories it evokes for me.  Emily is now in high-school...Zorro, true to nature, quietly slipped away and passed away years ago.  The photo is still one of my favorites. 

unabashed "natural" talent

stumbled on this while blog jumping when i couldn't sleep (from Raffaele De Ritis' Novelties and Wonder blog). awesome.

lil' dude.

when i got home from work last night at 8, i fed mokie and tigger.  mokie ate a little and then started sniffing the wall, chair, floor...anything sniffable.   he started trying to maneuver under a bar stool..instead of going under the foot rest, he tried to get his little plump belly over the dowels.   He did this once before about a month and 1/2 ago and i couldn't figure out what was going on.  at first i thought there was someone in the house because he acted like he smelled someone/something different.  then, i thought there might be a rodent in the house because he was going crazy sniffing the walls, floor, baskets, whatever.  after an hour or more of trying to figure it out and not being able to distract him from his sniff quest, i  called  my sister, Joyce (a nurse), she suggested it was hypoglycemia and this was his demonstration of disorientation.  I started giving him honey and corn syrup and eventually took him to the emergency vet hospital after an hour when my care didn't seem to have an effect.   his blood sugar was extremely low and they kept him overnight to continue a glucose drip.  ka-ching. 

so, at least i knew what was going on last night.  i started giving him  slightly diluted corn syrup (which the vet told me today does not need to be diluted at all)and i eventually spoke with the vet (he had given me his cell to call if this happened again after hours) and joyce.  I sat on the kitchen floor and held him while he continued to sniff my arms, the air, my sweater...and kept giving him honey and corn syrup for three hours. (I would let him walk around occasionally to see how he was doing and to make sure he wasn't losing his ability to walk.  another sign of his disorientation is that he gets in a corner or against the wall and can't figure out how to get out...it's like he can't back up.)  anyway, after three hours, we were both a sticky mess from the corn syrup and honey that didn't quite make it to his belly.  he eventually stopped sniffing and started to relax.  i kept giving him honey and corn syrup every 1/2 hour and then every hour until about 3 when he finally fell asleep and was okay.  i checked on him throughout the night and all was good.  took him to the vet today and am starting him on lower doses of insulin.  not sure what happens; maybe he was eating less...maybe his blood sugar levels were normalizing and he no longer needed as much insulin...who knows.  i'm just glad i knew what was going on this time and that all ended okay..oh yeah, and that i didn't have the expense of the emergency room again.  gulp.  between the vet, emergency room, insulin, needles, high protein food...it's spendy.  i hope this doesn't sound like the cost is what matters, but it does add up.  i was just glad i was able to care for him and get his blood sugar levels back up without the additional stress and cost of the emergency room this time.   

perhaps to people who have kids or those who don't have quite the same connection with their little furry family members, this exercise in maintaining his health and the costs associated with it are excessive.  maybe there was a time when i wouldn't have understood it either.  now i do. 

photo meal

since i'm still hungry after the bowl of soup i had for supper, but don't really want to eat more right now, i decided to create another meal from some of the pics of France. hmmm...i think i got all the major food groups...baguette, brie, darling red little currants, almond croissant, espresso, macaroons.  uh-huh.  

just because...

It's a rainy day and I was going through photos (and I realized I hadn't posted in a few days)...love this from a garden in Windsor, England.

Handmade Valentines

My 2010 calendar is Flora & Fauna by Cavallini & Co....I love their calendars.  Instead of discarding the January artwork (or more likely add it to the heap of pretty things I don't seem to be able to discard), I decided to make my own Valentine cards since I already had all the supplies.   

I tore the calendar page into strips, glued it to linen card stock i had torn to size to fit the envelopes and added just a touch of glitter.  I fought the urge to create the "perfect" card and second guess my creations...small task, big accomplishment...allowing/enjoying creativity without strict edits.  I created eight cards.  I loved them all.  Here's a few.

Kooza

Cirque Du Soleil - Irvine...so fabulous.  

when life gives you a diabetic kitty cat who likes baby food...

and you now have an abundance of the cute little jars that are just too cute to recycle, you make little votives out of them.   The votives aren't quite as fancy (or cute) as the ones Sandi brought me from Bordeaux with the delicate French wire and cut glass...but they add a nice little glow under the trees at night.  I think I'll decorate some of them too. Yeah, that's it!  instead of completing the mounting necessary projects, I'll come up with one more non-urgent, unnecessary project.   Good idea!  2010...the year of change!

just wondering...

how it is that i can be so unmotivated to do anything all day long except the things i absolutely have to do (hair appointment, vet appointment, making meals for the week) and then when night falls, i suddenly feel a burst of energy to do all the little things i didn't feel like doing all day long???