1. I had a mild panic when I realized that my brother was over and that dinner would have no vegetables save for roasted baby potatoes, which don’t count, and the parsley and rosemary in the turkey burgers.  Dave chopped up a bunch of carrots and threw them on a roasting pan with some olive oil and salt and pepper and stuck them in the oven with the potatoes.  It was fine and I didn’t lose my “Responsible Adult” badge.  Take away?  It is always good to have a bag of carrots in the fridge.

2. My ability to eat locally falls apart when it comes to lemons.  We’ve been out of lemons for a day and a half now and it has brought me to my knees TWICE. 

3. Sometimes love means that even though you don’t have lemons, if your partner really wants the parsley/lemon/caper/garlic sauce for the potatoes, you make it even though all you have is the bottled lemon juice from the deli next door which is NOT EVEN CLOSE to the same thing as lemons and won’t be as good at all.  And it’s not as good, but it’s fine, and you have demonstrated how much you love and care for this person.

4. The group unanimously agreed that cold apple crisp is better than hot.  Good things happen in the crisp topping arena while in the fridge. 

5. With this latest crisp I tried a mix of pie apples and dessert apples* (with skins on) and it was perfect.  It wasn’t too dry, but you still had discernible apple pieces and good texture.

6. I’m not sure why this didn’t occur to me before, but the tastiness of your whipped cream depends a lot on the quality of the cream you use.  Good cream makes a really big difference.

7. I don’t think there’s anyone that doesn’t find fig newtons disappointing.  My dad has a habit of asking things like, “anyone want a cookie?” and then producing a pile of fig newtons.  I WANTED A COOKIE.

* The apples that are intended to be eaten whole, fresh (not cooked, not made into cider, not baked) are called dessert apples.  This is a more Puritan way of life than I’m ready to sign on for.