Wintry Sunday Boredom

This Sunday finds me rather bored. I wanted to do garden-y things, but with this cold wind, I don't even want to pot basil and peppers for the back porch. Neither do I want to knit, practice the fiddle, or read.

Part of this discontentment is, I believe, due to the nearness, but not-yetness of Thursday. On Thursday, I go to Albuquerque, and then on Friday Porkchop and I caravan to St. Louis with Patrick and his girlfriend Chelsey. Since Pat didn't make the second year, he's moving back to Milwaukee, and then he and Chelsey will volunteer for a year in Chile.

Thursday is so close, but I still have 3 days of work and 3 days of anticipation.

So, even though I haven't been knitting (um, at all for the past couple of weeks), I have been cooking! This morning, I made French toast, which is something I never really eat. But it made sense since I still had bread left over from my share, eggs, and bit of cow milk. Behold:


The stuff on top is that wonderful apple butter. Also, this is actually a French toast sandwich! I cooked it with peanut butter (also from my share) and more apple butter in the middle. YUM! I really should make French toast more often since it's super easy.

Before making the French toast, I put together a chili for the crockpot. I soaked black beans last night and sauted ground beef this morning with onion, garlic, and spices. I can't wait to eat it...the crockpot is just taunting me. I have 49 minutes before I test the beans for doneness. Also, for the chili, I chopped up part of the smoked chipotle peppers that I received in my share. The peppers smell wonderful - I was tempted to take a bite out of one, but I knew that would be foolish.

Also on the food front...remember my tomato plant as pictured last week? If not, here it is:

And here it is this past Friday (a mere week after the previous photo):

It has grown A LOT.

Here it is today - it's at least a couple of inches taller than on Friday:


It has been trying to put out flowers, but I'm pinching them off because the plant needs to grow a bit more before producing tomatoes.

Sometimes I just stand on the backporch and look at my plants.

Keetah would rather I pet her if I'm going to just stand around. Here she is today, not staying still long enough for me to focus on her face:


Sometimes, she is so very cute.

This afternoon, I had to leave the house for cat food and litter. Whenever I'm at Petsmart, I always check out the cats - we won't get another one as long as Keetah is around, but I still like to look. Today was kind of heartbreaking because there was a mini Keetah!! And the sign said something to the effect of: "I was at the city humane society for a long time, but no one ever picked me." Murrr!

If you want a little Keetah, go to the Petsmart at Chippewa and Kingshighway and look for Siren (and maybe change her name).

Big Sigh

Finding a house is hard, especially when you know you can't have a huge monthly payment because of all of your other bills.

This morning was...interesting:

• I saw one SUPER pretty place. The downside: it's a townhouse, and I could faintly hear the other people walking up and down their stairs. Also, because of the big front yard, the backyard is a little shared brick courtyard. Where would the chickens live?! And, finally, I wouldn't really call the neighborhood transitional just yet. Still boarded up buildings and falling down places....no where to really walk.
• The mixed use building that I looked at was gross, gross, gross. Ugh.
• The other work/live place that was recently rehabbed is just WEIRD with multiple add-ons and sloping floors and odd bathroom configurations...among other things.
  
• One house would have been super-great, but it was a half-assed rehab job. Things would definitely be going wrong soon. Also, the backyard was all paved.
• The place I was most excited about looked okay in person...I just had issues with the condition of the wood floors, and there were little details that hadn't been finished. Like the closets didn't have rails or shelves. Some trim work needed to be finished more neatly, and some caulking was coming off around the bathtub. Also, the showing was generally weird because my realtor and I discovered that someone had stolen all of the kitchen appliances (dishwasher, stove, microwave, and refrigerator) (and scratched up the wood floor in the process of carting them out)! It was a bit awkward when the seller's agent came over because he was trying to tell me about other properties, and we were just like, dude, someone stole all of the appliances here - shouldn't you call the police or something. We determined it had to be an inside job because there were no signs of forced entry. The back door had been taken off its hinges, but that had been done from the inside. Someone totally knew the lockbox code.
  

So, I continue looking.

I mean, I like the place with the stolen appliances and it's right in my price range, so maybe I could just write some stuff in the contract for them to fix.

My Second Share

This is my second share, which is quite abundant. To me, anyway. I'm still finishing up stuff from my first share!


We have bread, lettuce, apple butter, an herb bouquet, more black beans, wheat tortillas, eggs, 1 lb of grass fed beef, popcorn (it was coffee, but I traded it), white cheddar, meat sauce from Maria & Sons, and two dried chipotle peppers.

I hope my share partner Deborah of Ephemeral Chaos has similar luck next week!

