Garden In

I thought I would be smart this year and get my garden started early. Last summer my chiles never ripened, but I thought that was because I didn't plant them until late June. What I didn't understand is that, really, in Western WA spring is too cold and summer is too short for chiles. Or so I'm told. This year I've got 3 tomato plants, 3 chile plants, mint, basil, cilantro and hops. The hops haven't come up yet, but everything else is lookin' gardeny!

Sprouting basil and cilantro:



Mint for the mojitos (everybody needs a mojito garden):


I've got a lovely pequin chile plant that I'm hoping to overwinter in doors this year. I grew one of these from seed once in Tucson:


And finally I've got a thai chile, 3 tomato plants, and an Anaheim chile. Yeah:


They may not look like much now, but check out the Russian red kale my neighbor planted for me. That's shoulder-high:


Party.

So. How's your garden growing?

Rhubarb Cobbler & Crazy Pie

Now that it's really and truly spring I've been feeling so rejuvenated. I feel happier and more energetic, more like my old self. And I have to admit that I've been having certain... cravings. Fruit cravings. I noticed that rhubarb was on sale at the grocery, and I still have some raspberries in the freezer from last summer so yesterday I made a raspberry-rhubarb cobbler.



It's my first cobbler but it turned out pretty good. Cobbler is, to me, sort of mythical and intimidating partly because I didn't really grow up eating it and partly because it requires making a dough. And that makes me think of pie dough, which is fussy and time consuming and sort of, well, formal. In the world of down-home baked goods nothing is more formal than a pie. But cobblers, oh! I am now a cobbler convert. Not only is the dough much faster and easier to make but it was also tastier. And the fruit part was simple too. All in all it took less than an hour. And it's F'ing delicious. Cobbler > Pie. And more fun to say.

I've managed to do a little gardening this week. I planted half my cilantro and basil seeds, and I planted the two Cascade hops rhizomes I ordered. Everything got lots of rain yesterday and it's all getting plenty of sun today, so that's a great start. When the night time temperatures get a little warmer I'll plant some chiles and tomatoes from the farmer's market. I can't wait. Anyone else gardening?

Now, the crazy pie. Yes, I've been partaking of the crazy pie recently. It helped me make this:




Yes, folks, that's a whole bunch of yarn that I spun and plied on a drop spindle. For those of you keeping track at home, drop spindles are ancient tools and they are slow. And that's a lotta yarn. But that's how I did it. And I've started spinning even more yarn on the drop spindle. More crazy pie? Yes, please.

Mr. T Enchiladas

Why Mr. T Enchiladas? Well, we know that Mr. T is a paragon of wisdom and inspiration. He's tough but compassionate; kind to women and children but not afraid to pity a fool who deserves it. We could use more role models like Mr. T. And enchiladas are like Mr. T for the soul.

What we have here are two basic themes for Mr. T Enchiladas: with meat and without. You can make them exactly as the recipe states, or you can get a little creative and improvise. As Mr. T probably never said, I pity the fool who follows the rules all the time.



We'll start with the sauce, which is the same whether or not you're using meat.
You'll need:
3 cups water
6 oz. tomato paste
3 jalapeno peppers, minced
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 an onion, minced (can be omitted if you're dealing with an onion allergy)
about a teaspoon each of: oregano, cumin, salt, chile powder of your choice
about a half cup of fresh chopped cilantro

What you'll do:
Place all of the sauce ingredients in a sauce pot and slowly bring to a boil, stirring as needed to achieve an even consistency. Once it comes to a boil reduce the heat to a simmer and stir occasionally for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

The vegetarian enchiladas are called the Mr. T Stay In School Enchiladas. Why? Because a lot of us try vegetarianism for the first time when we're in college. Like staying in school, being a vegetarian can sometimes require a little encouragement and these enchiladas can do both.
You'll need:
burrito-size tortillas
shredded cheese
3 cans of black or pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1-2 tomatoes, diced
1/2 an onion, finely chopped (can be omitted for those pesky onion allergies)
salt and pepper to taste

