this is..my favorite thing from nature

Lately, it's been these...

Sadly, the season is over this year, and too many of the figs never really ripened. I still have one container in the freezer from last year that I"m hoarding. I see them being eaten in January as a winter treat.

Thanks to cloth and fodder for this week's theme, and to Angela at threebuttons for hosting the meme.

This is...a recipe I want to share

One of my favorite recipes...and an easy easy one

Asian Marinade for Chicken Breasts (from Nancy @ Gardenweb)

Chicken done in this is flavorful and leftovers make a great salad the next day. This is enough for 5 lbs of raw chicken breasts. m notes..you can use this for chicken w/bones also

1C veg oil
¼ C sesame oil
¾ C soy sauce
1/3 C minced garlic
4 Tabsp minced ginger
2/3 C minced cilantro 5-6 green onions
1 tsp grd blk pepper

I put the onions, ginger and cilantro in the food processor and pulse till chopped fine.
Combine all and marinate chicken breasts, up to 24 hrs, but at least 1 hr if you can
I have also put marinade in a freezer bag with chicken and frozen (good to do with the left overs -m notes Nancy means that yes, you CAN freeze the raw chicken in this marinade and then thaw to cook on demand)

The weekly This is...comes from Angela over at Threebuttons. Go on over and see a list of players!

Thi is...my favorite film

Thanks to Hokey for this week's theme. First one that comes to mind is one that I've seen about 3 times...but consider the length - 227 minutes.




But then there was this one that got me pants-wetting laughing. (One of my sons worked in the convenience center round the corner and he got those ...Gotta come in and cover calls. )



Lately, I've love this series but have yet to see the last one. I'll rewatch #1 and 2 first.



Ok film buffs, check out the list over at ThreeButtons. It's also on that button that says This Is over on the right. You can have your own private festival du cinema today if you like.

This is....my current reading material

We are a household of readers. Books here, books there, and usually no complaint from either of us about the other's piles. However, recently Dick did say ...We seem to be accumulating a lot of things around here. Hmmm...I thought. Most of those things are things to read, and most of those things to read are mine. Dear oh dear. I did make a start at ...putting things back where they belong, or dealing with what needs dealing, and what you see here IS a bit better.


today's papers


more papers and magazines
(Nov LIVING just arrived; I am not anyway thru Oct LIVING!)


the bedtime pile


the current 'read in bed' book - The Visible World, Mark Slouka. (misidentified in my comment)

More of my reading habits can be seen over on that Good Reads button, and thank you again Jaenaveve for your rec of that site. Three Buttons hosts the whole shebang of This is... while this week's theme is from My Champagne Dreams. As always, click the This is ...button on the right for more players. Loll away your Sunday!

This is..my favorite kitchen tool

Yikes...the kitchen per se is my great joy in life. Last night we had dinner with friends - she's an architect and he's a builder and they LOVE our kitchen, which makes me glow!

I have a couple of Wusthoff knives that I couldn't do without and have become quite attached to the Sankoto. But it is my Cuisinart that really has no substitute in my mind. I bought my first back in the 60s and have never been without one since. I tried another brand - once - and immediately went back to Cuisinart. Just the regular home edition, tho I have a mini that I also use a lot esp for vinagrette since I can mince that garlic small enough to disappear along with the herbs du jour.


Good reminder..iIn fact I think I need to make some hummus today. To see what others use a lot, check the This Is button over on the right. Lots of blogs on Three Buttons list, lots of players.

Footnote: Yes, almost always available somewhere for < $100. US.

This is ...my favorite fabric store

It's terrible to pick this as I haven't sewn in YEARS but for sensual delight, I'll pick G Street Fabrics in Washington DC. It used to be on "G" Street in NW Washington, back when downtown WAS the shopping area. e.g. pre malls.



That was where I would go and get luscious material and patterns when I was a teenager. I'd come home and announce that I NEED this tomorrow night. Can you believe my mother and grandmother actually did it????? Perhaps the word spoiled comes to mind. btw, that lovely tulle and feather deal will only set you back $149. a yard. On sale now from $199. but sadly, polyester. (n.b. This is NOT one of my purchases. I was buying back in the 1960s when $10 a yard would make you faint...)

Today, if I need any kind of fabric for anything...it's usually Jo-ann's, with a coupon. I think my days of having a personal dressmaker are over. (Tho I have to say that after my years ordering my mother and grandmother around, I also had a lot of years with dressmakers in various countries of the world. Wool, Irish linen and Liberty cottons in England and loads and loads of silk in Thailand...I was much much kinder with paid dressmakers - to my now shame.)

