Rachel Zoe has vertigo! She is also extremely passive aggressive, but that's a separate issue. Unlike vertigo episodes, her nausea seems to hit even without full-on spinning dizziness which has to be pretty difficult to deal with--is days of constant nausea worse than hours of constant vomiting? I'm not sure of the answer to that. They haven't determined yet what is causing the vertigo, but told her to cut back on the stress and rest.

I spent a lot of time driving this weekend, especially on Sunday when I headed out to Oakdale to pick up my dad's .44 pistol and back to American Canyon to deliver it to Abman/John in time for his deer hunting trip out to someplace where there have been a lot of mountain lion and black bear sightings recently. Good thing gas is really cheap right now.

The Kitchn blog is holding a contest for easy weeknight dinners, and I was very impressed with this recipe for spaghetti squash with avocado and parmesan. Tonight I made another "spaghetti" dish (but with actual pasta this time) from a Marion Cunningham recipe featured on the Less is Enough blog, which continues even though her experiment of eating healthy on a dollar a day is over. Good, but next time I'd use about half the bread crumbs.

Two baby doves, five days old. Mom is off taking a break somewhere, probably tired of trying to sit on top of a pair of baby birds who are maybe one-third her size already. I keep forgetting to bring a real camera, so this is taken with my stupid Moto Q work phone, whose only redeeming quality is that the camera is slightly better than my LG Rumor personal phone.

I completely forgot to mention the other day in my praise of great actors the amazing performance by Stephen Root as the pathetic gay vampire on True Blood in a role completely unlike his usual great comedic work, but awe-inspiring nonetheless. (I hear he's in No Country for Old Men as well, but I haven't had a chance to watch that yet since I only recently found the USB drive where that's stored).

A lot of big expenses hit all at once this month, so I'm keeping to a very tight budget until the next paycheck and challenging myself to eat out of the pantry again. So far it's working pretty well, though I learned last night that if you make a baked penne dish to extend two servings of dry pasta and some leftover sauce into maybe three or four servings, you have to add something besides cheese and breadcrumbs to bulk it up. Otherwise it's just the same two servings of cooked pasta, only with stickier, cheesier sauce.

Count fennel in amongst the thing you don't want to revisit in the middle of the night at the toilet bowl--you know, that list of things like tomato sauce and hot peppers that make an extremely unpleasant experience even more awful. Fennel is very, very bitter.

It has been ungodly hot here again this week so the other night I made a raw lemon and fennel soup from Veggie Times (the recipe is not online yet and don't bother anyway). The soup itself was extremely bland but didn't taste especially off or anything. Nonetheless, I felt green around the gills right after eating it and then woke up in the middle of the night already halfway down the hall to the bathroom. Not sure if one of the ingredients was bad or whether I was predestined to get sick. Next day I was mostly fine, just tired and not particularly hungry. There's a weird stomach bug going around that makes you queasy/barfy and headachy/feverish for a couple of days, so it may have just been that. I made broiled tofu with mango sauce and mustard greens last night (also Veggie Times), and was for the most part just fine. The recipe itself was ok, basically tofu cooked in your favorite chutney and served over bitter greens that seemed like an afterthought.

That's the second time I've cooked fennel and the second time I was less than impressed, so it's off the list.

I've jumped on the True Blood bandwagon this season and am so impressed by some of the cast who tend to make the rounds of good shows. As I mentioned in a post about Lost recently, the same names seem to pop up again and again. William Sanderson plays the Sheriff, and Chris Bauer, who played the tragic union boss on the second season of The Wire, is the doomed Detective Bellefleur. Michelle Forbes, who has Bellefleur wrapped around her talon, was recently on Battlestar Galactica (a show that every geek on the planet but me watched), and was also Ensign Ro on Star Trek TNG way back when.

In other news: Cathy's mom passed away nine weeks after her initial diagnosis and the memorial was last weekend. I did one of the readings (2 Cor 4:14-5:1) without falling on my face on my way to or from the lectern and without either giggling or sobbing uncontrollably in the middle. It helped that the baptismal font blocked my view of Cathy and Tim in the front pew. The service was beautiful, and all of those who bitched and moaned about having to put on a dress and sit in church for an hour can just go stuff it because that's what Shirley wanted and if you're not the one who died then you don't get a say. Tomorrow Cathy flies to Pittsburgh to do the whole thing all over again and bury her mom's ashes in the family plot. I'm tired of people dying.

