This Superhero post is a birthday gift for all of us! I've been spending my time lately trusting myself and it does feel good.

We've been having fires in the fireplace every weekend since it hasn't been too cold yet. On a brisk night with kitties, it is the most wonderful thing in the world. Once it gets cold enough to have to use the heater, the central air sucks the smoke out of the fireplace into the house and that is not cozy. This conventional fireplace stuff is for the birds, I've definitely put fireplace insert or wood stove on the list for "must find a way" if we ever move. When?

On the weekend I made Alicia's Sourcream Apple Pie, the second apple pie I wanted to test for Thanksgiving. It was ridiculously well recieved and most of book club had seconds so it was a definite success. The other pie that I tried was also very good and probably my favorite of the two: Molly's tarte tatin. It was well liked by the people at work. The problem is that only two of us, me and Thad, actually tried both pies. I liked the tarte tatin better and Thad preferred the Sourcream version. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Quilting has been moving along swimmingly. This quilt is a secret since there is a chance it's recipient could read this. So that's the reason for the arty shot that doesn't show much. This one is turning out much better than I had anticipated and could be the better of two I'll be making before christmas, but we'll see.

Wonder of wonders, I have been knitting lately. I am mostly done with a scarf for Christmas in a three stitch basket pattern. As usual when I knit, my mind is filled with grand schemes of all that I will make. Texture seems to be what I like most about knitting since you don't get the instant color gratification that you get with sewing. I am very drawn to this beautiful technique for that reason. She explains that you drop down and knit stitches from a previous row into the current stitch, very cool.

Another installment in my salads for posterity series:

1/2 head of frilly lettuce, torn
1/2 fennel bulb sliced very thinly
1 clove of garlic minced
about 1/4 cup crumbled good quality feta
juice of 1/2 lemon
drizzle of good olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper

This was very good but in the future I would increase the fennel and use the whole bulb (minus the fronds stalks of course). I got the fennel + lemon combination from Orangette.

edited to add: We tried this again with more fennel and the addition of a couple of slices of good bacon fried up crisp, chopped up, and scattered over the top. The extra saltiness made an incredible difference and turned this into serious business. With bacon it's easily a fancy company kind of salad.

This is my first attempt at shrinky dinks since I've been allowed to use the oven without adult supervision. I'm the adult now! Anyway, you can see my skills have not improved in the years I've had to subconsciously mold my craft. I got two types of film to try out, black and clear. The black seemed like it would lend itself to interesting shapes since a drawn design would not stand out very much. My shapes are not interesting so far and the stars really want to curl up and not lay down even though I tried the tip they give you to put a piece of parchment on top while baking. I like the little rectangles with words on them the best so far. All of these are meant to be little earrings maybe with tiny crystals hanging from the bottom. They are a blatant rip off of the basic construction shrunkencathead uses, though nowhere near as nice. Today I will try to print words onto the clear sheet with an inkjet and see how that turns out.

Recipe for how to cure a bad day: here's how I do it

Step 1. Call your best friend and tell her everything. This may be all you need to do. However, if it's really bad or if she happens not to be home, proceed to step 2.

Step 2. Have a long hard cry, really get to heaving and snivelling. Do this by yourself or you could upset people. Please don't skip this step even though it's the most embarassing because it is critical to the success of the project.

Step 3. Take a nice hot shower and wash everything. Wash your hair, shave your legs, exfoliate anything that might need it. Use all of your best smelly items, the ones you save for a special occasion. This is a special occasion, see step 2.

Step 4. Put on snuggly pajamas and pour yourself a glass of champagne.

Step 5. Order your favorite take-out food and watch your favorite dvd. By this time you should be feeling much better, or at least I do. You can commence cuddling with whoever happens to be handy: husband, cat, whatever.

This year I am getting my Christmas shopping done early so I can really enjoy the act of giving. I love the slippers I ordered from the sweetloveablegoods etsy shop. They are to be a Christmas gift but they are so adorable and comfy (I slipped one on to make sure it would fit because it looked a little small but no worries there). They are sweet, and loveable, and good goods. I've been cruising the shop pretty regularly since to ogle the other items now that I know how nice they are. The flower pins are really pretty too and would like so nice with a ladylike wool coat and scarf.

There will be a Soulemama book! I have been reading this blog almost religiously lately as a tiny wish for what my family might be like when we have babies.

