summer in REVIEW

We TRAVELED;

we met some real CHARACTERS;

saw new PLACES;

Ate very WELL;

saw some great ENTERTAINMENT;

made some new FRIENDS;

and had an all around GREAT TIME.

New Art

Just in: New work from local artist (ink on paper)

The City

The photo does it no justice; it's fabulous!

On Vacation

Do you have a place in your memory, a place exemplifying the best of your childhood summers? So that when you think of that place, you see it in sepia or technicolor, depending on the memory or your mood? A place so entrenched as a part of you that a warm salty breeze or rain pounding on the roof or crickets in the cool night conjure a brief flash of the place?





We've been spending time at that place of mine--which isn't my place in real life, it's my parents' place, and my grandparents' before that; where my mother grew up with her sister and brother and best friend, and I grew up with my sisters and cousins, and now my kids and my nieces and cousins are doing the same. Where the grownups hang out on the porch long after dark and the usual bedtime hours, chatting and laughing; and the kids hang out in bed laughing and scheming. Where the neighbors are the same families as four generations ago, and the few new families are a good source of gossip and a good object of spying (depending on your age, of course.)



Here's where the kids get a real taste of freedom and self-responsibility. It's where you'll see your first shooting star, and where the milky way looks like a milky way. This is where you're brave enough to put your feet down even though that kid just pulled up a gigantic pinchy crab, and where you're brave enough to swim over to a jelly fish and capture it in a bucket. It's where you get your swim endurance and finally swim to the buoy; and where you get your land endurance and make it to the mile store for breakfast or candy or ice cream, depending on the time of day. On your way there, you'll screech when you see the bridge, and on the way home, you'll cry with your heart broken.



I love this place, with the rambling old cottage and the log at the end of the street at the beach, and that's where I've been spending my free time.





No blogging, nothing all that modern. So I'm back. I guess I'm back.


But there's still some summer left. I imagine that there always will be.

My New Favorite Tree

Years ago, when I was a student, during the most stressful (although happy) time in my life, I lived next door to a little house that had a beautiful tree in the front yard. Most of the year it just looked like any old tree, but in the spring, it burst into crazy fluffy pink blossoms.

Several years after I moved away, my husband was in the area again, and actually took a cutting of the tree (no, he did not ask the occupants of the house, but when I lived there it was a crowd of rugby players from new zealand, so we thought it probably wouldn't have been worth it.) But I couldn't get the cutting to root, so I gave up.

Last year I moved to my new house, and lo and behold, I have a new favorite tree! I don't know if it's the same type as my old favorite, but I love it. I think it's a cherry.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe I can't call this my favorite tree; first of all, one of my children is calling it their own; but I myself also have a penchant for big old maples (with really fat trunks) standing in lawns near the road; they remind me of my grandparents' house; scrub pines, possibly the ugliest of all trees, remind me of childhood summers down the Cape; and then there's the Catalpa tree. I love those; the beans are so gross. Weeping willows: remind me of Boston in spring. So I am a tree hugger. Hmm. But this is my prettiest tree.

PS: I don't love all trees; I'm turned off to cedars ever since I had a cedar with a cedar apple rust: a giant orange fungus ball hanging from its branches. Yucko. Actually, kind of cool, once you figured out it wasn't aliens. (You can see one like it here.)

PPS: Wow, two blog days in a row!

PPPS: What's your favorite tree?

Crudaiola

This is one of my favorites. It's a recipe I found in Bon Apetit several years ago, and I don't remember any more details than that. It's really summery and fresh and EASY. The ingredients and preparation are simple and the outcome is, well, perfect.

Taglierini with Fresh Tomato and Basil Sauce

(Crudaiola=Raw, or maybe raw sauce, or raw ingredients...

I don't know, I don't speak Italian.)

Ingredients:

1.75 lb plum tomatoes, chopped

1 C basil, coarsely chopped

0.5 C pine nuts, toasted

0.5 C olive oil

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped (I use 3, and put them through the garlic press)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 lb taglierini or linguini (I often use linguini fini)

0.5 C grated parmesan

Combine the first seven ingredients in a large bowl. Toss to blend. Cover and refrigerate at least thirty minutes, up to three hours.

Cook pasta. Drain, reserving some of the pasta cooking water. Return the pasta to the pot.

Add your tomato-basil sauce to the pasta in the pot.

