. . . Just Life Along the Way: This...

This is the way we roast our peanuts,

Roast our peanuts, roast our peanuts,

This is the way we roast our peanuts so early in the morning.

Okay, so it's just the way I roasted some raw peanuts. And it was at night. Anyway...I put a tad of oil in my non-stick skillet, tossed the peanuts in, sprinkled on some seasoning, and roasted them for oh, maybe 10-15 minutes? Something like that.

This was a beautifully loaded green salad I made after I found lettuce that looked exceptionally good. I never really buy lettuce here, but that day it was too crispy and fresh to resist. I do love a good salad. (When I was younger, my family used to call me the Salad Queen, because I could consume a very generous amount of salad.)

This is homemade papaya...jelly? jam? Confiture de papaye. That's what we'd say in French.

This is because kitchen work has its dangers (see burn spot on my wrist; piece of skin missing on my thumb).

This is because, as for me and my house, we will eat butternut squash.

We will eat a lot of it. And we will love it.

(And by "we" I mean of course "me". No one else lives here at the moment. Not even a gecko. Not that geckos would be interested in butternut squash. But I digress...)

This is just so you think I'm incapable of taking pictures of anything non-food related. I love fried plantains, sliced or speared, ripe or firm, salted or sweet enough to almost caramelize on the edges...

This was a cool find at a garage sale the other month. (Lest you think, "Oh, they have garage sales there too!" let me hasten to add that it was held at our Mission, and it is mostly definitely not a local thing.)

This is a creepy visitor I had one day. I walked past him in the hall, and I couldn't kill him right then because I had my arms full. A minute later when I walked past again - this time ready to smash him - I discovered he was already dead. Just like that. Weird, huh?

This was my birthday gift from Angèle. Pearl necklaces always make me laugh and think of a song from a video we had when we were kids.

"Oh, stomp, stomp on a pearl

There is nothing in this world

That feels as neat

As the feeling of a pearl

The feeling of a pearl under my feet!"

It was a pig singing. You know. From the verse about not letting your pearls get trampled by swine.

This is the artwork of a certain friend, whom I will call Picasso, in order to protect the real identity of said friend, whose initials are JD...

This was for Christmas fudge.

This is the amount of eggs I bought for December. Two flats. That's five dozen eggs. And yes, I used all of them. There was a lot of baking to do, you see.

This was Christmas cookies (from the thoughtful Debby). For all the Christmas baking I did, I didn't make a single batch of cookies, so it was fun to have some anyway!

This is the story of my Christmas break: olive cheese balls and more olive cheese balls and more olive cheese balls. I kid you not, I probably made nearly five hundred in that two weeks.

This was my first official translation project. ;) Angèle wanted one of my recipes, so I copied it for her. What I'd forgotten was that in addition to translating the ingredients and directions into French, I'd also have to convert all the amounts to metric. That was a bit trickier.

This was a "one-man's-trash-another-man's-treasure" find. Handy little jars, and cute to boot.

This is my lovely planner, by far the loveliest I think I've ever had. There's a pretty farm-y picture for each week. How could I not like that?

This is just funny. :)

This is what I found the day I decided to make myself a cup of tea, from my ever-dwindling stash of Candy Cane Lane tea. Apparently some little critters found it and liked it too. I wasn't particularly thrilled to share with them.