This is kind of what our skies looked like yesterday. We have some ashes (people further south have a lot more) but mostly we have this yellow-orange-filtered light that blankets the skies. The photo above (taken near Cooks Corner in Silverado Canyon, east of our home about 7-8 miles) shows the fires are still raging, just beyond the camera range. Our air is awful to breathe. You step outside and you know there’s still a lot of fire in the air.

Our daughter and her family are still evacuated in San Diego, although I read online this morning that they may be allowed back home today. They returned to work yesterday in Escondido, with their 2 children, 1 dog and 2 cats in tow (they own their own business, so they can do that). But the Witch Creek Fire that threatened their home, is still burning and only slightly contained. It’s just that it’s not close to their home any longer. It’s moved on.

Our fire is still raging, 30% contained, and is moving up Silverado Canyon (Modjeska is a side-shoot off Silverado). Many homes have been burned. Yesterday morning everyone was evacuated out of the canyon, and I believe they got most of the horses out. There is a line of foothills (well, one foothill) that separates us from that canyon, but it’s heading northwest, and southeast – not our direction. The firefighters have set back fires, so it is hoped they’ll get the fire stopped, or at least to change direction. The problem is it’s now into the Cleveland National Forest, a huge area of chaparral and scrub brush. But hundreds more firefighters have arrived in So California, so they’re trying the best they can. So far, our local fire has burned 23,000 acres. So sad. The fire sleuths are pouring over the 3 set-sites that the arsonist prepared, for clues. They say he was an expert – he knew a lot about fire and how to set one.

Thank goodness for these guys, dropping fire retardant. And thankfully, the Santa Ana winds have dropped to zero. Our humidity is still at about 4%, though. (photos from the Orange County Register)

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This is the same fire that was about 3/4 of a mile from our home on Sunday. It’s called the Santiago Fire, but our newscasters are now calling it the Modjeska Fire, since the wind shifted this morning and the fire has begun moving north into Modjeska Canyon, a very rural area directly east of our home by about 4-5 miles. It’s a 10+ mile long canyon and so far it’s burning at the further (southeasterly) end. It’s mostly vegetation with some small and large homes spotted throughout, but because of the steep terrain there and the heat of the fire, the firefighters have mostly pulled out and are having to let it burn. Hundreds of homes will be lost. And likely thousands of domestic animals. It’s a haven for horses.

The homes you see in the photo are a new group of subdivisions called Foothill Ranch. That’s not the Canyon – it goes off to the right. All the homes in Foothill Ranch have been evacuated.

Our daughter in San Diego (and her family) were evacuated yesterday very early morning. So far their home is okay, but they can’t return yet. San Diego has the worst of the fires, I think. Over 1400 homes have burned to date, and the fire is completely out of control. Southern California is known for its hills and small valleys and gullies. Usually homes aren’t built in the gullies, so if a fire gets started, the wind can carry the embers from one gully and valley to another in nothing flat.

This is an enhanced satellite view of Southern California coastline, showing the fires. The top one is Canyon Country, about 40 some miles north of Los Angeles. The one dot at the ocean is Malibu. The group inland from Malibu is Lake Arrowhead. Below that is our Santiago/Modjeska fire. The one below that is at Camp Pendleton in very north San Diego County. The bottom two groups are in the San Diego area. They’re by far the biggest fires and the most dangerous to human life. Our TV is saying there are still 10 major fires burning in So. California. You can see how the winds carry the smoke out to sea, but the fires also spread that way. The Santa Ana winds, that were gusting from 40-60 mph have reduced to probably less than 10 now, so that’s good. Fires won’t spread as rapidly, but the dry brush gives them lots of fuel to burn.

(photos from the Orange County Register)

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Did you know that there are people out there who do nothing but proofread? It sounds like a pretty boring job to me, but it’s oh-so-very necessary. I think they’re now called “copy editors,” but I’m not sure since I worked in advertising, not in the publishing world. I bring this up because I wish I’d had one when I hit the “publish” button a few days ago. One nice feature of blogging software is spell checkers. Good thing. Even though I consider myself a very good speller (I even came in 2nd in a spelling bee back in junior high school), when you type and read, and re-read your own copy (the word copy means the text) you often make typing, spelling and grammatical mistakes. And when you go back and re-phrase things, move sentence structure around sometimes, you forget to go look at sentences from beginning to end.

