Via dAlbergaria

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I was going to tell you about a new Alice Waters frozen food line, but it turned out to be an April Fool's joke. Then there was the manned misson to Mars, but that turned out to be a joke too. Can I just say I'm glad it's April 2nd?

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I realize I'm putting my geek cred in jeopardy by admitting I'm not a gamer, but I can do calc, and lewis dot diagrams, and have spilled acid on myself twice, so that should count for something, no?

Anyway, I finally found a game for the PS3 that I can play: Flower. Honestly, I have no idea what the point is, all I know is that nothing chases me and I can't get killed. I just kinda float around, pollinate things, and make pretty music - just perfect as far as I'm concerned!

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Um, yeah, that would be me.

Via The Kitchen

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You are spared stories of garlic sprouts, and tomato seedlings, and onion starts. You are spared bad photos of little yellow cuke flowers, and more tomato seedlings, and leggy marigolds. You are spared endless talk of tomatoes. You are spared these things because this year, I will have no garden.

OH NOES!

No, really, it's all good. After almost 4 years, we left the City of Mill for the City of Portland. Traded in 1200 sq feet on 3/4 of an acre, for 1200 sq ft on the first floor with a pretty awesome porch and not one ounce of dirt. What I got in return was a 4 minute ride to the symphony and a brand fucking new kitchen. This was not a hard decision people!

Actually, I got one other thing in return, and that is access to some awesome grocery stores, produce markets, and farmers markets. I'll be honest - this will be the first time in about 8 years that I won't be growing some kind of food, so it's a little weird to not have seedling trays on my kitchen counter right now, and I do get a little bummed out every time I find a seed catalog in my mailbox. But last summer we started making weekly trips to the Corvallis farmers market, and I don't know, I guess I got variety envy. One week, I found these amazing yellow romas and thought about canning some until I remembered that I had some 300 tomatoes hanging off my own plants at home. I was already thinking about downsizing the garden when we made the decision to move, so the plan is to take the year off and spend more time thinking about what's in season than what's coming out of my garden and when. Which explains the turnips and asparagus we had this week...

And fear not, there will still be jam! Outside of the plums, which were on the property, all the fruit either came from farmers market or the grower, so nothing will change there. Except maybe the variety!

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You should run to your kitchen and make this apple galette right away. It's yummy, and quite easy - you know this must be true or I wouldn't have made it. I add about 1/2 tsp sugar to the pastry dough, and because I never have lemons handy, I used that fantastic lemon oil Kate sent me instead of zest. Oh, and I've made it with granny smiths as well as golden delicious apples.

In other news, Tio Carlo bought us, er, the cats, one of these for xmas. Chica hasn't yet decided if it's trying to feed her or kill her, and while Pablo accepts it, he is somewhat upset that his job as nom distribution supervisor has been outsourced to a machine.

In other, other news, I have fallen in love with making my own pasta. Which, of course, means I'll need more beta testers. Anyone?

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Symphony outing #1 is done - Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, awesome. This weekend is trip #2 - Lauderdale Plays Gershwin. Thomas Lauderdale, for those who don't know, is the pianist in the band Pink Martini. I'm guessing you can probably figure out which one was my pick and which one was CR's.

My small thanksgiving dinner has now turned into dinner for six. On the upside, I finally get my veggie thanksgiving. On the down side, the living room is buried in recipes and I have no idea what to make. And that week is starting to fill up as not only do we have guests coming in from out of town, but someone got me Trail Blazers tix (v. Miami) for my birthday. Speaking of which, that's over, 39 (for the first time!) is now official. It's only been 2 days - so far so good. I figure I have another 363 days to decide whether or not 39 will become a permanent thing. :)

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November is always a busy month. My birthday, both our Mother's birthdays - and that is always it's own special drama since they are 4 days apart, and Thanksgiving usually falls on one of them. From one we get polish, catholic guilt, from the other those big sad eyes: oh, you're going to her house this year...Well, actually, no, I'm staying home this year.

That aside, I have two symphonies to attend this month, a small Thanksgiving dinner to plan, and a little thing called election day this Tuesday. You know what I realized today? I was in the kitchen cleaning the dried oregano and I had to mute the TV because Palin was speaking and all I was doing was swearing at the TV. Whenever John McCain is on TV I catch myself saying, stop calling me your friend you fucking asshole! On one hand I just want this to be oooooover. On the other hand, I agree with Bill Maher, this is the best election ever.

The other thing I realized while cleaning the oregano is that Pablo thinks EVERY herb is catnip. Furry little guy is a junkie...

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