Flowered Eggs comments: 93

Last night Andy and I made some Easter eggs inspired by these pretty ones. I just clipped some tiny sprigs from our tangle of a yard, placed them on the raw eggs, took a square of pantyhose (if you do a dozen eggs it's best to have two pairs of pantyhose) and stretched it over the sprig and egg, then caught up all the edges of the pantyhose in a little rubberband. (You want to pull the pantyhose pretty tight, so the sprigs stay on the egg.) Then, in a big soup pot, we made a little bed of outer skins from about eight or nine yellow onions, placed all the eggs on the skins, covered them with more skins, then added a few tablespoons of vinegar and enough cold water just to cover it all. Brought it just up to a boil then let it simmer very gently, without rumbling the eggs, for about fifteen minutes. Took the pot off the heat and let it sit for another fifteen minutes. Took the eggs out (careful, they're hot), rinsed them in cold water, and unveiled them. Voila. Beautiful botanical eggs.

My favorites are the ones that picked up some color from the blue flowers that were laid on top of them. It's best if you use sprigs that are very delicate, with thin leaves so that they can really press down on the egg. It also helps if the egg is a bit wet, because then the leaves will stick better when you go to wrap them with the pantyhose. Anyway, I think they look pretty. And I am a deviled egg fiend so I might have to make some more. I might try making some other colors, too.

Happy Easter weekend, dear friends!

My Christmas-Movie Screenplay Plans comments: 118

I've almost convinced Andy to write a Christmas-movie screenplay with me. Not an awesome movie like Elf, or Prancer, or The Family Man. But a made-for-TV one (what's not awesome about these!) like Boyfriend for Christmas (pictured above), Christmas Do-Over, or Holiday in Handcuffs. I've told him that it's easy: All we need to do is pick out and incorporate about ten of these Christmas-movie must-contains and we'll be set:

A character named Holly, Mary, Merry, Chris, Kris, Christy, Kristin, Nick, Nicholas, Rudolpha, Carol, Noel, Noelle, or some diminutive of Ebeneezer.

A widow.

A widower.

An orphan.

A soldier, sailor, or marine.

A homeless person who is, it is suspected, actually Santa/God/an angel.

A soup kitchen.

A workaholic corporate suit who schedules meetings on Christmas Eve and has clearly forgotten the reason for the season.

A cottage industry/family business in danger of being put out of business by big-box store/urban development/greedy coporation.

A character who pretends to be someone else.

A blizzard that knocks out all forms of transportation or communication.

Two characters who hate each other forced, by the blizzard, to spend the night in a cabin with no utilities and who wind up in love by the next morning.

A stinky, drunk department-store Santa. Who hates kids.

Someone in a Santa suit who stole something who is now being chased by a hundred other people in Santa suits. Through Manhattan.

Santa who falls ill/is too old/has lost hope, and Christmas is in danger of being cancelled.

Santa's son or daughter who must take over his job reluctantly, or with difficult conditions (must marry today by midnight, e.g.).

A child who knows more than all of the adults combined.

Stupid adults.

Toy freak out: not enough toys, wrong toys, toys lost, toys not able to reach their destinations.

A character who absolutely hates Christmas due to some past loss. Loss occuring around Christmastime.

A character who loves Christmas when everyone else around him/her hates it.

Overworked elf. Lazy elf. Cranky elf. Naive elf. One nice elf.

A character who returns home to find that things have changed. And, in a weird way, stayed much the same.

A character, unlucky in love, who returns home to find their high-school sweetheart conveniently unmarried.

A deer. Could be reindeer. Could be Rudolph.

Miracle snow.

Right? Now, which ten, which ten . . . Hmmm.

