Earlier this afternoon I walked out the backdoor to take a small bowl of kitchen garbage out to the compost pile. On my way I noticed a largish beetle-type bug on its back on the patio table, arms and legs waving about frantically in a futile effort against the smooth glass to correct itself. On the way back from the compost pile, I picked the Boy Wonder's frisbee and ever so gently slid it underneath the beetle and flipped it over. The insect immediately jumped to the ground, began making some kind of clicking/buzzing noise and flew away.


I don't love insects, beetles in particular, and ordinarily I probably wouldn't have bothered to assist any bug in its travails. Today, though, I've decided I need to improve my karma.


In the last two days, things have been going horribly wrong. It started with little events like the digital camera's memory card failing and the oven not heating at all (it used to just heat unevenly and only at great length). Then the laptop began to fail during my weekly back up and the dishwasher started to leak enthusiastically.


Then we moved onto bodily harm. Walking out to feed the dog I twisted my ankle whiched caused me to rather painfully hit the ground, spraying both dogfood and water all over the actual dog. She was pretty puzzled, to say the least. Last night I cooked up a few cheese sticks in the small auxilliary oven thinking that they would be a nice little "appetizer" for dinner. The Boy Wonder began choking on his first bite, a terrified look on his face as he struggled to make the stringy cheese either go down or come up. I sprang to my feet, took him in my arms and chopped him squarely on the back as I reached into his mouth and began pulling cheese out of his throat. He's fine, just a little scared (less so than his parents, I think).


I'm usually one of those people who is blessed by a ration of good luck, augmented by a large serving of privlege and garnished with hard work. My youngest sister, on the other hand, seems to attract all kinds of karmic lightening bolts - she actually came out of a store once to find that a small anvil had landed on the hood of her car as if she lived in some kind of live-action episode of the Roadrunner. But yesterday she called me jubuliant at having received a large check in the mail that she hadn't believed would actually arrive and learning that her oldest daughter won a lottery to attend a very nice, affordable and popular neighborhood pre-school this fall.


I do not believe that life is a zero-sum game and I am very pleased for my sister's good fortune. So why do I have this strange feeling that things are going to be a lot different from now on?

O.K., I admit it. I wiffed on the piscine version of Is My Blog Burning. I had this great recipe worked out involving little foil envelopes and rosemary skewers and the grill but it was not to be. I feel awful about it and the worst thing is that I have no excuse. I simply forgot all about it until I started seeing the posts. All I can say is that it won't happen again.


By way of apology, I offer a recipe instead for spaghetti with basil garlic sauce. The foundation for this came from Patricia Wells' new The Provence Cookbook, which is wonderful in every regard (I tried to give it as good a review on Amazon as I could without being gushing although I wish now I had been more specific about the recipes that I had tried before writing).


Anyway, Wells' recipe calls for a portion of a basil sauce for which a second recipe is offered. That second recipe requires four cups of basil, an amount that I was not willing to sacrifice since I only have two basil plants and although they are doing well they need to see me through the summer. So I did a little messing around and came up with:


First, prepare a pound of spaghetti by whatever method you choose. I like lots and lots of very well salted water, but that's just me. While the spaghetti is cooking, prepare the sauce by placing into a food processor or blender two large egg yolks, four largish cloves of garlic (peeled), about a cup of large basil leaves (rinsed), a quarter cup of olive oil and a quarter cup of freshly grated parmesan. Pulse to process, emulsifying the oil and egg yolks so that the basil and garlic become suspended in the mixture. It should be very viscous and somewhat mayo-like. Transfer the sauce to a large bowl. Immediately after the cooked spaghetti is drained, move about a quarter of it over to the sauce and blend well (this step "cooks" the egg yolk in the heat of the noodles). Add the remainder of the spaghetti, blend to coat with the sauce, season lightly to taste and serve with a green salad and a nice rosé.

Friday night's party turned out very well. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there was just enough food left over to convince me that people liked the offerings. I was pleased to meet more of my husband's colleagues and the Boy Wonder even managed to say, "It's nice to meet you" to the first several arrivals. It was, in short, an all around good time. I've asked my friend Barb if I can post her recipe for pickled shrimp, which was the best thing on the table. People just couldn't get enough of them.


