Rrufus' last ball

My parents' dog died two weeks ago - I've been avoiding this post because it wrecks me if I think about it too much.

His favorite things (in order):
1. my parents
2. balls (preferably squeaky)
3. butter
4. walks
5. sleeping on my parents' bed (with his paws in the air, mouth open, snoring)
6. car rides
7. swimming
8. his best buddies Fred (human) and Abigail (canine)
9. my brother and me
10. snow


Rrufus looking dignified:

And slightly less so:

I'm a Junior Foodie

First foodie credential: Sylvia Schur, who died last week (the link is to her obit in the NYT), lived across the street and gave my parents a high chair when I was born. Her second husband (before they were married) gave me and my brother a set of wind-up sushi toys.

Second foodie credential: I've been 'putting up' food in the last few weeks. Plum jam a few weeks ago and oven-dried tomatoes last week (which we're going to finish eating long before winter). The tomatoes were from the garden and were quite tasty before they were roasted. But after? With some salt and olive oil in the oven at 80 degrees C for 3 1/2 hours? Really awesome.

Third foodie credential: John and I have been watching the Hairy Bikers quite a bit lately, and in one of the recent recipes they made a meat pie. It looked REALLY tasty, and John has been demanding Pork Pie since then. So we asked the Good Food website what to do, and it told us to make Gordon Ramsay's Pork & Ham Pie. From scratch. With pork mince, sausagemeat, ham, sage, eggs, and pastry made with lard. Yes, lard. Gordon's picture:

And our picture:

 

We don't know what it looks like inside yet (or how it tastes), but it sure smells good. We will be taking it to the choir picnic today and thoroughly tasting it. From this angle, you can't see the decorations on the top very well, but they are an "H", and a pig, made out of pastry. Swoon.

Junior Foodie credentials: complete. Please proceed to next level. Involving foams.

Maybe I'll blog more...

In the hopes of blogging more than once a week, I've downloaded a blogging app for my iPhone. Which I'm still obsessed with, by the way, even though I've had it for almost a year.

Both bells and choir are back in full swing, and the September rush is definitely on at work. As a result my downtime has mostly consisted of watching The Hairy Bikers' Tour of Britain with John on iPlayer, and then going to bed early. The HBs are very entertaining, and our favorite episode so far is Kent. Mostly because of their hilarious antics in the kitchen with an extremely skillful chef. We liked the Suffolk episode, too, of course, but mostly for the "we've been there!" aspect of it. Yum.

-- Posted from my iPhone

I've been cooking again. I made a salmon, dill & potato tart, from BBC Good Food. It was more of a quiche, really, since I mixed the recipe with a quiche one (and added milk and eggs). It was really yummy - John doesn't normally like quiche and even he had some. I'm now trying to convince him that what he wants is for me to make MORE quiche...

I've been ringing lots of bells (and have my very own Buxhall shirt to add to my Trinity shirt). This was Alison's first quarter peal, at Tostock. I nearly lost the plot in the middle, but thankfully Lesley was paying attention and put me back in the right spot. I always feel bad swearing in church...

Oh, and if you haven't already, read the article from this weekend's NYT Arts Section about the bellringers at Trinity Church. I KNOW them!! The Ringing Master (interviewed in the "multimedia slideshow" attached to the article) was the one who kept me right during a course of Bob Minor. WOOT!!