Most of my recipes reside within my own recipe software program. I’ve mentioned it before, MasterCook. It’s a great little program. But, it’s only as good as the human (frail as we are) person who types in the ingredients and taps in the instructions. Some years ago I printed out a completed copy of all of my recipes and they live in two huge 3-ring binders here in my kitchen. When I go back and refer to them I sometimes notice little things about the recipes that need fixing. I’ve done a global spell-check of my complete cookbook, but there are some small errors that need to be fixed. Grammatical errors. Dangling participles. Detached phrases. Incomplete sentences. So I’ve attached little yellow stickies here and there to remind me to do that. One of these days I’ll get to it and fix all of them. The trouble is, as perhaps many of you have noticed yourselves, unless you have a GRAMMAR checker, you don’t know when a sentence contains something out of order. Like when you type is instead of it. The spell checker won’t notice that because the word is correctly SPELLED.

That’s why proofreaders, or copy editors, are so needed in the life of the printed word. To digress momentarily, during all the years I worked in the advertising field, and during the 17 years my business partner Audre and I owned an agency, we spent hours every week proofreading. We didn’t have copy editors, or someone who did nothing but that. All account exec reciprocated with one another to proofread everything that went out of the house. Sometimes ads were proofread more than once. Not enjoyable time, but vital. If we ran an ad for a company and misspelled the name of an important piece of equipment used, especially acronyms, or wrote in that the applicant needed 10 years of experience, when in fact they only needed 1, those were glaring errors, and our client wasn’t very pleased about paying big bucks when they might get very few applicants or applicants that were not at all qualified for the position.

That particular ad business is called recruitment advertising. There are lots of these firms out there and most people don’t even know they exist. Lots of HR departments don’t choose to spend time writing up and placing ads in newspapers and professional journals (or on Monster either) as their time is much better spent interviewing people. So recruitment ad agencies do that for them. That’s what we used to do. Big ads, splashy ads, color ads, but mostly they were the smaller in-line black and white ads in local papers under the help wanted section. Ads for accountants, clerks, engineers, production people, scientists, nurses. You name it, we’d write up ads for them. Each of the account execs (we had about 7 or so) wrote up the individual ads and then they got proofread with someone else to make sure all the details got included, and that the fine print, like the company’s phone number, address, and company name were spelled correctly. We proofread for spelling and completion, but also for grammar too.

Although recruitment ads generally use a kind of “help wanted shorthand” too. Lots of incomplete sentences. Lots of words left out, to save space. Space is money.
So, we get to the crux of the matter. When I typed in the recipe for the Bloomin’ Bread the other day (thank you again, Karen, for this awesome recipe), I failed to notice that there was no olive oil in the list of ingredients, but it was included in the instructions. I should have noticed. I’m pretty good at that kind of thing, usually. But not that day! Often when I type in a new recipe (here at home anyway) I re-write the instructions. To make them more clear, or in the proper order. Or to elaborate on something too. So my apologies to anybody who had already printed out my recipe for the Bloomin‘ Bread – it contains a little error. It really is a small error – it’s only 1/4 cup (or less) of olive oil. But what’s pesto, for goodness’ sake, without some olive oil, I ask you?

Fortunately, I think that if any of my readers out there DID try it without the olive oil, it probably tasted just fine. But, to be true to the recipe, the pesto does include a little bit of oil. Perhaps less than a traditional pesto, which is fine because the cream cheese and goat cheese both add fat.

If you want a corrected PDF recipe of the Bloomin’ Bread, click here

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Hooray. We’re home from our trip. Exhausted, but home. We flew out of Philadelphia at about 5 pm yesterday. Our flight was cancelled, but we were re-booked to Chicago O’Hare, then to L.A. Arrived at LAX at 11:45 pm California time, and made the fastest trip from the airport to home, ever. About 45 minutes from Parking Lot B to the garage. I saw the doctor this morning and I have an okay to do anything reasonable. Still have some pain walking, every step, so need to do some exercises 3x a day to loosen up those tendons that have atrophied during my long sojourn without walking. But, now that I don’t have to wear the gosh darned BOOT, I can stand. Made my first grocery store visit (Trader Joe’s) this morning.

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You know the lyrics . . .
Going on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again.

