The Food of Love

 

It's always about food here, and lately about growing herbs for it too. We are, however, also cultivating butterflies. Swallowtails, I think. I believe I posted about the caterpillars on some of my parsley. The plant isn't huge, but it seems to be feeding the little guys well! No one goes hungry around here.

 

The title of this post is semi-Shakespearian because We took in a performance of "Twelfth Night" yesterday. Buffalo, NY has the second longest continually running free Shakespear program in the country. Delaware Park (designed by Frederick Law Olmstead) is where the productions are held. They do some programs at other sites in the city, but the park is their home. Of course, I wore a thrifted linen dress.

We had initially thought we'd be meeting up with friends, but they ended up sitting in another section. The plan was to nosh together, so I stocked up on stuff to nibble using Flashfood (of course). We didn't eat a lot of it, but that's OK, it's being used. Hanging around afterward was not an option because we had to get home to Frankie. But for the record, the Enchilada bake was not part of our picnic basket. Those two packages are in the freezer for a quick meal another night.

I have been posting that my plan was to make veggie lasagna today. I had broccoli stalks to use, and a casserole is a great way to do that. Using fresh herbs, broccoli, and carrots chopped in the food processor, along with chopped onions, garlic, mushrooms, and canned tomato puree, the veggie filling was cheap and easy. For cheese, I used a bag from the freezer and half of the tub of gorgonzola I bought yesterday -- both Flashfood. The noodles were a big hoard from Big Lots. The no bake kind and were only a dollar for a box (I used 3/4 of the box). I mixed cottage and ricotta cheese too and added the remains of a tub of tabouli. This baked up perfectly. It came out of the pan easily, without any stuff sticking behind. We had two pieces for dinner and saved two for lunch tomorrow. The rest is in the freezer for dinners on another night. An entire tray cost under ten dollars to make. It's probably enough for eight meals.

My shower maintenance has been comprised of a soap and water scrub every couple of days, using blue dishwashing liquid and one of the wands that holds detergent, with a sponge on the end. We spray and squeegee vinegar after each shower. The first wand I used was great, but the sponge wore out and I couldn't easily (or cheaply) find replacement scrubbers. The new one I replaced it with leaked, and I wasted a few fills of liquid because of it. I've solved the problem by mixing detergent and water into one of the surplus pumps I keep on hand. There's a rubber band holding a scrubby sponge to the bottle. That should work fine. We use a lot of sponges in this house for a variety of purposes. There is always a microfiber sponge at the bathroom sink, so we can wipe the bowl after each use. This is great for rubbing toothpaste specks off the mirror too. Men must be genetically encoded to leave those behind!

In the spirit of using stuff up and not letting any food spoil, I made a huge fruit tart for dessert. The peaches I bought this week were going bad really fast because I mistakenly left them near a bag of onions. I cut up and saved what I could, along with the rest of a carton of strawberries, blueberries, and some sliced almonds. Making nut butter this week led me to discover we have two open bags of sliced almonds, so they needed to be used. The frozen pie crust was from a package of two, in foil dishes. I thawed both and rolled the dough out into a large tart pan. We enjoyed our slices with homemade French vanilla ice cream.  

Like the butterflies, we eat well!