Three dogs on the Asbury Park boardwalk, summer 2011

On My Blog

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Hannah wrote a post on garnishes in cooking, and it inspires me to consider a series of posts photographing beautiful bits of food: a bowl of parsley, a dish of grated carrots, a plate of purplish red beets. The photograph series hasn’t happened, yet, but if I write it here, maybe I will proceed.
• There is a review on Jewaicious of a book called Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter: “The primary character, Itsik Malpesh was born in Kishinev during the the Russian pogroms, to a well off family. The events of his birth, as told to him by his mother, are what has shaped his life, and shaped his perception on love. This novel is Itsik’s story, although it reads like a memoir that could be based on an actual person. “
• Batya has a preview for next week’s big event: Tu B’Shvat.
• I wrote a post on how one might use Pinterest for a small business. I have ideas for this blog (meaning my Here in HP blog) regarding Pinterest: maybe Pinterest and the Parsha or the much more general Pinterest and fine art. I posted my cardinal watercolor on Pinterest, as this week’s parsha B’Shelach, we are taught to feed the birds.

I saw two chickadees in my backyard last week. My, do these little birds jump about.

My daughter and I visited Donaldson Park on Sunday. There were many gulls hanging out by the pond; this one was swimming in the middle, apart from his buddies.

Near a slope of Donaldson Park many geese congregated.

This exposed tree trunk is on the edge of a brook on the border of Donaldson Park near the Meadows.

For more Nature Notes:

On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.

For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.

If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?

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In the above photo are the ducks with the colorful reflections around them (the image in the thumbnail is a cropped version).

In other nature news, my daughter taught me that the New Jersey state bird is a goldfinch and the New Jersey state flower is a violet.

For more Nature Notes:

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Just discovered one tiny technical problem with the NextGen Gallery – if I want to pin a photo (I just joined Pinterest), I have to put one directly into the post and not only use the gallery. So here’s one:

sporting detailed sneakers with bright pink laces in the woods

Next Week: LIGHT (Candle, Street, Business, Fireplace, Glitter, Sparkle,…)

And, yes, I did post these Twinkle Toes Skechers sneakers two weeks ago. Déjà vu. I have lots of candle photos from previous years – maybe I will do a Chanukah candle photo essay. We shall see.

red carnation blooms in a backyard

Update: I added one more photo of red carnations.

sporting detailed sneakers with bright pink laces in the woods

• Thank you to everyone who reads and/or comments on this blog. You are so appreciated!
• I have been enjoying working on a project for a client that is done with responsive web design. This means it will look good on your desktop, tablet or browser. This blog is responsive – if you move your browser to be small and then big again, you should see what I mean.
• I would love to post more creative works on this blog: for example, maybe I could do something interesting with those sneakers? A few months ago I started a project with roofs – I never got back to that one. Lots of starting and stopping. One could easily blame it on outside influences (work, family, laundry, the weather), but the creative process seems to be one that invites “stuckness.”
• If you are looking for a Thanksgiving recipe, you might want to check out the Stuffed Squash Workshop.
• I am thinking of stuffing my turkey tomorrow with rice, dried cranberries, celery and onion (maybe one egg to stick it together). Do you think it will work? Any suggestion?

Are you cooking this week? What is in the plans, cooking or otherwise?