Friday, July 30, 2010

Because my tiny niece


is the cutest thing ever. Happy Friday!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Friday, the goodness edition


Don't these look tasty? They are, I can tell you. I got into them last night, even though they are not quite done pickling. They are sort of a North African version, with turmeric and ginger and hot peppers. The veggies are radish, turnip, sugar snap peas, cabbage, carrots and plenty of sliced garlic. The brine is just water and salt and some rice vinegar. They will be featured on my table this evening as the star of the show.

Other supporting characters to be found this Shabbat are:

Olives
Lemon and allspice potato salad
Borekitas de Beregena (eggplant and feta in tiny little pies, sort of like empanadas)
Aliyah (a Georgian stewed chicken dish with tomatoes, cilantro, and tamarind)
Lemony sponge cake! (pan d'Espanya)

Okay, have a great weekend everyone!


Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Dieter and other miscellanea




Where the tiny pug likes to hide during breakfast.


I went to the best wedding this weekend! My friends Chad and Sarah got married out at Allie Park in Washington. (Chad is my bestfriend Kellie's older brother). It was lovely. The weather was lovely. My friends are lovely. And I finally got to wear this bright yellow dress I'd been saving for the weddings (plural) this summer. Yes, I will be wearing the same outfit to all three. I don't even care.





Friday, July 16, 2010

Bloomed


These finally faded away. I love this type of lily, but I am getting a little tired of the same flower week after week. There was no CSA box this week, but I think things will get back on track from here on out. Hopefully there will be a different variety of flowers soon.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

What I've Been Reading (The June-July Edition)


In order of appearance:






Monday, July 12, 2010

Weekend Round Up



I have to really love pugs, otherwise this would be get really old, day after day. The pugs aren't generally on the couch unaccompanied, but early in the morning they like to get up there while we are still sleeping. The sun shines in the front windows right onto the couch.

But who can stay mad at faces like these:


And the cutest thing ever:


Gunter, the true Oregon Outdoorspug.

The rest of the weekend sort of went by in a flash. After we came back from the river, J and I washed the pugs and then rode our bikes to the Kennedy school and ate hamburgers and played scrabble (...cognates, triple word, 50pt bonus).

Sunday I met J and his brother for breakfast. Then me and Dann (the brother) went dress shopping. I have a couple of weddings coming up and I sort of hate shopping. But we finally found something. It's a canary yellow dress with crossing straps in the back and full skirt. Super cute! Just have to figure out the whole undergarment dilemma.

After shopping and cupcakes at St. Cupcake (cupcakes!) J and I went to the gym and played a rousing game of racquet ball that ended in a tie. Then we went to our favorite Japanese place and had ramen while sitting on their patio (playing scrabble). They had this fabulous drink made with plum vinegar and ginger ale. Fantastic.

And that was the weekend.


Friday, July 9, 2010

Why today is good



On the menu:
  • Wine braised brisket, served cold with mustard (it is hot here!)
  • Fresh challah
  • Chilled green beans in vinaigrette
  • Something with figs and goat cheese (??)
  • Olives
(On the menu last week was chicken adobo with white rice and a cold cucumber and onion salad)

Figs! I love figs! I love pulling them warm off of a tree and just biting into them. So soft and delicious. These are from New Seasons and I've had better, but they are still figs.


I had to photograph them all close up, because the rest of my kitchen looked like this:


Which isn't exactly picturesque.


Have a great weekend everyone!


Thursday, July 8, 2010

哎呀

Aiya (eye-yah) in Chinese is exclamation sort of like oy vey. Think of the different ways you will say "oy vey". There is the "oy vey!" and the "oy...vey...." I can't really think of a good way to explain it. But it is suitable for me to use right now in all of its forms.

There is a heat wave in Portland right now, which I loooooove, but the Peanut hates. Last night was sizzling. Poor man. My apartment has no air-conditioning and it is on the second floor. Consequently, it is super warm. I have no problem with it, but J needed to lay flat on the couch in his underwear eating a fruit icee and being periodically spritzed with a water bottle in order to endure. The pugs were also trying to escape the heat any way they could (which mostly involved lying like pug-cakes on the floor).

Okay, why do I say 哎呀?

