Wedding

One of my younger brothers (I have 3) got married this weekend (Bride: 19, Groom: 22) . There is not much to say about the wedding* so i will just post some pictures. I really wish them the best of luck, they are going to need it.

My older sister came out for the weekend and we had a good time together doing Portlandy stuff. We also got a haircut (we seem to do a lot of hair based activities together for some reason. Probably because both of us loath getting our haircut...when you have special needs hair it is hard to find someone who can cut curly hair without mutilating it. We both have the same terrible stack of layers. One giant shelf at chin level and the rest of the hair just hanging below it. Terrible. Our hair is straightened here, only the hairdresser can get it that way).

Terribly washed out. Thanks Shakeitphoto! No wrinkles and/or chin!

*If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Friday, the moving edition

Shabbat Menu:

Roast chicken or fish

cucumber salad with onions, dill, and red wine vinegar

purple potato rosemary parmesan gratin (whipping cream is key here)

fresh baked challah

cold green bean salad(??)

Moving is moving along apace (hehehe...moving is moving. Noun and verb!) Jonathan spends 4 nights of the week here and so in the morning he takes a couple of boxes with him when he goes home. Which makes it easy for me.

Ah, cookbooks. I love to read cook books at night in bed.

Is that weird?

Ceramic China-men antique lamps. Should they stay

or go to the goodwill for some lucky hipster to find?

Almost empty bookshelves. Do you see that little squat,

dark wood statue? That is my pygmy. When my older sister

was on her honeymoon in S. Africa, I told her all I wanted

was for her to bring me a pygmy (a real one, of course) and she

didn't, but she did get me this cute carving of one.

The goodwill box.

What has been happening this morning? (Besides making challah, which is right now rising (at least I hope it is rising, this batch seemed a little reluctant to rise for some reason, maybe I put in too much salt or sugar? Ay!)

For the pug lovers, pug sunbathing.

When a loaf of this bread costs more than 5 dollars, I should be more

careful about toasting it.

Fruit! Glorious fruit from my CSA box. Midway through, I decided to add

the fruit share to my box, and I am so glad I did. I love fruit! A disproportionate

amount of my grocery budget (ha! Like I have a grocery budget!) goes towards

fruits and berries all summer long. I think that is because my mother

never bought the expensive fruit, or at least not very often. We ate a lot of red and green apples

and oranges at my house growing up. I remember one of the first things that I did

when I had a little money of my own was to buy pounds of cherries and gorge myself on them.

Things are pretty much still like that.

This weeks CSA box included a pound or so of tomatillos. So I decided

to make salsa. Broiled the tomatillos, a bunch of cilantro, white onion, jalepeno,

tad bit of vinegar and voila:

And the 2nd piece of burnt toast of the morning. I got distracted by

facebook. My lovely friend Annie announced her engagement this

morning and I totally forgot about the toast.

Have a great weekend everyone! I know I will, my sister will be in town from Reno and my younger brother is getting married!

August.

The time is quickly approaching when the Peanut and I will be joining households. We've already been moving some stuff from my little place to his place, and my apartment begins to look empty. Nothing like taking down all of the art on the walls to make a person feel sad.
(And leaving my light-filled old world charm/wooden floors/built-ins/subway tile/white molding/fireplace/antique chandeliers apartment for a more modern and carpeted condo makes me nervous. And there will now be 4 animals and two humans living in one little space. It will be like a pet circus all day long. Well, I hope not. I hope that after a while the pugs and kitties will get along. Plus the pugs come to work with me. The no sidewalks is also a bit of a worry. But there is a big park nearby. And we will be really close to the JCC gym. And Barbur World Foods is close. I hope that will make up for losing my New Seasons. Anyway, I can't think about it too much. I've only ever lived in NE, so SW is going to be a bit of a change for me, but I think I can adjust. If anyone has any clever lighting tips, or sources for nice lamps please let me know.)

Not that I am sad to be moving in with J. Just sad to be leaving my little apartment and a certain time in my life behind. I loved living alone. I will be honest, I like having my own way about things. Luckily for me, my boyfriend is the most accommodating guy in the world....Me: "What do you think of _____, or maybe blue ______, what about something like _______? Him: I don't care. I just want you to be happy." Nice, yes? I'm totally fine with him not caring about the color of the walls or whatever. Because I care and I like to make things happen. I think perhaps some of the stress that happens between people in a couple is because one person cares about XYZ, but the other doesn't care one way or another, but the first person expects the second person to make XYZ happen for them anyway, even though they don't really care/it doesn't make a material difference in their happiness. Well, not me. If I want XYZ, I will make XYZ happen. And that isn't to say that J isn't involved in making the new place* nice...as we speak he is going to look at a kitchen cart/island thing from craigslist and he has sanded and painted and run errands and all sorts of stuff. He's about as great as great can get.

I realize this post is confused and a bit contradictory. But I guess that happens when a big event fills you with both excitement and apprehension. Mostly excitement, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a tad nervous too. Not about living with J, not at all. That will be great, I know it. But living in a place/neighborhood so totally different from what I am used to. That makes me nervous. But it isn't permanent, we will probably be looking for a house in the next year and half or so, and I can make it through anything for a year and half (I managed 5 years in the Navy after all.)

We will be Beanifying the new place* in the next few months, so there will be updates. Hopefully with lots of before and after pictures. (If I can remember to take before pictures. I never do.)

*and by new place I mean his current condo that needs a lot of a help from a lady.

New Time Magazine cover

At J's suggestion:

Instead of:

My new lunch box

Since I moved into the new studio a few months ago, I've really been struggling to eat well during the day.  I'm no longer a short walk from my favorite burrito place, so I've generally been skipping lunch everyday.  Which I know is bad for me.  So when I saw this fancy lunchbox at New Seasons, I snapped it up.  I had been looking for a Japanese style box for a while, but this one is just so cute and I love that it is all made of metal!

Finally.

My spice cupboard was something that made me ashamed of myself every time I opened it. It looked as though a box of (dirty) plastic bags had exploded in there. I would dig through this mountainous pile of wreckage, searching for the coriander or the white pepper, cursing (myself) the entire time. And I finally snapped. Witness below what a case of 4 ounce class jars purchased from a container store on the interwebs will do in the space of an hour or so.

TAA DAA!

I seem to have checked out

of this blog last week.

What have I been doing?

Cooking.

Baked halibut with zhoug (a delicious sauce with hot peppers and cilantro. Anything with cilantro will be my favorite thing in the world. I'm still talking about this cilantro and peanut salad I had one time in China, 3 years later).

Hummus (not exciting, but I've finally figured out how to cook dried beans! The secret is a little baking soda in the water and soaking them for a day and half. We will see if it helps with other beans as well. There are many things I want to love but don't/can't. Recycling, vimeo, halva, cooking with dried beans, body lotion, CSAs, multivitamins, and nancy's plain yogurt to name a few. Maybe this baking soda thing will make me love dried beans).

Roasted vegetables (zucchini and onions, with some olive oil, salt and paprika, then some fresh chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon when you pull them out of the oven).

Pita. (This list is not exhaustive, obviously.)

Reading.

(And the Sookie Stackhouse novels.)

Watching:

Making.

Loving.

St. Cupcake cupcakes. And especially the peanut who brought them to me as a surprise, telling me he was just going to run to the new seasons for icecream, when really he was driving across the river to NW to get these! (We spent the evening eating popcorn and cupcakes and icecream for dinner. I love being an adult.)