Cooking Like New

"They" tell me that, globally, I'm in the notorious 1%, the privileged millions. Nevertheless, it's been at least 15 years since I've had a reliable cook stove.  


A new range was nearing the top of the renovations list in the Waldoboro, Maine, house when suddenly and sadly there was no more handy husband Tom to complete the beautiful, new kitchen. 


Now, years later, new handy husband Roy and I are fixing up his Wayland, Massachusetts, house anew, just for ourselves.
To that end we bought a gas range from a national retailer. Actually, we bought two.


If you want to know something of the trauma of that transaction, see Roy Barnacle's FB post on the topic. I'll just say that after 4 visits from the installers the first new stove was declared a lemon. Then, after one of the most tense and unpleasant re-shopping experiences I've ever endured, the replacement is in place, as of yesterday -- and it WORKS, very well. 

First act, peanut butter cookies.

There's something satisfying about a
reliable oven. . . not to mention its products!

Roy followed suit with a dutch apple pie. You can see what has happened to that.

Do you need cheering up?

I thought today you'd like to see some spring flowers.

It's been a tough day, with our soldier going on a killing binge in Afghanistan -- and apparently he's not the first. And their fighters just killed six young British soldiers. (Which event came first?) Assad of Syria still pursues his killing binge, a very coldly and politically calculated one. American politics still writhes with its foot caught in the trap of dirty name-calling, a trap set by big money and sprung by bigotry (remember, bigotry is not determined by which beliefs one holds but by the utterly tenacious way one holds those opinions). 


So, it was great to see on the news Queen Elizabeth making her rounds with the fledgling princess under her wing. So, it was good to take a walk and see the spring bulb flowers sticking a first green shoot or two out to test the sun and air. And it was some relief that the flares from our sun, which were expected to be disruptive, weren't. Just beautiful, from what I've heard on the news. 


The flowers pictured above were among the iris I imported from my daughter Leah's home on the Principia College campus in Elsah, Illinois, during the years her family lived there. Planted by my front door in Waldoboro, Maine, they were sheltered and came up early. 


Here is a picture that hints at how those iris, paired with
my own-planted white lilacs, fed me my spring tonic each year.
May they do the same for you.