Going More Swedish comments: 58

This past weekend I thought about paint a lot. Fall seems to be painting time around here, which makes sense, as we anticipate all the warm, cozy nesting that'll happen as soon as it starts raining. We spent all of Saturday morning at Miller Paint, getting new colors for the bathroom (aqua) and kitchen (gray), which haven't been painted in almost six years and are looking kind of yucky. This is the "dining" room, last Christmas. I say "dining" because it's really supposed to be a living room, but last year around this time we switched the living room into what should be the dining room, and put the dining room table (which we don't sit at very often) into the living room. It's a better arrangement — we have one of those front doors that opens directly into this room, with no real entry way or anything like that, so it was hard to arrange living room furniture, I thought. The only problem now is one of semantics, as in, "Where's Audrey?" "She's in the living, er — I mean the old living/new dining room , er — over there. C'mere Auds!"

Here it is last Thanksgiving, with the table pulled out. I like the room, but now that I've lived with it for a year, I feel it is too dark, so I've been looking through every old issue of Domino, trying to figure out what would be better. What I like about Domino is that it really seems to show rooms that successfully combine both vintage and modern styles. What I'm thinking for this one is Swedish-ish: pale gray for the walls, and lots and lots of whites/neutrals (I have cream curtains in storage), and lots of modern accessories, to temper the fussiness. Like a really modern, simple hanging light fixture — a glob of unfussy white Christmas lights? I think I saw something somewhere that was like an embroidery hoop with lights wrapped around it and hanging down — swagged over the table. I think I'm also going to top that table with a 60" round piece of plywood and leave it more "in" the room, instead of plastered parallel to the wall, where it sort of functions as a big desk. The plywood and the paint are the only things I want to spend a dime on.

See those blobs on the fireplace? They're plaster roses that I hot-glued onto the bricks and then piped plaster vines and leaves around them. The roses were made with plaster of Paris put into plastic candy molds — I did this about five years ago and got the idea from the Christopher Lowell show, so I can't point you toward better directions. What I will say is do not use hot glue to put them up. These are never coming off, honestly. I think we'll have to ruin the brick to do it. So, cute idea but not very responsible. I don't have any other ideas for putting them up there but maybe someone else does.

The reason I don't like this color is that in real life it too-closely matches the color of this room, which is directly opposite and connected by a big arch:

The colors on the paint chips looked hugely different to me, but in the rooms the shadows on the light color are almost exactly the same as the highlights on the dark color and visually it looks like one long rectangle of the same shade. At a dinner party we went to on Saturday, our friends confessed to testing twenty-six different colors of white for their kitchen cabinets. And it was worth it, they said. Eeeeeyikes. That will never be me, alas — no patience. I'm more of a pick-it-in-the-paint-store-and-hope-for-the-best kinda girl. I definitely don't always get it right, but what can I say.

And also, something I've been meaning to ask, does anyone know if there's some kind of paint-able cord-cover thing, or conduit that I can get to deal with those white cords on the right side of the photo? For some reason, this plug is three feet up the wall.

Don't you just have to wonder: Who thought that was a good idea?

Hurry IKEA, hurry! (We're getting one in Portland — anyone know when?)

Lovely River, then Delicious Dinner comments: 21

This is kind of what I imagined Oregon to look like before I moved here. That's Andy, in his orange swim trunks. He spent a good chunk of the late afternoon sitting on his floaty raft, paddling around. I laid in the shade and read, and took deep soul-searching woodsy breaths, inhaling that soft, soft pine-needle smell of the forest. I have rarely been in the forest since my accident, and although as a child I hated the forced marches our father took us on in our neighborhood forest preserve, as an adult, living in Montana and Oregon, I realize that I do love the huge, quiet pine-treed woods (so often to be found within city limits here) and do not get to them near enough. If I could manage to set up camp like Amy does, I would live there, I think. How in the hell and the hootenanny she managed to get a full-size bed into the tent I really don't know but . . . is that allowed? Wow. This changes everything.

We left the river around 5:30 and made it home an hour later to start dinner; I thought eating by candlelight might be nice. I made something that we call "Lasagna Rozale," named after the apartment building where we lived when we were engaged in Missoula, and where we first made this. From the February 1996 issue of Martha Stewart Living, these lasagnas are not smothered in red sauce (which I personally can't stand) the way so many seem to be; they are layered with bechamel and an only vaguely tomatoe-y sort of Bolognese sauce.