Yes, we’re going on a jet plane and we’ll be back in 10 days or so. I hope to blog some while I’m gone – maybe about the food I’m eating. We’re going to Philadelphia, then to Ocean City, New Jersey, to attend DH’s high school reunion. Maybe the scenery will be beautiful enough for a few photos. I hate lugging my laptop and accessories. I hope to find enough computers here and there to use other people’s, rather than trying to log onto some wireless networks. Anyway, stay tuned. I’ll be back. And hopefully upon my return I’ll be back in the kitchen doing some cookin’.

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A very brief update: I am free to walk SOME. The broken bone is mostly healed, but not entirely. But the doctor gave me my “walking papers,” so to speak. However, I can barely stand up, let alone walk. The foot and muscles and tendons have all forgotten what to do and it hurts to put weight on that foot – just because it hasn’t had to perform that function for 7 weeks. And my left foot (the good foot) has developed tendonitis from all the extra work it’s had to do in recent weeks, so it hurts more than the broken foot does. I’m nowhere near trying to cook. Or really walk more than about 20 very-slow-paces and that with a cane. Hopefully this will improve with practice in the next week.

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This doesn’t look much different than it did 2+ weeks ago, but thought I’d take another photo of my foot anyway. The upper calf is NOT as big around as the photo appears. Nothing’s really changed since the last picture 3 weeks ago. The bone isn’t healing very fast (according to the dr.). When people say how are you? my response is: the bone is still broken. I may be in this boot longer than I’d planned because it’s slow healing. Probable reason: I had too much movement in the boot during the first 2 weeks, so what little movement I did make (not knowing) probably kept reopening the fracture a little bit. So, now my foot is wrapped in an ace bandage, THEN it goes into the boot. My foot has much less ability to rattle around inside it. My foot and ankle still swell every day. Especially if I don’t lie down some a couple of times a day, which is ever so boring.

But today a “bone stimulator” was delivered to me that I will use once or twice a day until the bone heals. A little plastic boxy thing, about 5″ x 1″ x 1″ with an attachment that wraps around my foot and showers ultrasound waves to stimulate bone growth. Costs $3,000. Can’t rent it. Insurance will pay 80%. It better work, that’s all I have to say about it!

So, DH said about an hour ago, I’ll go shopping and maybe I’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Okay, he asked? Sure, hon. When he got home, I said, why don’t you go get the Cuisinart electric frypan. I’d asked him at least 2 weeks ago to go dig it out of the shelves in the laundry room where it lives, but he hadn’t done it. I bought it last year when our kitchen was being remodeled, and cooked with it and a 2-burner hotplate for the 4-month construction of the new kitchen. He dug that out, then brought in our ancient card table from the garage and voila, I have a kitchen setup that will maybe, just maybe, work for me. So here’s a picture of it. It helps that DH will be my schlepper – get this please, get that please, but he’s content to do that rather than cook. I’d far rather cook than schlep, so it’s a good combo!

I know, doesn’t exactly look exciting to you, but after not cooking for a month, this is a big deal for me. Now I’ll have to rethink our menus – what dishes can I cook in this frypan – and photograph them, since that’s been my biggest problem posting my tried and true recipes to my blog! One or two of my cookbooks have sections titled Skillet Dishes. I think I need to go research that, AND look through my entire main MasterCook cookbook and see what recipes will adapt to this. Bye now. I have a new project for the afternoon.

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With my foot mending, my DH is cooking all the meals. He’s starting to get into it. He actually likes to go grocery shopping. His family used to own a gourmet grocery store in Ocean City New Jersey. It still is a summer resort kind of town, and 80% of their annual business was conducted in those summer months. It was a small, family-run business, originally part of DH’s mother’s side of the family, then for about 18 years his parents owned it and the name was changed to Thurston’s Market. So, growing up in the late 40’s and early 50’s, DH helped out in the store all summer long. The wealthy customers would phone in an order, and he or others would box up the order and he’d ride shotgun in the delivery truck since he was too young to drive. Anyway, he learned some about butchering, about cheese, a lot about produce, stocked shelves, helped bag the 1-pound private label coffee (in special bags marked “Thurston’s Market Coffee”) and in the winter (slower) he was a checker sometimes. He swept floors and the most hated job was sorting out potatoes from the huge bin to wipe it out with a wet rag. (We all know what rotting potatoes smell like, don’t we?) He loved going with his father on rare occasions to the daily wholesale market (that opened at 1:00 am) in Philadelphia.

