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Blog depression. "If you feel overwhelmed with a crushing pressure to post to your blog, a pressure so acute and strong that you can't post anything at all, try to remember, no one cares. You took up blogging of your own accord. Stop torturing yourself! you silly bastard."

Simply substitute "LJ" for "blog" as needed. Pretty damn funny.

Good god.

I just sauntered out to put a bagful of glass bottles in the recycling bin behind my garage, sniffing the fine soft air, enjoying the peaceful quiet of a summer morning. After getting the bag stowed and putting the lid back on the bin, I heard someone say "Ma'am!" Looked up, and across the alley was a uniformed cop holding a rifle, in a take-cover position behind the neighbor's garage. Another, also with rifle, was crouched behind the garbage cans. The first one said, "You better get in back in your house, ma'am." I *motored* back in.

So now I'm scanning news outlets and listening for gunshots. Jeekers. (And it might be prudent to lock the back door and take my smoke breaks out front, for the nonce.)

ETA: All appears to be clear now. Still and all, jeekers.

Recipe box: Le Grand Aioli

Some people know aioli as a sauce--"garlic mayonnaise, right?", they'll say. And yes, it is that. But Le Grand Aoili is in fact a meal, a celebration -- and, in my annual trip through cycle of the seasons, the ultimate festival of high midsummer. It is, to my knowledge, the only holiday feast that is defined not by some sort of big-meat entree, but by a mere ("mere," heh) sauce.

I first got to know Le Grand Aoili through the Minneapolis Bastille Day festival of the same name, formerly put on by the New French Cafe (and which I wrote about several years ago, in my old blog). When the New French closed and the celebration went by the boards, I decided to continue the feast, at least, and have prepared it every year somewhere in mid/late July.

And this year, filled with some sort of culinary grandiosity, I decided to try making the sauce the authentic Provencal way...( Read more... )