Living and Cooking Solo

           Two things I never mastered, knitting and rolling out the perfect piecrust, or even a barely redeemable piecrust.  My motto has always been, “don’t learn to do anything that frustrates you or that you do not want to get stuck doing from that moment on.”  For that reason, I also never learned to scale a fish or dress wild game.  If you were ever married to a hunter/fisher male you understand.             My friend Ada tried with all of her patience to teach me to knit, but I could never get my brain to coordinate with the needles between my fingers.   Ada finally gave up trying to teach me and instead knitted me three Afghans over the years.   The first, crafted of orange and olive green yarns (a hint to its age), continues to be my favorite.   I have tossed this thing over my legs on many a cold, winter night and thrown it in the washing machine more time...

           Most people agree there is a separate, secret dimension for lost socks.  Those of us who perform the task of washing dirty laundry frequently experience the phenomena of pulling only one-half of a pair of socks from the washing machine while feeling sure we placed the entire pair inside prior to turning on the wash cycle.  I save those single socks hoping for the mysterious return of their mates, which rarely happens.  Instead, the survivors of the pairs end up in the ragbag while I ponder a galaxy filled with floating lost socks.             Something similar happens with me when it comes to mushroom brushes.             While not a “shopper” per se, there are two types of stores I gravitate to when forced to stroll through a mall, those with books and those with kitchen gadgets...

         I just spent two days digging ten asparagus ditches.  This entails creating ten holes that measure one foot in circumference by one foot deep (Some suggest digging a trench, but the holes I dug last time worked well with my partially sandy soil.).  I did this same thing about 25 years ago, when I was much younger, and enjoyed freshly cut asparagus each spring until this past year when the bed suddenly gave out except for a few struggling sprouts.             Once I decided to replenish the bed, I went to Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Store on-line in search of replacement plants.  Finding what I felt would be the best specimen for my part of the world in the sunny/shady spot I use for my asparagus bed, I placed my order.  Being a person who regularly proceeds backwards, I then went on-line to research the asparagus planting process.  Hey, it has been 25 years and I am ...