Friday Roundup #38
There are sunflowers in a mason jar on my kitchen counter, and I’ve walked past them probably forty times and gotten a small lift every single one. Big yellow petals, centers so dark they read almost black, the kind of flower that doesn’t require anything of you. That’s the whole story. There’s no lesson attached.
This one’s running on a Saturday, which y’all knew was coming. Yesterday belonged to something else: twenty-five years, and the room where I finally put the camera down. If you read it, thank you for sitting with it. If you didn’t, it’ll keep. Today we’re back to the ordinary Saturday-morning business of a food blog, which after a week like that one is its own kind of comfort.
- Coming on the blog: Tomorrow’s a kitchen disaster, and it’s Grandparents Day, which is either terrible timing or perfect timing depending on how you feel about my carrot cake. I knew it was wrong. I photographed it anyway. Tuesday’s the taco meat that hides a whole vegetable in it, and Tuesday is also when Hispanic Heritage Month starts, running through October 15. Thursday’s vacuum sealing, a post about which I have unreasonable feelings. Then Friday we’re back on schedule with a regular roundup in its regular Friday slot, like civilized people.
- This past week: Hatch roasting went up Tuesday, twenty-five pounds at a time, with the queso recipe attached, because you’re going to end up with chiles and you’re going to need a plan.
- Friday afternoon: Half the office left early. There was a storm coming, the kind you can feel in the parking lot before you can see it, and then the thunder got close enough that the building was shaking with it. Nobody made an announcement. People just started picking up their bags. I don’t think there’s a policy for everybody leaving because the sky looks like that, but there was a consensus, and I was part of it, and I was in my car before the first band came through.
- Garden Update: The collards are still not in the ground. I told y’all in #37 that the stiltgrass ate the weekend, and this week the seeds stayed exactly where they were, which is my desk. They’ll still make it if they go in late, which is one of the few genuine mercies of gardening down here. The stiltgrass, meanwhile, is doing precisely what I said it would do, which is seed.
- A small nod: Rosh Hashanah began at sundown last night and runs through tomorrow night. It isn’t my holiday, but it’s Ari’s, and after this particular Friday there’s something I like about a new year starting the very next evening. There’s a gluten-free honey cake in my kitchen for them right now, and if it comes out the way I want it to, y’all get the recipe as a bonus post. If it doesn’t, we will never speak of it again. Shana tova to everybody keeping it.
- What I’m Reading: I set down The Ferryman’s Daughter, which is no reflection on the book, because the new Eve Dallas dropped Tuesday and I have no self-control whatsoever. Fury in Death by J.D. Robb [Bookshop.org* | Kindle] I’m three chapters in and the body has only just turned up, so I can’t tell y’all whether it’s a good one yet. Sixty-three books into a series and I still clear the evening when a new one lands.
- What I’m Watching: We finally saw the new Spider-Man [IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes], five weeks after everybody else, exactly as promised. It’s really good. I was braced for the tired next-one-in-the-series drag and it never showed up. The thing actually pulled together, and it tied up pieces I had stopped expecting anybody to tie up. The ending isn’t all happy and it isn’t all sad, which is the right call and more than I expected.
- What I’m Eating: Chicken ramen, hamburgers, and leftovers. That’s the honest list. Some weeks the kitchen is the project and some weeks it’s just the room where dinner happens, and this was the second kind.
What are y’all reading/watching/cooking/dealing with this week? Let me know in the comments.
P.S. The sunflowers came in a bunch and I’ve already lost two of them to the vase-bottom mystery, where a stem just gives up overnight. The rest are on notice.
P.P.S. Those damn collards need to go in the ground.
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Friday Roundup