To get loads more ideas of where to buy fabric or crafts, look at that button on the right that says This Is and you'll go off to the list at ThreeButtons. Thanks to handmaiden for this week's meme theme. (PS..Handmaiden is going to be compiling a list of all the fabric and crafty emporiums you listed in This is. Won't THAT be a treasure.)

This is ...my favorite children's book

pottymouthmama chose this week's theme and I'm glad I have time to do this one while on vacation.

My favorite book? one I won in grade school for a writing contest. Prophetic since I later lived in Yorkshire for 7 years.



I recently watched a movie version and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a magic book to me.


Wanna see more choices? I do and will when I get back home. Click the "This is" button on the right and the list of players will come up. Have fun!

This is ... what scrambles my brain when I try to understand it

I know it's a big, bad program.
I know I may be out of its league.
And #&#%% it, it's the first software program that has stumped, or rather overwhelmed me.

Mostly I have had no one to teach me, nor have the classes I attended been quite what I thought they would be. I finally got Photoshop Elements by buying the inexpensive Bamboo tablet. I took a PE class....but can you believe it was a lecture class with no computers provided? That was fun stupid imho. Just think of listening to a droning voice for 3, yes, 3, hours talk about Photoshop.

So now I find a get library books, or tutorials on the Web, try to walk myself thru it, and have moderate sucess. But even better, I now have found someone who knows the whole CS and I am going to ask him to come over and walk me thru a couple of things. I don't want to teach myself the longest way to do stuff if I don't have to. He gets a good dinner, and I get hands on advice. I now have hope. I may go blind in the process, but I have hope.


This meme comes from FlightlessBoyds and she even had 2 options. And ThreeButtons has a list of the players so you can check out more brain scrambling things. Prepare your brain!!

This is ....the space in which I create (and created)

This week's great theme comes from Michelle, the Quilting Mick . My primary creative space is my kitchen.



I have loved to cook since I was a young teenager and saw Julia Child on tv, slapping her hindquarters and saying you need to show the butcher where you want a cut. Butcher? that wasn't a concept in the rapidly growing suburban lifestyle. But a seed was planted, I learned how to make a great quiche, and still have the recipe for African Pickled Peaches from a 1960s Gourmet magazine. Living all around the world only opened my eyes and taste buds to all sorts of food and cooking styles. It was wonderful.

Fast forward to 2001 and I am married to my 2nd husband and he says the magic words...Anything I can do to make your cooking easier... And we plunged like fools into renovation. There is a whole Flickr collection of 11 sets about that project.

By this point, dh had built me an island to test out the concept and I finally had a cooktop that could boil water. We also bought and installed some Ikea drawers to see if I really liked having drawers. OMIGOD, did I!!!



I'm here showing how happy I am with the test island and marvy Fisher and Paykel cooktop. Note the little jar of chimichurri sauce on the red formica. Yum!



June/July 2004 the back porch and deck were gone, and then the foundation for the addition was laid.



There was a lot of this kind of examination of the blueprints



to get to this point.



But by fall I was chiseling away at the stone for the new bathroom.



And Christmas 2004 was simple.




By Jan 2005, we were waiting for the soapstone counters.



and on a bitter cold day they arrived.



The final time was over 14 months from breaking ground till the final punchout items.

It tested a new marriage, but we learned pretty well then that we are on the same team, and that our different ways of thinking CAN be complimentary, not combative. We didn't want to make our contractor the enemy either so we had to talk, cry and work our way through want WE wanted vs what I want and what you want, so that we could put a united front in discussions. That was hard because until something came up I know I couldn't always see what I wanted. It was easier to see what I didn't want. (Life lesson for me???)

But this IS my creation and my creative workspace...and I love it.



Want to see other spaces? come on, you know you do!! Then check out Angela at ThreeButtons . She maintains the list of players.

This is ...my pet

This week's theme comes from Two Peas in a Pod.

In reality, this is the one who owns us, but if you have a pet you already know that. If you don't have a pet, then consider who owns who....carefully. This is Sebastian, our Lilacpoint Siamese. He's "mature", 16 I think.



He was one of a pair of brothers we got from a family who were giving the two away. the couple had had 3 boys in 5 yrs, and were expecting boy #4. The cats didn't stand a chance...tho the couple had doted on them for 5 years pre children.



The two boys were inseperable, i.e. Felix would not leave Sebastian alone, and was always grooming him and fussing over him. The vet told us Sebastian was a ...gasp!..poor groomer. Well, he might have been less than diligent about his grooming but it turned out he was diabetic. Sigh. Felix flew away to live with another catlover who was desperate for a cat, and we began the twice daily insulin shots.



He was not happy when we renovated the kitchen - 14 months of bedlam.




