Notes from Here and There

1. The Snowpocalypse was really awesome, and of course I dug out my Snow Penetrometer to take measurements every day to see how three feet of fresh snow changed over the week. This was a really wonderful and unique opportunity, but dayum. It generated a ton of data that has been quite painful to crunch.

2. Last night, I discovered, to my surprise and delight, that my winter squash from last fall's harvest was still good. So I made a pot of pasta e zucca. Yum!

Mmmmm punkin...


Linden supervises cooking, as always:


Autumn does, too, but not as closely:


Mmmmmm soup:


3. After reading Ian McEwan's beautiful Saturday, I ordered several poetry anthologies. I had never done so before because I figured that you could look up pretty much any poem you want on the internet. But I've come to realize that reading for pleasure doesn't work that way. You can't look up what to read for pleasure; you must browse for it. It's similar for me with recipes. Even though there is no reason on earth to buy cookbooks for specific recipes, since you can look up a recipe for anything you can imagine on the internet, I still like to have cookbooks around to browse and use for ideas and inspiration. I rarely, if ever, follow recipes when I cook, but when I browse recipes, they burn ideas into my neural pathways, and months or years later, I'll be cooking and think to myself, "Oh, I bet a dash of balsamic vinegar would be great in this." And it is. :)