Though the recipe originally called for polenta "noodles," dried porcini, and veal, we modified things to be much more Orange-Street-Food-Farm (our very small neighborhood grocery store) friendly, using regular noodles, button mushrooms, and Italian sausage. Nevertheless, it is our hands-down all-time-favorite romantic meal. I thank you all quite sincerely for the kind anniversary wishes you left for us yesterday. I share this recipe with best wishes for many happy years and romantic dinners of your own.

Lasagnas Rozale
Serves 2

For the sauce:
8 oz. mushrooms, chopped
2 t. olive oil
2 t. butter
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
3 oz. lean ground beef
3 oz. ground pork
3 oz. Italian sausage
Salt and pepper
1/2 c. red wine
12 oz. chopped tomatoes (boxed or canned)
2 c. chicken stock
1/4 t. nutmeg

For the bechamel sauce:
2 T. butter
2 T. flour
1 c. plus 3 tablespoons milk
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. nutmeg

Other ingredients:
6 lasagna noodles
10 oz. frozen spinach, thawed and drained
3/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan

To make the sauce:
1. In large skillet, heat olive oil and butter over medium-low heat. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are soft and have let off their liquid, about 5 minutes. Add carrot, celery, onion, and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are translucent, 3 to 4 more minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in separate skillet, break up and brown all meats over high heat, stirring occasionally, about 4 minutes. Add 1/2 t. salt and 1/8 t. pepper. Drain off fat and add meats to skillet containing vegetables; mix everything together. Add wine and cook until liquid has evaporated, about 2 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, stock, and nutmeg. Lower heat to medium low and slowly simmer, stirring occasionally, about 35 minutes. Much of the liquid will evaporate but sauce will remain very moist. It can be made 2 days in advance and stored in refrigerator. You will have extra sauce after lasagnas are assembled to use over pasta, etc., for lunch the next day, too.

To make the bechamel:
1. In a saucepan, melt 2 T. butter over medium-low heat. Add flour and cook, stirring frequently, 5 to 6 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, bring milk and salt to a boil. Slowly whisk the milk into the flour mixture until completely incorporated and smooth. Add the nutmeg and reduce heat to low; simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

To assemble the lasagna:
1. Boil lasagna noodles in large pot of salted water until about a minute before you normally like them to come out. Drain and rinse with cold water, then cut (shorten) to fit two 12-ounce individual ovenproof casserole dishes.
2. Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat; add spinach and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until wilted and tender. Remove from heat and drain in a colander. Set aside.
3. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread 5 T. meat sauce into each of the casserole dishes. Cover with 1 lasagna noodle and spread 5 T. meat sauce evenly over. Spread 2 T. bechamel over the meat sauce and evenly distribute 2 T. chopped spinach over the bechamel. Sprinkle with Parmesan and cover with 1 lasagna noodle. Repeat layering process. Spread 1 heaping tablespoon of Parmesan and dot with butter.
4. Bake until tops of lasagnas are golden and juices are bubbling, about 20 to 25 minutes. If the tops are not yet brown, increase heat to broil and place lasagnas under broiler until tops are speckled brown. Let stand 10 minutes; serve with red wine, simple salad, crusty bread, fancy deserts, and lots of love.

Oh — and I forgot to tell you a tip about the parasols hanging from the pergola thing (thanks for the reminder, Hildy!). So, we have one of those trellis things, I never know what it's called, over the patio area, pictured here. (The lantern is several years old, from Smith & Hawken.) My friend Nancy told me about something she'd seen her friend do over her trellis thing in Italy once, while she was waiting for stuff to grow up and cover it. She floated parasols above the boards on top to give a bit of shade and extra romance. You just push the parasols up between the boards while they're closed, then open them. I would say that if you do this, it would be best to weight down the handles of the parasols somehow; I had four up there and two blew out and across the yard, even though there wasn't much of a breeze. The things act like sails. But I would think a couple of little bags of rice attached to the handles, or something like that, would help? Pretty idea — I'd been meaning to do it for ages. Would even be lovely with jelly-jar lanterns hanging from the handles for a little extra candlelight, no?