Odds and ends...

Neighbor's cat, the same one that got stuck in our car overnight during Halloween.
The cat is usually quick to scat when it sees me now.  I always want to take his picture before he skedaddles, and the other day I got camera lucky for this shot.

FYI: Princess Beatrice has her quirky Royal Wedding hat listed on ebay for charity.
She had Philip Treacy design the thing, at an estimated cost of 2,000 British pounds.

As of last night, just before 9 pm the hat was going for $32,900 USD. It is for a good cause; feel free to bid up!

(I have a feeling that hat is beautiful up close, and would have looked stunning if Beatrice had had her hair pulled back smartly when she wore it.)

Maybe it was all that attention directed towards the UK during that wedding that can be blamed for our current deary rain: It has rained unabated here now, just like it supposedly does over in Jolly Old England.

I am not amused.

The rain is seriously getting on my nerves.
I wish the cold gloomy weather would inspire me to bake or something. All it is doing is making me feel like going back into hibernation. Knowing there will be no new episodes of NCIS until next fall isn't helping either.

What I really need is some nice weather and a chance to go on a picnic.  Cook up a bunch of great food and head out for some dining al fresco...wouldn't that be nice.

Happily, I got my copy of the Mennonite Girls Can Cook cook book just the other day. As the book's introduction reads:

"No matter which way you look at it, wonderful things happen when people are given the opportunity to gather around the table—a chance to nurture and build relationships, fellowship and encourage one another and create a place of refuge for those who have had a stressful day."

That is SO true.

I want to leaf though through the absolutely beautiful MGCC cook book until I can select the perfect recipes to put together a menu for a perfect picnic once the weather gets nice.

But I am not really envisioning a relationship building meal "gathered around a table" in this case.  I am thinking more a blanket on the grass sort of event. 

It really doesn't require a table to "nurture and build relationships, fellowship and encourage one another and create a place of refuge for those who have had a stressful day", does it?

This dilemma is exactly why everyone should own several cook books.  I do happen to own another cook book, written in 1963;  I have personally have owned for about twenty years. It was written by famed food critic Mimi Sheraton, and it is scandalously entitled "The Seducer's Cookbook" .  (And yes, you can still buy it on Amazon too...)

In the book are several recipes suggested for put together a menu perfect romantic picnic. The author kindly notes however that in the case of some picnic parties, such as the one depicted in Manet's famous classic painting of 1863, entitled Luncheon on the Grass, (also known as Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) no menu planning may be required at all.  And talk about relationship building and stress relief:  I'll bet attending Manet's kind of picnic would be simply amazing in those regards. 

For those of us who would rather be out in the wild on a warm sunny day than be stuck at home in the kitchen, I think Sheraton's cookbook observations are just the thing.*  Summer will eventually come.  Some day...

* with a slight paring down of the guest list, of course!