This is one of my favorite summer recipes because it’s warm. I’m not a cold gazpacho girl, and I don’t want a hot anything, especially if it means turning on my oven in the middle of a heat wave (not that we’re having one or may ever have one again). So this dish, cool greens and warm chicken, is perfect.

Get yourself a rotisserie chicken and shred. In a pan, reduce 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 clove of minced garlic, and 2/3 cup of chicken stock. Remove from heat and add a splash of red wine vinegar. Cover and set aside.

Roast some grape tomatoes with olive oil and salt for say, 15 minutes at 400 degrees. If you’re ambitious, use up that stale bread and make your own croutons.

Wash some greens (arugula works well) and toss it with the chicken, coating it with the olive oil and stock mixture, tomatoes, pine nuts, croutons and a little grated cheese. Delightful.

Kathy Griffin basking in the sun

Originally uploaded by konstantin sergeyev

My crazy neighbor is a barrel of laughs. Apparently, he thinks I am too.

“You should be a comedian,” he tells me after I say something that’s only mildly funny. He’s good for cheap laughs. “You’d have to work up some material though,” he tells me, which is hilarious because I could do an entire 90-minute set on his antics alone. He’s a 40-something unemployed guy who lifts weights in his driveway, swears at his mother, talks to his pit bull like a confidante (loudly), breaks things when his stress level runs high (it’s always high), and screams bloody murder if his team (he backs a lot of teams) screws up a play. He’s unstable and slightly frightening, but hes does provide free entertainment to the neighborhood. Sometimes that entertainment comes at 1:00 in the morning, but what can you do? He’s been known to blast Journey and Michael Jackson tunes from his truck—his truck that he repainted himself with a can of what appeared to be regular old house paint—attempting to relive what I can only imagine were his glory days.

So yeah, neighbor. I’m working up a routine. Look out Kathy Griffin.

You might have noticed it’s Nature Week here at Musings at a Picnic (also known as I Just Got a Digital Camera and I’m Using it in My Backyard and on All My Walks Week).

For example, I keep spotting this snail in my yard. He comes out when it’s damp (along with his buddies the slugs and earthworms), but he just seems like the oddest creature to be hanging out in the grass. His shell belongs more at the beach. Maybe I’ll take him the next time I hit the beach—give him a new change of scenery. I can’t imagine he’d appreciate it. And I kind of like seeing him every time it rains, so fine, I’ll leave him be. I’ll just harass him like I’m the paparazzi. 

Dude, you try carrying your house

I spotted these white-capped mushrooms in the wild the other day. Well, in a Cambridge yard. They have such an Alice in Wonderland quality, I wanted to eat them right then and there. 

How cute are we?

Can’t you just see fairies dancing around the toadstools like May poles and then scurrying back to their woodsy homes?

And thanks to this sweet field guide to mushrooms I picked up at an estate sale (couldn’t resist the illustrated cover), I was able to identify them as Coprinus niveus. Or something.

Know your 'shrooms

Goats are the friendliest animals, aren’t they? Or maybe they just seem that way because they’re always running up to you looking for food or chomping on your shirt (I suspect every child who’s ever been to a petting zoo has experienced this). Goats are hungry. This tawny fellow at Ward’s Berry Farm in Sharon was munching on the grass, in between looking up to see if I had a handout. I did not. But I had a camera, so I made him pose every which way, until he was like, “Enough.”

The sheep were cute too, but kind of sedentary in a way that said, “I will not waddle over to the fence today, because I do not perform on command. Also, this wool frizzes like a bastard in the humidity.”

 

Yo

When I ducked out for lunch today (as in, I looked like a duck with my rain slicker), I saw a group of co-workers headed back to the office with food from Subway and D’Angelos. Now, I’m a snob about lunch in general (ew, chains with bad food), but today, the 189th day of consecutive rain, I was especially not having it. Instead, I took myself to a fancy lunch at Bina Osteria, and Italian restaurant near the Ritz on the edge of Chinatown.

You should really do this to cheer yourself up, because when you walk in to the restaurant, everyone will be happy to see you because of 1. the recession and 2. the deeply depressing weather. You will feel loved by complete strangers. When the waiter asks if you’d like some bread, say yes. Proceed to eat the entire assortment of bread in the adorable wooden bowl, dipping the crusty goodness in olive oil and salt as you go. Because it’s cold and damp out, order a comfort food like the pasta carbonara for its warmth. Devour the entire thing without pausing. Gaze outside and appreciate that you are not a tourist visiting Boston this week. Repeat the next day. And the next, until the sun comes out (then, switch to their outdoor patio).

Remember when New England had a summer? You remember summer—that season of hot and sticky beach days and the promise of shade? Remember the joy of hearing that tinkling tune as the ice cream truck rounded the corner, cruising into your hood? You just couldn’t run out the door fast enough. I heard one the other day, in fact, and was humming along to the song until I realized it was Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. In June. Huh? I was so confused I couldn’t make it through the throng of kids in time. 

Twitter to the rescue. 

Just when I had dismissed Twitter as silly, I read this article in Budget Travel magazine and suddenly see the brilliance behind this little tool. The dessert truck can alert me when it’s coming around the bend? I’m there.

After 72 consecutive days of rain, mist, fog, and drizzle, the weather forecasters have run out of words to express, “moisture.” Boston.com declares that tomorrow will be “thundery rain.” 

I’m starting to play this game where I pretend I’m in England. I listen to the Beatles on my iPod, spring open my cheery brolly, and plan my date with Prince William—er, my trip to Covent Garden.

