This week’s local meal was super simple and stress free. Just boiled the corn, blanched the purple beans (well, they were purple…) and mixed the greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Oh yeah, and sliced the pickle. I bought those pickles from Newcastle Produce. These are the real kind made with just a brine and no vinegar, which I’ve never had before.  I quite like them.

I then poured myself a home brew from our keggerator and sat down to a delicious meal.

Hope you all in the U.S. have a safe and fun 4th of July!

I go to Karen’s Bakery & Cafe quite a bit. It’s my favorite place that is walking distance where I can grab a small snack and sit outside on their large patio surrounded by herbs and flowers to read or get some knitting done. The other day I noticed that the employees were using customer’s left over water to irrigate their potted plants. I love this idea and I do it at home. It’s a quite obvious solution to wasted water, and I’m sure plenty of people do it at home, but I had never thought that a business would put it to practice as well. Way to go Karen’s!

The summer when I was thirteen, my best friend Rachel and I explored the world of food. Nothing that we came up with was culinary genius, but it was good enough to wolf down while watching old movies like Sayonara or Flower Drum Song. One of our favorites was something Rachel came up with… a simple chocolate smoothie which consisted of blending Nesquick powder, ice cubes and a splash of milk. They would never blend quite that well (probably because we were impatient), but that was okay because little flecks of chocolate powder and chocolate milk bubbles would be left on on the rim of the glass which were promptly scooped up with a spoon and eaten. That summer was the end of our stint as chefs, but it left us with homemade garlic croutons, unripened mango and soy sauce, cinnamon popcorn and of course the Nesquick smoothie.

A couple weeks back I picked up a discount bag of raspberries (they were slightly crushed) at the farmer’s market and froze them with smoothies in mind. Then a few days later when it was too late to run to the store and get ice cream to curb my usual chocolate craving, I concocted a remix of our old favorite- the Nesquick smoothie:

A cup of vanilla goat’s milk yogurt (for sweetness), a scoop of unsweetened cocoa powder, ice, raspberries and a splash of milk whirled in the blender until smooth. Perfect!

Today I had another raspberry-chocolate smoothie with scrambled garlic eggs and sauteed swiss chard. This was one of my favorite local meals so far because I used all left over ingredients from the week before.

I’ve taken the plunge and begun knitting myself a sweater. Completing the baby sweater really gave me the courage to try the real thing. The pattern is the Slouchy Cardigan in Greetings From the Knit Cafe. It is a really simple, dressed down, basic construction cardigan that still looks capable of being a really elegant addition to an outfit. The book says “This is the perfect sweater to wear with your pajamas, especially on those mornings when you have to take the kids to school but don’t feel like getting dressed. It’s the sweater you wear on Sundays curled up with the newspaper or while cutting flowers in your garden on cool mornings. The flared sleeves and curly sides keep it pretty and feminine and the DK weight alpaca, worked at a slightly larger than usual gauge, keeps it light and cozy.”

Well I don’t have any kids to take anywhere, but I do love wearing sweaters over my pajamas all day (just ask Joe). Perfect for me!

Knitting commenced just under a week ago and I’ve already completed the back panel and I’m on to the right front panel. I may be able to knock this thing out before the month’s end! Then who knows… once the first sweater is out of the way I can only imagine the addiction I’ll be facing. I’ve queued countless sweater patterns. One for my mom, one for my sister, one for Joe’s mom, one for Joe… and on and on. You get the idea. I’m sure there are a few of you who know exactly the feeling.

Wow, I could not for the life of me take a decent picture of my local meal. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the swiss chard and basil pesto look like anything other than a green pile of yuck. It was tasty though. I had pesto laced potatoes with sour cream, a simple salad, a sliced plum and I also snagged a couple of Joe’s chicken wings just for the extra protein (and because they are so good!). I was excited to find a bag of sun dried tomatoes from Full Belly Farm at the co-op to add to my pesto.

It seems as if I have a surplus of baby knits that really have nowhere to go, so they will just be folded up and stuffed into a box, left to live out their lives unused. Unless anybody that I know has a baby in the oven that I don’t know about. I’ve made newborn sized socks and a sweater. It seems sort of silly to waste time knitting for a baby when I don’t know any that tiny, but I wanted to practice socks and sweaters, and didn’t want to practice them in adult sizes just yet (more time and more money for bigger sizes).

Now that I have completed socks and a sweater, I’m going to move on to the real thing. I bought a few skeins of yarn and started myself a sweater. My gauge is right on, so let’s hope it stays that way. I wonder how it will turn out and how it will fit me…

Ask me in a few weeks. I’m knitting as fast as I can (and it’s still not that fast).

Who’s gonna remind us how absolutely ridiculous humanity is now?

Man am I ever a flake sometimes. I put together this basil, smoked mozzarella and tomato salad the other night. It was late. I was tired.  I wasn’t thinking clearly. Last minute I thought I should throw in some whole wheat couscous to make it more substantial. Did I remember that the couscous that I had in my cupboard was not local? Nope.

I just realized right as I was posting. Oops.

It was still mostly local. The cheese, tomatoes, string beans, basil, and olive oil were all local. So were the blueberries and cherries. Oh well, do I get points for trying?

I took a women’s brewing class today held at the local brew shop which is just a five minute walk from our back door. Good thing too, because it was already hitting triple digits by the time I was walking over. I almost broke a sweat on my way there, but I’ve found that I stay drier longer if I keep thinking about iced tea or ice cream and cool breezes, and it worked! Mind over reality…

The class was great fun. The two teachers had both been brewing over 10 years and were already seasoned judges for various beer competitions. One even started her own contest, “The Queen of Beer” competition (which our class was preparing for). I’m wondering if I can manage a decent brew by September. I really would like to, but I don’t handle criticism very well. I’d like to think I do, but deep down, I let things bother me too much. Could I handle a professional critique? Three of them?

Either way, the class was fun and I’ve learned a lot of little things that would make the brewing process easier (like tempering the malt! why didn’t we think of that?). I also got to sample more beer than I normally drink in a month or two! And you know what mixes really well with beer? Heat….lot’s of dry heat.

Can you sense the sarcasm here?

Just a few days back, our weatherman estimated we’d be happily in the 80s today. Perfect for brewing outdoors. But what did I feel when I stepped out of my house this morning? Not nice, cool 80 degree weather. No no no. More like miserable 100 degree weather, with rain. Yeah, you read right. It rained today too. Not a bunch, and it didn’t even stay long on the pavement it was so hot, but it rained! I know other states get rain when it’s hot, but it’s also really humid in those areas. It felt dry as a bone here (as usual) so rain was the furthest thing from everyone’s minds today. What next? Puppies falling from the sky? Okay, that’s a bit of a leap, but you get where I’m goin’ here. Weather has been getting down right weird!