« Once Upon a Time, There Was a Monkey | Main | REAL Suggestions from the Children's Room »
May 31, 2009
Dill and Stuff
One advantage of neglecting my gardens late in the year last year is that I suddenly find myself with a quite unexpected bumper crop of dill. Turns out if you let dill go to seed and ignore it, it will sprout up all over the place the next spring, even the sidewalk cracks. Since the neighbor's lilacs went south, dill is the first thing I smell when I walk out the door every morning.
Currently, my favorite thing to do with dill is to make cucumber salad with a yogurt dill dressing, but it's also quite nice on roasted potatoes or in mashed potatoes, with lots of butter. Mmmmm.
Speaking of butter, the thing is that I've had this cold. Everyone KNOWS you have to feed a cold, and it was only about fifty degrees here today, which made a cold cucumber salad sound a little eh. So I decided to make a nice, big, melty batch of homemade macaroni and cheese. I even had some breadcrumbs in the freezer, which I whipped up with some butter (because the five tablespoons I'd used in the Bechamel sauce really just wasn't enough) and spread all over the top before I put the whole cheesy, yummy mess in the oven. Yes, it had everything good: butter, cheese, and lots of white flour. I ate three helpings.
Tomorrow, it's back to the cucumbers and dill, and probably the gym.
Posted by adrienne at May 31, 2009 08:22 PM
Comments
Ohhhh-your mac&cheese is sooo goood!I hope your darn cold goes away soon.It'll be June 1st tomorrow after all.Love to you little sweetheart!
Posted by: momster at May 31, 2009 11:10 PM
There's nothing like good old comfort food when you're feeling yucky. I hope it helped. :)
Posted by: olivia at June 1, 2009 08:08 AM
Home-made mac & cheese (with gouda!) is my favorite comfort food. I think it's on our menu for tonight, in fact. Deliciable, as Piper says. (I'm starting to believe that's a real word, in the dictionary and everything.)
I really want to plant some lavender one day. My mother-in-law used to have some next to her back door, and it always smelled so lovely when you brushed past it.
Plus, as Piper pointed out yesterday, "lavender" is a beautiful word, isn't it?
Posted by: Jules at June 1, 2009 09:46 AM
Momster, I finally seem to have stopped coughing.
Olivia, It did!
Jules, And I had some more mac and cheese leftover for lunch today. As the wise Piper says, deliciable.
Yes, I have some lavender, too. They say the scent is calming, and that seems to me to be true.
Posted by: adrienne at June 1, 2009 01:38 PM
Baked mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food. Yours sounds delicious! Hope it did the trick.
And Jules, you really must read Anne of Green Gables to Piper, if you haven't already. ""lavender" is a beautiful word" sounds exactly like something that Anne would say.
Posted by: Jen Robinson at June 1, 2009 03:42 PM
Jen, It did, and I spent much of last evening reading reading a good book (My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult). That's my favorite kind of an evening.
Posted by: adrienne at June 1, 2009 04:58 PM
Isn't dill just the best smell in the air? Last year I got some at the farmers market and left the extra sitting outside the patio door, which just happens to be where the dryer vent is. I discovered that every time we ran the dryer, the smell of dill wafted all over and smelled absolutely delicious!
Posted by: Anne at June 1, 2009 08:09 PM
I might try that.
Tonight, I made a barley and cucumber salad with the dill/yogurt dressing. This was very, very good. I keep thinking about eating up what's left in the fridge.
Posted by: adrienne at June 1, 2009 09:55 PM
I've had a pesky cold for over a week, and it's sapped my strength. A cucumber salad sounds so good, but I don't want to make it. I just want to eat strawberries.
I think I may make another lavender doll for the shop and one for me too-- with dried lavender inside, that is.
Posted by: Saints and Spinners at June 3, 2009 11:37 PM
Do you guys have fresh strawberries already? I'm waiting for the season to start here, but it shouldn't be so much longer.
Posted by: adrienne at June 4, 2009 03:42 PM
Ooh. I want your dill. I've been eating cukes like they're going out of style -- I figure if I eat raw food for lunch on warm days, the mac-and-cheese slides away easier.
Hope springs eternal, eh?
Posted by: tanita at June 7, 2009 02:28 PM
Are cucumbers readily available there now? They aren't in here yet, and we're paying about a dollar a piece most places. I did get a better deal at the market yesterday, but I wish the cucumbers would get busy coordinating their schedules with my dill.
Posted by: adrienne at June 7, 2009 07:34 PM