What you'll do:
Combine the beans, tomato, onion, salt and pepper and about 1 cup of the cheese in a bowl and gently toss until evenly mixed. Wow, that was easy. You're ready to begin assembling your enchiladas!
Now:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a ladle, spoon enough enchilada sauce into a cake or lasagna pan to evenly coat the bottom of the pan. Take a tortilla and spoon some of the bean mixture into it, then ladle some sauce over the filling, maybe about 3-4 tablespoons worth. Roll the tortilla up and place in the pan. Do this until your pan is full of filled enchiladas and you have no bean filling left over. Pour the remaining sauce over the top and finish with 3-4 handfuls of the shredded cheese. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Pity some fools.

The non-vegetarian enchiladas are called the Mr. T Get a Mortgage Enchiladas. Like getting a mortgage, making them requires a little foresight and planning, but is well worth it in the end.
You'll need:
Burrito-size tortillas
shredded cheese
about 4 lbs. pork shoulder (I haven't tried it with beef yet, but I'm sure it works just the same)
2 teaspoons each of the following: kosher salt, garlic powder, cumin, oregano
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 bay leaves
2 cups chicken or beef broth

What you'll do:
Wash the pork shoulder and pat it dry with paper towels. Combine all the spices except the bay leaves in a little bowl, then carefully rub the spice mixture onto the pork shoulder, coating it completely. Place the bay leaves and any leftover spices in the bottom of a crockpot, put the pork shoulder on top, then carefully add the broth, being sure not to rinse the spice mixture off of the meat. Cook on low setting for 5-7 hours, or all day. Halfway through use a pair of tongs to turn the meat.
Once the meat is cooked and tender transfer it to a platter and use a couple of forks to completely shred it. Use the cooking liquid to moisten the meat as necessary. If you're extra fancy you can also replace about a cup of the water in your sauce with a cup of the cooking liquid from the meat. You're ready to begin assembling your enchiladas!
Now:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a ladle, spoon enough enchilada sauce into a cake or lasagna pan to evenly coat the bottom of the pan. Take a tortilla and spoon some of the shredded meat into it, then ladle some sauce over the filling, maybe about 3-4 tablespoons worth. Roll the tortilla up and place in the pan. Do this until your pan is full of filled enchiladas and you have no meat left over. Pour the remaining sauce over the top and finish with 3-4 handfuls of the shredded cheese. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Pity some fools.

It's Spring!

Two beautiful, warm sunny days here in Oly! Two days of making dinner on the grill! And lots of flowers flowering:









Also, look at what's growing outside next to my patio:



Looks like a great big weed, huh? But my upstairs neighbor informs me that it is Russian Red kale. He came down one day and told me all about how I could eat it. Apparently he had gotten some seeds and just dropped a couple over the side of his balcony for us. Wow. So this week I'm going to try putting some in a cheese frittata. It's getting to be time to plant some herbs and chiles and tomatoes and hops soon. Hooray!

And oh yeah, congrats to Vermont too!

Wedding Beer

Last night we sampled the second version of pumpkin porter for the first time. It's only been in bottles for two weeks. It was, well, good. It's never good after only two weeks. The beer always needs more time to age a little and mellow out. After only two weeks it's usually still way too bitter and the complexity of the flavors don't shine through clearly enough. In short, after only two weeks the beer is usually not quite drinkable yet.

But this pumpkin porter was drinkable. Bitter without being overwhelming. Relatively clean after-taste. Not exactly sweet, and much smoother than I expected. There was a little bit of depth to the flavor but the spice and pumpkin notes were really subdued. So much so that you wouldn't know it was a pumpkin just from tasting it. And it should only get better as it ages.

I wish I had time to play around with it a little more, but I don't. I'm going to spend May brewing the beer for the wedding so that it has a few months to even out and reach its peak. Maybe I'll add more spices to the next batches, but I'll keep the amount of pumpkin the same. I'll taste the first version of pumpkin porter again to be sure, but I'm pretty sure this second version is the keeper. I based it off of Papazian's recipe for Goat Scrotum Porter, but I'm going to call mine Black Bird Pumpkin Porter instead. Seems a little more autumnal and wedding-appropriate (although I'm sure some may argue that scrotums of any variety are wedding-appropriate).

