Brian is the Best
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006You have heard me tell of my roommate/husband Brian, before. We have been married a few weeks more than 10 years. He just keeps getting better. Me, I keep getting more eccentric and forgetful (at age 47, too young for excuses), but he somehow loves me consistently, in spite of imy warts.
Now, you’ve also heard me tell about how much I dislike cooking. Yet fate has determined that most of the food I eat must be made in my kitchen, because of all the zillion ingredients commonly found in this culture’s food that make me feel crummy. When I can control the ingredients, I feel great. It makes sense to do just that.
So I’m stuck in the kitchen a lot these days. I’m getting more used to the routine but I’ll never like touching, eating or even thinking about meat. Ugh. The crock pot is my friend!!! I can cook four turkey breasts or two cornish game hens or a dozen chicken drumsticks all at once, and then not have to cook more meat for several days. (Yes, I’d prefer to be a vegetarian but if you can’t eat cheese/dairy, eggs, nuts or tofu, it’s pretty difficult to get enough protein to thrive without meat. Pout.)
So late last week Brian and I hit a bunch of different markets/grocery stores and collected as many root vegetables as possible. I was craving parsnips for some reason, wanted some in a soup. (Kathy inspired me a while ago and I finally was ready to take action on that idea.) I’ve only eaten parsnips a few times in my life but they just sounded right. So I tried 3 places with no luck, and Brian went to Goodrich Shop Rite and brought home a whole lot of parsnips. Yeah!
Sunday I did my rounds and picked up/dropped off things at Threadbear and Little Red Schoolhouse on the west side of Lansing. While I was off and running, Brian not only fixed our faucet (it would leak everywhere when we ran the water, didn’t drip at all when shut off)… but he chopped so many vegetables that there was no more room on the counter.
I joined him when I got home. We ended up making TWO soups. One (in a pressure cooker) used some of the turkey breast I cooked earlier that week, and ginger/garlic and cabbage, sweet red bell pepper, turnip, and kohlrabi (one of my favorite vegetables of all time). The other was parsnips, sweet potatoes, sauteed onions, a touch of fresh organic spinach, and fava beans (an excellent meaty bean often used for a breakfast dip in Egypt, but is great in tomato sauce on pasta and even in salads).
I left that soup in the crockpot overnight and it is SO good!!! It’s good cold, it’s good hot, it’s hard to not eat the whole pot in one serving. Because trust me, when I cook, I make lots of leftovers so I don’t have to cook for a while.
I can’t tell you how great it is to come home and have more than half the prep for dinner already done. I guess my sweetie doesn’t mind doing it (he has a good attitude about everything, really) but this is the first year he has done much in the kitchen. I totally am loving the results.
I’m feeling happy and loved. And full!!!


I knit this piece in Africa, nearly two years ago. It was intended to be the bottom of a felted backpack that I had wanted to knit *before* I left, but it took all I had to just get ready for a trip I couldn’t plan. (How do you plan for something you can’t imagine?)
So this piece was relegated to after everyone else went to bed. I spent a lot of that time writing in a journal, and as you know I tend to write a lot. I did knit but the bottom of the bag was all I accomplished.
Today I found the lid to a saucepan I have not owned since I moved to Brian’s house 10 years ago. Dang. Every day a new discovery. Maybe someday we’ll be able to move around here without dealing with all the clutter. I have seen the changes my brother Eric and his wife Diana have done in a relatively few years. It’s a miracle, the change that is really working for them every day now. They don’t buy if they don’t know where it will go before they make the purchase. I’m not there (Brian thinks that way but I never have). I can get there, one day at a time.
Brian and I had breakfast on Sunday at the diner down the street. Their first location was in Ann Arbor, about an hour away from us. This building was closed for a while and we’re very happy the Fleetwood folks bought it. It’s thriving… teeming on Sunday mornings.
We took a lot of photos when we were there. These struck me as the most interesting. Brian took the pictures of me and of the teacup. I believe I took the rest, with the possible exception of the photo at left (or just above, depending on your monitor settings).
The place is very city-like, more than most places in Lansing. It reminds me of places I’ve been in Chicago (but it’s much newer, the building is less than 10 years old). It attracts a great cross-section of Lansing cultural/social groups. You see old and young, affluent and working class, artful folk and business folk. I love that.
