I'm also addicted to playlists for work; sometimes I worry that I rely too much on them and try to force myself to listen to albums instead. But playlists are so easy to just put on in the background and leave them be, and there's so much less danger of accidentally over-listening to something!

Sharon Van Etten - Are We There (we pre-ordered vinyl and got an early download code as part of the deal)

Keeping with the frittata theme here in the Food Thread, it's asparagus season in these parts so I've been celebrating with many ham and asparagus frittatas. I got some gorgeous eggs from a coworker who has those chickens that lay green eggs, and it's been heavenly.

The anadama bread definitely turned out to be a solid sandwich bread (mine were hand and swiss cheese), but I agree that it was too sweet on its own. I don't see it becoming a staple at Casa n Dick.

I also love Moonraker, so I guess we can be pariahs together.

I bought my celery because it was called "peppermint stick" and supposedly has pink and green stripes on it. Who can resist something like that??

This weekend our increasingly bedraggled seedlings finally get to move into the garden, and I can't wait. They are definitely not thrilled to still be in seedling pots, but I'm pretty sure we've got at least one sturdy specimen of each of the tomatoes (13 varieties), and it's not like I need all of the basils we…

The vet sends our cats email birthday wishes, which is the only reason I ever remember them. Matsui turned 10 this weekend (this is a link! Damn Disqus with their stupid black-on-black hypertext!), but wasn't very impressed to hear it was her big day. She was far more interested in sitting on that shoebox in the…

I scoop off the gooey flesh part and discard it, rinse a bit of the salty brine off the peels, and then just mince them up. Mmmm… tart and salty…

Things are great! I've finally gotten an end-date for the dopey indefinite temporary assignment at work, so my life will be going back to normal after next Monday. Away from work, I'm feeling very enthused about a lot of my hobbies and am making great headway on a few fun projects. And I've finally gotten past 50…

I asked my mother if she had any specific requests for foodstuffs this weekend, and she kept coming up with really cold-weather stuff. "Chicken and dumplings," she said, then, "No, no — roast chicken with sweet potatoes!" I was like, "Dude, it's May. We're having roast chicken with asparagus and you'll like it." …

Oh, that sucks about your weather! I hope your seedlings will be okay. Ours are in that stressful state of getting to be just a little too big to still be in their seedling pots, but we're still a week or two from the last frost date so they can't get planted for reals yet. So we get to spend the next two weeks…

Name: I was in the process of building up the courage to start commenting around here, and read about Liz n Dick in the NYT obituary for Elizabeth Taylor. The prospect of coming up with a username was one of the biggest stumbling blocks for me, and this seemed perfect, what with how it's pop-cultural but also my…

I order the bitters components online, mostly from Dandelion Botanical. I'm glad you're enjoying the husk cherry bitters! I broke my last bottle of them, and meant to start another batch (I've still got about a pound of husk cherries in the freezer; as an aside, I'm realizing that I'm compulsive about freezing…

Hugs and Hisses is the vinyl curator at Casa n Dick, but she's in an all-day meeting today. So I'll have to pipe up on her behalf to say that our recent additions have been:
- Sharon Van Etten's "Tramp", purchased on vinyl because we felt guilty about ripping the CD from the library. Sorry, Sharon! (It's currently…

Please don't disillusion me about the bacon-covered mozzarella, if it was terrible. I want to keep living in a world where that sounds insanely delicious.

My mother likes to impulse-shop for booze, so one of the perks of having her living in my basement is that I'll often come home from work to find a line of new bottles that caught her eye while she was browsing the local liquor store. Last week she brought home a bottle of Buggy Whip Wheat Whiskey from Journeyman…

I did a lot of infrastructure cooking this past weekend. Started a batch of orange bitters, canned a double batch of taco sauce, and baked three dozen little bacon-and-chive cornbread breakfast cakes to have on hand in the freezer. (The chives were exciting — our first garden harvest of the year!) I also baked two…

My mother said the hardest jump was from two kids to three (she ended up with four), because that's when you run out of hands.

Oh, and my personal garden update is that things seem to be rolling along nicely. The peach trees are blossoming, peas no longer require a magnifying glass to see, onion seedlings seem to have handled their transplant into the garden proper fairly well, and the garlic is going like gangbusters. And our potentially…