Musings

Before the heat came on, that is around 8:15am, I was removing grasses from around the peony and found these rosebuds! Later I found two blooms. These are small roses, less than two inches across and a slightly different pink from the peonies.

In the heat of the afternoon, we took a jaunt to Naubinway to King’s to get smoked whitefish for dinner. After we secured our purchase (and we could have had menominee or lake trout or I forget the other local fish), we meandered down to the dock…and found the Ida S., all buttoned up…for the season?…permanently?

Kinda hard to believe all these little towns along the Lake Michigan shore used to have many active fishing boats, shipping their catch toward Chicago and Detroit. Most of the fishermen were immigrants, Europeans who knew the fishing trade of the Atlantic or Mediterranean. Some Portuguese and Italian surnames still remain, for example.

Posted at 8:44 PM | Comments Off on Finds

Chives! And blooming! So…delicate. And once snipped, they are a great contribution to salads…veggie sides…chili…and so many more dishes.

Rhubarb! I transplanted these two autumns ago, and the collective wisdom of the internet indicated that I should wait two years before picking. It is time! And these are exceptionally fine stalks…time to pick a new batch…cautiously, so as not to over-harvest. [Restraint!]

In product-to-come news, these are “wild”flowers from a gift seed packet from the baby shower last month…day three since first observed germination…. Not edible, but beauty and aesthetics are also important…. [The sand grains look huge!]

Posted at 10:19 PM | Comments Off on Growth curves

I’m proud of how this clean-out-the-fridge dinner turned out. Frozen pizza (cheese with arugula from TJs, and some prosciutto), plus veggies instead of salad (onion, garlic, red pepper, and spinach, sautéed together). With a topper of extra parm and snipped fresh basil.

Posted at 9:02 PM | Comments Off on Good good good

Here’s a ham and cheese salad. It was what was in the fridge.

However, the ham is speck and the cheese is sharp cheddar, so I guess it’s a modern, tadah, fusion cuisine dish.

Posted at 8:33 PM | Comments Off on Salad composée

Tonight: bison burgers. His: with cheese. Mine: not.

Both of us: very happy (in the dining realm).

Posted at 7:19 PM | Comments Off on Bye-sohn

We went with a sheet-pan dinner to celebrate…with BBQ sauced tofu and assorted veggies. Tofu won over fish as fish is not from the earth (heh).

Posted at 7:30 PM | Comments Off on Earth Day

Came across this apparently life-sized elk statue posing street-side. I “say” apparently because I’ve never been this close to an elk before. Heavy overcast made for strange lighting.

This lighting, however: fabulous. It lasted not even two minutes….

Dear friends treated us to a tasty dinner, and yummy as it was, the conversation and camaraderie was even better. These ribs were roasted with a red-chili paste just before serving; never had anything quite like this. Show-stopping. The waitron said the recipe is on the restaurant website. I looked; it’s not—their secret…I understand.

Posted at 10:49 PM | Comments Off on Selected pretties

We headed toward mountains, not difficult to do. Note plenty of snow.

We crossed the Río Grande. Note plenty of water aka snow melt.

We stopped at an overlook to see the canyon of the Rito de los Frijoles, aka Bandelier National Monument,

The main community on the flats is Tyuonyi, extensively excavated between 1909 and 1912, including 242 rooms. I cringe at the thought of the data that was destroyed and discarded. These walls are reconstructions.

This is Long House, which extends along the base of this wall for quite some distance. In some places the rooms were three deep. The rows of holes were the sockets for roof beams, called visas.

If you look very closely on the slope above the model, you will see walkways, stairs, and ladders that reach the big cave, aka Alcove House, just to the right of center and far above the model’s left shoulder.

This view makes the “trail” look more vertiginous than it is. If you visit, remember that ladders are easier to go up than to descend, IMHO.

The view from Alcove House. I was so lucky to be there by myself for about five minutes.

Back on the return trail along the creek, note the good flow of water and the logjam. We counted at least five big logjams, and all new foot bridges across the creek. The rangers were too busy for me to ask when the storm was that brought down the many trees and washed them downstream.

On the way back, we stopped at the Tesuque Village Market, which is indeed a market, but also a restaurant and bakery. We indulged in their key lime pie…lovely, just the right tartness.

We returned to Santa Fé on the Old Spanish Trail, which is winding and scenic. I find these fences particularly picturesque.

Posted at 8:44 PM | 1 Comment »

I heard the breaking news from MSU right before I went to bed last night…made and makes me sad. Personally, during my MSU years, I spent very little time on that part of campus. I daresay that decades later, my spouse spent far more time in the Student Union than I ever did; he was using the internet. For work.

For our fancy ❤️-appropriate dessert, we comparison-tasted two mint-chocolate chip ice creams: Breyers and Tillamook. I enjoyed both. I thought the chocolate, the mint, and the ice cream…all were tastier in the Breyers. I would be happy consuming the Tillamook, however, if the Breyers wasn’t available. [I’ve had several other brands…typically not minty enough, and with wimpier chocolate.]

Posted at 7:28 PM | Comments Off on 💘 day

Prepped casserole ingredients: ready for assembly.

Final casserole, and side salad with dressing—not yet mixed. The former was a lasagne with squash slices instead of pasta. The latter was inspired by an old “Joy of Cooking” BBQ slaw recipe (her term) that has some lettuce and some cabbage, plus other raw veggies.

Yield: happy diners. Yay!

Posted at 8:56 PM | Comments Off on Still life moments