Meanwhile, my husband has (obviously) been picking up everything that weighs more than 10 pounds, not to mention doing all the laundry and cleaning. All while looking ridiculously handsome. You’re familiar with the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme? I did my own version of “Hey Girl” with photos of Richard, and I think it works at least as well.

Many thanks to Quickmeme.com for the endless entertainment.

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So first, here is my dream bath…

Image used with permission from Bath Tourism and Colin Hawkins.

Image used with permission from Bath Tourism and Colin Hawkins.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a geothermal spring, nor the space to accommodate a tepidarium, caldarium, and frigidarium. My original bathroom is, however, not much of an improvement over the muddy site where these Roman baths were first erected. I reluctantly post the photos of the bath as it stands:

When we first moved in, there was some peeling vinyl flooring on the floor, and a super gross fake tile paneling on the left wall that was punctuated with ragged nail holes. It was grim. We did an under $200 “renovation” that involved a new light fixture, adding cheap white ceramic tile to the floor, replacing that wood paneling with drywall, and slapping on a coat of grayish-blue paint. Believe it or not, this was a huge improvement. But now its time has come. Here is the new plan:

Lots of gray and white, right? Not to worry, I’m planning on painting the walls fluorescent pink. No, I’m not. It’s going to be pretty subdued, and I’m going to love it that way. And the best part of this plan is going to have NO COLOR AT ALL. It’s going to be a perfectly transparent shower—very similar to this image below, except with no track holding the stationary glass panel in. Instead it will use a bracket that looks just like the hinges. And in our case, the door will be on the right, and considerably smaller. But this is the general idea.

Image from Alumax

I’ll post again as soon as I have the tile samples in hand, and we get ready to demolish the walls, floor, and the Vegas shower.

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My sister is somewhat obsessed with scorpions and other venomous* creatures. She brought a special scorpion-detecting lamp with her. And she bought this fantastic little guide called Spiders and Their Kin at the Big Bend outpost. So when we stopped at our old favorite, the Starlight Theater in Terlingua, Texas, who was she to resist their Stinger Margarita? (Terlingua is the site of a great ghost town, and the Starlight is an old theater that’s been converted into a restaurant and music venue.)

Unfortunately, having lived in Texas so long, most of our taste buds have been burned off by our overconsumption of chipotle peppers. She reported that the Stinger didn’t have much of a sting. The waiter told us that they used to serve them with a copper scorpion at the bottom of the glass, but they weren’t able to get them anymore, since “the border had closed.” (?!?) He also said that you could find a video about how to make them on YouTube. HELLO.

Needless to say, I could not wait to get myself to an Internet connection. I NEEDED a spicy margarita with a copper scorpion at the bottom. I had to wait till I got home, but then I decided my sister needed a margarita with a copper scorpion at the bottom even more. So that’s how I ended up making the most ridiculous care package ever.

I’m going to include instructions for how to replicate it if you are insane (i.e., me) or sane (i.e., hopefully everyone else).

If You’re Insane: First I obtained some 24 gauge bare copper wire. In my case, this was in my closet (as I said, I’m not altogether well).

If You’re Sane: Most people would need to go out and buy 24 gauge copper wire at a craft store—definitely not at a home improvement store.

Both Insane & Sane People: Watch the video below. It’s the best one out there to teach you how to make a copper scorpion. Sorry, it’s kind of weird. But this is what the final product should look like.

Next, you are going to create a box like this and fill it up.

Insane: Because you’re going to go nuts, you’re going to need a big box. Being insane means being inflexible, so only this box from The Container Store will do: the Legal Size Quick Ship Mailer. Because you want it to look “rustic,” you will assemble it so that the white side faces inside and the brown cardboard faces out.

Sane: Since you’re putting together this project on a budget, you only need a little box. You could pull one out of the recycling, make one, or buy one of these clamshell-style boxes from The Container Store: the Letter Size Quick Ship Mailer.

