California Central Coast Wine and Food Guide.

Here I sit at my computer trying to type out a blog to explain my lack of tweets and blogs the last few days.

As I told you in my last blog, I LOVE this time of year with still a lot of late summer's best vegetables, nuts, squash, grapes and pumpkins to use as inspirations for new recipes. I had plans and the house stocked with plenty of good things to cook these next couple of weeks---until this last Thursday. Then disaster struck!

I had just finished-up my tweets and correspondence in our home office and gone over to the house to change into "my cooking clothes." I came out and was off to the pantry to round-up some ingredients, when I stopped to open-up our outside peasant bench that opens to a pet bed for my cat at night time. For some reason I got distracted and looked away for a second. Just then whole thing closed down on my right hand cutting deeply into all my knuckles, spurting blood all over the place. I shouldn't have been so nice to my cat, she ignored me the whole time! I quickly ran into the house, grabbed some ice and buzzed my husband on the intercom. He ran over and immediately said "you're going to the emergency doctor. It's in a really bad place and won't heal. You really did it this time!"

Well to cut to the chase, I went, was immediately seen and had sixteen stitches done. I am currently looking a little like the mummy with the amount of pads and gauze on my right hand. Needless to say, it hurts constantly when I use any of my right hand's fingers--but life goes on. So I had better learn to adapt quickly! And Thank God for "Spell check!"

You should see me trying to cook! What used to be so easily done, is now a three-phased move! Just making coffee requires some forethought! I can no longer lift a full coffee pot, but rather must add the water to the coffeemaker in thirds. Just lifting my favorite stainless steel stockpot is a major challenge. And forget about making the nice pumpkin risotto I planned for the week-end since I primarily make it using my right hand. No risotto until I'm free of my stitches! (Which is at least two weeks away!)

What really bugs me right now is that I'm right in the middle of creating November and December's holiday recipes and this has really slowed me down! Then on top of that, our wedding anniversary is this next Wednesday, October 21st and we had plans to cook something special all day, a tradition for us. This will really crimp our plans! Oh well! it could be worse, and I know in years to come we'll laugh about this, but it's still so frustrating right here and now!

I must concentrate on all the "pluses" that this mishap will generate. For instance the slight nausea caused by the underlying pain, spoils my appetite, so this should be an "easy way" to lose a pound or two. And learning a new technique to stir risotto left-handed, and the technique of opening a can of anchovies with one hand will be a boon to my list of cooking techniques. Opening a bottle of capers or anything else is a real crack-up too. But I will persevere-and if nothing else, I'll be "food for fodder" for one of my husband's blogs!

Oh well, I got my husband doing ALL the dishes for me without complaining for a change. My dog, fascinated by my bandaged hand looks at me with his sad eyes and a lot of sympathy.

And my cat? She still ignores me!