Not Fried Fried Rice
October 9, 2025
You cook a batch of easy rice cooker rice, spread it on a sheet pan, add chopped carrots, onions, scallions and salt/pepper. Then sprinkle with sesame oil, soy sauce, some garlic-infused melted butter, and some sesame seeds. Make two wells and crack eggs into those. Bake in a hot oven for 15 mins.
Cut up the well-cooked eggs, toss it all together and serve. I’ll reduce the salt next time, otherwise yummy, crispy.
YES, Ma’am
October 8, 2025
I started as a NO. That didn’t last long. As soon as the conversations about the pros and cons of Proposition 50 started happening, I realized YES was the only answer. Then I became a phone banker, a post carder, a canvasser, a canvass trainer, a two-time donator, and a lawn sign displayer. And today, a YES voter.
Almost Two Quarts
October 7, 2025
So this is what became of the arm load of basil Jim brought in from the garden a couple days ago.
It generated 15 cups of packed basil leaves, enough for three batches of Ina Garten’s recipe.
The pesto making begins…
Her recipe is slightly different than pestos I’ve made in the past.. but not much. Hers has walnuts and pine nuts, and she adds a fair amount of salt and pepper. She also may use more garlic than most. I ended up not using as much oil as she called for.
But look at this!
I figure each of those is about 1/2 a cup. There are 14 of those, plus the nearly 1 cup of pesto I set aside for last night’s dinner. That’s two quarts.. which oughta last us the winter. Into the freezer these have gone. I left the parmesan out of the ones I’m freezing. I’m thinking about 2T of grated parm, added just before serving, will be about right.
That’s what we did last night and it was perfect! Here it is, pre-parm garnish.
In the Sick Zone
October 5, 2025
I’ve about had it with being in the sick zone. Five straight days in the house, the first two of which were terrible-horrible-miserable days with the whole panoply of covid symptoms — fever, chills, body aches, headache, cough, sore throat (have I already complained about this?) (no doubt I have).
The next three days have been a welcome relief from most of that, but still feeling weak-ish, still on Paxlovid, and am certainly contagious. So home confinement it is. Have been missing all the normal walks and friend meet ups, movie night and Sunday brunch with Jim, and just daylight. But I’ve also missed (or will be missing) a planned dinner with friends, a scheduled massage, Saturday’s Prop 50 canvassing, a fancy Prop 50 fundraiser, and today’s annual Neighbor’s Night Out.
Sad.
I’m a bit stir crazy, so how about this cool optical illusional image… (I do love these things):
Pesto Part 1
October 4, 2025
Today turned out to be the day…. time to pull up the summer’s basil and make some pesto! It was already too late for the sweetest, most tender basil, but any longer and we’d have run out the clock. Our plants (we have 8-10) were getting long in the tooth, long-flowered, their leaves well-munched… so it was kind of now or never.
Jim brought in a huge armload of long, leaf-ful stems. He gave them their first bath, which got most of the birch detritus, dust, and bug remnants off of them. Then we plucked….
Then the leaves got a second wash…
Then they were laid out to dry…
Not going to blanch them, though some do to preserve a bright green color.
Tomorrow, we’ll make the pesto.
We’re Positive
October 3, 2025
Been outa the blog scene for a few weeks (I hate that, and miss it). First there was the 13-day trip to the PNW (which I’ll be back-blogging soon). That was followed by a bout of COVID… a bout I’m very much still in the throes of.
We got back from our trip on Sunday night. Jim had started sensing some cold symptoms forming on Saturday, but nothing big.. he gave it a few days and tested on Wednesday. Bright test line: COVID. Started Paxlovid that night.
I started to feel terrible Tuesday, so also tested Wednesday: nada. Prob too early, not a critical mass of viral load.
Was miserable all day Wednesday, though, and retested on Thursday (yesterday). That is one faint test line.. but faint qualifies. So now I’m on Paxlovid, too. Jim has remained largely asymptomatic, while I’m having the full, immersive experience. Go big or go home. The works. The whole enchilada. In for a penny in for a pound: fever, chills, aches, fatigue, sore throat, headache, chesty chest.
