I love fall and the days leading up to Halloween. I love watching the trees change color and the crisp fall days. Here in California the transformation to autumn seems to be taking weeks and I am just soaking it in. I’ve made lots of hearty soups and corn dishes; we’ve been eating lots of apples, persimmons, and roasted squash (locally grown, of course); and have started pulling long-sleeved shirts and sweaters out of boxes. I have been in a knitting frenzy, trying to finish gifts as well as warm socks and scarves for us. We’ve been watching a bunch of Halloween movies and celebrating the season with friends. I still enjoy my early morning tea ritual and go for my daily runs in the early afternoons. It is so nice having the time to enjoy the every day things. Truly, I have never been so entirely content in my life. We both feel so relaxed and happy. Life is good.

In celebration beautiful 80-degree days in late October (I love living in California!), David and I took a trip to the beach. We basked in the sun while lying on our beach blanket, each reading twodifferent Robert Jordan books. Pelicans flew overhead, kids and dogs were swimming, and we felt lulled into relaxation with the sound of the surf.

Today I have my last sock knitting class. While I am not sure that I will be able to fully knit socks on my own (without our fabulous instructor holding my hand!), I have mastered several essential skills in the past two weeks: 1) how to knit on double-pointed needles in the round (my goal for the class!), 2) how to read knitting patterns on my own, and 3) how to do a double cast on. Hopefully I will make enormous progress tonight on my sock. Regardless, I am having such a great time and am really enjoying meeting some new people and learning new things!

I’ve been doing lots of cooking lately. Some recent highlights include Prawn, Lemongrass, and Coconut Soup (from Donna Hay’s The Instant Cook); Paraguayan Corn Bread (from the Best of Cooking Light); and Seared Tofu with Spicy Black Beans and Mango Salsa (from Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast: Delicious, Seasonal Vegetarian Meals in Under an Hour). I’ve cooked each of these a few different times and have been making adjustments to the original recipes. For example, I’ve added chopped scallions to the soup, jalapenos and chopped scallions to the bread, and substituted extra onion and orange juice for the tomato and lemon juice in the salsa (shown above). I’ve had so much fun playing around and making the recipes (in our opinion!) better. Either way, all of these dishes are to die for and I’ve been having a blast in the kitchen!

BLOG: news and magazine articles, recent press mentions, book excerpts and reviews, website updates and news

SHOP: books, calendars, movies, soundtracks, posters

MAIN SITE:biographies, desktop images, films, photographs, movie stills, transcripts, tribute, trivia, quotes, links

Also, I was recently quoted in a Denver Post article about Audrey Hepburn. Read about it here.

Every Friday, David and a group of guys from work go on mountain bike rides. Recently they have gone on two night bike rides up Mount Saint Helena. The route that they have taken is more of an endurance ride than anything else and David noticed it was much easier for him the second time around. I think it’s so cool that they ride by the moonlight (and their headlamps on the way down). Pretty cool pictures!