Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Sometimes it would be nice to have the kind of blog where your posts start out with phrases like "if you ever find yourself in the south of France, be certain to visit the chateau la durantie. . ." instead of "If you're buying crickets for your chickens, get them cheaper at the bait shop instead of the pet store. . ."
This weekend I learned a bag of crickets is a Happy Meal for chickens because Mr. Bromeliad's parents in South Carolina have three hens. Also that chickens can run seven miles an hour, which is the approximate speed at which they lunged for the cricket sack.
Chickens are way better than Chihuahuas. They also are, believe it or not, a bit hip and trendy. For more info on urban chickens, see Simplified Bee.
p.s. btw, the word "cricket" is French for little creaker. And you thought we had no class.
A couple of shots of the place we stayed for a few days upstate. The house was originally built in the 1700s, which to Americans is really really old. I obsessed over the wide plank wood floors, the old door hardware, the light through the wavy glass windows. A peaceful place and a restful week.
We visited some wineries along the North Fork of Long Island Saturday. Good cheap fun. Free music at many places, lovely places to walk and sit and extraordinary people watching. Half the sippers looked like they were probably some kind of style editor at Glamour magazine (You know, that casual chicness that looks exhausting to achieve.) or maybe possibly someone famous but you can't quite place who.
Dita at Handmade Nest asked for a photo of my husband and me having fun on the beach. Here is a photo of my husband having fun. There is no photo of me because I was not having fun. Somehow in the middle of a heat wave, we managed to find the only spot in the entire state of New York that was covered in a chilly mist.
Many Italian families in Long Island still make their own tomato sauce. Our friends do it once a year in a big blowout that starts at 7 a.m. and doesn't stop until the last tomato is boiled, mashed, salted, canned and boiled again (about 7 p.m.) by a labor force of Italians, Colombians, Ghanians, a midwesterner or two and occasional drop-ins by Paris Hilton wannabes.
All 40 bushels get a bath in the garage. Some tomatoes get sliced and jarred with basil. The majority go into four tubs in the back yard by the pool and are heated over propane burners until the skins burst. Then they are drained through old lace curtains and sent through two grinders where they are rendered into sauce. The skins go into the garden as compost.
This year no grocery store in town had enough jars, so we drank as much Coke and beer as we could so we could use the bottles.
In the end, we all get a reward for our day's work - a huge outdoor dinner featuring pasta with fresh sauce.
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