Home Alone

Does that sound like an adventure movie about parents who leave a mischievous kid at home?

Sometimes it’s just the lady of the house. 

What does she do?  First, she cleans like a fiend. Off come the work clothes, on with the leggings and tee shirt and diving into a long-awaited project. All gadgets and solutions are in use: vacuum cleaner, windex, dust cloth, washing machine, dryer, masking tape, goo-gone. Garbage is carted out. Piles go away. A mini-reorg happens. Like an episode of Bewitched, all is perfectly innocently in place when the husband gets home. 

After the cleaning, the chef gets to work. A trip out to the pots that make up my kitchen garden to snip some fresh watercress and dill. These are the pots of my failed summer vegetables; I’m doing much better growing lettuce, spinach and herbs in the winter. [If you’re not in California, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you jealous that we can actually grow a salad between fires and mudslides.]

Before getting on with my dinner - a side note on watercress:  I don’t know anyone who grows it but when you google it, it comes up as a micro-green, a super-food with instructions on how easy it is to grow in a jar on your windowsill. I’ve always loved watercress. My grandmother soaked it in a lemon juice dressing and served it as is. Watercress sandwiches?!  The British are on to something, I tell you! Watercress will be the new basil. One of these days, it will be in little pots at Trader Joe’s for $3.99. Just remember, you heard it first HERE.

Dinner:  Fresh tomatoes with watercress; fresh dill in a lemon sauce (lemons from coworker’s tree) on my vegetable stew, topped dried tomatoes from my summer garden. I’m able to add something homegrown to almost every meal these days. 

And then she writes a blog post. 

Satisfaction guaranteed.