I’ve had several house guests in the last week, for anywhere from three hours to one night’s stay. First, son Pathfinder came down for work, and this time we had dinner here. It included polenta, which I hadn’t made for a long time, and I cooked up a big batch; then later in the week I served some of it to Maggie and Wil with a meatloaf that I also hadn’t made in years.

It was my Italian Meatloaf, and they liked it a lot. When I first came up with the idea for it, I wasn’t in the habit of using fresh herbs, and it even calls for dried garlic rather than fresh. But last week I was pleased to use four fresh herbs gathered that day from my garden: basil, oregano, parsley and tarragon.

Maggie wanted the recipe, so I took a picture of it and texted it to her. I need to make a new card, but in the meantime, here is the well used version, showing how adaptable it is:

After those people had gone home, I fried slices of the remaining polenta and ate it with leftover broccoli and a fried egg. Do you like polenta? I find it all too easy to eat.

The next guests were three young children and their mother whom I’d invited over for an afternoon of play plus a snack. The snack I decided to serve was mochi. I baked my old standby that I adapted from one of the recipes in this book that a friend brought me from Maui a long time ago. I’m not going to show you another one of my messy and annotated recipes, but will just say that this one uses lime Jello, sweet rice flour (mochiko) and coconut milk. The sweet cubes cut from the slab of baked and cooled mochi are dusted with potato starch. Everyone loved it. But next time I’m going to try making a version without Jello’s artificial color and flavor — even if the color is pretty!

While I was cooking all week, both of my Thanksgiving cactuses got confused and started blooming! Are they trying to be Halloween cactuses?