Oh, also, I got a new chair:

Congratulations, Iowa!

Who knew Iowa was so bad-ass?

Today Iowa ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage violates the state's constitution. Iowa now joins Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which allow same-sex marriage.

This is tremendous. We now have our first heartland state where gay marriage will be legal. One report I've read said that this is a big step toward mainstreaming gay marriage. Imagine: Iowa, a state perhaps best known for its corn and its pigs, allowing same sex marriages. It's not just those wacky, uber-liberal coastal states anymore!

So congratulations, Iowa, and good on you. You rock. Now if you can just keep your fearful, hate-mongering groups from putting civil rights to a public vote a la California...

Massacre Monkeys

The yarn is from the first shipment in the 2009 Cables & Lace Sock Club. The colorway is called Valentine's Day Massacre. The pattern is Monkey from Knitty.com. Thus, Massacre Monkeys. I made a pair of Monkeys last year, but they shrank in the wash and I gave them to Erika, who has smaller feet. These Monkeys will never shrink in the wash because I am only going to hand wash them. Ever.



Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. The sun is shining, and I'm not used to that. Here's a close-up.

Chipmunk vs. Librarian

Yesterday there was a chipmunk running loose in the library. It came running in through an open staff door when a staff member went out to empty the book drop. The chipmunk was immediately spotted by several staff members and one patron, who tried unsuccessfully to herd it out the still-open door, at great personal risk. The wily chipmunk faked toward the door and then darted ever-deeper into the staff area.

It took four staff members about fifteen minutes to barricade the chipmunk under a desk where it found a delightful assortment of long-forgotten snack chips and crackers. The chipmunk could be heard softly crunching on the discarded snack items while the librarians quietly panicked nearby. Chipmunk - 1; Librarians - 0.

It was at this point that I remarked to a coworker, "This reminds me of the time when there was a cell phone in the toilet and no one would call a plumber," (more on that story at a later date). My coworker then called animal control. She also notified the acting supervisor of the problem. Finally.

Our acting supervisor confidently took control of the situation by putting a sign on the barricade reading CHIPMUNK UNDER BOX - DO NOT MOVE. Several of the library workers began to speculate that the chipmunk might have by this point escaped. Chipmunk - 2; Librarians - 1.

Eventually animal control dispatched two uniformed police officers, guns and all, to remove the dangerous creature from the building. Chipmunk - 0; Police - WIN.

Postscript: Later in the day I spotted the chipmunk dashing toward the sliding glass doors at the front of the library. Thankfully a chipmunk is not large enough to trigger the motion sensor that opens the door. When the chipmunk was unable to gain access to the building it jumped into the shrubbery. Will we see it again? Possibly, now that it knows we have such delicious snacks.

Vernal

Is spring finally coming? Dare I even think it? About a week ago it was snowing, and last year we even had snow in April. But for many days now there has been no frost on my car in the morning, and the highs have even been in the 50's. There are other signs as well:



If I remember correctly these should be beautiful, big tulips. I can't remember what color they are, but I know they're tulips; daffodils would already be out and blooming. And then there are these:



Buds forming on the, what are they, rhododendrons? I think. If Mother Nature is polite we should soon have crowds of flowers. And that would lighten the mood considerably. Already there's still some daylight left when I get home from work (thanks, Daylight Saving!) and the seasonal beers for spring are starting to show up in the stores. In a couple of months I should be lounging on my back porch after work with a beer while Nico grills my dinner.

Well, I can hope, can't I?

The seasonal change isn't the only thing brightening my spirits. There's a new rumor going around at work that we might all get to keep our jobs. Our hours might be cut but we should still have jobs. This news is unbelievably good, if it's true. And if it isn't, well, Olympia is allegedly getting a Trader Joe's soon. Maybe I could work there. Wasabi peas, anyone?

