Yikes. Nothing worse than waking up and realizing "here it comes", knowing the next 5-7 days will be miseable while it goes its course. And sometimes longer will secondary issues. Nice to be on the mend. Usually early Spring here can be miserable with cool temps in the 40-50ºF rainy and damp. Freezing snowy weather is dry and not so bad. I was planning to use a chowder base, SummerTonic, a fish corn chowder-ish. Did a 180 and made something up making a fish stock with one of the smaller heads and a collar. (butter, white wine, leek, celery, shallot) Fish stock is a quick 30-45min. Broth was epic with the miso-ginger-lemon-wakame-hijiki Tonic. Poached two of the larger collars in the broth 8-10 min and into our bowls under the noodles. (collars are full of tender meat) Shared at the table between us... Larger head and two collars food savered for the freezer. A pint of cubed fish, (tuna, salmon, halibut) and two collars. Future chowders. Seasoned glass noodle was an excellent choice.

Oh man, I'm behind again. I really love John's yogurt bottle, though, LOL. I've been super busy here, mostly with gardening. I've made my way through a bushel of poblano peppers, all of a sudden they were happy. I took a half bushel to the food pantry, gave a 5 gallon bucket to the neighbor and then began roasting/peeling/freezing for future chilies rellenos. Also got a bushel of mixed Anaheim and Pasilla and dried about half of those, then put a tray of chopped red habaneros in the freezer for future Habanero Gold Jelly. I've canned tomato sauce and salsa and catsup and Sharon's chile sauce and I'm officially over tomatoes, even though I still have this in the backyard. Again, no takers so they will go to the food pantry. So many people here have their own gardens and fruit trees and by the end of the summer everyone has garden burnout, I guess. I've also been wading my way through the peaches, Elery and I picked 3 bushels before we both gave up and said the rest could fall on the ground. I tried hard to give them away, peaches are $60 a bushel here, but they are clingstones and no one wants to mess with them, so no takers. I froze 18 quarts, made some peach butter and peach cobbler and peach crumble bars and I'm almost done with them. In the meantime, I have actually been cooking. I made black bean sheet pan tacos last night along with queso fundido: Tonight it was country style pork ribs with roasted golden beets and kale from the garden. The Princess was home and came for breakfast and she wanted crepes with cream cheese filling and blueberry topping, and it was so. She is the Princess after all. I made burgers with our homegrown beef and roasted potatoes with fingerlings from the garden as well as a salad with everything I could find that was still crunchy in the fridge: Chicken gyros which were just OK: A chilies relleno casserole which I wasn't optimistic about but it turned out to be really good: Bratwurst with potatoes from the garden, homemade sauerkraut and some cheese bread from a small local bakery: I made apple sauce and apple butter with some MacIntosh apples I got from a neighbor in exchange for some of my Red Delicious. They were very dark red and even were red in the center and they made awesome sauce and apple butter. I've never seen Macs go red inside, though. And, since we got our first frost a couple of days ago, I also had a bucket of sweet peppers to use, we picked them all before they froze. I dehydrated two quarts of them and put 24 in the freezer for future stuffed peppers: My next project? Cutting an 18 pound cushaw into bakable pieces, then packaging the puree for pies. They have become a favorite with several family members, and I only planted one plant. I got 3 squash, one was chewed by something, we got this one and one more about half this size. I'm sure I won't need any more, that should be about 20 pies, LOL. The garden is winding down, I still have to deal with the kale and have 3 tubs of leeks in the garage that need to be dehydrated. It's cooling off and although we are officially in drought conditions it seems better than when it was 90F for far too many days. I'll be planting garlic in the next couple of weeks, a sure sign of fall. Annie

Oh mercy, I'm behind again. I had a couple of "set backs", but I think I"m good to go now. My family will have their Christmas dinner on Saturday, so I'm in the middle of planning and cooking. John, kittens are so cute when they're sleeping. :-) I've never seen a crab heart either, that's....interesting. Here we've been eating and I'm cooking. This was baked salmon with roasted potatoes and a pea and peanut salad. I made a surprisingly good tomato basil soup with white beans: And enchilada casserole with salad on the side: And some of Diane/craftyrn's cuccidati. I know, not really heart healthy, but Elery loves it: Saturday's meal is scheduled to be glazed ham, stuffed and rolled turkey breast, green beans, au gratin potatoes, homemade rolls, a potato dressing that I"ve never tried before, some sausage and cheese stuffed "shotgun shells" which is a manicotto stuffed and wrapped with bacon, then smoked, a Godiva chocolate cheesecake, lemon meringue bars, snickerdoodle apple cobbler and the usual plate of cookies and fudge, with some Chex Mix and firecrackers on the side. I'll try to remember to take pictures... Annie

It was my birthday on Thursday, and DD asked what I wanted for my birthday dinner. Lamb radiatore, I said. This is a dish that I ordered all the time at our favorite local Italian eatery, until they cruelly discontinued it, never to reappear again. This keeps happening to me. Three years ago our local brewery dropped their “Luscious Lupilin” beer, that I’ve been drinking for a decade, and have refused to restore it, no matter how much I whine and wheedle. My radiatore has gone the same sad way. This is hard. I’m old, and don’t like change. DD questioned me about the dish. We decided to use half lamb, half pork, and to use ground meat rather than hand chopping. Plenty of umami from anchovies and suchlike, not too much tomato, long slow cooking, and radiatore pasta bought from that same eatery’s little market. It was almost the same as my long lamented dish, and the next day, a bit of heavy cream into the leftovers closed the gap. Served with a radicchio salad, carmelized leeks, olives, a cheese platter, and creme bruleé. Another birthday. Sigh. But I’m creeping closer to Medicare eligibility, and that’s good, because what is happening to the ACA is making that coverage expensive indeed. SWMBO got on Medicare last year, and she enjoys taunting me about it :-(