Halloween at home was a new experience and very delightful. I think I would like to make it an annual tradition. We got a handful of trick-or-treaters but none past 8 p.m. I made a delicious lentil soup (but skipped the pancetta because I didn't have any and it already included bacon) and we watched the first long episode of Firefly that Thad got for his birthday.

This is a little hot water bottle holder I made this weekend. It's very grandmaish but my feet get cold since I am not capable of producing heat with my body. And anyway, I'm pretty grandmaish to begin with so no use fighting it. I saw the knitted hot water bottle holders around and liked them but didn't see myself actually knitting so I did it this way with a little quilted cover, lined, and leftover snaptape from my duvet cover for the closure. Here's the back.

article about e.coli and industrial meat by Michael Pollan
Wendell Berry once wrote that when we took animals off farms and put them onto feedlots, we had, in effect, taken an old solution — the one where crops feed animals and animals’ waste feeds crops — and neatly divided it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm, and a pollution problem on the feedlot. Rather than return to that elegant solution, however, industrial agriculture came up with a technological fix for the first problem — chemical fertilizers on the farm. As yet, there is no good fix for the second problem, unless you count irradiation and Haccp plans and overcooking your burgers and, now, staying away from spinach. All of these solutions treat E. coli 0157:H7 as an unavoidable fact of life rather than what it is: a fact of industrial agriculture.

This weekend I was very proud of myself! I took care of many chores and made a few savory and healthy soups for us to have for lunches through the week. My biggest triumph was cleaning out my vegetable garden and harvesting all of the tomatoes that had been languishing including a couple pounds of Sungold cherry tomatoes and several giant sized Amish Paste plum tomatoes. These are great varieties for this region and I will plant both again, they succeeded incredibly against insurmountable odds: no water and almost complete neglect. It was basically a Tour de Force. I ground up all of the ripe tomatoes in a food mill and cooked them up with some chicken broth I made last week (from the leftovers of our organic free range roasted chicken) seasoned with rosemary from the front planter. I threw in a can of some garbanzo beans (would have done dried but I didn't know I had so many tomatoes left) and it was good and made me feel like a soup making goddess! Thaddy and I have agreed that next weekend we will do absolutely nothing since we were so productive this weekend to celebrate the end of daylight savings time.

I liked to read this blog post about how it feels to finally have a home. Waiting to move I have been maintaining a static status quo that no longer gives me that sublime feeling of home. There are small things I could do though, to spark some happy at home feelings like burning incense or lighting more than one candle. I will work on it.

I confirmed that Venice is still the most magical city I've ever been to and discovered an abiding love of the cafe latte, the coffee my grandma made for me as a child given legitimacy with an Italian name. It was nice to know that I can still use most of my Italian and could probably get very proficient with a teeny bit of study next time. Good to be home though and we've roasted a chicken, also confirmed that our bed is the most comfortable place I can imagine. I made a big stride already upon homecoming by finishing a project that had been languishing for a year: put snap tape on the duvet cover I made for the couch snuggling blanket. Project completed and snuggles in progress!

At least when we come back Fall will be here and I plan to celebrate and get over jet lag with Thomas Keller's roast chicken, I already cleaned my oven and everything! Ms. Orangette's salad looks like the perfect thing for leftovers and I'm sure we'll be craving salad after traveling.

Well my weekend was not blissful or relaxing but very annoying. It seems that Thad's car is now well and truly dead so we have to decide what to do and where the money will come from for a new house and a new car. This is not how I like to feel when getting ready for vacation.

A blissfully relaxing weekend awaits and I intend to celebrate with champagne and picnic food, maybe a bitter greens salad with goat cheese. We will watch many dvds and I hope to can something, either tomatoes or another kind of jam depending on what looks good and cheap at the farmer's market. This is my last weekend since I am afraid summer will be over when I get back from Italy. I can make some cookies for the flight.

We have been having fun watching dvds of the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica in preparation for the third to start next month. It is great sci-fi and very addicting. My sweet Thadeus enjoys using the swear word they've developed for the show. There is some pretty sexy content too to keep things spicy.

Last night I cleaned the kitchen and even scrubbed the stove top. Then I took a long shower and washed my hair and exfoliated with my extra special body scrub that smells like the most yummy coconut ever. Afterwards I watched a Jane Austen (novel inspired) movie and felt quite a bit better than I had before I began the whole exercise.