The Garden Inspiration

So, other than the very kind, encouraging comments here (thank you!), the inspiration for my garden-preparation is stuff like this: lettuce I picked from Husband's coworker's garden just hours before we ate it all up. I mean, really, to go and pick gorgeous greens like these in November -- who wouldn't want that? I want it, and I'm willing to do the work to get it. Fresh greens make such a difference in a salad. In this case, it was a full-meal salad with red pepper, avocado, toasted walnuts, and my newly arrived Maytag blue cheese. Delicious!

In other news, we had our first winter rains! Two nights of heavy rain, followed by grey, damp, cool days. Good, soaking rains, too, without a lot of run-off. It was great!

And in still other news, I love Marcella Hazan's comments today in the NYTimes. I'm a cook. I was a cook when I cooked professionally for someone else and I was a cook when I ran my own kitchen for a living. I'm not a chef and I don't pretend to be one. I haven't run into the phenomenon of home cooks calling themselves (or being called) chefs, but I love that Marcella Hazan makes the distinction, even among professionals. I don't have anything particularly profound to say; I just enjoyed the article and the sentiment behind it.