100 words: The one I love

It’s all too easy to lose sight of important things in the day-to-day hustle and bustle. The little kindnesses that he does, without expectation of gratitude. The gentle warm hand on my side as we spoon asleep. I smile at his consideration for the sunflowers, such that no fire can be lit in the firepit they’ve grown around. The care he takes of cats and household. Exasperated acceptance of a pet name, originally bestowed upon the cats, which somehow also labeled him. His willingness to try any culinary experiment. His love suffuses my life and I am enriched by him.

100 words: Patience

The tomatoes have started to ripen and we had the first tomato-basil-mozzarella salad of the summer. Later, we cooked down about 20 tomatoes and garlic over 4 hours to reduce into a sauce, which I was so much looking forward to having on Sunday night. However, that was not to be, as our friend and his son came over to visit. And then, my husband reminded me we have a wine tasting dinner at Eros on Monday night… so Tuesday. Growing tomatoes this summer has been one long experience in waiting; and now the weather has started to turn cool…

100 words: Warmth

There is a welcome break in the heat and humidity of summer today, and maybe for a couple days. This change is reflected in the cats’ behavior. When it is too warm they want nothing to do with us. When it becomes the slightest bit cooler, they become like little heat seeking missiles and zero in on their targets. Laps are preferred, but also the more inconvenient locations: between and on legs in bed, trapping the sleeping humans in one posture for hours on end. Sure, certain morning aches are due to age but some definitely have a feline origin.

100 words: Sniff

The summer smells are here. Long ago gone are the aromas of lilacs. Fresh mowed grass now dominates. I love tomatoes but not the alkaloid smell of the plants. Horse manure in all its forms, wet, dried, composted. The particular moist and organic odor of a freshwater beach. Greasy-feeling sunscreen, lightly scented. The bug repellent has, itself, a repellent reek. Windows open all the time so the musty house smells are dissipated. Hot plastic smell of a closed-up auto in the sun. And the season’s fresh abundance: strawberries, zucchini, oysters, cherries, corn, and herbs- oh! Basil, parsley, chives, and more.

100 words: Education

There are two new tumbling grizzled kittens in the house. He has a three-quarters length tail; she, a small little nubbin. Without the tail’s disparity they can be hard to tell apart. They play very hard and explore the house fearlessly. They also nap hard; together; alone; and with their adopted “mother,” an older three-legged orange male. This unrelated, no resemblance tabby offers instruction on the fine points of licking oneself clean, reinforced by a pinioning paw, while emitting a diesel-engine quality purr. These good habits are so-so-necessary to learn; but not some of his more adult, post-adolescent bad habits.

100 words: Dreams

In the early morning, when the sky lightens in the east bedroom window, is when I find I have the most intense dreams. There may be wild adventures; there can be prosaic going-ons. Interestingly enough I find most these dreams take place inside a building, usually a house. Sometimes the house is one I’ve been in before, typically morphed out of recognition. Sometimes it’s a new place full of dark corners and clanking hulking machinery. Is the outside too strange, too uncommon to make its way into my dreams except in nightmares where I am plunging from a collapsing bridge?

a commitment to write more....

I would like to contribute more to this blog than I have been. In an effort to impose discipline, and gain the habit, I’m borrowing a meme from another blog http://mrlondonstreet.blogspot.com/. So, for at least a little while, I shall try to write 100 word entries. I hope to do two or more per week. Please enjoy!

Hot hot summer is here

It's July, and it's already 90+ degrees!!! This is not typical of Rochester... On the bright side, the tomatoes love it. Thanks to the sprinkler system my husband installed they should just grow and grow in the sunshine.

We went to a movie last night, Micmacs. Very funny movie, in French with subtitles. Lots of Rube Goldbergian devices and improbable coincidences. One disappointment: we've been using the Rosetta Stone for French for three months. Not always that faithfully. It shows in our total incomprehension of the movie's dialogue!

The kittens are growing so fast! Little Ada was only 2.5 pounds at her last checkup in June; now she's 3 lbs 12 oz. She went to the vet on Saturday for a recheck due to walking on her wrist. Hopefully she'll grow out of it, but if I don't see improvement I may take her to an orthopedist. Both Ada and Kelvin have adopted Pudly as mother; Pumpkin and Tempe mostly ignore them; and Kelvin seems to want to give Copy a hard time.

Newest members of the feline family

Please welcome Ada and Kelvin, 11 week old pixie bob kittens

An infrequent blogger returns to the blog

We made a kind of Passover dinner Sunday night. Veal meatballs with matzo meal, green olives, egg, parsley and garlic; served with perfectly diced (by me of course!) braised parsnips and turnips picked up from the Public market on Saturday. Shopping at 7:30 am when the weather is 20 degrees was unexpectedly fun.

We have a cooking class tonight at the New York Wine and Culinary Center. It is based on maple, so includes salmon, pork, chicken, brussel sprouts, parsnips and so forth. This is more for my husband than me. In exchange, he has agreed to go with me to a class in two weeks on bivalves, which I love. Finally, I get to learn how to chuck oysters!

Lecture last night at RIT was fascinating. Hiroshi Ishii was the lecturer for "The Art of Tangible Bits." The premise was that there are more ways of interacting and getting information from the environment than mouse/keyboard/display, so why be constrained? There are the science fictiony elements such as the screen displays seen in "Minority Reports." Examples shown include a glow lamp (ambientdevices.com) that changes color based on the stock market; a bottle, placed on a glass table, that when uncorked plays bird song if the weather is nice; a sand table or clay table that is continuously mapped by a computer and has contour maps or other information overlaid on it as it is changed.