Since I was shipping mine a long way, I needed to use a lot of padding to prevent breakage. If you’re giving this to someone in town, you have the luxury of using those little paper crinkles as padding, or even just limes. As you can see above, I did use both key limes and regular limes to keep things separated…

Insane: But behind the scenes I had cut foam out so everything fits together like a machine gun in a Halliburton case. (A) Copper scorpions. (B) Stackable old fashioned glasses from World Market, $1.99 each. (C) Spice bottle filled with kosher salt, free since I had this in my kitchen. (D) Grand Marnier. (E) 1800 Agave Silver. (F) Norpro lime squeezer from Amazon.com, $8.39.

Sane: As I mentioned above, give this to someone you’ll see in person and you can just use limes or tissue paper or whatever to stuff the box.

Both Insane & Sane: Next you’ll need some things to put your scorpions, or rather margaritas, in. I recommend some glasses. I find traditional margarita glasses declassé, although I do not know how to say that in Spanish. Personally I picked these stackable old fashioneds from World Market because they are simple and versatile and $1.99 each.

Next you need salt.

Insane: Fill an empty spice jar from Penzey’s with kosher salt.

Sane: You could also use an envelope filled with kosher salt. Maybe even a glassine envelope! That would work.

Next you need liquor.

Insane: Go to the liquor store and buy almost full-sized bottles. It will make you sorry when you are paying to ship it, but you only live once.

Sane: Go to the liquor store and buy a few of these airplane-sized bottles of Grand Marnier and/or Jose Cuervo. Or… this is something I really wanted to do, but couldn’t risk the possibility of leakage. Buy yourself a normal bottle of good quality agave tequila (keep most of it for yourself), pour some into a small jar, slice up a jalapeño and a bit of lime rind, and put it in the jar of tequila. Leave it at room temperature for 3 days, shaking at least once a day. Afterwards, strain and include this new spicy citrus tequila in your care package. That will really give it a proper sting! Instead, because I couldn’t risk the possibility of ruining the whole box with a leaky jar, I included the recipe to do this in the box. My sister is a scientist who works in a lab, so I think she’ll appreciate the ability to make her own jalapeño-infused liquor with the exact parts per million she desires.

Insane: Now you need a lime squeezer. You can order this Norpro Lime Juicer off Amazon. It’s only about $8.39.

Sane: You can still order that lime squeezer off Amazon, or you can just include a little wooden citrus reamer. You can find those just about everywhere, even the grocery store. I know they have an OXO Good Grips one at Bed Bath & Beyond for $5.99. (I have the best story about Prince Albert of Monaco and Bed Bath & Beyond.)

Now you need to include a nice recipe card and a label for your box. I’ve made a downloadable PDF with both of these.

Insane: Me, I have a Gocco home silkscreening kit, so I printed the label out on a laser printer, made a Gocco silkscreen, and hand-stamped it onto the box.

Sane: It’s REALLY not necessary to silkscreen your box, even if you are making multiple kits. Instead, why not just print the label on a piece of paper and stick it to the box? You could even use the inside of brown paper grocery bag. That would also be good.

Finally, fill the box with limes and jalapeños, close it up, and give it to your friend in need of a super-spicy margarita.

With any luck, he or she will invite you to share one, and you can pretend you are here. If you are into Mars, that is.

*Do not say poisonous instead of venomous. You will get in TROUBLE!

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When she showed up at my door, I was nonplussed. I quickly gave my menu a mental review: no soft cheeses, no raw eggs, no lunchmeat. Check, check, check… just in case. But it wasn’t till I saw her rub her belly that I felt safe in asking my question: “Uh, is there something you wanted to tell me?”

Here’s a rule for life: no non-pregnant woman ever rubs her stomach, except maybe if she’s eaten a really large meal, and even then probably not.

And yes, my friend was seven months pregnant, and had not mentioned it. And so my cocktail was out. That’s okay, we just had them later.