Also, here's a handy tip which I learned a couple days ago just in time for the party: cheese will stay "good" even on very hot days if you place it on marble that has been frozen. It's true! The heat index on Friday was nearly 100 degrees F but the cheeses I set out stayed perfect. I used a marble board given to me as a wedding shower present by my dear friend Alisha almost exactly nine years ago.


After spending most of yesterday cleaning and recovering we are today enjoying the warm glow of achievement. The weather is much more mild than it has been lately and there is not a cloud in the sky so we are taking this opportunity to work outside. I have been weeding (you should see some of the scary ass weeds I've been pulling - some are taller than I and covered with thorns) and spreading peat around. My husband has been working on the play set and a quick look out back reveals a raised platform with the slide attached. Things seem to be going well.


I recently discovered a volunteer squash in my one raised bed so I was careful to weed carefully so it would not be overly disturbed. There are a dozen, maybe more, blossoms ready to turn into squashes (I hope) and lots more buds. I'm a little concerned that it's a sterile plant. Since I don't know precisely how it got there I'm wondering if perhaps it grew from something that can't reproduce itself from seed. If that's the case, though, would it be flowering? I checked the flowers today for swelling at the base and a couple look like they might be ever so slightly larger, but it's hard to say. Watch and wait is the only thing to do, I guess.


I also transplanted four marzano tomato plants and two cherry tomato plants (one red, one yellow) into the newly peated herb garden. I never did fill the whole space with herbs, which is good since I probably overplanted as it is. Now that I've seen that the space receives adequate sun I thought the tomatoes might actually do okay since they weren't thriving at all in their containers. A good soaking this evening with the hose and hopefully they'll settle right in.

FYI - It is, in fact, possible to become tired of cherries.


The activity level is ratcheting up (as if it ever ceases) here at the Hot Water Bath homestead. We've invited about 30 people over for cocktails on Friday, somehow neglecting to notice that this is only three days after returning home from the Little Diva's Baptism in Philadelphia. There is laundry everywhere, gifts piled up to be organized and documented for thank you notes, groceries to put away (we hit the Ardmore Trader Joe's before heading back), yardwork to finish and food to prepare. Clearly, we are insane and must be committed as we dangerous to ourselves. This will, however, have to wait until Saturday morning at the earliest.


I've decided that I will serve absolutely nothing that I cannot make tomorrow and save for Friday or that can't be slapped together Friday afternoon. It's been well into the 80s here, with humidity approaching 100% (strangely, there's been little rain) and I refuse to make anything requiring me to heat my stove for any length of time.


So here's the menu: olives/stuffed grape leaves/roasted peppers/pickled veggies, cheeses and fruit on chilled marble, cream puffs (made tomorrow) with curried tuna or pate, skewers of grilled marinated veggies (made tomorrow and served room temp), pickled shrimp and steamed mussels (mussels from the grill, shrimp to be made tonight), blue and white chips with black bean and corn salsa (made tonight) and tomatilla salsa (canned), spicy meatballs (in a chafing dish), melon wrapped in Bayonne ham. If I have time and people look hungry, I'll make some variety of crostini.


For drinks, I'm planning to keep it simple: sangria, beer, iced tea and French sodas. I always say I'm going to offer only a limited bar, but then I cave and put out a full selection of liquors and mixings only to have to clean it all up again, untouched. If I cave again on Friday you have my permission to slap me upside the head next time you see me. Seriously.

Is it possible to become tired of cherries? I'll know soon. One of markets had a sale on local cherries, 99 cents a pound. Well. I ended up buying fix pounds, freezing about three pounds of stoned fruit, putting another pound in a clafouti (which I wish I had taken a picture of - it was gorgeous) and eating another pound out of hand. There's another three or four weeks of cherry time here, by which time I'll know if it is indeed possible to never want to see another cherry again (or at least not see one until next year).


