Monday, July 26, 2010

Apologies, but I'm Brooklyn Bound

I know, I know, I've been MIA lately. Shayna stayed for a week and a half, Poppy is really sick, I have been working a lot. Several parties and good people have been taking up my time, and I leave right from work today for Brooklyn. Lots of good people there too. And museums! And galleries! And food! I promise photos will be posted soon. A thousand apologies.

Monday, July 12, 2010

"How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true."

Reading Salinger again.


Shayna will be staying with me for a week or so, I must get her a key, as I'll be visiting Jackson (somehow, and only briefly) and my elderly grandpapa and my sillyface gradmammy.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Herbs and a Birthday

So I know I've been bad about posting what I've been doing with all my herbs! Well, I did dry a shit ton of mint, and made iced tea last week. Delish!

To be honest, I've been a little intimidated, its still scary to throw herbs in something unless you know it'll be good. The thought of it being awful and therefore having wasted otherwise perfectly-edible food is horrific to me, but its pretty hard to mess things up with a few herbs! (The irony of course is when I'm feeling especially ballsy, I just throw in a ton of different herbs and hope for the best, and this is of course when its most likely to turn out badly!)

Tonight I made my go-to mushroom&cheese burger sandwich (I am always comfortable buying mushrooms because no matter how many I use, I can throw the rest into this burger-like masterpiece just before they go bad and save the day!) but I threw in some marjoram, which turned out well! And topped off with the last of the mixed greens from the CSA a few weeks ago.

And I have so many cucumbers from last weeks CSA, but luckily my Melissa's Everyday Cooking with Organic Produce by Cathy Thomas had the trick:

-peel, slice & remove seeds from the cucumbers (even though I hate peeling/de-seeding cucumbers because they're fantastic in all their wholesome glory!)
-heat up in a skillet with some olive oil for 3ish minutes
-add 1/4 cup water and a pinch of cumin, boil until water evaporates
-add 2 tbsp basil/tarragon/dill (and of course I picked all 3)


and voila! it really was good too! (And then an apricot, followed by several too many peanut butter cups from trader joe's, sigh.)

Enough about food, I forgot to share photos from Elizabeth's birthday this weekend! We did all sorts of things, mostly walking around, enjoying alcoholic milkshakes at PYT, followed by more walking around, some shopping, and dinner at my favorite Cantino Dos Segundos. We attempted to get ice cream at the leukemia fundraiser Saturday night at Penn's Landing, but it was sort of insane, and we didn't get to a prime viewing location in time for the fireworks, but we all had a very nice time, so many Swarthmorons at once!

Elizabeth had a birthday!
Kate flew to visit from Chicago!
I met the infamous Jack!
Even Toby and Julia were there!

Andrew showed up too, just in time to miss the photoshoot, but this blogpost documents his presence.


And for those of you at the edge of your seat, I *did* end up bringing my camera to Making Time, and I *did* have a good time. Maybe I'll even do something with the two rolls I shot, eventually...

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy 234th, America!

Celebrating tonight at the annual Making Time Pool Party at the Bamboo Bar

Will I bring my camera to photograph the youth of America as sponsored by Urban Outfitters (during the daylight hours at least?) Or will I jump into a bathing suit and attempt to act as one of them? Only time will tell.

And as always on wasteful-massive-consumptive food-related-American-holidays-celebrating-something-we-barely-understand-but-pretend-to-make-sense-out-of-from-convincing-history-books, can at least try to consume less?
This lovely illustration is by Zoe Keller, illustration-turned-graphic-designer, currently acting as head-of-house at good old 1533.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

100 Blog Posts!

Well guys, this is it! My 100th blog post (not counting the 52 and counting on my art blog!) So let's reflect, shall we? I've lived here for one year and one month. We've had some laughs and choked back some tears, but mostly there's been plants, and Hans... and some fantastic food!

I walk past this building all the time on my way to Basho and whatnot, and I just love it, mostly that some of the boarded up windows are painted as the sky.

On my way home from Basho today, stopped to smell the flowers, they smelled so good! Was photographing them when this little old lady with a Russian or Polish accent yelling from her top floor window told me that they are Passionflowers, and then proceeded to tell me that we're all going to die because there are no bees left, anywhere in the world, and its just a matter of time until we die. (Expressing that I totally agreed with her would have done no good, and I was trapped for a good 5 minutes!)

Walking to get the CSA, this is the intersection by my house. I've been really fond of the 5-7 oclock light lately.And I finally photographed Greensgrow's CSA!

These are their chickens! Hi chickens!Waiting patiently in line, I'm standing in the threshold, also where the fridge for the cheese and "proteins" are kept, I took the Muenster this week, and some eggs for myself!
So the left side is the CSA, the right is the farmstand. So, for those of you still confused about how CSAs work, we pay for our shares ahead of time which ensures the farmers and whatnot that their produce will be sold, which means that they can go ahead and grow all this organic deliciousness. The farmstand is there for whoever is not part of the CSA but still wants awesome goodies, and also they have things that the CSA doesn't, maybe things that aren't quite as in-season, so someone with a CSA share can still buy stuff from the farmstand side, obviously!
And they very clearly label what everything is, and how much of it you should take!
Oh, you can see the apricots in the first one, but because of all the weighing, the line was long this week, and I was able to take these photos without being horribly in the way!

The basket to the left is the trade-in basket, so if there's something you simply don't need or want, you take it, and then put in the basket, and hope that there's something in there that you want instead! Today no one wanted the mint, I bet because a lot of people grow mint on their own, or most people don't know what to do with it (quite a difference, I wonder which one is true) And although I do grow my own mint, I grow spearmint, and this is peppermint, but there will be much more of this I'm sure. I gave it to Erika and Jeremy, this week, they also grow spearmint!

And oh my god, Erika asked that I pick up some meat from their freezer (this year they're not including meat in the CSA but its available for purchase in the retail fridge/freezer section), and so we picked lamb cubes, and then Erika and Jeremy made a fantastic dinner (as usual) of lamb kabobs with peppers and hummus made while everything else cooked. I love CSA day!