Here's my plan for the beef...use half of it to make a beef and black bean chili-type thing (as Rebekah suggested) and then freeze the other half for burgers (as Deborah suggested). Porkchop might like a burger when she returns next week! Alternatively, we can have tacos or burritos so that she does not become homesick for Albuquerque cuisine.

After picking up this huge share, I ended up having a salad and leftover pizza tonight! I didn't want the pizza to go to waste, and I jazzed it up with stuff from my share. For the piece of cheese pizza, I added black beans from my first pick-up. For the piece of tomato-mushroom pizza, I added basil from the herb bouquet.

For lunch tomorrow, I will have 1) a salad using the lettuce and an apple that I already have and 2) a sandwich using the bread, cheese, and apple butter.

The apple butter won't last long. It's from Centennial Farms in Augusta and is a total revelation.

Taking Suggestions

What do I do with a pound of ground beef?

This will be in my share this evening, and I have no clue what to do with it. I need something where the beef isn't super noticeable (no burgers, no tacos, and no meatloaf).

Ideas?

Shaking and Yelling

Shaking
I thought I felt a little earthquake this morning, and I did! A little microquake of 2.7 about 4 miles away.

Yelling
Recently, I've had to start yelling at some kids around here.

Yesterday, two kids were in the gangway shooting what I think were BBs at either my or my neighbor's window unit. I spied them from my back porch and commenced yelling at them: Don't run through here shooting that in my yard! To which the kids looked up, scared, and said okay. When they started to run off, I yelled: And close that gate! Because I hate open gates as much as I hate open drawers and cabinet doors. The kids closed the gate and took off.

This evening, there were older kids playing with the same gun, which didn't seem to having anything in it at the moment. As I walked out to my car, I KNEW that they were going to shoot at my car when I drove off. To me, it doesn't matter if a gun has anything in it or not, or if it's a BB gun or an airgun or a cap gun, it's the intention behind the action that I can't stomach. So, yes, the kid shot as I drove away, I threw the car in reverse, rolled down the window, and yelled: DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!

The kids and I went back in forth a couple of times:
Kids: But there's nothing in it!
Me: I don't care! Don't shoot it at me!

I was hoping that the kids were still outside when I got home so that we could have a conversation about this, but they weren't there.

I mean, I don't like kids pointing anything at me and shooting. But, the larger issue is their safety. There are people on our street and larger neighborhood with REAL guns, and they aren't afraid to use them. I'm worried that one of these kids is going to mess with the wrong person.

I really don't want to see that happen.

Craptastic

I am so ashamed, embarrassed, and angry that my university is giving an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly.

I don't toss around the word hate lightly, but I hate Phyllis Schlafly.

Let's Talk about Other Things

My work week was incredibly draining and is the reason I haven't posted in a while. So...moving on to other topics...

Friday of last week, my parents met me at work and I took off a few hours early. Their visit was much better than I anticipated. Not that I thought my parents would be bad company or something, I was just really worried about them staying with me and perhaps my dad making comments about my neighborhood. Just because there are signs posted at nearly every intersection that read, "This area under mobile camera surveillance," it isn't really that bad. (As long as you stay in at night and aren't a post office letter carrier, since people around here tend to shoot their letter carriers. Ha - see, things aren't so bad!)

But, my parents didn't say much about my neighborhood. Probably because we were so busy buying gardening supplies and plants and looking at plants and eating.

We ate so much Friday night at Sidney Street Cafe, none of us were very hungry on Saturday. We hit the Webster Groves herb sale in the morning, and were surprised at how many people were there! We had to wait in this looooong line to get in:

It was like a night club where you have to wait for people to leave in order to go in. Only it was an herb sale.

After the herb sale and after stopping at Serendipity for a few scoops of ice cream, we went to the Botanical Gardens. Although the Niki de Saint Phalle show didn't officially open until the next day, we saw plenty of sculptures. Like the Niki-gator:


We also saw someone who might possibly be the Chinese ambassador to the US, but that's another story for another post.

We were at the gardens for a long time and certainly got our money's worth. That's a bit of humor because the gardens are free to City and County residents before noon on Saturday...so we didn't have to pay anything. But I would have paid because the gardens are great.

Anyway, I made dinner for my parents Saturday night using the black beans and tortillas from my CSA share. Sunday morning was breakfast at Missisippi Mud House (because La Dolce Via doesn't open until 10 on Sunday), and then my parents were off.

Here are some other plant-related updates...

