Saturday Miscellany

I finally got out to work in the disaster area that was formally known as my front yard today and it was a joy to be rooting about the leaves and twigs, unearthing the dainty green tendrils.

The fritallaria are blooming:

They are hiding between the iris  and a few stalwart tulips that have ventured up for a second year’s bloom.  I had been a bit worried about the irises after a few of them thought they were going to go for a third bloom last year in early December.  They were caught by a frost and a snowstorm just a day or two before they would have opened and I remember how the warm January of 2007 fooled my poppies into thinking it was spring and they were fully leafed out and blooming when we got the February snowstorms. Only two of the poppies survived, a fate apparently not shared by the irises.

I also neglected to plant tulips in the front bed last fall; in fact I didn’t even pull the spent tulip bulbs and I was thrilled to see so many coming back up with buds. Of course they are much smaller than new bulbs, but I don’t usually expect more than one year from my tulips. I did learn that the Ropell dip I gave them when I planted them in the fall of 2006 is apparently good for only 1 season, as quite a few of the tulips have been nibbled down to the ground, but I am hoping that a few of these buds will survive long enough to give me a few blossoms.

Between gardening adventures I have been knitting — I’ll update you on that tomorrow, and have absolutely been avoiding the UFO pile.

What I have been spending my indoor time with today is the new issue of Gourmet, which arrived yesterday and is devoted to cooking vacations.

I am reading all the descriptions of the various locations and courses and filling my head with dreams of new skills, wonderful flavors, and exotic locales.  There is not  a one that does not sound interesting to me.  I always want to cook when I go to new places and look at the markets and the food, and I would love to go somewhere and learn to cool regional or local dishes.  Although France and Italy and California sound wonderful, so do the more exotic climes.  I would happily travel from village to village in Soviet Georgia and milk cows to make my own fresh cheese, I would love to explore the cuisines of Turkey, or Laos, and I would probably try the Buffalo stomach too, it can’t be that much different than the pig stomach we had in Chinatown once, when DH pulled over the waiter and said we wanted what they were having at the next table, despite the protestations that the dish was not suited to American tastes.

Anyway, it is a great magazine for dreaming, and of course there are recipes (not for beef stomach) to try,  and even a discussion of a culinary vacation right in my own backyard.  The CIA offers a culinary boot camp, an intense one week course in basic skills and techniques.  I have taken simpler, one day classes and learned a lot but I would still love to go to boot camp.  As a self-taught home cook, there are wide gaps in my knowledge.  Lucky me I wouldn’t even have to leave home and DH wouldn’t have to milk cows or wander around strange locales while I cooked.  Of course he might still miss me when I’m in cooking school from dawn to dark or beyond.