Brian goes to the Fleetwood about once a week. I don’t go there much because of my food allergies… I can eat a salad or order tea, and that’s all I can eat there. However, the waitstaff are always willing to accommodate whatever I want or need, whether it is on the menu or a custom order.
I’ll let the photos talk for me now. I did not crop anything. I did color-correct and feather the edges, but they are otherwise as taken from my point- and- shoot digital camera.



It is “Sun-day” and the sun shines in Lansing. The wind is wild, and though the walk to the Fleetwood Diner from our house is merely 5 blocks, we felt chilled as we approached their building. Good coats are essential on these days, snow or no.
I’m knitting with the softest, most comforting yarns I can find in my stash. It does my heart good.
Wednesday on the way home from Foster Center (for a quick break) around dinnertime, I glimpsed a beautiful view of the Grand River near Potter Park. (This is somewhere around a mile from my house, closer to downtown.)
crossed Pennsylvania Avenue by foot so that I could take some photos. I took maybe two dozen photos and I promise you, they are all wonderful. I just do not want to bore you with that many facets of the same jewel… so you get two.
The last photo is from Thursday morning. We got a hard frost for the first time that night. I don’t usually get up that early but here I was outside around 8:30am or so. The first hard frost puts all the “iffy” leaves on the ground in a split second! I stood there and watched the leaves fall on (almost bury) these cars across the street, like it was a blizzard with flakes falling. It was amazing how fast they came down.
Stephanie/
Therefore, I give in. I took a quick photo of a table full of the colorways I dyed, on the way to the Threadbear sale a few Saturdays ago. I’ve done a quick edit to try and adjust it properly, though blue tends to disappear and purple always looks like dark blue. I’ve always said if you got a skein where the colors didn’t look as you liked when it arrived, I’d swap it for something else. (I know that turquoise does not do well on a monitor, it’s caused me trouble buying yarn myself.)
I spent my childhood singing into the mirror. Practicing for when I’d be grown up and singing as my job.
Singing for people who want to listen, is the best fun I can think of right now. I definitely was right when I was a kid. This is the best. And doing it with the man I adore and who loves me back… well, I never imagined life could be this great. It’s not great every second but when we’re on stage, time stops and I experience bits of heaven right there.
I had to go to a doctor’s office to pick up something, had to go to the post office, grocery store, teach CityKidz, take a dance class, rehearse with Habibi dancers, then for dinner we dancers went to Emil’s restaurant because one of our dancers is moving north and it was her last night with us.
Nevermind that the people in the shop that day were great company and it would have been fun, sale or no.
tly, the best thing I do all week is teach the CityKidz Knit! program. These kids are normal, everyday kids in many respects… but in my room, they shine and they are fun, funny, brilliant, creative. They love me and they know I love them back.
But hey, I have made a promise. It took so long to find the exactly right fingering weight solid red yarn, that I need to get on it now that all the stars are in alignment.
I’m wearing my Bloom Shawl in a Multicolor (slowly color-changing) turquoise brushed mohair. I love this shawl, I wear it almost every day. Until yesterday. Somehow when I took it off at Threadbear, there was what looked like a 2″ cut with scissors from the crochet edge toward the neck.
fter the sale, Brian and I had a private musical performance. Then we went to Altu’s for dinner… and THEN we went to Magdalenas (for not long enough) which deserves its own story if I can find time.
I have more sockyarn that isn’t re-skeined but I have a decent sense of what usually sells and I’ve prepared more than is needed for a one-day sale. I’ll take along the dyed but not prepped yarn, in a box in the car, in case someone wants more of a colorway than I’ve wound, but this is somewhat unlikely. Most likely, the yarn in that box will become yarn for those of you out there reading who can’t make it to the sale (hi, Deb!).
Two special events are today and tomorrow for me. I’d love to see you folks there. Both are in Lansing, Michigan.
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8 colorways of my Cushy ColorSport DK weight washable merino. I may have some polymer clay buttons… if I can find the box I put them in when I cleaned house for overnight guests (sigh).
Candy just finished her First-Time Toe-Up sock class at Rae’s. She finished a whole sock and almost half of a second one, in three weeks.
OK, it’s not even halfway through October. It snowed All Day Long.
few months, very unusual for this time of year. Often we do not need to mow grass much if at all in October. This fall, most people have been trying to keep things from looking like a jungle.