I have been a proud (hmm, maybe that's a bit much, maybe just "owner" will do) of an iPhone for about two weeks; I purchased mine on August 18th.

Not 'blogging, not me anyways - not sure what happened, but I haven't written in over a week. It was relief to read my bro's post that 'blogging is sooo over, in which he quotes Hemingway, pointing out that 'blogging, like letter-writing for Hemingway, is a great way to feel like you're doing creative work, without really doing any. The problem for me is that I feel just as guilty about not-'blogging as I do about not-working.

On Saturday, I went to the farmers' market and came back with (among other things) 3 baskets of plums. Two of the baskets were red plums; one blue. Somehow, all the farmers seemed to have a little extra story about their plums - when we admired the blue ones with leaves attached, the grower gave us two extras, also with leaves.

Some cookbook I was reading a long time ago said, as advice, "Don't be a housewife" meaning don't hoard little odds and ends of food thinking you might turn them into something good - you won't. This is the antithesis of M.F.K. Fisher's keeping the wolf at bay cooking, saving and savoring all those bits and and scraps. But, even though I hold M.F.K. Fisher in high regard, probably higher regard than whoever that other writer was, seeing as how I can't even remember who that other writer was, I think they were right.

Yesterday I got to go to this wildly expensive dinner on the farm, put on by an outfit called Outstanding in the Field. They organize dinners all around the country, mostly on the West coast, at farms, with local chefs. The Wisconsin dinner was at Fountain Prairie Farm, and the chef was Tory Miller, from L'Etoile.

My sweetheart gave me a Nikon Coolpix for my birthday yesterday - I am sure he is sick of me lugging my big Canon, and the tripod, too, for Pete's sake, along when we go out to eat, on the off chance that I might get a good shot of some of the food - and leaving it under the table the whole night, because it's too big to haul out.

It's purple. Maybe plum. It'll fit into the same Timbuk2 bag as my iPod.

Yesterday I baked those apricots. I was trying to recreate a recipe I last made almost 20 years ago, for the dessert of a summer meal. My kids were pretty small, 2 and a half, and not quite one, and my brother and father were visiting.

There are a lot of recipes for fruit salad,that tell you to add syrups, herbs, maybe a dash of booze - some of these are delicious, especially if your fruit is less than perfect, for example the Italian treatment of strawberries with Balsamic vinegar.

Yesterday, I bought a basket of fresh apricots, and even though I usually am drooling over recipes for making fresh apricot tarts, adding butter and sugar and almond paste, maybe cream - muttering to myself, "oh, yeah, it's fine for you [California-based recipe writer's name goes here] to come up with a recipe for fresh apricots that you can get all the time" - today I am instead trawling for recipes that can somehow preserve the apricots, to be eaten in more healthful food combinations, with yogurt, or maybe grilled meats.

I thought it'd be nice to make a pesto spread from my new Vegan cookbook, Veganomicon (I am doing a meal for a vegetarian group in September, so I splurged on some new cookbooks). And I had a giant cauliflower in the veggie bin, so I thought I'd make roasted cauliflower with a little bit of curry spices thrown in. And I had two blackening bananas, so I decided to make the Cordon Rose banana cake as cupcakes.