Beautiful Food – December 2016

I buy pomegranates almost once a week during their season. Their deep red color and the shape of the seeds are the ‘jewel food’ for the holiday. Of course, getting the seeds out of the peel and membrane is the challenge.

I cut the outer peeling and pull the halves apart --- then beat the peeling over a large bowl causing the seeds to fall it. It works well although there are still some splatters that escape over the rim of the bowl. The process is more like ‘play’ than food preparation!

Since the natural world is pretty drab this time of year – the bright colored foods are on my ‘favorites’ list. I like to make chicken salad with broccoli and cranberries (although I still include the celery that I usually use during the summer too).

I also like to stock up on homemade dried orange peel this time of year – to add to soups or stir fries….or to package up to give as a Christmas present! Have a small plate on the counter all during the month has just become part of my Christmas tradition.

Ten days of Little Celebrations – November 2016

So many little celebrations – it was hard to choose just 10!

There is always a lot of good food in November:

Thanksgiving was celebrated with our tradition of brisket cooked in the crock pot…but I enjoyed two new sides even more: a slaw made with Napa Cabbage, beet noodles and crystalized ginger (homemade cranberry relish and olive oil dressing) and butternut squash mousse (following the recipe for pumpkin mousse found here – sort of…I substituted unsweetened coconut for the banana).

Graham crackers have become my ‘comfort food’ for my afternoon snack or in the evening. I like the ‘originals’ the best and celebrate that they are still available!

Pomegranates are in season. They are so beautiful and their season meshes very well with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have become part of my tradition in those big celebrations.

Being home again after travelling was worth celebrating too:

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard after we returned from New Mexico and I managed to get a picture when the bird sat for a bit in our tulip poplar tree. I celebrated my new camera’s ability to get the picture…and that the bird was around. But I don’t want it to stay around all the time because I like the little birds that come to the bird bath and the feeder!

The Modern World, Part Two is the Coursera course I am viewing this month. I’d taken Part I way back in 2013! I celebrated when I found this one in the Coursera catalog because I’ve always thought my basic knowledge of history since 1900s was patchy.

The trip to New Mexico had so many celebrations…but I managed to pick just 5:

Birds that I had not seen (or maybe had not noticed) before worth celebration: Grebes and Brewers Blackbirds and Pyrrhuloxia to name a few. I should count each new (to me) bird is a little celebration all by itself!

Sandhill Cranes silhouetted by the sunrise…the image, the luck to catch it, just being at Bosque del Apache.

Wild Turkeys in action. Turkey being stately is one think…turkey running down the road to catch up with their cohort…I celebrated their quick analysis of their situation and seeing them move in hurry!

Macro Photography of Cactus. I haven’t gotten around to posting the pictures yet…but I celebrated how well my camera worked in the small botanical garden at Bosque del Apache.

Petroglyph National Monument. I had read a book before I left for New Mexico about petroglyphs in the southwest and celebrated being the place (near Albuquerque) to see some. They’ll be a topic of an upcoming post as well.

Tucson Botanical Garden

We visited the Tucson Botanical Garden back in January 2015 (did three posts about it: butterflies, garden and poison dart frogs. There is a new building that is the garden entrance and gift shop – with a lot more room than the older structure that was originally a house. We knew about the butterfly exhibit from last year and headed for that as soon as it was open since the air temperature was still pretty cool outside. Inside the greenhouse it was steamy and warm. I enjoyed the orchids and other tropical plants.

There were fewer butterflies than last year but one sat on my husband’s hat for a very long time. Can you see the curled proboscis?

Another sat high on some foliage and posed with wings wide open. The markings make the upper wing look pleated.

I only saw one poison dart frog and did not get a good picture. Disappointing. But….the docent told me that they have tadpoles; if they are successful raising them the population will be larger next year. The poison dart frog live multiple years and were originally brought to the butterfly house to eat fruit flies attracted to the fruit put out for the butterflies.

Outdoors, I noticed better signage this year for birds, lizards, and material for basket making. The signage is tile or protected by glass to survive the very hot temperatures of Tucson in the summer.

I saw a tiled bench with a pomegranate motif

And then the plant itself!

Arizona is famous for its geology and its deserts so I took a number of rocks/minerals along with desert plants.

Some of the colorful rocks look like they’ve been painted but the crystals of the mineral are often visible!

There were two special cactus images this time: a colorful one

And a dead one (for some reason – the curves in this piece of cactus stem appealed to me…maybe I should use it as a starting point for a Zentangle pattern).