I have been picking up and reading and resting from reading "Songs of the Dying Earth," a tribute anthogy to Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth" series. I remember reading his book as a teenager and the stories entranced me. However, the effulgent language is best taken in small draughts and so it has taken me over 6 months to get almost to the end. Another book, Ricardo Pinto's "The Third God," I have been avoiding starting as it feels like such a commitment. I know once I get into it I will enjoy it as he is a visionary writer. It occurred to me to go with my husband to his family this easter weekend as a way of starting the book during the 12 hour total car ride. My husband made fun of me for that thought, declaring he would have taken pleasure at starting the book at home if he knew he was all alone.

We have new kittens arriving in May from Natureworks cattery in Gananoque, Ontario. They are Pixie Bob cats, mainly because I wanted cats that would be on the large size. We couldn't get, for example, Savannah cats, as the lower generation (larger) cats are not legal in NYS. These are likely our last kittens. We've loved all our cats over the years, large and small, but all non-pure-bred; in memory of our big boys Pascal and Tamarind, and girls, Teaka, I wanted big cuddlers. It should be interesting having kittens around! We were commenting the other day about kitten proofing the house and about how we have to train them to not get on the kitchen counter and not walk over keyboards. But then we came to the realization after opening the door for Pumpkin and Pudly for the upteenth time that they train us!

So, names for the cats are under consideration. Obviously they may change as we get to know the kittens and their personalities. Immediately, Ada came to mind for the girl, in honor of Lady Lovelace, the progenitor of computer programming. Grace is also under consideration, for Admiral Hopper, inventor of COBOL. Albert came to mind for the boy, in honor of Einstein. My husband suggested keeping with the theme of famous programmers but they generally have such boring names: George and John and Guido, for example. Von Neumann is on the table. Getting back to physicists, and staying away from names with sibilant consonants: Galileo, Kelvin, Henri, Nikola.

Baking preferences

There are few things in life more sublime than a nice warm freshly baked biscuit. Sad to say, though, the readily-available Bisquik mix is lumpy. The recipe from Joy of Cooking or similar cookbooks is another doughy, dry lump. My husband and I had a discussion which ended with him declaring he would make a biscuit! He used a puff pastry recipe, which exemplified his ideal of a buscuit: buttery, layered, crispy. And it was good, although I got on his wrong side by asserting it was a puff pastry not a biscuit recipe. So the next weekend I turned to one of our newest cookbooks, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman. I was not disappointed. It was a nice, chewy, layered biscuit, which exemplified my ideal.

It also made me realize the importance of testing recipes, and how much I appreciate cooks such as Michael Ruhlman, Alton Brown, and the guiding light behind Cook's Illustrated, Christopher Kimball. They take the time to throughly vet recipes, understand the science behind the techniques and ingredients used, and share it with the middling cook, such as myself. Also, as a scientist, I appreciate the scientific approach. I hear of people who eat out most nights of the week, or simply reheat prepared foods, and I shudder. Maybe I am too hard on myself, calling myself a "middling" cook, but even my mediocre (ok- outright failed) attempts usually taste better than the Olive Garden or frozen dinners. I know the kids in school have a lot to learn and would probably rebel at the thought of more classes in their curriculums. But would it kill them to take a semester or two of basic home cooking, accompanied perhaps by visits to restaurant kitchens of higher caliber? I probably would not have appreciated it at the time, too, myself, but that would've enhanced my life so much now. As well as other things that were self-taught such as balancing my check book, etc.

Reading is good

I have always been a voracious reader. Anything in reach will be read even if it is not interesting. Dining is normally multi-tasking with a book or newspaper. Preferred genres are science fiction, historical biographies (as in, dead more than 100 years), science non-fiction, single topic books (as in, Salt), Edith Wharton and suchlike. As someone who has a lot of books, many of which she has re-read, that take up two and a half rooms in her house, I have always harbored the fantasy that I could be a writer. However, as this blog bears witness, I write quite infrequently. So I will aim to write more often, and to branch out from the culinary delights that are oft my subjects.

So I will today relate my love for the feline members of the household. We are down to 4 (from a high of 10-12, depending on how you count). It feels empty sometimes, when we remember the crowd that we had once. We have been fortunate to share many years with our companions, with the majority passing away at advanced old ages. So who is left? A petite, q-tip fetching, long haired black and white girl; a three-legged all-orange tabby boy; a playful all-grey tabby boy; and the old orange tabby curmudgeon who came with the farm and now leads his retired life of leisure indoors. It feels sad to relate that setting out their meals does not anymore require wading through a sea of fur; yet the nightimes still finds us trapped in positions in bed where we do not wish to disturb our sleeping buddies.

Dining in Rochester

We went out for dinner last night at Eros' biweekly wine tasting dinner. Of note for me were the riesling for the first course, a delicious Bloom riesling from Germany. The second course was a pleasant surprise with a lobster/cornbread/strawberry salsa. The company at the approx. 40 person dinner was pleasant, we sat with an architect and his wife, who recently relocated from Texas. She could not get used to our regional pronounciations of "Chili," "Charlotte," "Lima," and "Avon." They live in the top floor of a local landmark, recently converted to loft apartments. I was talking with my co-worker about his travel plans. He mentions how nice it is to come home to the known comforts of Rochester. Even though the restaurants might be better elsewhere, even though the architecture is grander, the art institutions larger, what we have here is usually good enough and actually not bad at all.