Like Hippies

Today, we have an empty carport

(if you look carefully, there are plants.  sitting on a tricycle.  don’t ask)

My dear sweet car is currently at the doctor.

And by doctor, I mean transmission shop.

We only own one car, so the car breaking = we’re carfree.

Like hippies.  Only with freshly washed hair.

Thankfully right at the end of our block

Lives a Zipcar!

(Zipcar is a car sharing thing, that’s around in major cities.  When you’re a member you can reserve cars, then your membership card unlocks them when you hold it up to the windshield.  All the cars have names.  This one is named Icy)

Not having a car makes me 700% more antsy, and I feel the need to get out of the house.  Since grocery shopping is almost productive, I can justify it.

We’ll ignore the fact that it’s only productive if there are things you need.

Last time my car broke we lived in our old apartment, where the closet grocery store was the world’s sketchiest Safeway.  And I say that having lived by a Safeway in Spokane.  Spokane is hard to beat for sketch.

Now instead I live right by a Co-op

Cause like I said before, we’re like hippies.

It’s got a random mix of stuff.  I mean, if you’re in the market for hemp seed?

Totally covered.  And certified kosher.

Or if you’re trying to find local eggs from grass fed cage free chickens?

You’re set there too. There’s even a chart.

(the ones where they don’t trim the beaks cost the most btw.  I looked)

Or Oregon albacore tuna in a JAR?

Gross looking, but there!

Food Front is right by my beloved Baker & Spice.  Once I took Mama Pea there, and she found sedatives for children.

But if you’re making latkes and you need applesauce?  That stupid applesauce cost me like 5 dollars. 5 dollar APPLESAUCE.

I came home with these totally productive groceries

We were out of milk.  The rest?  Well… the avocados were really cheap.  Like, we’re talking less than conventional ones at Safeway, and they’re organic!  And if you get avocados clearly you need a pepper too so that you can make guac.  And chocolate milk, and a little bit of gouda for the husband cause he’s had a long day dealing with our car.   And if you have cheese, you need crackers.

And the ice cream?  It has chocolate dinosaurs in it.  Which is reason enough to me.

And when I got home from the store, I found a package had come from Amazon.  A text to the husband reveiled it was a one month anniversary gift.

Inside I found something I’d been wanting for a long time.  I’d actually asked for it for my birthday.

What was it?

A compost pail!

Cause, you know, we’re hippies.

What’s your nearest grocery store?

Do you compost?

Home Grown

Hope you had a wonderful 4th!  We just got back from surreal america, doing some last bits of wedding planning because it’s LESS THAN TWO WEEKS till we’re married!!

Thankfully, we’ve got some good weather coming up, so I can distract myself with yard work.

If you look at my yard, you can tell I have a green thumb

Weeds are green guys.  They’re green.

I’ve never had a full real yard in Portland before, so I’m learning as I go.  One thing I learned-if you wait to try and kill the weeds till it’s not raining, you’ll have a weed JUNGLE to kill.

Also, next year we need to order bark sooner.  We were going to, which would keep the weeds down for the most part, but we kept putting it off and now…

Well, there’s a weed jungle.  I feel like bark would be no match for that.

Some of my yard is actually growing useful things though!

See these babies??

I grew them!  I’ve had strawberry plants for a few years, but this year there’s enough to actually make a whole dessert from them (as opposed to “oh look, two strawberries” thing I had going on for the past few years)

Also growing?

Peas!

When I was planting the peas (in February!) I was worried they wouldn’t sprout, so I planted a tonnnn.  My worries were unfounded, although I should’ve spread them out more.  Whoops.  Next year I’m planting more.

We’ve been cooking them up in their pods for stir-fry

And I shelled and boiled some for dinner recently, along with roasted fingerlings and a chicken sausage

See how there’s two?

That’s because I forgot what I was doing, and overcooked the first ones.  I wanted the fiance to understand the goodness of fresh peas, so I went out, picked more, and made those perfect.  Then salvaged the overcooked ones by adding tons of garlic and pepper.  If you can’t have the texture right, at least make ’em tasty…

(The fiance loveddd the fresh ones-they’re fantastic)

And my laziest gardening?

Basil.  Thank you giant plants at Trader Joes for $3.  But I’m keeping it alive, so it’s like I grew it, right?

Fresh basil is heaven.  I want it in everything.  Like Friday’s breakfast:

Strawberries from the garden + baby quiche made with fresh basil (there’s more inside, but I like the little pop of basil on top), bacon, and mozzarella.  Love it.

Do you have a garden?

Learning

Last year was my first Easter not at home. And, I realized the other day that since last year on Easter my old camera (before the current broke-face one) was broken, I had Easter pictures on my phone to share!

