Cold as Christmas...

November and December have been strange and rather unsettling months for me. Good and not-so-good currents have upset my otherwise pretty stable atmosphere.

My good high school friend, Barbara, visited and it was wonderful to once again be sixteen, talking about junior prom, red licorice (inside joke) and mutual friends and then just as quickly returning to age sixty-five and chatting about books read, marriage, and weight gain.  There was cataract surgery #1 and cataract surgery #2, both successful and after over two years of seeing everything in a blur, my vision is now just a hair short of 20/20 and I’ve assured David I still want to stay with him.

As usual, I’ve cooked, baked and read a lot, not necessarily in that order. Thinking back, as we’re nearing yearend, I’ve come up with my own list of 2014 Top Ten Books Read. For the most part it was a serious year. Drum roll.

Tehran Noir (an anthology of noir short stories in the Akashic Noir series)
Life Drawing by Robin Black
High As the Horses’ Bridles by Scott Cheshire
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (a visit to Masada this summer made this particularly poignant)
The Son by Jo Nesbo
The Enchanted by Rene Denfield
To the End of the Land by David Grossman
The Marco Effect (part of the intriguing Department Q series) by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (a surprise Top Ten for me)
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

You can read the reviews on Goodreads, if you so choose.

Next year I’ll keep track and draw up a list of my Top Ten recipes. That should be interesting.

My brother has found new love. My sister struggles with the loss of her love to Alzheimer’s. My love continues to grow for both David and family, although these last two months it’s been tested. I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about that quote I’ve always loved so much and one that’s been appearing a lot on Facebook (I found it first.) “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” It’s been my mantra for years, but recently it’s been put to a test. Sometimes we have to let go of our battles. They are old and if we hold onto them, they will only create new ones. And that is what has happened. It saddens me. It grieves me particularly when I see and know others who struggle with adversity not of their making, yet do not complain and continue to give love and laughter to others, asking nothing in return. They have learned the lesson of letting go.

Enough. I have a good life, a wonderful husband, who is both an old and new love; a son, recently engaged, and following his dream of a musical career; new FB friends to meet and a new year ahead of me. Stay tuned for a new cookbook review of Bitter: A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavor with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan. I’m looking forward to reading it, trying some recipes upon my return to Maryland, and then telling you about it here.  For an earlier peek:

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/224835/bitter-by-jennifer-mclagan

“May the lights of Hanukkah usher in a better world for all humankind.” – Author Unknown

Happy Chanukah!

“May peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through.” – Author Unknown

Merry Christmas!

I didn't dumpster dive for the spaghetti.

I think perhaps the second blog post is more difficult to write than the first. I’ve been cooking, baking and reading. I’ve made my first visit to New York City and seen “Wicked,” one of two Broadway plays I desire to see in my life. I did not buy a witch hat. A high school friend has visited and verified to David my rather sweet, if boring, existence during our small town high school years. Thanksgiving is this week and I’ll bake my first duck. But the subject of this blog post is Portland, OR. Or more specifically, Portlandia and the companion cookbook, The Portlandia Cook Book: Cook Like a Local by Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein with Jonathan Krisel.

Have you watched “Portlandia”? If you have any sense of or appreciation for the bizarre, you must. And then, once you’ve seen the show and if you cook, you need to buy the cookbook. It’s a great companion to the series and contains excellent recipes to boot. You’ll find all of your favorite friends here and be able to recreate some of their signature dishes. And if you’re at all like me, the entire time you’re cooking, you’ll be talking to them.

I first made the Tortilla Soup with Chicken. Peter and Nance, I did not get to meet the person who personally knew and raised the chicken(s) I used in the soup, but I did purchase them from Whole Foods, which I hope helps. The chicken’s name was not included on the label, but I will suggest this next time I visit . I’ve never eaten hominy before and I had to look up its definition, but once I found out it was basically corn in another state, and hailing from Iowa, I was convinced it was edible. We loved this soup. It was easy, filling, and soooo good.

Tonight we had Spaghetti and Meatballs, a la Peter and Nance, with whole-wheat spaghetti.  Again, easy, flavorful, and as with the tortilla soup with chicken, I had the satisfying feeling of having made a dinner that was authentic, good for us, and representative of all things good in the food city of Portland, OR. I even was able to use some of my own rosemary from my (sad to say, once again) dying rosemary plant.

The Brussels Sprouts with Bacon recipe is on my Thanksgiving menu and other recipes soon to be tried are Spicy Garlic Pickles, Butterflied Chicken Roasted Over Bread, Babysitter’s Mac and Cheese, Mango Lassi Smoothie, and Nance’s Lavender Shortbread Cookies. Of course, it will all be moot if I try Candace’s Khappu Jiu Jiu Jiu Jiu Tea first. Seriously, if you love the series, you’ll enjoy this cookbook. And if you don’t know about the series, watch it, get your hands on a copy of the book, and then cook. And don’t forget your bag!

This book was courtesy of Blogging for Books.

Drum Roll....The first post

Welcome to Bay Leaf and Rosemary, my new blog, or at least what I think will be my new blog. I've not done this before, but since I've always threatened, I decided to follow through with that threat.

The idea behind this blog is to give me something to do and perhaps get and give some enjoyment from the result. If you stay with me from the ground up, perhaps this will even get better and we'll both learn something, but there are no promises.

Since what I do best is read and sometimes what I do second best is produce things from my kitchen, that's mostly what you will find here, comments about what I'm currently reading and exhortations to pick up the book if I find it particularly good. I'll also share some of my cooking and baking adventures, with photos, of course, because who doesn't take pictures of what they cook, bake and eat these days. In fact, this weekend's results are shared below (not physically because if it can be done, I haven't reached that level of expertise yet in blogsphere).

You're looking at the edges of a very pretty plate from Anthropologie (there's a reading bird in the tree) and treats from Monica Holland's recent cookbook, Lick the Bowl Good. The chocolatey-looking squares are Chocolate Gingerbread and the caramel-like squares are pieces of Apple Cake with Cinnamon Brown Sugar Glaze. If you like some brownie with your gingerbread, the first resemble a chewy take on a spicy brownie or a chocolatey take on a chewy gingerbread. The apple cake is as moist as it looks in my rather poor photo so put your mind to work and imagine how this little square of goodness would feel in your mouth. There are a minimum of five more recipes in this book marked with little tabs waiting for a turn in my kitchen.

Reading Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests and Robert Goodard's Long Time Coming and one of them is beckoning now, perhaps the Waters' book since it's an e-library loan. Both are keeping my interest. I'll report back.

Laurel