Random Thoughts

We're up in the triple digits again; too hot to do much of anything but keep the plants and animals watered.  I literally watered Bessie Anne last evening.  She was following me around as I tended the plants on the deck, flopping down and panting with the heat.  Knowing just how she felt, I hosed her down (thinking that if I didn't have to go down to the barn soon, I'd turn the hose on myself!).  Talk about rejuvenation...she raced about like a puppy, so obviously happy to be cooler.  It is the little things that count.

I miss having people to cook for, hot or not.  I realized yesterday that almost everything I've DVRd on the new receiver is a cooking show, and Julia Child's Kitchen sits right by my chair (I read cookbooks like novels).  I have an entire bookcase devoted solely to cookbooks and folders of clipped recipes.  Whenever anyone says they're coming to visit, dust can lay thick on the furniture while I plan menus.  I love the language of cooking.  Sauce Bearnaise sounds so much more elegant than white sauce.  Fricassee is just fun to say.  When I married at age eighteen, I quite literally couldn't boil water.  (I was also appalled to discover that toilets are not self-cleaning.)  In a very short time I had a family of six with big appetites to feed and it behooved me to learn to cook pretty darned fast.  My utensils from those days are huge; it takes a big pot to cook ten pounds of potatoes.  It was hard to learn to cook for two when the Kids left home, and now one mashed potato is enough for two meals.  I miss having people to cook for.  (For whom to cook...forgive the dangling participle.)