I finished my wool socks last night, on one of the hottest evenings of the year so far. That did not stop me from wearing them for about two minutes before it became unbearable.

I tried two new recipes this week. Last Sunday I made a baked quinoa and cheese dish from Veggie Times that turned out well, even though quinoa gets absolutely everywhere. I found some in my knitting bag a couple days later. I thought the dish was a little bland so if I make it again I'd add chopped scallions and make sure the cheddar is a sharp or longhorn variety. It's also better sprinkled with Parmesan rather than the suggested additional cheddar.

The other recipe I made was black bean croquettes with fresh salsa from Eating Well. These turned out great, though I discovered too late that my tomatoes had sprouted an interesting filmy white mold and had to use diced canned tomatoes instead, with the only good part of the least spoiled tomato mixed in. I also served it over sliced avocado sprinkled with lime juice rather than combining diced avocado with the rest of the salsa. I'd also suggest flipping the croquettes at some point while still in the oven since one side gets nicely browned while the other stays too pale. They're even better the next day; had leftovers for lunch and dinner.

It's summer and foodie stunt tv is in full swing. The Next Food Network Star remains the most painful reality tv on the air, vividly illustrating that the best tv chefs are discovered and cultivated, not forced like bulbs in winter. Top Chef Masters improved with the second episode; the interaction between these chefs was thoroughly entertaining, and the challenges were much better.

I've had a hard time keeping up with much else on screen. In Plain Sight is having a great second season, and USA's new show Royal Pains is reasonably entertaining so far. I watched all of the first season of True Blood last weekend during the HBO free offer, but now am sadly stuck since I am not willing to pay $10/month more just to watch one show. I hear there are some good movies in theaters now as well. Maybe someday I'll get to see the inside of a theater again.

Somehow I managed to make an entirely green dinner tonight without intending to. For the main meal I made linguine with pesto, asparagus and feta, and a little while later wanted dessert. The only quick thing that sounded at all good was instant pistachio pudding.

This weekend I knitted my first sock which went very well until the very end when I was grafting the toes together. After the last stitch I turned it right side out, and discovered a rapidly growing hole at the toe where a stitch had broken or somehow been dropped. I'll give it a day or two before beginning again.

The last episode of Little Dorrit ran on Masterpiece Theater tonight. There's no way they could have known it when it was put on the schedule, but the collapsed Ponzi scheme that throws everything into chaos at the end bears an eerie resemblance to the Bernie Madoff affair, though in Dickens' story Merdle has the good grace to off himself. "Merdle" and "Madoff" even sound alike...

It's not easy, but I'm watching Project Runway as if for the first time, carefully shielding myself from any hint of the eventual results. I kept hearing that season 3 is one of the best (next to season 2), but after the first few episodes I just wasn't seeing it. Tonight I watched all of disk 2 (episodes 5-8) and the drama really kicked in, starting with Keith's expulsion (completely justified). I still think Michael, Uli and Bree-oops-I-mean-Laura are by far the most talented of the group, not to mention the most gracious. Vincent is a whack job, and only the others' egregious sins have allowed Angela's weirdness and rosette obsession to fly under the radar for this long. Jeffrey is a piece of work. I get that he's worked hard to get himself clean and off the streets, but he's an asshole and his knee-jerk self-centered tantrums are textbook addict behavior. I thought Alison was let go too early even though she's really green, and poor Bradley, funny as he was, needs counseling.

I was finally able to get to the doctor today to get some antibiotics. The bad news is that even though the weather is cooling down a lot this weekend, they don't expect rain which would go a long way toward washing all the pollen out of the air and alleviating some of the dryness (about 40% currently).

The pesto pea soup never really developed any oomph, so for the last bowl yesterday I added more pesto and some greek yogurt and ate it cold with flatbread and red pepper hummus. The original recipe needed twice the pesto.

