Friday Night

 

Due to various forces, circumstances, and lifestyle choices, my Friday nights have become a somewhat sacred time when I’m pretty much by myself, often with nobody to answer to at all. Many years ago I began a ritual of starting to read a new book on Fridays. Because of some inherent distractibility in my brain, I’m always in the midst of more than one book. I love to start new books, but I felt I needed to limit cracking yet another cover to one day a week, and chose Friday.

This week, I’m starting To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams, the third book in the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy published in the early 1990s. I’ve read this book before, but that was in 1994, and it’s going to be fun to revisit. (I’ve somewhat recently re-read The Dragonbone Chair and The Stone of Farewell, the first two books in the series.) My copy of this book is a first edition hardcover that I’m pretty sure could stop a bullet (the paperback edition was published in two volumes), so I’ll be reading this one for a while.

I also often end up contemplating the week that just happened and planning the weekend and following week on any given Friday night, often because I’m too tired to do much more than think.

This Friday I’m contemplating…

**The delicious omelet I made back on Monday: I stirred a good dose of Basic Basil Pesto into the eggs I scrambled for an omelet that I stuffed with home-grown cherry tomatoes and provolone cheese. This was one of the most satisfying improvisations I’ve ever performed!

**Sourdough bread baking using methods (approximately) outlined in Whole Grain Baking from King Arthur Flour. I’ve got my starter going, and have been making little loaves from the starter discard, the byproduct of the process required to make a properly ripe starter with the correct pH.

**This archive recipe, which was fabulous with zucchini and jalapeno bacon.

And planning…

**Recipes with vegetables from my garden and the farmer’s market inspired by cookbooks such as Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison

**Meringues using this technique and any egg whites I can save after using the yolks to make Scalloped Corn with Sour Cream and Chile

**Using berries and stone fruits as much as possible, especially to make desserts.

Coming soon…

**Mocha Sorbet and Double Espresso Cookies

I hope you have a night or day that’s all your own, that serves to refresh and revitalize you, that helps you celebrate what you really love. Or that just lets you settle in with a good book and something delicious.