Is it me or do bunnies seem to be breeding like rabbits this season? They’re everywhere. 

Here’s one I snapped snacking on clover at Ward’s Berry Farm in Sharon this weekend.

Everywhere I look, someone is writing or blogging about keeping chickens; apparently, raising the little fluffballs in not just for the farm anymore. Chicken coops are cropping up on city dweller’s little patches of land as urbanites, old hats at shopping at farmers’ markets, try to take it one step further and get in on the raise-your-own-food movement. The idea of fresh eggs is attractive (how pretty are those blue ones?), but for a single gal, one chicken would do me. For those of you thinking of getting a hen house, this company makes funky habitats for chickens; they’re like airstream trailers for chicks. And they’re almost as cute as the chicks themselves—before they grow up and into their feathers and start flapping and clucking.

Coop sweet coop

The sun has come out tomorrow. For real. Good thing, because no human should have to don socks and sweaters in June.

demands a power nap. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ideal yoga class for me is a half hour of child’s pose followed by a half hour of corpse pose. Balasana and savasana, I love you.

Ahhhhh......

Forget pork chops and apple sauce. The modern version is way better: tender pork tenderloin slices with a crunchy cabbage and apple slaw. This recipe from Real Simple magazine satisfied. And I’m a tough customer. Instead of rice vinegar, we used an orange one, which gave it a nice citrus punch. Lemon would be nice too. And you could try it with pears and nuts and oh, there are so many combinations. If you have leftover slaw (unlikely), don’t let it sit in the vinaigrette though or the cabbage will lose its crunch. 

Yum on a plate

Cricket, that ever-so-civil sport of the Continent, plays a major role in the book Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. It’s a sport that unites immigrants trying to make New York City home; to one, it represents his American dream. It’s also a model of behavior reflected in the saying, “It’s not cricket.” After a player pulls a gun on the field and the other players talk him down, the umpire gives an inspirational speech about what it means to play cricket in their adopted country. The gun incident, he tells the teams, is not cricket.

Now that’s a saying we should adopt. I’m gonna try it out in the  grocery store when a rule breaker rolls in to the 10 Items or Less line with a cart full of food. “Excuse me, ma’am, that’s not cricket.” If someone interrupts me: “Hey, man: not cricket. And when someone cuts me off in traffic, I’m gonna yell out the window, “That’s not cricket.” But then, I guess that wouldn’t be cricket.

It's not cricket

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen is causing quite a stir in the book world. Heavily promoted in Boston (the author is from Brookline) with a book reading and a slide show on boston.com, and accompanying media on its Amazon page, I was eager to get my hands on a copy. The novel chronicles the adventures of a 12-year-old genius mapmaker, and the text is full of marginalia—maps and illustrations drawn by the narrator. Who can resist that?

Once again, the library has come through. I’m even the first one to borrow the book—a virgin copy—seeing as it was just catalogued today. And yes, I take a nerdy pleasure in that. The hardcover is all newly wrapped in clear plastic, free of smudgy fingerprints, and the Due Date flap is practically blank. No dog-eared pages here. I can’t wait to dig in.

 

An illustrated novel for adults!

I’ve been to a lot of yard sales in my day. I’ve seen people trying to sell things they have no business selling. I’ve seen women wrapping their bras around trees to get cars to pull over. But this weekend, I pulled up to an estate sale on the Cape and saw a prop plane in the yard. I didn’t see a tag on it, so either a) it wasn’t for sale or b) if you have to ask the price… 

Strangely, the rest of the stuff was crap, so I left empty handed.

I just spotted the biggest, creepiest, most-legged bug I’ve ever seen in my life—in my bedroom. Alone, it was clear I had to act fast. Killing bugs (or humanely removing them…ha! Not gonna happen with this sucker) is not my forte, but the thought of this tentacled-thing slithering across my floor and—don’t even think it, my bed—was enough for me to grab a shoe and hammer the hell out of it while yelling involuntarily. The slam of the shoe meeting bug, I’m convinced, awakened everyone in the neighborhood. Hell, I can’t even go near that shoe, lest a leg be clinging to the sole. So now I’m awake and on guard, eyeing every crack in the floor, and down one good pair of shoes.

In today’s economy, articles about saving money abound. I’ve skimmed a few (you can’t ignore an article that tells you how to save a few bucks), and while I imagine they’re helpful to some people who have never thought to pack a lunch or skip that morning coffee at Starbucks, I find them kind of obvious. 

Call around for insurance quotes. Check.

Buy energy-saving everything. Yup.

Use the library. Right.

Shop around for internet service, cell phone plans, etc. Duh.

What’s bothered me lately about some of these articles though, is the emphasis on going out less (to dinner, to amusement parks), pulling the technology cord, and spending more quality family time at home. A fine idea. But when one writer describes how he “discovered” the joys of the backyard with his toddler, and another recommended playing board games with your kids, I was left to wonder: Aren’t you already playing with your kids in the backyard or playing a round of Candyland now and then? Did it really take an economic downturn to discover the value of play? I don’t think I’m the only kid that thought playing in a cardboard box was the most exciting thing ever.

If you go in for bloodwork, and you don’t like bloodwork (because really, who likes bloodwork?), I think the least a technician can do is to smile and say hello. Maybe it’s me, but I feel like that’s a basic moment of communication one must have before  being jabbed with a needle by Ms. Grumpy Pants.

I heard this blind busker at the Harvard T station this morning, white cane in hand, singing “I only have eyes for you.”