Toss the sauce and pasta over medium-high heat until heated through, and the sauce coats the pasta thickly, adding enough reserved pasta cooking water (by half-cupfuls) to moisten, about four minutes.

Add 0.5 C parmesan cheese and toss to blend.

Season with salt and pepper.

Prep time: pretty quick. Serves: about six.

No pictures of the finished project--off to an annoying quarterly meeting right after dinner and budgeted my time poorly!

Bottoms Up

Oh yes. I outdid myself this time. Let's let the lead-in be that I basically replicated one of my favorite funny memories, except in the original, the star was a relatively famous but not very likeable Spanish professor, and in the remake, I'm in the lead role. Now, I like to think I've reached an age at which I generally no longer find humor in other people's embarrassment. Generally. Not that this actually has anything to do with the remake, but it plays into the original. Mostly nowadays I am a helpful person, with the occasional "excuse me sir, you dropped your credit card," or "sure, I'll direct you to the place you're trying to find," or "of course, let me help you finish up so you can get home a little earlier"...but I have to say, I laughed all day at the remake.

Anyway, the original is just a short story: ditzy but well-published Spanish prof arrives to class late after taking the subway in the rain. Now, she's been mean to the non-native speakers all semester, belittling American culture in off-handed comments to the class all along. (Can you tell this is me trying to justify something?)

Today she comes in and starts writing on the board without taking off her trench coat because she's late; so she starts writing and talking about some literary topic--it was actually a really interesting class, she's famous for a reason, I guess. She's speaking in Spanish, so I'm concentrating pretty hard...she takes off the trench coat and throws it over a chair and keeps writing and talking. About halfway through the class, I look up from my notes and I realize that the entire back of her skirt is tucked into the waistband of her nylons. Those icky tan control-top-type nylons. And for the rest of the period, I can't even look up, I'm trying so hard not to laugh; except I do look up, and she is feeling a draft or a breeze or something on the back of her....well, her backside, and waving her hand around back there, but not quite figuring out where the breeze is coming from; and occasionally she must feel like her skirt is a bit askew and she straightens it out a bit (but doesn't do any untucking,) and I'm trying to sneak sidelong glances at the other girls (no boys in this class, if there were, I might have acted more...helpfully) to see if they are reacting--and they all have their heads down too!
Finally I just get up and leave the little classroom early, because I really am on the verge of hysteria and I have to get out of there because I'm starting to shake and soon she's going to ask me if I'm okay in Spanish and then I'll have to answer her with tears rolling down my face and my voice wobbling, and then when she figures out that her bum was hanging out of her skirt all period, she'll know I knew, and kaplooey, failure of Spanish Literature 205 or whatever it was.

Well, in today's remake, I head back from lunch after a quick stop in the ladies' room; I did notice that my skirt seemed quite puffy posteriorly, and I checked but it didn't seem out of place (I am sensitive to the skirt stuff because of the above story) so I went about my business, literally--and I'm sure I passed some co-workers in the hall. But it wasn't until I was talking to a nice grandmotherly type (client, not colleague,) when she interupted me and said, "your skirt's all wrapped up, and I'm sure you don't want go around with your bum hanging out!" So I rapidly rearranged things, (I hadn't even felt a draft or a breeze!) laughed hysterically for about ten minutes (rather inappropriately, I must add) and then tried to get back to work. Every once in a while I would erupt in hysterical laughter, prompting odd looks and questions about what I was up to from colleagues--even now I can't write this without laughing. Man, it's a good thing this remake wasn't set in high school--can you imagine the fallout? Probably not that cool to be well-known but not popular.

And that's what I get for dressing up. Thank you, helpful grandmotherly lady! I think I'll wear pants tomorrow.

Sandwiched In

One of my favorite things to eat is a good sandwich. I think this may be something I inherited from my father, an excellent sandwich maker. He can turn out those kinds of sandwiches that are just loaded with good things and are presented with panache--you know, an olive on a toothpick, pickles on the side, chips, what have you. So I have a sandwich thing; never really liked hot lunch.

Today was a great sandwich day. It's cold and rainy and dark, and lunch, comprised of my latest favorite, was in the warm, bright kitchen.

This is my latest favorite:

cucumber, sliced thinly; tomato, sliced very thinly; maple brown sugar ham (yup, sliced thinly) and boursin cheese on lavash bread. Very important also is the beverage, which in this case (as usual,) is iced mocha. The cookies, well, they should be for desert, but I had four just like them for breakfast, so maybe I'll hold off. Maybe.