I have a large herb garden and this time of year they are at their peak. The more you pick them the better they grow.
A few years ago I added tarragon. It grew beautifully but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. After a little searching around I found a recipe for tarragon egg salad. It was delicious. Tarragon has a distinctive, aromatic flavor and enhanced the taste of the salad.
Ingredients:
• 6 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon freshly minced flat leaf parsley
• 1 tablespoon freshly minced french tarragon leaves
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon celery seed
• freshly ground pepper to taste
Preparation
Place eggs in medium sauce pan and cover with cold water. Bring water to a boil, turn off heat, cover and let cook for 12 minutes. Immediately cool eggs in cold or ice water to stop the cooking. Let sit a few minutes, then peel and chop eggs.
In a medium bowl mix together the tarragon, parsley, mustard, mayonaise, celery seed, salt and pepper. Stir in the eggs.
Recipe makes 4 sandwiches.
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Participation is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.
By the end of August you may notice many of the birds are looking a bit shabby. Bald patches and scruffy looking feathers and even a few pieces of down fluff poking out. There’s nothing wrong with your birds. It’s molting season. After a busy summer of nesting and raising young a bird’s feathers get a bit tattered and worn. Migratory birds have had the added wear and tear of a long journey to their nesting grounds.
Most robins don’t look as bad as this poor guy does. He seemed fine other than being a bit naked. He had a beak full of worms and was on his way home to feed the youngsters. It’s possible this was a first year bird. Their feathers tend to wear out faster than an older robin. This is because their adult plumage grew in quickly after the juvenile plumage molted the prior year.
This sparrow is growing his new feathers for winter. Healthy, clean feathers keep a bird warm and water resistant. The little goldfinches, so bright and beautiful in the summer, are beginning to turn a brownish color.
Poor Mrs. Cardinal wasn't looking too good this day. Her usually perky crown feathers had fallen out, her body feathers are scruffy and her tail looks shredded. This photo is from last year. She looked even worse before her new feathers grew back, but within a few weeks she was looking beautiful again.
Interesting Facts:
- Why do birds molt? Because feathers wear out and cannot heal when damaged and need to be replaced.
- Feathers are not alive, they are similar to hair or nails in humans.
- How often a bird will molt depends on the species but most molt once a year. Some species will molt twice a year, an example is the Goldfinch, and others will do a partial molt before breeding season.
- When do birds molt? Growing new feathers requires a lot of energy so molting takes place during less stressful times such as after nesting is complete or before migration.
- Usually birds lose only a few feathers at a time and the molting is inconspicuous. Sometimes it’s not a neat, orderly process as you can see from these photos.
For more bird photos check out my previous Weekend Birding posts.
I link up my bird photos on Saturday Snapshot hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
To Be Sung Underwater
by Tom McNeal
Read by: Susan Boyce
Genre: Women’s Literature
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publish Date: June 2011
Format: Downloadable Audio | 15 Hours and 15 min
Rating: 5 of 5
Judith Whitman has been married twenty years now, her high school days long behind her. When her husband buys new furniture for their daughter’s bedroom, removing Judith’s old childhood furniture, it triggers memories long buried. She does not want to part with the bird’s eye maple bedroom set. She secretly rents a storage unit under a fake name for the furniture and reconstructs her childhood room spending hours there thinking back on her last summer and Willy, the boy she left behind.
After Judith moved to California to attend Stanford University, she lost touch with Willy and her high school friends from Nebraska. Her thoughts about that summer have become an obsession with Judith spending increasing amounts of time at the storage unit with negative effects on her job and her family. Eventually she hires a detective to track down Willy and two friends. But what will she do if he finds them? Should she call Willy?
I listened to the audio book knowing little about the story other than the publisher’s summary. I was looking for an easy summer read but what I got was a powerful, emotional journey down a young woman’s memory lane. There are two stories in this novel: Judith’s past before she left for college and the present, her life as it is today. The book moves easily between the two time periods tying them together in the end.
The writing was lovely and descriptive. This was the first audio book I’d listened to narrated by Susan Boyce. Her voice is pleasant and easy to listen to, as if Judith herself were telling the story. Until I wrote my review I didn’t realize the book was 15 hours long. There are many long, lyrical passages to be savored and enjoyed. My listening time passed quickly.
I liked Judith and I liked Willy and at times I was sad they didn’t spend their life together. In the end we feel both their happiness and sadness for what was and what could have been. We’re left with a lot of unanswered questions which will make good discussion topics for book groups. I did like the ending but I’m pretty sure not everyone will agree with me. Highly recommended.
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Source: Review copy provided by Hachette Audio.
Thanks to Doubleday Books, I have two copies of Sex on the Moon to give away to my readers.
I’m reading my copy of the book now and will have my review posted next week. So far, no actual sex on the moon, but I hope to find out what the title means by the time I finish the book. Until then, I’ve included the publisher’s description below.
Description from the publisher:
Sex on the Moon:
The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
by Ben Mezrich
Genre: Narrative Non-Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday
Publish Date: July 12, 2011
Format: Hardcover | 320 pages
Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.
Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.
But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts—undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a possible astronaut—really what he seemed?
Mezrich has pored over thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts, and NASA documents and has interviewed most of the participants in the crime to reconstruct this Ocean’s Eleven–style heist, a madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.
About The Author
Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, is the author of eleven books, including the international bestseller Bringing Down the House, which spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was made into the movie 21, starring Kevin Spacey. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor to Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.
Giveaway Information
- Contest is open to US addresses only, no PO Boxes.
- To enter fill out the Entry Form. One entry per person.
- If this is your first visit to my blog and you are not a follower, please also leave a comment. Thanks.
- The deadline for entry is Sunday, September 4th. I will draw 2 winners using random.org. Winners will be contacted by email and have 48 hours to respond with a mailing address.
The book will be shipped by the publisher.
Contest Now Closed
Almost Wordless: I planted Milkweed in my wildflower garden to attract Monarch Butterflies. Apparently it works. I spotted this little guy munching on a milkweed leaf a few days ago.
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More Wordless Wednesday.
Giveaway Winners
Teresa of Teresa’s Reading Corner and Sarah Cruz were the winners of The Things We Cherished by Pam Jenoff.
Congratulations! Enjoy your new book.
Contest Formats
I’ve been using the Google Form instead of the comments section for my contest entries and in general have been pleased with the results. I get a nice numbered spreadsheet which makes it easy to draw a winner and comments don’t get lost between the contest entries. My wordpress template does not number the comments which made it a chore to pick a winner. I try to keep entries simple and limiting it to one per person and only asking for a name and email address. That’s what I like to see on other blogs when I enter a contest.
So, what’s my problem? Google forms does not let us log the IP number of the computer used to enter the contest making it difficult to eliminate duplicate entries. Using the comment section I can easily identify multiple entries by using the IP and time stamp. It doesn’t happen often, but I want the contest to be fair and give everyone the same chance to win.
One solution would be to require a mailing address but I hesitate to do that as not everyone is comfortable putting that in an online form. Another would be to require a comment only if one had never commented before. That would allow me to verify the entry. More work for me but better for privacy. So I ask…
Would you still enter a contest if an address was a requirement?
Any tips, suggestions or ways to make contests better?
Really Random Tuesday is hosted on random Tuesdays by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. It’s a way to post odds and ends–announcements, musings, quotes–any blogging and book-related things you can think of.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The August host is Staci at Life in the Thumb.
One new arrival this week.
For review from the publisher:
All These Things I’ve Done
by Gabrielle Zevin
In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city’s most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.’s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidentally poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she’s to blame.
Under My Apple Tree 