Last night was my first bath in three years.

Nice deep tub, Lush bath bomb, glass of wine, and a good book.

Lovely.

Sent to me by ghostpoetical.

Last night, La Cyn brought home some greens and a nice salmon filet. We did a quick roast of the filet in the oven, then tossed it in with the greens, some fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and a light raspberry vinaigrette.

But what to do with the other half of the filet? Well tonight it's mashed up with some cream cheese, dijon mustard, and chives and it's going into an omelet.

We win at food!

Also last night, another package had shown up at some random time in our foyer. It certainly wasn't there when cynstress got home and we hadn't heard anyone in the foyer during the evening.

Anyway, it was a box from B&N full of books for my birthday from My Awesome Dad! Unfortunately, I already owned all of them -- oh dear. But, it afforded me the perfect opportunity to take my first trip on the EL to exchange them. So I heaved myself and my books down to Lincoln Park on the train -- which it must be said travels at a MUCH slower pace than the subway in NYC -- I'd missed the morning rush hour by a fair shot, so it was a very pleasant trip.

For my birthday, My Awesome Dad ended up getting me four books (and there's still a store credit leftover):

The Life Before Her Eyes by Laurie Kasischke
Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins (essays and poems)
On Beauty by Zadie Smith (hardcover from their deep discount shelf)
Three Novels by John LeCarre in one: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (also a deep discount hardcover)

So in the end, he got me exactly what I wanted*. I called him after I left the shop and we had a nice chat as I walked down to the lakefront.

Also am I the only person in the world who puts her phone on silent or vibrate when on the train or in a store? Really?







*Pssst, Dad, next time, just check out the amazon wishlist -- you don't have to buy from it, but it does have lots of stuff aside from books and I keep it updated.

Ganked from starfishchick and alltheleaves.

SCATTERGORIES...it's harder than it looks! Copy the text below, erase my answers, then use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things.. nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial.. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Zoje George
4 LETTER WORD: Zion
BOY NAME: Zed
GIRL NAME: Zenobia
OCCUPATION: Zoologist
A COLOUR: Zahrah (Arabic for "white" -- I had to google this one)
SOMETHING YOU WEAR: Zoot suit
BEVERAGE: Zima (EW!)
FOOD: Zabaglione
SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: Ziari (ha! that one was easy)
PLACE: Zaire
REASON FOR BEING LATE: Zebra stampede!
SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: Zut alors!

Y'know, I love Nigella, even though sometimes I find her a bit precious and a little hazy on the details in her recipes. But when she gets one right, that recipe stays in my repertoire. I've used her roasted lemon-rosemary chicken recipe from Forever Summer several times over, I don't even need to check the book anymore. Somehow, I've managed to repeatedly overlook one of her other roast chicken recipes, until yesterday.

( It begins like this... )

So, two hours later, or ( double in size. )

My first bread in the new house, and it decided to struggle with me. Yes, I had an argument with bread.

I make nearly all my breads from my favorite bread book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. seriouspenguin gave me this book as a gift a few years ago, and it's the best book on bread baking I've ever owned.

( We begin... )

( Birthday in Brief... )

So that was my birthday, the one in which I turned 42: the answer to the ultimate question.

Thank you all for your birthday wishes!

The Pook and I had a good day yesterday. ( Although I've hardly ventured out of my neighborhood... )

Yeah, well, so yesterday, I made a very nummy blueberry thing, right? But, it was really kind of boring to just eat the blueberries all by themselves, I had to fix that.

( There is nothing good for you under this cut... )

I don't think I can even enumerate the many ways in which the Former Boss of Me is teh awesome.

That is all.

This is not, actually, the first meal I've made in the new house. On Monday, I made Nigella's super easy lemon rosemary roasted chicken (the leftovers of which will become chicken fried rice for tomorrow night) with rice pilaf.

Let's take this in reverse order, as that's the way I did it. Dessert actually took more prep time than the entree.

Can Madame burn*? ( Yes, she can. )

You can leave Viet Nam, but it never really leaves you.


Như Lan Bakery on Lawrence.

I have one box of utensils left, and I'm still deciding how to organize the kitchen.

( more pics )

In nearly every room: mirrors. Now I've got no reason to complain that I can't see what the hell I look like before I leave the house.

( Some first pictures... )

A few other things happened in New York after Wednesday...

( Thursday )

When pescana returned from her visit to Saigon, I kind of thought she was exaggerating a bit in describing the near constant dropping off to sleep with no warning. Nope, she wasn't. I was pretty much asleep on my feet as we went through the Met and despite still not actually being able to sleep through the night, right around 10 or 11 pm, I'm pretty much done for.

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

I also watched endless episodes of various flavors of Law & Order...

( My Gracious Hosts )

So much crap. It's overwhelming.

( Making a Dent in it... )