recycling

i've always been a magazine junkie. always. there was that notorious car & driver subscription at 10, archaeology at 11, and let us not neglect teen, to which i subsribed long before i actually became one and wised up to the fact that bubblegum pink was not the most sophisticated of lipstick hues.

this periodical obsession has continued into adulthood, reaching its apogee (or perhaps its nadir) a couple of years ago, when i held subsriptions to two weeklies and something like five monthlies. ludicrous. the amount of trees consumed to feed my addiction was no doubt obscene. so i've scaled back. just the essentials. new yorker. domino. martha stewart (yes, she IS essential). and now, a mystery subscription to house beautiful that i myself did not place and will soon be canceling.

of course this doesn't mean my obsession has waned, just my personal investment therein (and that of the world's lumber supply). fortunately, i have hit upon something of a solution, one which exploits my packrat tendencies - i've started rereading all of the magazines i've saved over the past five or so years. and wouldn't you know it, it's like i've never cracked them open before.

i've been methodically working through the back issues of martha in particular, combing them for recipes to try, a list of which i now keep in my recipe notebook (which sounds more anal than it is). on saturday, abbs came over for lunch in the garden before we went to see "candida" at everyman.

i sprung no fewer than three new recipes on her: a warm spring salad with poached egg, bacon and peas; a potato and tomato galette (for which i inaugurated my mandoline) with fresh sage from the garden; and watermelon, blueberries and strawberries with feta and cracked black pepper. i served d the same when he got home from germany on sunday (yay), and added a peach and raspberry crumble that wasn't the biggest success (the topping was more crumb than crumble).

oh well. at least the garden is thriving, especially with all the rain we're having. the coleus in particular have probably doubled in size since i took this shot a couple of weeks ago. those things are off the hook.

in more exciting news, my friend melissa recently hosted a radio program in l.a., interviewing a prominent gay priest and one of my favorite essayists, anne lamott. you can listen to it here:
http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/kpcc/news/shows/zocalo/2006/06/20060611_zocalo