Next up are raspberries, blueberries and nectarines - any of which I would happily walk over hot coals for. We have several pick your own sources nearby for these and I'm thinking that the Little Diva and I should strap on the back pack and have a few outings. Since my canning wish list includes blueberry pie filling, I'll know where to start.

There comes a time in every blogger's life when he or she must look at the referral logs and say, "huh?"


I am but one blogger and I cannot include all the information currently being sought that includes the keywords bath, hot, nursing or pregnant. To wit:


1) To the person who asked Yahoo search, "Can you get pregnant taking a bath together?" I recommend that you speak to a health practitioner as soon as possible.


2) To the person who asked Google to find references for "hot sex bath mother son" I beg you to speak to a health practioners as soon as possible.


3) I do not post entries that would likely be of interest to the person who wanted "Zeta Jones Naked" via Ask.com


4) I don't even want to think about what was being sought with the search "man woman nursing milk"


5) Can anyone hazard a guess as to what a search for "vegetable sex" might be looking for?


6) The search "hot women having" seems incomplete somehow - although I don't imagine the searcher was looking for "hot women having intelligent conversation"


7) The search "Laura Bush hairdo" cracks me up in a million ways.


8) Finally, to the person seeking references for "hot aunt" well, how did you know that all of my aunts are exceptionally fetching?

The jerk sauce turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Hot, tangy, spicy, and sweet - just as it should be. I was surprised, although I shouldn't have been given my choice of ingredients, at how it is more actual sauce than a rub - which is what I am more accustomed to with jerks. That little discovery led to something of a mess with the food processor, but nothing that couldn't be dealt with on the fly (as you will see).

The picture above shows the small number of ingredients: a cup of soy sauce, a cup of lime juice- I used half key lime and half "regular", a teaspoon of both nutmeg and cinnamon, 12 cloves of peeled garlic, six jalapeño peppers (seeded and stemmed), a hunk of ginger (peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces - maybe an ounce or two), a cup of molasses, a cup of cider vinegar, and a mess of scallions - I used about 12 - trimmed of roots, but using all the white and green parts.

Place all of your non-liquid ingredients into a food processor and blend until it's a moist mass - maybe six pulses. Place into a large sauce pan and add all of the liquid ingredients. (Here was where I made my big mistake - I also put the soy sauce and lime juice into the food processor. It was just too much liquid for the processor to contain and I had a few leaks that were easy enough cleaned up but caused some distress every time I pulsed and, as a result, I maybe didn't grind it all up enough.)

Bring everything to a boil and keep at a medium rolling boil for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Then remove from heat and pack hot into hot, sterilized half pint jars. Wipe the rims with a hot cloth, seal with hot sterilized two part lids and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. When the processing is complete, remove from the water and allow to cool on a cooling rack or tea towel for a day or so. Check for seals (hopefully, you'll have heard the telltale "pings" of a job well done) before storing. Any jars that didn't seal may be opened, emptied, resterilized and refilled with hot sauce before resealing and processing.

That's it. As usual, the longest part of the whole enterprise is waiting for the water bath to boil. If you're more clever than I (not a far jump, I promise you) you'll have started the water boiling well before you started gathering your ingredients.

Now you have about about 3 pints of jerk sauce ready for marinating, rubbing, brushing and generally flavoring all kinds of meats, poultries and fish. Since I've got a roaster thawing in the fridge I think my first order will be to use my bit of leftover (i.e., not enough to process) sauce as a basting liquid for tomorrow night's dinner.

Can someone please explain to me the need that some people have to inquire after the nitty-gritty details of one's delivery of a child? Any woman who has been noticeably pregnant has been through the "community property" phenomenon, wherein one's every move and condition seems to welcome comment from the public at large. I, for example, was subjected to censure and angry stares after being "caught" tasting my husband's wine during dinner at one of Philadelphia's most expensive restaurants. You would think that someone paying so much for dinner would pay attention to the food and not fellow diners, but there you are. This woman was angry with me for that sip of wine.


Anyway, I digress. Until recently I have never experienced the phenomenon's post-partum equivilent. In the last three or four days total stranger have asked very intimate questions about delivering the Little Diva. I don't remember it happening after the Boy Wonder was born, but maybe I've just blocked it out.