It has been an emotionally and physically exhausting week, so this may or may not be coherent. Cathy's mom was diagnosed Monday with Stage IV lung cancer, just two days after Tim's (Cathy's significant other's) 50th birthday party, the original reason I was down in LA this weekend. I ended up staying an extra day to help out with random things and drive people to and from the hospital. Cathy is an only child, which makes me appreciate Ben and Chris all the more. They're giving Shirley about two months, and she's being released tomorrow. She'll be moving in with Cathy and Tim for the foreseeable future.

Cathy's aunt Barbara gave me a very cute clutch handbag this weekend... without even knowing about my obsession! Photos and explanation some other time, as it's a long story. Suffice it to say, very Audrey Hepburn!

It's also a million billion degrees all over California, so last night I whipped up a pesto pea soup from Gourmet's website that mostly used things I had on hand since I did not want to do major grocery shopping, and sounded like it would be good warm or cold. It turned out ok but not great hot, warm, or cold. For the last of it tonight I added a dollop more pesto and some greek yogurt and that perked it up. If I ever make it again, I'd double the pesto.

I'm trying to reverse engineer the recipe for Sconehenge English Muffins, which are not at all English muffins in the traditional sense but very yummy nonetheless. The exceedingly unhelpful ingredient label just says "all purpose flour, buttermilk, yeast." I have to figure out proportions and if there are any ingredients that don't need to be listed on the label. Grumble, grumble.

The cast iron skillet reseasoning project should be back on this weekend as it's supposed to cool down significantly tonight. Weekend before last I left both skillets in the oven for a three hour self-cleaning cycle and then went over them with steel wool to remove the rust. I'd really like to get on with the next step, but seasoning cast iron when it's over 90 outside just ain't gonna happen. The same goes for bread baking, or vigorous movement of any sort. I've been battling a horrible sinus infection for probably two weeks now, but couldn't get in to see the doctor until tomorrow.

On TV, I finished the second season of Project Runway, and am well into season three. Such a great show: exactly like Top Chef, but with fabric instead of foodstuffs, and with the amazingly adorable and insightful Tim Gunn. Where Tom just looks worried. Tim actually cares--he's not a judge so he can get more involved with each contestant and really act as a mentor. I'm ambivalent about Hell's Kitchen. Lost is backing up 'cuz I haven't been in the mood. Other shows have not been especially comment-worthy. Running in Heels ended, but I'm not quite in the frame of mind to gather my thoughts on that one just yet. Fionla Hughes was a co-producer, something I did not notice until about halfway through the run.

Food Detectives this week has a fascinating segment on eating bugs. I've also been watching past seasons of Project Runway on DVD. Great show. I suspect Padma studied Heidi Klum closely when she was first named host of Top Chef. I'm not sure whether or not to be excited about the upcoming Top Chef Masters.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy, and the next few weeks will also be insanely busy. I'm kind of in the eye of the storm this weekend, the quiet part where you scramble around to get a bunch of things done before the chaos starts up again.

I've tried to not shop very much this week and eat what I can out of the freezer and pantry, especially since it's been so hard to plan ahead amidst all the activity. Tonight's dinner was a pantry type meal, "drunken pasta" from the Serious Eats blog. I used less liquid than it calls for to cook the linguine--I usually cook my pasta in less water than normal people do anyway--using a $3 bottle of perfectly reasonable merlot I found last night at Big Lots while I was picking up $1/pouch tuna for the cats. It turned out well; a nice switch from the usual pasta-with-butter-and-cheese-and-maybe-some-herbs-or-lemon. It'd likely work well with rice, too. In fact, it was somewhat similar to the rice starter/risotto I had at my friends' dinner party a few months ago.

The main reason we're so busy at work is that we're about to launch a search for someone to be the next Duke Nukem, an initiative companies with normal budgets would hire production companies to handle. That's not the case here. We had an extremely successful GDC, so I guess all the sleepless nights and constant level of near nervous breakdown was worth it, but we're only halfway done with this nutty plan. At GDC I got to do a few things I've never done before, including scouting good places near the Moscone Convention Center to drop urinal screens, and serving up Popeyes chicken and biscuits to well over 100 people at our client's party (arranging the chicken was a lot more work than the company website would indicate, but that's a long, boring story for another time; let's just say the crew at the Fillmore Popeyes deserve a medal). This is why I got a Master's degree, folks.

