Marvelous Monday: Week 24

You know how this goes! Five marvelous tidbits to begin the week:

1) I've been catching up on my reading over the last couple of weeks. I like to save books for flights, and I relished the uninterrupted block of time last week to settle into a book. As mentioned yesterday, I finished Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach, who writes a Bon Appetit column with her husband. I loved many pieces of her take on how to make dinner a priority (first with her husband and later with young kids at the table) and was very impressed that the author jotted down every dinner she cooked for 14 years. Wouldn't it be a hoot to do the same thing with your own meals over that long of a time frame?

Later I read Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life by Natalie Dykstra, and over the weekend I finished Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games by Lopez Lomong, a runner who I have always admired but whose full story I never knew. Thumbs up to both.

2) As you might have deduced from other recent posts, the last few days have been gorgeous and wonderfully summery...

3) ...and I've been having a great time cooking and eating the season's foods. (WATERMELON!) My CSA vegetable box has helped a lot with that, and I think my favorite new recipe is the cilantro pesto I made on Thursday night. (It didn't hurt that the whole dish came together in 15 minutes.)

I jotted down the recipe on a Post It and wanted to share it with you...

...Oops. Good going. You can check out this recipe for the basic idea.

4) I dug out my little white running hat for my midday run today, and while it earned me no style points, it really worked like a charm to keep my face shaded and cool (well, sort of cool).

5) Josh usually takes Wish for his morning walk, but the job today was mine, and I loved strolling the neighborhood when it was quiet and cool and the day was just starting. It maybe gave me incentive to launch my morning running routine again. (But even if that doesn't happen, it was marvelous.)

What's up in your corner of the world? What's nice about the start of your week? What are you reading, and what's for dinner tonight? Tell me!