blue artichoke

Part of the reason I went over budget last week was because I bought a quart of blueberries. I've been looking forward to blueberry season since the weather warmed up, and the price finally reached a reasonable range. So I bought some, back off! Though I may have wanted to shovel them into my mouth by the fistful, I demurely waited until yesterday to bake some into muffins for breakfast this morning. I froze the rest, to try out my remaining two plain blueberry muffin recipes in the next two weeks. The ones we ate this morning were disappointing, fit for those who prize appearance above all else. They looked awesome: lightly browned and puffy, nicely textured and riddled with dark blueberry polka dots. But the flavor? Not so much. The recipe was rather vague about the sugar, calling for 2 T. in the ingredient list, but directing me to sprinkle the berries in sugar, add sugar to the batter, and sprinkle the muffins with sugar before baking. All that on a mere 2 T? I tossed the blueberries in 2 heaping tablespoons of sugar, added 2 more heaping tablespoons of sugar to the batter, and sprinkled a hefty pinch of vanilla sugar on top of each muffin before baking. Still, not nearly sweet enough. I'm not going to pass along the recipe just yet; I plan to tinker with it while fresh blueberries are still available at a reasonable price and hope to pass along the recipe when I find a nice balance of looks and tastes.

I don't own a home, but I had a homeowner weekend. Yesterday morning, I took Fat Larry outside for a walk through the backyard. Amidst the overgrown bushes, I noticed a lot of dead branches. I found my trusty rusty loppers with three-foot handles, and went crazy chopping shit down, a la Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. I dragged the downed branches to the big pile of deadwood I've been building for two years and surveyed the damage. Perhaps I got a bit overzealous in places, but for the most part, you'd never know I cleared out so much. We still have ample privacy in the back yard for sunning on the hammock in a bikini. After that, I walked down the street to paint a bathroom and jump out the windows of an empty house, then back to my house to mow the back yard and water the instant garden in the front, with the hose I dug out of the shed and coiled around a new hose-holder-thingy my landlord installed beside our outdoor spigot. I showered, put in some time in the hammock, then made dinner and baked muffins for today's breakfast. Sometimes it's nice to visit the life of a homeowner, but mostly I like leaving the yard work to GC and the landlord.

Getting to Know All About You: What would you plant in your ideal garden (or would you have a garden at all)?