cold cucumber soup, a great recipe

well, it's hot here in brooklyn today. and when i say hot i mean 94.5 degrees farenheit and climbing. so i've been inspired to break out my cold soup recipes and this is one of my favorites. i love cold soup, but sometimes they are a little too bland. this one has quite the zip because of all the garlic, scallions and chives. feel free to not use so much garlic if it's too much for you. it 's super easy to make and delicious.

6 cucumbers, peel if waxed
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
6 cloves garlic, cooked for 1 min in boiling water, and then peeled
1/4 cup champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
a few drops of tabasco, or hot chili, sauce
4 cups plain yogurt, regular or low fat
1/2 cup minced chives or scallions
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp walnut oil, suggested but can substitute olive oil
freshly ground white pepper
additional yogurt for garnish, optional
additional minced chives for garnish

1. cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds with a teaspoon. cut into 1-inch slices and toss with salt. let sit 1 hour at room temperature. rinse well and drain.
2. in a food processor, combine the cucumbers, walnuts, garlic, vinegar, tabasco, and yogurt. process well.
3. stir in the chives, olive oil, and walnut oil. chill for at least 6 hours before serving.
4. before pouring into a chilled picnic thermos (chill by filling with ice water and then pouring out), adjust salt, white pepper, vinegar, and tabasco.
5. add a dollop of yogurt and sprinkle of chives, if desired, to individual portions.

apricots and fat free cool whip

after having a lovely snack of apricots and fat free cool whip i received an email with this in it:

which foods have more pesticides on them and which foods are lower in pesticides

should have washed that apricot more thoroughly! (or at all)

do you love the green grass?

people may not understand why i put so much effort into gardening on our terrace in brooklyn. but this is a perfect example of why. there is nothing quite so genuinely pleasing as having fresh cut flowers or fresh fruit/food from our garden. i love these roses. they are planted in a large whiskey barrel with herbs.

next year i may try to get another rose bush to add somewhere else- i have a special love of peachy/pink roses and i would love to have those.

these are peonies i have cared for that bloomed just in time for my baby shower. have you ever seen anything so beautiful? me neither.

we may be growing a lime!

not one the size of a tic tac, but a real lime! i've had a dwarf lime tree in a container for two years now and we get teeny tiny limes that appear occasionally and drop off after a week or two. i realized the pot was probably too small - the old one was a plastic pot from IKEA measuring about 15" across and equally as deep - so we got a 10-gallon galvanized trash can, fertilized it with compost, and repotted it and voila! a lime bigger than any lime we've had before.

i'm very proud. if it drops off, i'm committing hari kari.

never run out of jam.

i just ate so much food if anyone had been watching in my apt, they would have run away screaming and never spoken to me again. i believe the list is as follows: four eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese and a side of sriracha sauce, about 1/3 of a loaf of raisin nut loaf toasted with either butter or peanut butter and jam. and maybe a few chocolate chips made it in there as well. this is what happens when an 8-month-pregnant woman decides to ignore her hunger pangs for four hours.

while i was shoveling food into my gullet i had several thoughts running through my brain, the most pronounced of which was: i vow to myself never to run out of jam.

bonne maman jam is my absolute favorite and i make sure to have at least one jar on hand at all times. my favorite flavor is raspberry preserves, but wild blueberry and marmalade come in right behind.

having just finished my food orgy i'm now sipping on my new favorite tea-
peppermint chocolate tea by the republic of tea.

they have a whole selection of chocolate teas. do you understand? A WHOLE SELECTION. i am trying to burp as often as possible, but i'm afraid the burp is actually vomit. sexy, i know.

i just returned from a trip to the midwestern city of minneapolis to see my brother and sister-in-law and aging father. it was a great trip and i'm glad we got to go, but seeing my father is always difficult. he was a charismatic man full of a zest for life, humor and passion until my mother died 11 years ago and he lost his way. i am not going to go into it fully because it's information not well suited for a blog on the internet, suffice to say, the wheels have come off the wagon. he needs to move to a new senior facility- the lovely one he's been at doesn't work anymore.

the day before we left to go on our trip, my husband and i received and computer generated audit from the IRS regarding a stock sale that wasn't reported on our taxes two years ago. oops. we thought we had submitted all the necessary paperwork, but it turns out we didn't. so now we are scrambling to come up with the documents which is always a treasure hunt. i'm a pretty organized person, although you would never guess it to speak to me, but even i don't have documents for the past 15 years on this one account. i only have the last 7 years. paper fail.

we also returned home to find that one of our three adorable cats peed all over a hefty bag with linens i no longer want that was sitting in our living room. who cares about the bag or the linens, but it's left a permanent black stain on our NEW hardwood floors that now needs to be sanded down and restained.

