back on track! THE DAY BEFORE'S POST!!

Finally have my new Mac book pro set up but it's a bit of a learning curve with their new operating system. Nonetheless, here I am, feet up in the living room, looking at the temporary setup for what will become actual online courses (if I live long enough).

Phil has gone to New Jersey for the month so I won't have any distractions from my work. Some of my time will be in the studio, but probably most of the video for the classes will be done at home. The studio has a very loud air conditioner and when it is on, you can't hear me speaking. When it's off, the place is 90 degrees: this is Florida! The apartment where I live has central air, so I will be working at home doing most of the filming and on Zoom, when we do the intro part, as I always do in the classroom. But I am getting ahead of myself...

In the studio I have been picking out stitches and restitching the purportedly straight but lopsided lines. And I've been experimenting with improv log cabin blocks. To be continued.

At home I have been taking care of my plants on the kitchen windowsill.

Ignore the pot on the left. I have already transplanted the green onions and the rest are cilantro seedlings. Next one is cabbage. Really!

I planted the bottom of a cabbage some months ago and it is sprouting. I don't even love cabbage, but it is just so cool to see how far it gets. In the middle, my sweetheart of a curry leaf plant. It has taken a year to get to this point and I love the fragrant leaves which I use in my South Indian dishes. If I want to feel happy, I go talk to my little curry tree. On the end, mint and basil.

The good news is that the hurricane, which was heading right to West Palm Beach, changed its mind and all we got was a tropical storm. When it was over, there were four avocados on the ground. Still small and with some teeth marks from the squirrels (see them?) but we will let them ripen. We gave two to our neighbors. These are Florida avocados, which are not nearly as wonderful as the Haas avocados. But they are free. My mother and her friend planted a pit in the 1980's and it is now a big tree right outside my window. But there are poachers around, so I have to keep my eye on it.

Have, of course, been cooking as always. Monday I made fish for dinner. Last night I made chowder with the leftover fish and a couple of shrimp and scallops from my freezer.

Delicious!

This chowder is a no-recipe recipe from Sam Sifton, editor of the NYTimes cooking app. I l love no-recipe recipes because that's mostly the way I cook, anyway. You need this one for when you don't feel like cooking. It makes itself!

Finally, today I made another semolina bread -- different from the one I made last month. Just out of the oven and I will let you know how it turned out. It looks good, but the test is in the taste. The apartment smells SO wonderful.

Between all of this fiddling around I am managing to work on the preliminaries for one class. I'm doing some for the guilds who have postponed (optimistically) for 2021 but I will probably offer some of them to the public. If you have any of my books, let me know what you'd love to see as part of my online teaching schedule in the future.

I miss you. Sending my love - stay safe!