When I have a quiet moment or two, I've been reading Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning (twice!) novel Midnight's Children, which is fantastic. It never would have occurred to me to read it, except that I heard Rushdie on City Arts & Lectures a few months ago while I was puttering around town, and he's absolutely hilarious (he was also going through a bitter divorce from our Padma when she started hosting Top Chef). New blog reading includes yet another look at trying to live frugally by W. Hodding Carter on (of all places) the Gourmet magazine website.

I'm behind on a lot of tv, but have pretty much stopped watching Hell's Kitchen, and am sustaining only slight interest in Survivor (although I am surprised about the last vote--99.9% of the time you can bank on men keeping the hottie around over the smart chick, but this time I was wrong... yes, me). Running in Heels continues to fascinate, but I watched the episode in which they mainly whinged about having to work a chaotic sample sale right after GDC was over, and it made me want to hunt these girls down and hang them up by their overglossed lips.

I freely admit to watching a lot of trashy tv, but can't understand why anyone continues to watch The Bachelor, even before the latest kerfuffle. The show has resulted in exactly zero marriages and only two reported engagements to date, giving them a batting average of .167 which is bad even in baseball. (If you add in stats from The Bachelorette with its one marriage, the franchise's slugging percentage does actually go up to .625 because you have to also figure in the two engagements which I equate to triples for the purposes of this calculation. But still.)

In real life, if some guy decided to go out with 25 women over the course of three months (I'm not sure how long they film each series) and whittle them down to the one to whom he'll propose, his friends and family--and certainly the friends and family of the chosen woman--would all raise holy hell over the idiocy of it all. Yet because it's on tv, we expect it to work?

Apparently I'm the only person watching Running in Heels on Style. It's another bitchy-interns-at-the-fashion-mag show, but this one actually spends a lot of time with the editors of Marie Claire so it's way more interesting. Editor-in-chief Joanna Coles is quite funny and has an endearing lack of confidence that makes her seem more human.

This week I'm still working on eating out of the pantry and freezer, but did make up a big pot of kitchuri from a Veggie Times recipe since I'm really bored with Cathy's version. Comforting, filling, low cal, low sodium, and cheap.

I still don't get where Fox finds the chefs on Hell's Kitchen. Anyone who knows anything about GR knows that he is psycho about chefs knowing where the food, especially the protein, comes from and being comfortable with butchering as well as cooking it. Anyone aspiring to be an elite chef, furthermore, ought to know that sweetbreads are considered delicacies and unless they're a vegetarian/vegan (in which case, why are you even on the show?) should welcome the opportunity to learn, even if it's not especially appetizing at first.

Speaking of not actually watching the show before you're on it, what's with Coach's all-black ensemble on Survivor? Is he insane? They always shoot in a hot climate. He's not only creepy but apparently an idiot to boot.

And what's up with the Subaru commercial in which the dad has enrolled his little boy in Brownies? Subaru Foresters are often considered lesbian cars, but this seems to portray some gender confusion on the part of small children or their parents. Bizarre.

There's a lot of snark being lobbed at Sandra Lee's new magazine. I bought the first issue a couple weeks ago but haven't had a chance to do more than flip through it while I was on the phone, and my only impression so far is that it's hella pink. I generally only watch her show for its high camp entertainment value, and the only recipe I've ever thought looked remotely appetizing didn't turn out to be.

I did see the clip of her making her "burrito casserole" on Good Morning America. It's frozen burritos covered in sauce and cheese and microwaved. I'm stunned she had the nerve to do this on national television. While many moms have, in moments of desperation, dumped tuna into Kraft mac & cheese and fed it to their kids, none to my knowledge then went on tv and called it a lifestyle to be proud of.

I happened across a new (to me) show in I.D. (Investigation Discovery) called Ross Kemp on Gangs (The I.D. website calls it Gang Nation, for some mysterious reason). Ross Kemp played Grant on EastEnders back when EastEnders was interesting, and he apparently did this series originally for Sky1 in Britain. I've only seen the El Salvador episode so far (Moscow's on the dvr), but it was good. Not Frontline by any means, but well-done and informative. I'm guessing that Ross is able to gain access to some of these people because he looks a bit like a gang member himself.