Canceling stuff right and left. By today, though, most of the symptoms have eased, so I’m feeling a bit better. What remains are fatigue and goop in the chest. Eager to be on other side of this Pax-induced metallic taste thing.
Notable: we’d gotten the flu and COVID vaccines prior to leaving on Sept 16. Hm. Grateful the virus held off until we got home.
My Vote for the Nobel Peace Prize
October 1, 2025
Jane Goodall died today.
I’ve read many, many lovely things in the last few days about her life, her compassion, her respect for all living things. She sounds like someone who lived with peace in her heart and shared that peace with the world through her actions — humbly, and with dignity. To me, this qualifies her for a Nobel Peace Prize.
This was something nice I read:
“My next great adventure, aged 90, is going to be dying.
There’s either nothing or something.
If there’s nothing, in which case I don’t have to worry anymore, that’s it.
If there’s something, I can’t think of a greater adventure, of anything more exciting than finding out what it is.
I happen to believe that there is something because of the experiences I’ve had, because of experiences other people have had. Very powerful ones. I’ve read every book there is about near-death experiences.
So I look at death as my next great adventure!”
~ Jane Goodall
And then there’s this:
(Besides being a nice sentiment on its face, it’s also a response to the administration requiring recently that all flags to be lowered for a man who trafficked in hate.)
End of Tomato Season
September 30, 2025
As seen on my drive to Woodland this morning.. a seasonal sign of the times.. one of the last tomato trucks of the season hauling a gazillion tomatoes to slaughter (I presume). With our own Hunts factory being closed, I’m not sure where these are headed (sure Jim will tell me tomorrow).
At Least There’s This
September 13, 2025
When it feels like the country is in a violent swirl down a filthy Trainspotting-like toilet (who could EVER forget that horrifically gross, retch-inducing scene), canvassing for a righteous cause (well, not that righteous, but I’ll explain that in a sec) can be a wee balm for the soul.
I mean, look at these young, obviously smart, ever-optimistic-about-their-futures Davis College Dems loading turfs on their smart phones and collecting high-priced, glossy literature on a GORGEOUS Saturday morning at Farmer’s Market so they can canvass the lovely tree-lined streets of upper-middle-class Davis where they will talk earnestly with conscientious fellow dems, who’ll cheerfully answer their front doors when they hear a knock, and kindly remind them to vote on November 4 in FAVOR of Proposition 50 — the Anti-Election-Rigging bill that Gavin has put on the California ballot in response to the appallingly deceitful move on the part of Texas Governor Abbot (at trump’s desperate command) to squeeze five Democratic congress members from their seat by gerrymandering the f**k out of the Texas congressional map. And those nice, conscientious fellow dems will do just that.
Prop 50 allows California to redraw five districts of its own, setting aside temporarily the districts drawn by our beautiful, fair, non-partisan election commission. By doing so, those previously red districts can move to the blue column and effectively render Abbot’s gains a wash.
Awful, isn’t it? Not the outcome, but the tactic. Feels super shitty. But we are not living in a functioning, fair democracy right now. That’s just fact. If they’re going to manipulate the election, they leave us little choice but to follow suit. Otherwise we’ve just handed them the keys to our democracy to ransack as they please. It’s a hail Mary. And probably not the last one we’ll throw. We’re hanging on by a thread here.
So canvass we did today. And wow, was it fun and satisfying. Those Davis College Dems evidently canvassed our neighborhood today, as I came home to a glossy piece of literature tucked under our door mat. Sherri and I worked the M-N Street neighborhood (with some Pomona, Lesley, Adeline and Lehigh mixed in). That is one deep blue neighborhood, I have to say. Nearly everyone we spoke with (about half the doors we knocked) knew about and was strongly in favor of the proposition. The few (2 or 3) who were on the fence came around. Not happily, but agreed this is existential. The conversations were sober and smart.
It was a worthwhile and very gratifying way to spend an afternoon.
Life of Wry 