1) Dieter, last night, discovered the extra bag of dog food stored on his crate and ate as much of it as he could pack into his little sausage self. He did this stealthily, there were no telltale sounds. J and I were watching a movie (mama mia, which was terrible, btw) and I was wondering where the Demon pug had got to...I discovered him lying prostrate on the bathroom floor. His belly was swollen up so that he was a solid tube of pug. Normally he is lean and leggy, but at that point he was so large that I was wondering if he could breath. He had done this once before, down at my mom's, and I knew what would follow...A terrible poop hurricane in the middle of the night.

(Please notice the distended and swollen belly. Contents of which are waiting to be deposited on my floors)

He did not disappoint. I didn't know what to do. Should I have locked him in his crate? It would have been a sh*t coffin in the morning, I knew. So I left him free, and put some paper down. (I think we can all guess where this is going...)

In the morning, I came out to discover that a pug-poo tornado had touched down in my living room. (Thank g*d for wood floors). The one spot that had been left untouched was, of course, the paper.

Aiya.

Nothing like pulling on a pair of rubber gloves at 8 am.

(For those of you who would remember...Kellie....Mary...this really had nothing on the Zoe Poop-a-poolooza at the 14th street house.)

For those of you contemplating adopting a dog, let me just remind you that it is not all charming walks and cavorting in the dog park before you go home to snuggle on the couch. No. It is giant piles of hair under the couch and poo-fests and fishing moldy chicken bone fragments out of their mouths with your bare hands. Be warned.

Unless of course, you have a pug like this one:



Sunday, July 4, 2010

Virtual Pug

For those of you who are pug-less, for whatever reason, this weekends post is for you. It is a virtual pugfest.







Thursday, July 1, 2010

Odds and Ends

So this week I picked up my second CSA box. This is the first time that I've subscribed to a CSA farm, and I'm liking it thus far. I'd always wanted to join since I first started reading about it years ago, but I was never settled enough. But now I finally have a routine (of sorts) and that makes it easier to remember to pick the box up and to cook regularly.

So, as I've been writing, this summer took FOREVER to get going. Gloom and clouds straight through to the end of June. Since my little farm is located nearby, just over the border in Washington (it's a little organic farm run by two women), it has gotten off to a bit of a late start in the veg department. Last week the first box contained radishes, arugula, 2 small heads of butter lettuce, chives, 3-4 garlic scapes, chinese broccoli, and a small pint of watery strawberries. I was a tad disappointed, but I understand. The NW has been under a cloud of grayness and drowned in water, so everything is growing slowly. It is actually a nice reminder that food actually comes out of the ground and is affected by the local weather. I know that with 2 New Seasons (the greatest grocery stores ever in the world) just a few minutes away, I get to feeling like I should have just about anything in abundance any time that I want. And that is not the way to cultivate gratitude for the food that you eat. So am I am glad to be paying a little bit more for organic food grown nearby. (At least that is what I keep telling myself. :-) This week had carrots, lettuce, chives, arugula, cilantro, and a big bag of apricot/plum things. Yay! (I see a galette in my future! Maybe for Shabbat!)


But it really is nice to have someone else choosing your produce for you. I don't know about you, but I tend to buy a lot of the things I know I like (zucchini, kale, tomatoes). So it is nice to have different things in the fridge to inspire me. I've been eating great salads at work. See below:


It is made mostly from my recent box. Lettuce, tiny heirloom carrots, arugula, chives, radish (from last week), onion, zucchini, canellini beans. The container on top has a fantastic blue cheese dressing that I made last week for shabbos from the stinkiest, grossest blue cheese ever, shallots, chives, champagne vinegar, garlic, parsley, basil, smoked salt, and sour cream (of course).

With each box, I get a big bunch of flowers. It has been asiatic lilies the last couple of times. Absolutely gorgeous. (These are last weeks, they last forever! It's like a fireworks show as they open up.)


And while I'm here, I got this awesome little blue gee-gaw from this tiny shop in Cannon Beach called The Butler Did It. It is made from french blue glass. I. Love. It.

The sweet little fu-dog tea light holder is from a little place down the street that is chock full of cool junks. And it is only open on Saturday.

These are this weeks flowers:


I've very excited to see them bloom. Yellow!