Potatoes in the Mist

Took this photo before the rain started. 

So I tried the recipe from Budget Bytes and liked it. So even if her prices are not accurate in NYC, I am now a fan and bookmarked a bunch of recipes from her website. I saw two movies in two days - The Good Dinosaur yesterday and the Peanuts movie today. Eric really enjoyed the Peanuts movie, laughing loudly and frequently. I like seeing kids' movies. And audience participation is not frowned upon. There is always some 3-year-old firing off commentary.

I was just browsing on Pinterest and found a recipe that looks good-- Creamy Tomato & Spinach Pasta . It turns out it was from the Budget Bytes site. So the woman listed the cost of every ingredient. And I don't know where she lives...but a 9-ounce bag of fresh spinach costs more than 50 cents in my city. Or my state. Or my country...

I finished Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving. I tried it years ago; I'm glad I gave it another shot. I originally tried it in hardcover, but the print was small and the lines were close together. I do find the Kindle much easier to read. Anyway, I thought it was vintage Irving, once I got past the logging bit at the beginning. I thought the whole book would be about logging, but it was just a small part. The rest of it was his usual Dickensian novel--elaborately plotted, lots of crazy characters, and little marvels. I really enjoyed it.

Found another good lentil salad. You cook the lentils for 20 minutes in boiling water with a bay leaf; then you drain them and mix them with some chopped red onion, carrot, celery and parsley. You make a dressing with some olive oil, cumin, thyme, salt and pepper. Very easy and good.

A friend of mine (from high school) got to brush an opossum's teeth at work :)

Found a healthy salad that still tastes good in one of my cookbooks. You cook a cup of lentils, then mix them with spinach, feta, diced cucumber, slivered red onion, and some homemade dressing (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper). It's really delicious and doesn't taste spartan/medicinal at all.

I tried a new dish tonight. I had thumbed past it before because it looked a little dull. But it was really delicious. You put cauliflower and red potatoes in one bowl, with some parsley, basil and garlic. In another bowl, you mix together some tomato paste, dry white wine, water and olive oil. Then you pour the sauce over the vegetables and bake for 45 minutes, covered, at 400. You take it out, add some breadcrumbs and Parmesan, and bake it for 15 minutes more (uncovered this time). It was really amazing. I'm not even sure why. Maybe the slow roasting brings the flavors out, or maybe the sauce really helped. Hard to say. At any rate, I'd make it again. I finished John Irving's Avenue of Mysteries, which was far out, definitely not a realistic novel, but enjoyable and thought-provoking. I couldn't think of anything else to read, so now I'm trying Last Night in Twisted River by the same author. It seems pretty good so far, in terms of the characters, though I'm...

I read this interesting article about how the brain is actually more active when you are doing nothing (or daydreaming) than it is when you are performing a task. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151106-why-we-should-stop-worrying-about-our-wandering-minds

Today I took Zoe to a birthday party in Brooklyn. I was reluctant to make the shlep, but the carousel (Jane's Carousel) was really nice. I looked up their birthday party prices...much lower than Manhattan. Also, there were pretty views of the river and the Brooklyn Bridge.

I finished Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. That was a complex book. I went to the Wikipedia entry for the novel when I was done, because the central story (of the 6 interlocking narratives) didn't make much sense to me. Wikipedia cleared it up nicely. Also, the author explained (in the Wikipedia entry) how there are "transmigrating souls" in the story, pointing out that each of the 6 main characters has a birthmark. I noticed they all had a birthmark, but I didn't jump from there to transmigrating souls. The New York Times compared the book to a challenging crossword puzzle.

I just finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I do like his books, but this one had such a bittersweet ending. It was interesting to learn more about Japan though.

Just finished this puzzle, mostly by myself. Zoe thought it was too hard. Somebody gave it to her for her birthday. It has 100 pieces.

I just rediscovered Expose (imagine an accent mark over the second e, because I don't know how to make one on Blogger). In sixth grade, I used to roller skate to their songs at the Roller Palace in Beverly, Massachusetts. I still like their music. I guess people don't change that much.

I just took a bike ride. It was great to be able to ride outside in November. In shorts and a T-shirt, no less. Some guy was wearing a fleece vest over his T-shirt, which I've never understood. If you need a heavy vest, you probably need long sleeves.

On Twitter today, I saw the cutest image of a rabbit playing the trumpet. It was from the margin of a medieval manuscript. Blogger wouldn't let me upload it, but I found a similar picture online. I love these illuminated manuscripts. So cute and whimsical. They make me think of monks, huddled over the manuscripts, drawing carefully.