Caramelized fennel, leek and orange; the farro again; jury duty

Friends, I do not want to go to jury duty tomorrow. I simply don't. I love to vote, am committed to community involvement and so forth and so on, but jury duty does not float my boat. In the least. Ah well. I did a great deal of cooking today which was a lovely way to spend much of Monday: smothered okra for lunch; caramelized fennel, leek and orange; the fab farro salad again... I also seem to have the dessert-craving tapeworm again so sprung for a jelly-filled, powdered-sugar-dusted beignet at Whole Foods, the best of their bakery goods (in the context of those that are good because many are not). It was, as always, fantastic.

Nanny and Mom often made smothered okra when I was growing up. I am an enormous, enthusiastic fan of okra except in gumbo where I truly believe it has no place. #honesty

Anyway, smothered okra is one of those crazy-simple, crazy-good comforting home foods that makes me happy. I hadn't thought about it in ages, but when I took the boys to Louisiana in August, Mom had just made a huge batch with a bushel of Louisiana longhorn okra some friends had grown and given her. I swear I ate 90% of the batch and have been craving more ever since.

Today at the market, I saw some decent okra. At $6 a pound I didn't get more than would feed me, but it made such a sublime lunch. I sat in silence, on a stool at my counter, breathing in the scent of long- and slowly-cooked okra in bacon fat. I wondered why on earth I gave up bacon for so long. I marveled anew at how good something with two ingredients -three if you count salt- can be. And I thought of home.

Delicious, tired

Wow you guys, I am wiped out. Do you know what I learned this week? That the few hours of babysitting I had Monday/Tuesday were not enough. Since Wednesday morning I have done nothing on my own personal to-do/want list. Not one darn thing. Despite my efforts to not over-schedule the children, it appears we had gymnastics, chess and baseball practice within 72 hours as well as a class play, absurd amounts of laundry, some pets that apparently want attention, and so forth. At 5:30p tonight, I told the kids that they better keep on with their Tic-Tac-Toe game because if I didn't shower, a) my greasy hair would literally slither out of my head, b) I would go crazy from yukkiness, or c) both+. They swore they'd not open the front door so I took the opportunity to give my legs a cursory shave and my hair a MUCH-needed wash. When I emerged I found, to my jump-out-the-window dismay, that T had texted to say that he wouldn't be home until at least 7:30p. Mother of....Bath- and bed-time solo again. I bathed the kids in a less than detailed way and then informed them that Jack would be reading the goodnight stories whilst I took a load off downstairs. With wine.

It had to be done, peeps. They were fine. Had a ball.

I also informed T that I would not be doing bath- or bed-time at any point this weekend.

On a more positive note, I made a bitchin' dinner of seared halibut with mango-lime salsa and my now-finalist-nominated caramelized fennel, leek and orange salad. SO good, HIT the spot. I also enjoyed a bit more wine, brainstormed with a dear friend about what she should do with the zucchini she'd just mandolined (I suggested mojito zuc; apparently it was a total success), conversed with a dear pen-pal friend, Karen, about her birthday (which is now), and then, for the first time(!), spoke to my F52 long-distance friend, boulangere, aka Cyn.

Tomorrow, the boys are heading to T's parents' house for the day and an overnight. This is incredible, and I am thrilled. They are so great but god, the noise and talking are wearing. Like a bayou wake against un-wharfed land; rough!

Kale-coconut juice round 1, 10½ pounds of cherries

This morning, the boys and I watched a YouTube video on how to break into a fresh coconut -that husk is HARD!- and when we realized we would need a hammer, they were thrilled. T hammered a screwdriver into the bowling ball-like holes so that we could first drain the coconut milk. Then, we put the coconut into a freezer Ziploc, sealed it shut and went to town with the hammer. It worked extremely well though did take more bangs than you might imagine. With that (and now I really appreciate the cost of coconut milk, meat, and drinks), I made this breakfast/juice; it also included kale, orange and lemon. Not quite as smooth and flavorful as its counterpart at the juice bar, it was nonetheless, really good and I'll keep working on the ratio and such. Doesn't it just scream, "I am good for you!"?

After dropping Jack off at camp, I went to get some cherries and came away with 10½ pounds. Y'all think I better get busy a'pitting over here? Wow! If I've not showed you my new cherry pitter before, here it is, in the flesh. Thank you, OXO.