Grocery shopping is in his blood, I think. Therefore, going to the market these days is an almost everyday occurrence. He loves to go. He hops into his 11-year old teal blue convertible, with the top down, of course, and zips off. Give him a shopping list and he’s a happy camper. He’s learned over the years that I normally buy name brands, not the grocery generic brands of cottage cheese, sour cream, etc. Our cell phones are busy when Dave goes shopping as he still has questions now and then. Yesterday he phoned me twice. Often he has to go to at least 2 markets – Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Neither market carries everything we like. About every 10 days we buy a loaf of grainy Harvest bread from the Corner Bakery, so that’s another stop in a different direction. That gets repackaged at home in small foil wraps and frozen. And about once a week he has to go to our regular grocery store as well. Some meats come from a small, independent market in another direction, where they also make sensational fresh tomato salsa. Then there’s the occasional Costco run too.

But, we’re talking about salads here, weren’t we? When I make green salads I fill them with all kinds of vegies (carrots, celery, fennel, radishes, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc.). And a variety of lettuces, of course. And usually some Greek feta cheese too. Then it gets tossed with one of my home made dressings.

A couple of days ago DH and I discussed that we needed salad makings. These days his M.O. for dinner is a protein and maybe a salad. We eat low carb anyway, but he tends to not want to fix a vegetable. But he doesn’t really like chopping up the salad vegies either. Too much trouble. I keep encouraging him, though. He did saute some zucchini and yellow squash the other night, along with some red onion. It was mostly edible. He forgot to stir it, so about 25% of it was burned black. We ate it anyway. 🙂

So yesterday, on his grocery list was salad greens. I usually buy Romaine and head lettuce and supplement with some of the fancy greens. He prefers to buy bagged salad. He also was to buy a few other vegies. Dinner time arrived. As usual, he doesn’t even think about dinner until about 6:30 or 7:00. I kept quiet; didn’t want to nag. 🙂 Last night he rooted around in the refrigerator and found two Italian sausages. He thought we’d have a sausage and a salad. He began taking things out of the refrigerator to make the salad, arranging stuff, opened the bag and read out loud what he’d bought – mixed greens. Oops. Those are the greens like kale, chard, red chard, collards etc. Oh —-, he said. I piped up. No problem, honey, just saute them. He actually loves all those kinds of things.

So, with me coaching him all the way through, he managed just fine – he cooked the onion in olive oil, added garlic at the end, then cut up all the greens and added them. He popped a lid on top and let it simmer for awhile. I wheeled around and poured in a little bit of red wine vinegar toward the end. I suggested he add about 2-3 tablespoons of water – he was going to put in more oil. It worked out fine with water. He forgot the salt and pepper, but that was easily added at the table. Meanwhile, he fried up the two sausages and nearly burned them completely, but they were edible. He was too busy working on the greens to watch the sausages on the burner one inch away. 🙂 He made a salad with what he could rummage out of the vegie bin and tossed it with a very inedible fat-free dressing I’d bought some time ago that I’d tried once and never used again. I never learn – I keep hoping I’m going to find some bottled salad dressings that I really like. (He threw it out later. He says he’s going to make some home made salad dressing today if I’ll tell him how.) But overall, the dinner was fine. Just not very much of it, that’s all.

Therefore, DH was hungry after dinner was finished. Hmmm. I kept quiet. 🙂 So he found the last of the home made apricot ice cream and scooped out rather large bowls. Smiles all around.

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I’ve not had a very good couple of days. My foot hurts. Aches. The doctor called ME – believe it or not – to check on me this morning and he decided he needed to remove my purple cast, after hearing my report on the pain. So, I’m now in a removable boot/cast, but only promising that I will not, under any circumstances, walk with it. I’m still completely off the foot except to balance getting up or down. I’m spending way too many hours a day lying down with my foot elevated above my heart to reduce swelling. We had no tv, air conditioning or internet most of today because of some electrical work being done. Long day.

The doctor thinks I must have some torn ligaments, perhaps some tendon damage, may have some soft tissue damage, and maybe a broken bone in the ankle, although the latter doesn’t show up on the x-ray. If my pain isn’t better by Thursday he’ll order an MRI. So far this afternoon I’d say it’s improved with the new boot. We’ll see whether I can sleep tonight, however. Sleeping hasn’t been all that good to this juncture. I wake up about 2 every morning in heavy-duty pain and can’t get comfortable or sleep.

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