I probably should learn to be nicer to my cameras, huh?

Anyways….

The fiance was, at the time, simply the boyfriend.  He lived in a studio apartment, I lived in a crazy duplex (the fridge door fell off the first week I lived there) with two other girls.  And I was finishing up student teaching in the projects, writing my work sample, and BSing my way through action research.

This was the first real holiday I’d had on my own.  It was  learning experience.

I hate hardboiled eggs.  I’m not a big egg person in general.  But I was quite insistent on dying eggs.

The fiance made ones with Weezer logos.  He does that to anything he can.  I’ve learned to accept it, because it’s basically never going to change.

I did learn something no one had taught me in my childhood

Drinking totally helps.

My mom sent us little beach buckets filled with stuff (because she knew I was already doing some real baskets)

We got toys from her

(I also learned that things like making me an Easter basket do not occur to the fiance at all.  This year, he bought me clothes.  And said I can put them in my basket if I want.  I like Ann Taylor and all, but it’s no Cadbury mini eggs)

When we went to Easter morning mass I learned that saying things like “I’m going to dress up for church today” (we’re generally jeans to church type of people) does not translate to my fiance as “YOU should dress up too”, and he stared at me when we got to church and asked “why didn’t you tell me not to wear jeans?”

Lesson learned.  Hinting never works.

I made Easter dinner.

It was lamb meatballs, couscous, and asparagus.  One thing I learned in childhood-when asparagus is in season, eat it like there’s no tomorrow.

(also, if you look closely, there’s totally a Christmas stocking up.  Awesome)

I tried to give the fiance some taziki on it.  But he saw me grating cucumber.  That was a a no… I’m still learning how to make him eat.

What’s the first holiday you did not at home?

A Great Day to be Alive

Reasons yesterday was awesome

1.  Finding hash browns hiding in the freezer + this new sausage from Costco

equaled breakfast inspiration

2.  Not screwing up when making omelets

Seriously, isn’t your life a little happier when they look just right?

3.  Date nights!  We took a walk by the river, then went out for dinner + a movie

4.  Giant flatbread things at dinner

This sucker was easily like two feet across.  Delicious.

5.  Hummmmmusssss.  And falafel.  And other things.  But mostly hummus and falafel.

6.  Delicious lamb and rice

There was cinnamon in there.  Cinnamon in savory things is easily one of my favorites.

7.  Baklava

In high school I had a friend whose mother would sometimes make baklava and send my friend to school with giant boxes of it to share.  I need a friend like that in Portland.

9.  The movie theater was next to a Whole Foods.  That had kombucha on tap

Where that employee is standing, those taps are kombucha.  He kept taking samples, which made it hard to get a picture without being a creeper.  But you can get a growler of it.  Crazy.

10.  The movie theater had beer.  And cheap popcorn.  (ticket+ beer + popcorn = 9.75!)

11.  While we were waiting for the movie to start, the fiance got a call.  From New Seasons.  Saying…

We won BEER from their anniversary drawing we entered a few weeks ago.

I love New Seasons. I love them extra now.

What was good in your day?

You’ve Got Fail*

*someone found my blog googling that.  I’m kinda sad I didn’t think it up.  Ok, really sad.

I’ve been a slacker blogger lately.  I’ve been doing things like working on the yard and teaching children

and drinking.  Let’s be honest here.

Our yard is coming to life.

Which is fantastic.  Since we bought in the fall and it was a foreclosure what would pop up in the spring was a mystery.

The less fun mystery?  Turns out when it rains our yard becomes a swamp.

No, seriously.  We’re working on building a drainage ditch.  The hole isn’t too deep yet and check this out

Yup, it’s a moat!

Oh, and inside our house we’ve been having fun too.  Remember that leak?  Yeah, turns out it’s behind the shower.  Which means that we had to remove some of the tile

We could’ve paid the plumber for this part.  But doing it ourselves cost less.  And also required the fiance to buy a Dremel.

I’m fairly sure getting to buy the dremel was the main factor in him being excited to do it.  His favorite part of owning a home is power tools.

Because I’ve been working a ton, I’ve been going to town in weird weird ways for breakfasts on the days where I am home.

In the past two weeks I’ve made chocolate chip pancakes

(There are chocolate chips both in them and on top.  HEALTH FOOD)

An omelet

(This is actually a super weird breakfast for me.  I hate eggs most days.  But I cook ’em for the fiance’s breakfast sometimes and it just sounded so dang good…)

And yesterday I busted out all this

To make this

Salad.  For breakfast.

Normal eating?  You’ve got fail.

Does anyone else eat non breakfast foods for breakfast?  In high school one of my favorite breakfasts was rice with peas and Parmesan cheese.  Which isn’t weird at all.