I Don’t Want to Go Out, I Want to Stay in. Get things Done.

The last of the holiday fireworks have exploded leaving the neighbourhood peaceful again in the evenings. Omaha is experiencing a record stretch of heat and humidity that’s bad enough to keep tomato plants from setting fruit. I don’t ever remember that happening. In a normal, non-pandemic summer I would feel trapped at home with the extreme weather,  but in our current reality I’d hardly noticed. Most of my walks are at dusk. 

Some plants clearly like the heat. Tropical ones anyway.

Cardoon staus is excellent. 

Lemon cucumbers and sweet potatoes are doing great as well. We had a bit of a Japanese beetle infestation, but I plucked them out by hand with a torch in the dark. They were small, so hopefully that was just a recent hatching,  and it is now under control. They demolish leaves, but don’t do too much damage to the plants otherwise. I suppose pestilence just goes hand in hand with plague. Perhaps the new comet being seen in the sky will turn out to bean  asteroid racing to earth. We’d probably admit we deserved it, if we were being honest. 

Trips to the grocer are very much a matter of buying what’s available rather than what I’d prefer. This is celerac/ celery root/ knob celery. It wouldn’t be my first choice of root vegetables, but we were happy to have it. 

I prepared it by tossing the peeled and cut root in lemon juice to keep it from browning. After 30 minutes I boiled it in salted water for another 10. Rinsed  in cold water to stop the cooking,  it then dries on a towel. I heated some olive oil in a frying pan and before frying tossed the celery root in flour. Fried a few minutes until golden and served with a tomato, caper, and olive sauce it made a

Lovely accompaniment for a fish dinner. 

Smaller celery root can be shaved thinly and used in salads. Anyway, I’m not going to limit myself to whatever is on my monthly list as there’s a good chance of it being unavailable. 

I’ve had no such difficulties finding chicken from a small local producer. 

I don’t let my inexperience with poultry ( I’ve been vegetarian since the early 80s) stop me ftom cooking for the meat eaters in the family. My chicken recipe is this:

Let chicken warm at room temperature 30 minutes before cooking. Salt, pepper, tarragon, thyme, and rosemary if you like it. Rub the chicken with olive oil, season and then shove two cut lemons inside. This solves the need to truss and also flavours it. For a 5 lb. chicken, give it about an hour. That’s it. I don’t bother basting. This will give it crisp skin without drying it out. 

I’ve also been putting the fresh basil to good use! This was a simple sauce made with fresh tomatoes and onion. 

In addition to the cherry vinegar I am making, this is a jar of nasturtium vinegar. I’m rather excited for it.  Sometimes all a sautéed vegetable needs is a splash of vinegar to season it. I like this sort of thing on greens, carrots, etc. 

Clothes this week have been random. I haven’t bothered planning outfits and have taken an improvisational approach. This dress almost certainly began life as a bedsheet. 

I was wearing this blouse the day I found out I was pregnant. Obviously it is sentimental to me. The skirt was thrifted ages ago. 

I bought this mask from SewingbySelena on etsy.  It is beautifully made. 

I’m still not seeing very much mask wearing in Omaha, and am terribly disappointed. I was especially upset by the schmuck standing behind me in Walgreens screaming (unmasked) into his phone about how he doesn’t want to be “cooped up at home with a screaming baby”🙄. The cashier pointed at him and scolded, “You! Six feet!”, but he continued spewing into the phone. I reckon thst baby doesn’t want to be with him either.  People are such assholes.

This dress is so sheer it can’t be worn without a slip, but is so lightweight it still feels like wearing almost nothing. I’ve owned it close to 40 years 

and never tire of it.

And that’s about it for the moment. I continue to plod along with the novel, cook, clean, and do the shopping once every few weeks. We still haven’t heard much guidance from the schools about autumn, and will probably have to be flexible day to day. Deadly Dan the future exterminator took out a wasp nest for me, so his summer is now complete 😂. He’s careful

, I promise. 

If only he could do something about the Japanese Beetles.