Leftovers

These are the Leftovers socks, because I made them with the yarn I had leftover from my knee-high lacy socks from a couple of years ago. There was more than enough for a regular pair of socks and I could have even made these a little taller, but I was ready to be done with them. The Leftovers socks were supposed to be plain and quick, like their namesake. Instead they have taken me forever which is mostly because of my failure to focus. But they're done now. Plain stockinette with a picot cuff and bind-off. The yarn was from Fearless Fibers, Kildare colorway. They are sooo soft and comfy. In the few short hours I have worn them they have become my favorite socks. Yum.

Day 621

Day 621 of Our Northwestern Adventure.

Today I calculated that Olympia has about 310 days every year where the sky is either completely, mostly, or partly cloudy. Most of those days are completely cloudy. That means that it is cloudy here 85% of the year.

85%.

That's a lot more than 75%.

Juicy

The winter has been getting to me and I've been missing the desert something awful. So I decided to bring a little bit of the desert to me. I have added three little succulents to my household.





I always used to keep little succulents in terra cotta pots on the steps to my apartment in Tucson. I love them.

Nico refuses to call them succulents and refers to them as "juicy" plants instead.

Evergreen.

I'll tell you one thing about living in the Pacific Northwest: I'm getting pretty damn sick of pine trees.

Hiring a Photographer (aka Maybe the Wedding Won't Suck After All)

On Monday I'm going to drive to Tacoma and meet my potential wedding photographer at Hello Cupcake to interview her. I'm going to bring my little wedding notebook, my list of questions printed out from Real Simple and my checkbook, and I'm going to pretend to be Charlotte from Sex and the City. I'm pretty sure this is the photographer I'm going to hire. I don't have any overall vision for the photography, other than it "looking awesome." I'm just happy to be getting it done.

Until this week it was looking to me like we wouldn't be able to afford a photographer. I might lose my job at the end of the year and to be honest we don't have a huge budget to begin with. The idea of paying for everything was quite literally overwhelming me. And I'm not a huge photography arts person, but the idea of not having any nice, professional pics of my wedding was depressing me to the point where I was wondering why we were even having a wedding. Why not just elope? In short I've been pretty depressed over the economy and wedding planning in general. Don't get me wrong - I want to be married. I was just having trouble keeping up the excitement about getting married.

Deciding to go ahead and hire a photographer has made a huge difference in my wedding planning mood. I can't quite pin down why that is, but I think that somehow the thought of NOT having a photographer became, in my mind, emblematic of all the things my wedding couldn't be. As for the money side of it, well, I'm just making the decision to have faith that we can swing this.

I also printed out a good wedding planning checklist from OffbeatBride, and that's helped me to wrap my head around the whole planning process. When I was still in what I like to call the theoretical stages of planning I was having a great time thinking of what we would and wouldn't have or do at the wedding. But now that we're in the actual stages of planning, every decision made has felt like the death of a fantasy. The checklist helps me to feel like I'm getting things done in a positive way rather than winnowing away all my ideas. Plus I was able to show the checklist to Nico to help him understand what's happening with the planning. That checklist actually has the potential to be a great communication tool. As a result Nico understands the process a little better and will be helping more, and I don't feel like I'm doing this all on my own. Win-win.

Red Tulips, Red Ale

These are the gorgeous flowers Nico surprised me with yesterday morning. They bring some wonderful color and freshness to our apartment. I think tulips make more sense for Valentine's Day because they're spring flowers. And I can't wait for spring.

Alright, so I've been homebrewing since last summer, and it's been alright but I haven't been obsessed. Until now.

I recently read Red, White and Brew by Brian Yaeger. And now I want to start a brewery. Anyone want to help?

Right now I've got an Irish Red Ale in the secondary fermenter. I've got a pumpkin porter resting in bottles, and I'm going to brew a different pumpkin porter recipe next weekend. The winner will be the wedding beer. After that I think I'll make another amber ale, maybe with honey this time. And Nico has recently fallen in love with Belgian-style dubbels, so I'll probably make one of those and we'll let it sit until the fall. I'm also itching to try a little experimental brew I thought up last night. And this summer I want to make some wheat beers. I'm thinking a honey wheat, which I'll start in May so it should be ready to try in June, and then a raspberry wheat once raspberries are in season. Oh there's so much to brew, and I have so few bottles to store it all in!