Yesterday while standing in line at the drugstore (which messed up our scrip, but the way) I became aware of a women behind me cooing and making googly noises at the babe. I turned to say hello and she asked me the usual opener:


Strange Lady: Cute baby. How old?


Me: Thanks. She's four months.


Strange Lady: Awwww...where was she born.


Me: Just down the road at the commmunity hospital.


Strange Lady: And everything went well?


Me: Yes, she's very healthy, thanks.


Strange Lady: Did you need stitches?


Me: Gulp.


I tried to trot out Miss Manner's "Why do you ask?" response, which usually distracts the questioner so that they do not immediately realize they are not going to get an answer but I completely stumbled and ended up mumbling something about having a very good doctor.


At the hardware store on Saturday another woman wanted to know how long I had to push. (My husband was with me and he couldn't believe that one.) Not long ago I found myself discussing - again, WITH A TOTAL STRANGER - my decision not to have an epidural and whether or not this made me a competitive individual.


Part of me wants to cut these people some slack, realizing that giving birth is truly a transcendant experience - no matter what happens, you aren't the same after as you were before and it's natural to want to talk, talk, talk about it. And I don't believe that women should be silent about birth or how it changes you. These things should be discusess openly and honestly, with as much love and care as possible.


(Are you sensing a "but"?)


But. No matter how you, parden the expression, slice it, childbirth is an intimate process and should be open only to the woman and those whom she has expressly invited to share it with her. So if you want a cast of thousands in the room with you and then take out a full page ad in the local paper with your birth story, great (well, not really, because I don't want to hear about it, but you know what I mean). If you want just yourself, a partner and a care provider (or perhaps not even these), fine.


If you're not among these persons holding a backstage pass, do try to limit your line of questioning. A simple, "You're looking well" will usually suffice.

I was cleaning out the canning cupboard the other day and thought to take this picture. I didn't think, however, to write down what this all is, but I see some mango and strawberry jams, carrot pickles, chocolate sauce, pink grapefuit marmalade, cranberry chutney, dilly beans and maybe some key lime chutney. I also keep things like preserved lemons, applesauce, peaches and both pureed and diced tomatoes (although I'm currently out of all my tomato products). In the past I've made marinated mushrooms, which I'd like to make again, and am planning to start making ketchups.

This weekend I was planning to put in another supply of pickled carrots and make a first pass at jerk sauce. Instead, both the Little Diva and I got a bad case of the yucks. Neither of us has eaten much over the last couple days. This morning I graduated to toast and she's now nursing for just a minute or two at a time. Other than these little steps, food has not been popular around here.

So instead of talking about canning I want to tell you about our tent. You may not be surprised to hear that I'm not much of a camper. We live in the country and that's more or less enough for me. My husband and the Boy Wonder, however, are itching to pack up a tent and head off to the nearest park for some communing with even more nature (as long as said nature includes a playground, pool, showers and movie night, of course).

So after an exhaustive month of price and feature comparison we bought a tent. Specifically, we bought a $60 tent that's large enough for all of us and had a brand name that even I recognized. So I figured it would be serviceable and it would not be necessary to spend the hundreds of dollars that it's apparently possible to spend on tents (much better to spend that money on shoes, in my opinion).

Anyway, on Saturday afternoon the tent went up in the backyard and plans were made for the men in the family to sleep outside. Around 9 p.m. they went out armed with a flashlight and a bedtime book. Sometime around 4 a.m. it started to rain.

Turns out that the $60 tent leaks. A lot.

It's supposed to be leak proof. Or waterproof. Or whatever it is they say about tents that means you won't get wet when you sleep in one. So my husband says the tent is going back. I asked how much he thought a non-leaking tent might cost. "Don't know," he replied, "Maybe a hundred, hundred-fifty. Possibly more."

There is no way I'm going through the whole tent buying process again. We can buy a lot of seam sealer for the forty to ninety dollar difference between the tent we have in hand and some mythical leak-proof tent.