Potatoes in the Mist

So I'm reading this really fun book called All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Smith. I just wanted to make a little plug for it here. It's the true story of a woman (I think she's an English professor) who decides to go to different countries in Central and South America to read Jane Austen books with the locals and see how well they translate across cultures. In the first chapter, she notes, "Mrs. Bennet translates particularly well across cultures." It's filled with lively surprises - such as the Guatemalan man who asks her what she thinks about the position of women in Guatemala, and the night she goes out on the town in Antigua and decides she wants to eat something - German.

So I woke up in a bad mood because I didn't get enough sleep, and then two things happened that kind of tickled me. 1) E came in with a little green man on a yellow vehicle. It was very cool. D explained that it was from M___, which is my sister's name. But it turned out he meant M___, the homeless person. This homeless person really likes reciprocity; whenever D gives her money, she gives him a toy for E or a drawing (last time it was a bird with no body, but two feet). 2) D told me that he caught the mouse last night (sometimes we, um, get a mouse in our apartment) and brought it to the garden and set it free. Doesn't that sound like a fairy tale?

So my cooking/baking self has been reborn. In that spirit, I bought a bundt pan and a cherry wood bowl. (I used to have a bundt pan; I don't know what happened to it.) The bowl was lovely to the touch. In fact, I saw another woman caressing it. So I should wash it before I use it :) Anyway, I made these two recipes. They were both excellent. This was tofu with personality. And these were fabulous cookies. They were a little messy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So we threw E a little birthday party yesterday. (He'll also have dinner with the in-laws and see my family this weekend.) The party turned out really well. We had to postpone from Saturday to Sunday because of predicted rain. So we lost some people, but we gained some. And it was fun. I was sorry when it was over. These things are really stressful to plan, but fun in the actuality.