I don’t claim to be any kind of mixologist, but I did make up this cocktail especially for my sweet husband Richard, who loves orangey things, and for the novelty factor: it glows in the dark.

Did you know that tonic water glows under a blacklight? It does, if it has quinine in it. So this cocktail is a simple 1 part Cointreau and 3 parts tonic water, and it’s very tasty and very orangey. Good old G&Ts will also glow under a blacklight, if you’re feeling more conventionally summery.

You’re welcome to add more than one ice cube, for the record. They also don’t have to be shaped like stars. That’s just a bonus.

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For my birthday last year, I received a new weapon to wage war against bermuda grass. It’s not for everyone, because it really is a weapon.

Behold, the FLAME WEEDER.

Hold on to your hat. You set your weeds… ON FIRE.

Die, jerks!!!

I wish I could say that it’s the answer to my prayers. It is not. It does get rid of the volunteer hackberry and oak trees that pop up everywhere, and it’s great for lesser weeds. Bermuda grass will still come back, but this does get rid of it for a while. More to the point, it is so, so satisfying. UNBELIEVABLY SATISFYING. I think this was the first time I ever let Richard use it and it was difficult to get him to turn it off. (Normally he’s the one to follow me around with a garden hose. This is a good idea, by the way.)

You have to buy a little propane tank at your local Lowe’s or Home Depot, but don’t worry, it’s only about $3. You can often find them in the plumbing session. These are not refillable, and it feels pretty wasteful to have a pile of empties sitting in the garage. I’m going to look into whether scrap metal companies will give you any cash for them.

P.S. Of course, you shouldn’t do this if your county has enacted a burn ban, or if the thing you’re trying to burn is near something you definitely don’t want to burn, such as a fence, or your house. Have a water source nearby, and so on.

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What am I saying? There are never enough crêpes to make it through the weekend. But we did get by.

Melted chocolate and sliced banana crêpes for breakfast:

Caprese crêpes with fresh mozzarella, fresh fat tomatoes, and a balsamic vinegar reduction for lunch. I reduced the balsamic vinegar on the stove myself, burning one batch quite spectacularly, but I just learned that Trader Joe’s sells a product called  Balsamic Glaze for $2.99 that would have saved the house being smelly for an entire day.

For dinner, sautéed mushrooms with thyme and white wine, thickened with a splash of cream. Spread the crêpes with ricotta or burrata and add mushrooms:

For dessert, Richard’s favorite, crêpes Suzette. You could probably do this by hand if you wanted to, but I use a food processor. Mix the zest of an orange with 4 Tbsp of sugar, then add half a stick of butter and the juice of the orange. When it comes together (the orange juice may not totally incorporate, and that’s okay), add it to a large sauté pan. Heat till your orange butter is melted and slightly thickened to make a sauce. Then add four crêpes one by one, saturating them with the sauce and folding them into triangles. Forks are useful in this endeavor, unless you like burning your hands off.

Pour in about a quarter cup of Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur. You can do more if you like. Then set it on fire with a fireplace match or lighter. Or don’t! Either way it’s hard to beat. Serve with a scoop of ice cream, and if you are retro like me, some mandarin orange segments.

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The grilling of the bread was the revelatory part, so while my panzanella is not plated at all elegantly, it’s got the flavor I was after.

So, this is what I do: take a loaf of stale country bread, preferably unsalted. In this case, I had a fresh loaf of pagnotta, so I toasted it in the oven after cubing it.

Do you have one of these? To me it’s essential for roasting vegetables; you can just lightly spray them with olive oil instead of drizzling them (drenching them, really) in oil. I’m sure you could toss the toasted cubes with olive oil too, but this is a lot lighter. Well, considering that this is a salad made out of bread, after all.

After that, we grilled the cubes in our panini press. It would definitely be even better on a charcoal grill, but it’s been threatening to rain all day, so that wasn’t a viable option.