Disappointed, Not Surprised

Well, it looks like the library levy lid lift (say that 8 times fast - I defy you) did not pass.

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. This means that my library system will be cutting services because we don't have the money to maintain the current service level (Thanks, housing market!). While we don't yet know what exactly will be cut or reduced, we can make some educated guesses: books and materials, hours of operation, staffing levels and pay/benefits are probably the biggies.

Hopefully my job will not be cut, and hopefully no one whose job may be cut will choose to bump me out of my position. But there's a chance. Anybody need a slightly used librarian?

Maybe I should've gone to pastry school after all.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve. The tree is lit.



The cats are cozy.




The shopping is done. The groceries are bought, the stew is in the crock pot and the snow is coming down in big fat flakes. True, the table isn't cleared and the floor isn't swept so the holiday isn't totally picture-perfect, but it's close.

This is the first time I haven't spent Christmas with parents or with sisters. I almost said this is the first time I haven't spent Christmas with family, but I am with family. I'm with Nico. This is the first time we've spent the actual holiday together, so we've been trying to hash out our traditions and figure out what Christmas has meant to each of us in the past and how we want to celebrate it as a family in the future.

For me, this is a quiet Christmas. No nieces and nephews, no brothers-in-law or cousins, no cooking or gossiping with the other women in my family. I miss the noise and the bustle.

But there are good things, too. Wonderful things. Being with Nico, waking up with him on Christmas morning. Planning out the Christmas menu myself (lamb! dressing! asparagus!). Today while we were shopping in down town Olympia there was a group of carolers wandering around. And then there's the snow. We've had to slow down because of it and plan things out a little more, which can be a hard thing to do over the holidays.

The quiet is nice, but I miss having kids around.

Merry Christmas.

2.5 Months

It's been a while since I've posted. I've had a lot to post about, a lot of things rolling around in my head, but I've just been too tired to sit down and type anything out. The truth is I've been a little depressed.

Part of it is my job. I never intended to stay at this job very long. Aberdeen was supposed to be a stepping stone. The plan was to get my foot in the door, get a little experience under my belt and then find a better job in a large city. The economy was not supposed to collapse and trap me in Aberdeen. I know it's not forever and that things might be very different in a different setting and different library. But it's still very disappointing to find yourself so unhappy with the job you studied so hard for, the job you thought you'd love.

And part of it is just the usual holiday sadness. I miss my parents. My dad loved Christmas - loved it - and that makes this time of year especially hard. Thanks to Nico I am learning to love this holiday again but it's a slow process.

So here is a short recap of what the last 2.5 months have meant to me:

Pumpkin Pie Socks



I finished the socks in the Pumpkin Pie colorway from Handspun and Dyed Too. I knit the cuff in a sort of triangular stitch pattern to look like slices of pie. They're good socks, only they've been shrinking as I wash them so I have to be careful.

Wedding Stuff
We reserved our venue and set our date for the wedding next year. We also ordered our save the date cards and I bought my dress (more on that later).

Beer
Our pumpkin beer actually turned out OK. I used brown sugar as the priming sugar and was disappointed with the level of carbonation that provided, so perhaps next time I'll stick to corn sugar or maybe I'll try molasses. The pumpkin beer wasn't terribly spicy but it did have a pumpkininy taste. It also came out a little sweet, which is probably a good thing. It wasn't the best pumpkin beer I've had, but it wasn't too bad. I'm looking forward to trying a pumpkin porter next.

Halloween
I did absolutely nothing for Halloween. No costume, no parties, nothing. How disappointing.

The Election
Wow. Just, wow. This election went the way I hoped it would, but it's all uphill from here.

Seattle
The weekend before Thanksgiving both my sisters and I took a trip to Seattle. We stayed at the W Hotel, went shopping and generally had a fantastic time. We also stopped by the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery.



And we went to David's Bridal so I could try on awful wedding dresses. I had an idea of the kind of dress I wanted and was surprised to find that style of dress looked really horrible on me. And I was even more surprised to find a dress I really liked that was nothing like what I thought I was going to get. So I ended up buying the dress. Huh.

