Friday & Food

The man who loves me just called to tell me bought some wild salmon at a local farmer's market. That ought to get us out of the salad rut. Of course, I'll make a salad anyway, but it will have a supporting role for a change instead of sitting center stage. I've been serving salad for dinner every night for months--which is not to say that it's always the same. I have a number of ingredients in my repertoire. Avocados, tomatoes, pine nuts, other nuts and seeds, roasted peppers, any number of vegetables--raw or cooked, apples, tangerines, berries of all kinds, cranberries and other dried fruit. Even so, C. has rebelled. She goes out now for In 'N Out or something. I love salad--the way I do it with super fresh organic mixed greens. Arugula is one of the most amazing flavors on the planet. To me it tastes like greens crossbred with pepper and peanut butter.

And speaking of food, here are a couple of food blogs for your weekend enjoyment:
1) Wild, Fresh + Tasty (where, if you read the post that features MADE, the coffee/gift shop at the Downtown Women's Center, you will see a photo of me working the counter in my barista hat.
2) How To Eat I have the good fortune to know Elizabeth personally, and when my divorce is completely over, she's going to bake me a cake. Now that's something to hope for!

Now for a Los Angeles food scene trivia question:
At which cafe are you likely to come upon a patio table with a pile of poop on it? 

ɯnʇǝɹoqɹɐ ʎʇunoɔ sǝlǝƃuɐ sol ǝɥʇ ʇɐ ǝɟɐɔ ʞɔoɔɐǝd ǝɥʇ

The name of the place says it all.

The image used in this post is a painting by an 18th century painter named Luis Melendez.

What I've been doing lately instead of blogging...

...visiting botanical gardens, of course.

There's been high tea and photography with friends   at
The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.











There's been a visit from writer and artist Thordis Niela Simonsen that not only included another trip to the Huntington, but the Los Angeles County Arboretum as well.

And the fabulous Greene and Greene masterpiece The Gamble House--which we were not allowed to photograph, but was full of images of birds and trees and flowers like the ones we were seeing.

When Niela saw the delphiniums at the Huntington, she thought of her grandmother's garden. I thought of the people in my life who are like the stakes that keep the delphiniums from toppling over.

And before these forays into urban nature, I drove 400 miles through the desert and back to visit my son and his family where there is a girl who loves horses.

There has been such beauty laid out before me.

photo credit for the botanical erotica at the top of the post: Sandy Walker
The rest of the photos are my own.