The Looming

Do you see that ladybug on the wall in the lamplight?  We are currently enjoying our annual ladybug invasion.  They are everywhere in the house, marching across the sunny windows, holding meetings in the laundry room, congregating on the ceiling in The Boy Wonder's room, and lolling about on the houseplants.  Princess Hazelnut likes to sing songs to them.  It's ridiculous.  The sort of cuteness overload that makes your heart hurt.

I have a silly amount of recipes I have been stockpiling to share here when time allows.  Alas, there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many neurons continuing to fire properly in my (scatter)brain by the time the kids are in bed, the lights are turned off in my office, and I find my way to my favorite corner of the living room.  Or the bedroom.  God bless that warm, comfortable bed.

This weekend, I finally cooked from Moosewood Daily Special, and I think I might have fallen in love with the cookbook.  A few months ago, I ran across an entire box of incredible vegetarian cookbooks at a yard sale, and this was one of my finds from that day, but as with so many of the finer things in life, it got put on the back burner while the rest of life swirled around in its busy way.

It is a lovely cookbook, full of the soups and salads that Moosewood Restaurant would have as their popular - wait for it - daily specials.  So you turn to a page for a Creamy Onion Soup (be still my beating heart), for instance, and at the bottom of the page, it lists three or four of the salads that marry well with it.  Menu planning at its absolute best.  When I simply cannot bear to take the time to think through multiple components for a meal, I can turn here and know that all I will need to add is some fresh focaccia bread or a baguette from the bakery I am so blessed to have as a client.

Don't hate me because I have beautiful clients.  With offices in perfectly wonderful locations.  And more work than I know what to do with at the moment.

And tonight's dinner - oh my - of blue cheese ravioli made with wonton wrappers (because I barely had the time to be stuffing the wrappers much less time to make pasta dough from scratch this afternoon).  So delicious.  I really, truly should have been in my office rather than carefully sealing those ravioli, but a girl must have her priorities.

Recipes to come.  All in due time.  With pictures and descriptions and my usual absurdities.  And my newest and best-yet recipe for natural deodorant.  For now, I leave you with my new favorite album to listen to online - perfect for a rainy day indoors (I would know, we just had four days of grey skies and rain - it was a minor miracle and we loved every soggy minute of it).  If you need me, I will be in my office, madly and hilariously attempting to finish these infernal W2s and 1099s before that looming IRS deadline.