and did i mention we are expecting a baby? in 8 weeks. we also have to put the nursery together and finish cleaning out our closets to make room for all the baby crap associated with newborns.

none of this is world-ending, but it's enough to get my head in a state. pile on top of that, another short trip planned, projects that i swore up and down i would get working on pre-baby and you've got a woman who can barely make out the three post it pages i put up on the fridge with the list of to-dos.

the cucumbers need that extra trellis! they are grabbing onto the blueberry bush for godssakes! the snow peas need netting! how do you prune petunias? is the sore on my other cat's lip serious? why did i fail to mention it to the vet when we took 2 out of the 3 cats to the vet two days before we left town because one is mysteriously limping and the other won't stop shitting on the floor?! god, we need primer before we use the paint samples in the baby's room otherwise the COLOR WON'T BE EXACTLY RIGHT AND WE'LL PAINT THE WHOLE DAMN ROOM TO DISCOVER IT'S NOT THE CORRECT SHADE OF AQUA!

i'm also rather laaaaarge these days and making it around nyc to do errands or make appointments takes a lot more time than it used to. my baby, as i've been writing this, has been punching me in the bladder which is full with peppermint chocolate tea, thank you. the chair i'm sitting in also FAINTLY smells of cat urine...just enough to make me pause and think, was this chair violated as well? or is it something else nearby? i'll do a thorough inspection soon, but today i've already contacted my accountant, the stock company, my therapist, two friends and made a meal large enough for a small baseball team. (are they one size only?) and i haven't yet cleaned the fridge before the groceries arrive and i have to fill it up again. and oh my god, we need new cat litter and toothpaste and olive oil. ack!

and all i want to do is watch Murder at 1600 which happens to be on tv. sigh.

i'm unemployed now which is glorious so i have time to deal with all of these things, but it's amazing to me how much can happen when nothing is happening.

 i called a friend of mine who has a newborn and is not working and said she has back pain, was supposed to have all four impacted wisdom teeth removed (a procedure she has literally been avoiding since she was a teen), then a dead tree fell on their house and the landlord doesn't seem to care...she said she was taking it all in stride until she cut a beet in half the other night and was trying to get it to fit into a piece of tupperware. the damn thing just wouldn't fit and she said she just about lost her mind. she canceled her appointment to remove her teeth, gave the beet to her husband and took a deep breath. i was laughing, knowing exactly how she felt. it's all fine until the fucking beet won't fit in the goddamn tupperware.

now i only have 40 mins to clean the fridge before the groceries come so i better get to it. maybe i can sneak in some Murder at 1600 while i do it.

homemade antidepressants.

some of us need more dopamine in their lives, in their synapses. i am definitely in that category so i'm always looking for things to make me happy. the most productive and consistently successful way, that i've discovered, is exercise.

but, really...how fun is exercise? not very. afterwards you feel like a rockstar. and you are!

but on those cold october evenings when you are NOT leaving your house, can't do drugs and need a dopa-rush...CAKE!

i made a new recipe of chocolate cake last night complete with rainbow sprinkles.
yeah, i'm 37...what of it?

and then this morning i made more smoothies to try and compensate for the *several* slices of cake i've had since i made this damn thing.

my husband and i had chocolate cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream for dinner last night. yup, that's what we had. and you know what? it worked. it brought smiles to both our faces.

take that, world!

the chocolate cake is super moist and a PERFECT birthday cake. the only things i wasn't super crazy about was the icing - it's too sweet for me. it's delicious. really. but as i get older i can't handle sugar like i used to as a kid. kids would LOVE this. but my friends recommend a Swiss Buttercream which i think may work better for me next time.
this cake is the Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake from epicurious.com. i know, mayo...gross. but if you've never had a mayo cake, don't judge! they are super moist. and tasty tasty. try it out.

the smoothies are a banana, some frozen strawberries, frozen blueberries (i prefer wyman's), flax seeds, a little skim milk and a few chocolate chips => a trick i learned from my older brother...thanks, b. enjoy!

Smoothie madness.

i've put off making smoothies for myself for years. i'm not sure why. do you ever have things you want to do but just never get around to doing? well, smoothies have been on that list for me.

i just made myself a berry, flax seed, greek yogurt, milk & choc chip smoothie for lunch and it was dee-lish-us. why have i waited so long have this healthy and satisfying food experience? i used frozen berries, a berry mix and whole, frozen strawberries. i quickly learned that for my cheap blender, that was too sticky so i added greek yogurt...still too sticky. so added about 1/2 cup of skim milk, that helped. chocolate chips (a trick i learned from my oldest brother...yum). and i had to add flax seed because uhhh...it's healthy.

bottom line is, the damn thing blended up with some coaxing from a spatula and it was soooo good.

next time i would like to use more frozen strawberries, fresh banana, more yogurt, milk, choc chips, flax seed and some chocolate protein powder.

love it!