Sebastian has now 'outgrown' his diabetes, but I believe it was the energy work I did on him. Whatever, the shots are history, and he is a happily aging cat who tolerates me and loves my dh.

This is most of his life these days.He is happiest asleep on dh's lap while dh reads. Not a shabby way of life...



There are more pets to see on Threebuttons list. Have a look at the blogroll of This is...

This is ...the pair of shoes I'd sleep in...sortof

All in all, I am happier barefoot and if we didn't have an old cat who is prone to regurgitation, I'd be barefoot a lot. But this is as close as it comes....my old slippers that are wonderfully warm in the winter with socks and are soon to be replaced by Crocs. But sleep in Crocs??? not hardly.

So thank you HipHop and Banana Bread for this different one.



Wanna see more? Check over at Three Buttons for a long list of players.

This is...my favorite book

Dees came up with an intriguing subject for the weekly meme, This is...my favorite book.

I usually don't have the kind of favorite that I read again and again but two stand out in my mind. This one was a present for my 10th birthday - The Secret Garden by Frances Hogdson Burnett. I still have my copy, a 1949 Lippincott edition.



I certainly identified with little Mary and her "I Won't!" attitude. and later lived in Yorkshire and read it again there having a full appreciation of the 'invigorating' Yorkshire air. Later, living in SE Asia I could imagine Mary's early days of being cared for by servants. I know I've seen more than one of the film/tv adaptations and recently had a fine time seeing it on cable. I felt like Mary was a lot snittier in the book!

While living in England, I was happily near a library which was full of authors unknown to me, and I made some of my initial selections by scanning which one of them had a lot of books. I figured that if I liked the author I had a treasure trove; if not, I had one section already crossed off. I think that is how I first selected Laurie Lee. His Cider with Rosie became one of my favorites, read more than once while in England, and one which went around the world with me for a long time. While that copy is now gone, I now have this version which I found in a US used book store. I plan to read it again next winter...somehow it seems like a cozy, winter read to me...perhaps bringing back memories of England so long ago.



Want to see more faves?? check out the list of players over at Three Buttons who is good enough to maintain the list.

This is...the contents of my purse

Sharon suggested this week's meme theme. (good rhyme there)And of course the great instigator is ThreeButtons.




Not a lot you say? no, I've tried to lighten my purse, since I almost never carry it unless I am in my car.
So...wallet, glass case free from Talbots, cell phone, and some lingering receipts from Lisbon.

I had been carrying a larger purse that I thrifted in on our recent trip to Chicago, and went back to this smaller one I had taken as the replacement. However....I realized the first night I went to use the smaller one (a CA thrift store purchase last December and used A Lot since then) that it had a small tear on the strap and would have probably broken if I carried it. Deep deep sigh. I do hope I can get it sewn to be usable without it looking like sh*t.



The size I'm looking for does not seem to be in fashion any more and I'm just tired of looking. Any shade of black is fine. Bah humbug, or bah handbag.

This is ... my creation

bettythegeek picked this week's theme in threebutton's meme. Well done ladies!

Well, the first thing that sprang to mind was from long ago. Two blond haired, blue eyed boys...that became blond-ish, blue eyed, 6'2' men. There is also a raven haired, black eyed girl but as she was adopted she is not quite my 'own' creation.



and the most recent creation I'm proudest of - created with This Dear Husband - my kitchen.

This is...My Collection!

This week's meme comes from Hyena In Petticoats . This is...my collection.

I used to have so many. Is that an attribute of youth or just personality? I wonder since downsizing, and having less interest in accumulations does seem to come with age. When I was a fairly young wife and mother, living in England when the US dollar was strong, I started collecting teapots. Good teapots. Bone china teapots. I was up to about 30+ and had them arranged on one kitchen wall, on shelves rawplugged into the rock hard plaster walls by my then dh. One day I came home to my lovely Nanny-ish babysitter who was all atwitter at my front door. My elder son was in nursery school so I immediately assumed something had happend to #2 son. (Do you remember the days before cell phones???) No, he was all right but...he had climbed on to the kitchen table, reached for something on one of the shelves and down the teapots tumbled.

All of them.

He was unhurt, and it was one of my first lessons in letting go of stuff. I also learned that second children are not exactly like first children. Let this be a caveat to parents contemplating child #2...

So now what do I collect? Well, I still have this collection. Cookbooks. Nearly every book on these shelves is a cookbook.


And there is the odd annex or two about the house. Well, really I don't know how many annexes there are as I just came across a hidden one this a.m.!



And then there are the cooking magazines that seem to be breeding since I no longer have any subscriptions, and then there are the folders on the 'puter. 1350 items in the folder. Do you think I can live long enough to even make a dent????

And what do YOU collect?