Week 44

Neighborhood walk

Sunday morning, 8 a.m. MDT

I crashed the book club. Dear friends for the last 20+ years!

Don Draper old-fashioned donut from Guru

Wednesday morning, 7 a.m. PDT

Snuggles, long overdue

Neighborhood carpet

Spent

Tis the season for seasonal inflatables

It was a beautiful and bittersweet week. I relished my time in Boise with the sunshine, family time and a chance to get together with old friends. It was hard to leave. We also lost a furry family member a few years too soon on Wednesday. I'm glad I got to see her one last time while there. It was wonderful to come back home and feel missed, with things taken care of. The weather in Spokane gave us sun and rain and cinematic sunsets. I'm getting that hibernation feeling as the days are darker and colder. We ran out of candy on Halloween by 6:45 and I'm noting this here for myself next year to remember to get more candy or to hand out fewer than 2 pieces at a time...

Reading

I am still taking my sweet time reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I'm catching up on magazines for my bedtime reading - great mindless stuff. Everything is about Thanksgiving menus and low stress levels.

Recipes

I made my old favorite meatballs in tomato-chipotle sauce for my folks and it lasted two meals. It's a great recipe for special diets (gluten-free, dairy-free) and so easy to make.

Joel welcomed me home with the real-deal pasta bolognese. The next night he turned it into risotto. We've been feasting on this stuff for days.

On Saturday night we made a quick beef and vegetable soup from Cook's Illustrated with homemade rye bread.

Watching

My mom and I watched The Color Purple one afternoon and it was almost as good as the book.

House of Cards is required viewing right now but I'm not hooked yet after the first two episodes. But it's nice to have so much Diane Lane in our lives right now between HoC and the Romanoffs.

It was also good to see Robert Redford in The Old Man and the Gun. That smile still charms my socks off.

Making

I am making socks because it was the best thing to travel with. I am already three-quarters of the way done with the set I started in Boise.

Listening

I listened to a couple episodes of Milk Street Radio this week and must admit it was good to hear Christopher Kimball talk about food again. I have been ambivalent about him lately, but I can't deny the fact that he taught me a lot of what I know about cooking from his Cook's Illustrated tenure, and I still trust him. With Milk Street, I was glad he never used his tired old Test Kitchen phrases, like, "And there you have it, the best reinvented/updated/quick recipe for ____" nor did he seem skeptical with his cohosts or guests, as he often was when his test kitchen cooks introduced a new technique. As you can tell, I think too much about this stuff.

Playing

We tried out a new game called "Low Down" on Saturday and kinda got into it. It's from the makers of Uno, and it's part memory game, part strategy. We're still testing out which strategies work best but it seems like they all have their advantages. We've only played with two people, but you can play with up to six. It was worth the five bucks (I found it at Uncle's Games).