My tomato plant on the porch is doing terrifically well! Here it is with a companion sweet basil plant that I picked up at the WG sale (its other basil buddies are in the garden):


I have a lot of lettuce to thin out. I think I might have a very baby lettuce salad this weekend:


Here's a thyme plant and a pistou basil plant, also from the WG sale:


And an oregano plant from the sale:


I can't wait until the basil plants are big and there are tomatoes to harvest!

My only wish is that it wasn't allergy time. I'm actually faring well this season thanks to a steady regimen of sinucleanse, allegra, and flonase. However, my throat is getting a bit sore now, and my nose is full of snot and some other yucky stuff. But, you know, at least I can still breathe without too much trouble. It doesn't help that there's a thick coat of pollen on everything in the living room - I intend to clean up that crap tomorrow.

My plant goals this weekend are to find and plant two red bell pepper plants, a banana pepper plant, and possibly an eggplant. In the garden, we currently have the following sprouting: radishes, carrots, beets, lettuce, chard, peas, tomatoes, basil, sage, garlic, and chives. In mid-May, we'll plant watermelons, cantaloupes, and cucumbers. Awesome!

Oh, also, Porkchop and I have decided that it would be best for us to purchase a regular house at the moment. So, I have identified a few around Cherokee street to look at next weekend. Like most people, we have certain requirements that potential houses need to meet. We've nixed a few already because the yards would not be able to accommodate chickens.

Yes, we are basing our housing purchase options on chickens that we don't have.

But we will get them, oh yes, we will. We are so excited about having chickens!

Porkchop wants to buy one of these Eglus, but I'd rather we build a chicken tractor ourselves instead of paying $500 for wire and plastic.

Anyway, that's what we're talking about now...chickens.

My First Share!

Okay, so I received neither trout nor fig jam, but I'm happy overall with my first pick-up from Fair Shares.

Buttercrunch lettuce, a huge bag of shiitake and oyster mushrooms, cheese from Heartland Creamery (um, you know how I feel about them, but fine, I will eat their cheese), spaghetti from Mangia, black beans, a 2.5 lb. chicken, San Luis flour tortillas, peanut butter from Sappington Farmers Market, and salsa.

The chicken is a bit small, so the family who raised them included a note explaining the cold weather had kept the chickens small. Future ones will be around 3.5 lbs.

But, oh my gosh, check out the mushrooms!


For dinner, I cooked half of the spaghetti, combined it with sauted mushrooms, carrots, and ginger (I already had the last two in the refrigerator). Then I topped it with a yummy peanut sauce (using my new peanut butter). Awesome! I also topped some lettuce with a carrot and lemon juice salad that I made over the weekend.

Not too shabby for a thrown together meal.


And I have leftovers for two more meals.

Trying to Look Up

I have some things going against me right now:

1. My favorite pair of summer pants (and it's summer-pant wearing weather right now) are coming unsewn below the zipper. Unfortunately, my seamstress is living in Albuquerque at the moment. Hmmm....
2. Squirrels have savaged three of my tomato plants. The plants have been in the ground for not yet 36 hours. I'm quite sad about this, but I know I can replace the plants this weekend after the Webster Groves herb sale. But I'm also QUITE sad because I've cared for these little plants for more than two months now. It hurts. So much.
   
3. I've only practiced my fiddle twice this week, and I have class tomorrow. Oh, and I never bought a digital tuner. I'm such a slacker.

On the upside:

1. Porkchop comes home in less than a month.
2. We've been pre-approved for an FHA home renovation loan. The approval amount is alright, but I hope we can buy a place and get it done for much cheaper. The monthly payment amount makes me gasp. I mean, really, I'm glad Wells Fargo pre-approved us for this amount, but ARE THEY NUTS??!! Have they REALLY looked at our income-debt ratio? I sure as hell wouldn't lend us such money.
3. Hmmm...I'm trying to think of a third. My parents will take me out to a nice dinner Friday night at the Sidney Street Cafe.
   

And, I don't know how to feel about this...

When I came home from work this evening, I observed an unsettled atmosphere on my street. People sitting outside, but quiet and uneasily watching a guy with a dog standing outside one of the 4-family flats. Then I noticed a police car parked in front of my apartment and a police woman taking a report from a guy who lives across the street. My neighbor told me that the guy with the dog had been reported for animal abuse.

I don't know how to feel about this because I'm sad to hear that this guy was beating his dog, but I'm glad that no one was shot, which is what I thought had happened.

On that note, have a great Tuesday!

Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe

I wish today were May 15.

If it were May 15, I would be at the airport, ready to leave for Albuquerque to help drive Porkchop back to St. Louis.

It's going to be a long three and a half weeks.