u/tea-boat

Original painting is available in Wikipedia Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Jacques\_Louis\_David\_-\_Madame\_Fran%C3%A7ois\_Buron\_-\_1963.205\_-\_Art\_Institute\_of\_Chicago.jpg

But I want the meme version where she looks freaked out, in high enough res that I can print it and hang it on my wall. 😆 I haven't been able to find a suitable copy online, they are all tiny or have obviously been edited using AI, which always changes other aspects of the painting as well (which you can see in the example version I've included; the colors have been changed, her face has been changed, there's an overall blurriness/weird texture overlay, etc), which is not what I want. I want everything to be exactly as the original painting except her eyes, is what I mean.

Much appreciated! 🙏🏻

This recipe is inspired by sophsplantkitchen's Creamy Wild Garlic & Pea Pasta recipe (screenshot of her recipe included in pics). It sounded easy and delicious, but I didn't have wild garlic, so I used some sliced leeks I had leftover in the freezer from another recipe; and I didn't have any tofu, so I used cottage cheese (because I also just wanted some real cheese in there, rather than just nooch, which I find kind of underwhelming) and a can of white beans. Then halfway through I forgot I was supposed to use peas, and used frozen spinach instead. 😆 So voila! I made something new, I guess. It was very tasty, and light yet satisfying. I hope you enjoy.

~1 to 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced frozen leeks

~ 2 cups frozen spinach

1 cup cottage cheese

1 can white beans (~15oz, I'm guessing)

Pinch of nutmeg

3 cloves garlic, minced, plus some garlic powder added later after testing the flavor, maybe around 2 tsp?

1.5 cups pasta water (start with 1)

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil, about 2tbsp?

The inspiration recipe doesn't really have any real cooking, which is one of the things that drew me to it, but there was no way I was going to make it with raw leeks. So my rough process was this:

Cook pasta in well salted water. Reserve 1.5 cups of the water before draining the rest.

Heat olive oil in pan, add leeks and cook until you're happy with them. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Add in your garlic cloves and cook another minute or two. Then throw in the frozen spinach just to slightly thaw it out. (I didn't want to heat it all the way through because I wanted it to help cool the pasta water when I added that, because I'm paranoid about putting ripping hot things in my blender... But that's just me.)

Then I dumped the leek/garlic/spinach mixture into the blender with the cottage cheese and can of beans, added 1 cup of the pasta water (poured from a height to help cool it 😆) and blended everything. Adjusted the seasonings to taste. It was still kinda thick so I added the extra 1/2 cup which made it a good consistency.

This made... A LOT of sauce. My blender was pretty full, so probably like somewhere between 35-45oz of sauce? So if a serving is a 1/2 cup of sauce, that's like ~10ish servings? I made four servings of pasta for the week (tho I did not measure the amount of sauce I added to those servings) and had around six 1/2 cup servings leftover to freeze, so feels like it checks out, to me.

I just threw some microwaved frozen broccoli on the side as an after thought, which went nicely.

Anyway. If you make it, let me know what you think!

Location: Southern California; in the corner of a west-facing porch. Gets approximately six hours of direct sunlight per day, maybe more at certain times of year.

In February 2026, it was lush.

At the time she was watering deeply, water running out the bottom of the pot, and giving it a little shower cleaning every two to three days; feeding citrus food every ~3 months according to package instructions.

She was also monitoring regularly for pests; she had just recently beaten a scale infestation.

Then she went on three month trip; tree remained in the same location but was in the care of others during that time.

Upon her return, the tree is blooming and starting to set fruit, but it's losing leaves. The leaves are curling, yellowing and drying out. She trimmed off any dead twigs and fertilized it. Inspected for bugs and didn't find any. She thinks the people taking care of it didn't water it enough while she was away.

Since returning she's been watering it deeply every 2-3 days. Her understanding is that it shouldn't get dried out, so she tries to keep it well watered.

I also took a look and didn't find any insects. I took the photos attached to this post. I don't know enough about citrus to advise her, but we're planning to remove most of the fruit since the tree is stressed.

What might be wrong with it? Was it just not getting enough water while under others' care? Is there a nutrient issue? Would her fertilizing have taken care of that and the tree just needs time?

We're just not sure what else to do for it.