It's all about Nie if you read long enough

A few days ago I did sort of a purge. I spent an entire day eating nothing but vegies. I was feeling the need for some retrenchment after spending a couple days testing out a really great no-bake cookie recipe. I know you thought there wasn't a great recipe for those, but I struck culinary gold with a combo of roasted almond butter and carob. No, really. They are great cookies. I know you hate carob. You will love it now. I'll eventually get around to posting the recipe at Pizza Dreams so you can try them and I can say I told you so.



I'm really supposed to be following a regimen that fights Candida. I did that for a while and was my healthiest and slimmest ever. But then I go and get called again to work with the Young Women (which reintroduced Krispy Kremes to my life), I subscribe to Tartelette, and I let my guard down. You know what happens next—my resistance to all that is blissfully sweet crumbles, cookie-style.

Anyway. Here's what I ate to do a gentle, drop-in-the-bucket, one-day purge:


Corn—it's the breakfast of champions, I'm telling you. Does this ear remind anyone else of Bill the Cat from Bloom County? Really scraggly. I'd say this corn did not quite live up to its potential. Now the ear in the background—that one made the most of its opportunities. Filled the measure of its creation. Yeah, that's the kind of corn I want to be.

These are the kinds of deep thoughts I never get to have when I'm eating cookies.

Now for the rest of breakfast and beyond:


See the steam rising? Summer squash + sweet onions + peppers = YUM.




The evolution of my gorgeous tomato collection (thanks to Gary of the Tiaras and our local farmer's market) into delicious soup with basil and mint (thanks to the Boston Globe).



Sometimes cucumbers knock me out with their gorgeous cool whiteness. I wish you could see just how this one glowed, but the lighting was all wrong and I was too hungry to fix that.

Which brings me to a very important point: vegies burn off fast.


But home fries! Now they stick around for a few minutes. I love mixing up different varieties together—this batch was yellow, red, and yam. Though I didn't count this as anti-vegie, I confess I did make some kick-butt cayenne fry sauce a la Guru's. But just a little.

And when I went to bed I was thinking about the Nie-worthy oatmeal I'd get to eat in a few hours.

Part of my deal with vegie day was that if I stuck it out the whole 24 hours, I would treat myself to a new lipstick. I'd have rather had an almond croissant from Eliane's, but I figured that would have quickly defeated the purpose of vegie day. Lipstick seemed fair—still somewhat attached to my digestive system.

But I didn't have time till today to shop for cosmetics. And I really didn't have time to visit Aveda or some shmancy beauty counter, so I settled for Walgreen's. The new one. Because I have loved drug stores all my life, almost as much as I have loved office supply stores.

One thing you should know about me is that I have been hunting for the perfect red lipstick forEVER. I can never find it. I can find everybody else's perfect red, but not the one that really does it with my weird skin color. Today I even found a special batch of about a dozen red lipsticks, each named for a different actress. All wrong. Do you know how many shades of red exist? I don't believe there's any other color in the visible spectrum that presents so many gorgeous, but in this case, impossible possibilities.

But I keep trying.

And today, I found it at Walgreen's. Luckily, it was L'oreal, because that means I can actually stand the smell of it. (I've become something of a makeup snob, which is probably ironic since I wear so little of it.) I looked at every single red in the place, and there it was: #339, Red Rhapsody. An appropriate name.

I've been thinking, like all the rest of you, almost constantly about Nie and Mr. Nielson and their families since last weekend's accident. Today was very much Nie Day in my mind because of this evening's big, loving balloon launch and gathering. To find my one perfect red lipstick on Nie Day (one of many to come, I'm certain) and then to wear it while whispering my wishes for her and Christian in the park as I released a fistful of green and orange balloons—well, that really made me smile.

And so, like I said, it's all about Nie if you read long enough.

But wait, there's a little bit more.

What's even better than seeing Cirque du Soleil's Delirium for free instead of having to pay forty bucks for the both of us, plus sitting in our favorite seats, plus sharing the theater with next to nobody?


Ripe Brandywine tomatoes from the farmers' market (and even better still with bitter Asian greens and quinoa polenta with pecorino cheese).


Coming home from errands to find Rob giving the dog a bath.


Getting to see lovely friends (really wish I'd taken photos of them all).

Visiting later in the evening with the wonderful Wileys. (Please click that link—they are ever so pretty.)


AND. Best of all, watching a lively, colorful milky way of love spread itself across a beautiful blue sky and climb up to the sun, to honor and bless Stephanie and Christian.

I don't care that Cirque du Soleil featured a guy floating for an hour and a half from a fantastical balloon (although that detail sure worked with the theme of the day). They got nothin' on our park performance. It was simple and real and full of light and I'd see it again and again, if I only could. Thank you so much to the Clarks and all the rest of the family for letting us share that time with you. It meant so much. Thank for sharing this whole experience with us. I send you all my love and continued prayers, a whole skyful of them.

See? I told you it would all eventually be about Nie.