Then I made a simple balsamic vinaigrette with two crushed garlic gloves, freshly ground black pepper, and equal parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (Typically, vinaigrettes are 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, but I like this more vinegary ratio better.)

Add mozzarella, tomatoes straight from the garden, Kalamata olives, chiffonaded basil, and the dressing. Quick pickled red onions would be nice too, and I’ve done that in the past. Refrigerate for an hour, if you can manage it. (You can’t.)

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All the same, the tree has more or less thrived under my benign neglect. It did lose a big branch a few weeks ago when it broke under the weight of growing peaches, so I picked immature fruit off the other branches in hopes of preserving them. Today we picked a large basketful of peaches that are close to ripe, and I figure I have about a week before I have to do something with them… or else.

A disappointing number of our peaches looked like this:

I’m not sure if these bite marks are from squirrels or birds, but either way, they are scoundrels. Seriously, you just ate a few bites, critter? So wasteful. Maybe this will shame me into researching pest prevention.

These are too small for eating out of hand, so I plan to make my first batches of homemade jam. I’m thinking… sriracha peach jam? I’d start with a basic recipe like the one here and add just a little bit of Thai chili sauce or sriracha. We shall see. I may just do straight up jam, since I’ve never made any at all.

But if I do make some spicy peach jam, I have some labels at the ready:

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Thanks to my very dear friend Michael Tole, who also happens to be a serious Artist with a capital A, this is my new view upon waking and falling asleep. I love it. Love is not the word.

This beast is 5 feet by 4 feet of vertiginous, riotous wonder. I generally like my art kind of dark and miserable, and this is most certainly not.

And yes, I only have one foot. What of it?

This is the official photo of the painting from the gallery, so you can see it without distortion.

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The Toas-Tite is a little clam-shaped sandwich maker with a long handle. You put in a piece of buttered bread, add your filling, put a second piece of bread on top, and close them in the Toas-Tite iron. Peel off the excess bread, put it over the stove (or the campfire!), and minutes later you have a UFO-shaped sandwich that simply does not leak, just as they claim. Introduced in 1949, it’s a space-age gadget for space-age sandwiches.

While Stacey recommends a fluffernutter Toas-Tite (and surely we will try that at some point), this morning we decided to make breakfast sandwiches.  To that end, we purchased some Orowheat potato bread, as recommended by a Toas-tite recipe blog. We also took their suggestion to roll out the bread before using it in the Toas-Tite iron, so as to let it better overlap the sides of the iron and ensure a tight seal on the sandwich.

Then we buttered the outside of the bread, and placed the buttered side facing the iron. We filled it with a mix of scrambled eggs, sautéed bell peppers, caramelized onions, tomatoes, and sharp cheddar cheese.

After placing the other slice of bread on top, butter-side facing the iron, we just closed the iron, tore off the excess bread, and heated it on the stove.

And this is what we ended up with! The verdict: even more fun to eat than you would expect.

The sealed edges are quite crispy and it really is nice to eat something that doesn’t want to spill down your shirt straightaway. Obviously, the tastiness is completely dependent on the fillings you choose. Next we’re thinking of trying a Welsh rarebit Toas-Tite with grated cheddar, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. We’re also considering a vegetarian Reuben with rye bread, roasted portabella mushrooms, sauerkraut, and a bit of Thousand Island dressing. What about an Indian Toas-Tite with mutter paneer and naan? The retro recipe booklet suggests experimenting donuts or raisin bread in the Toas-Tite, and I might just do that.

Not all of the recipes translate well to modern day tastes. For example, they offer instructions for a “mock cherry pie” with cranberry sauce and almond extract. Hmm. And I guarantee I won’t be filling one with “creamed fish” (what?!?). Still, the possibilities are nevertheless infinite, even if you exclude the idea of “prune pudgy pie.”

Oh, and, by the way, I bought this Toas-Tite and posted this lengthy paean to it all of my own accord. The Toas-Tite people have never heard of me except to ship me a package.

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