Thanksgiving
I met my future in-laws when Nico and I flew to Oklahoma to spend the holiday with his parents. He hadn't seen them in about three years so this was very special for him. They were very nice people and they showed us a lot of hospitality. I still don't feel that I know them very well but we seem to be off to a pretty good start.

Snow



These are my potted chile pepper plants, almost completely covered in snow. Olympia and Western Washington in general have gotten a lot of the white shit over the last week or so. The driving is awful, no one's prepared, there aren't enough plows to go around, and today even work was cancelled. I love it!



Look how covered these cars are! People have been snowed in! Nico and I spent most of today getting chains for my tires. We tried buying chains at a couple of different places but it seemed like everyone was out of the kind we'd need for my car. As we were leaving one place, though, the guy parked next to us asked us if we wanted to buy the chains he'd bought previously that were the wrong size for his tires. Well, they were the right size for my tires, so I got a set of chains for $25! We took them over to a tire place to have them installed and drove around enjoying our new-found traction. They really do seem to make a difference. This means I will have no trouble getting to work tomorrow. Um. Yay.

Cookies



And finally I spent tonight making Christmas cookies. I had already made Nico's favorite, the Goddamn Blackened Elf Balls, and tonight I made my favorites. These are Krumkake, but I also made spritz and oatmeal-cranberry cookies. My family has these recipes for krumkake and spritz that we've used forever, but this year I couldn't find them so I used a couple of recipes I found on the internet. Well, the krumkake came out alright in the end, but the spritz? Let's just say I've learned a valuable lesson: No matter what the Food Network tells you, if your family has a recipe they've used forever, there's probably a good reason for it. The spritz didn't hold their shape once baked and they don't taste the same as I'm used to. I need to find the family recipes, because these just aren't good enough.

Banana Slug Sighting!

It's been rainy and cool for the last few days, so yesterday I decided I would go hiking in the rain and mist at McLane Creek to look for banana slugs. That park is just as beautiful in the rain as it is in the sun, and I actually didn't get that wet hiking in the trees.




I wandered off the trail at one point and almost stepped on this little guy.



And to show you how 'city' I am, when I first saw it I thought that someone had dropped their headphones. Heh. Nope. No headphones, just a naturally occurring amphibian. Then a few feet away from the salamander I saw my first banana slug!



Not the most strapping specimen, but still pretty cool. If it had been stretched out I would estimate it to be 3 - 4 inches long. The poor little thing is in some kind of defensive mode with its eyes pulled in. Here's another picture where it looks even more like a frightened, greenish penis:



After this I went back to the trail and obeyed all posted signs. I saw another salamander and, at the very end of the trail, another banana slug. Boy am I lucky! This one has those characteristic spotty-banana markings, too.



Jackpot, my friends. It's good to have that checked off the list. There were also a ton of cool-looking mushrooms, if you like that kind of thing...





And so my attempt to reprogram myself to the Pac NW made some significant progress this weekend. I have to admit that Nico and I are still recovering from living in Aberdeen. We were so used to being home-bodies there and keeping ourselves aloof that it is still an effort for either of us to get out of the house and do something, try something new. But we're working on it. Last night we stopped by Orca Books for the first time. I can't believe we waited so long to go in there. It was great! It made Oly feel just a tiny bit more like home. And then afterwards we went to Quality Burrito and I actually remembered to order my burrito without rice this time. (Rice in the burritos. That's something that deserves its own blog post; I don't want to get into it right now.)

And then there's the wedding planning, which must begin in actuality now. It will be around this time next year. I was worried that having it in early October wouldn't be the best idea because the leaves might not be pretty enough yet, but they are. So that will be good. And now we're beginning to look for an actual place in Oly to throw this shin-dig. There are a couple of possibilities in the works that we're planning to take a look at, but it seems like every place I find is possibly too small (we don't know how many people we'll have, how many will be able to travel from AZ/MN) or a little far away or maybe a little too expensive. We'll figure it out.