In an exciting turn of events, a few things happened this week.
On Sunday, Joel got in a bike crash.
Fortunately, he was OK with a number of scrapes and bruises, and his bike was fine, too. I picked him up in Cheney while he was still a little shell shocked.
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| Overlooking the Spokane Valley on Saturday |
On Monday evening, Luna injured herself after chasing after a neighbor dog. She came away with a severe limp that we had checked out at the vet on Tuesday morning. Fortunately for her (and us), there was no major apparent damage, and he's doing much better with the help of some doggy Advil.
The weather got hot this week and I switched my at-home workouts to the mornings (I usually work out after work) to try to stay cool, but the house was still 76 degrees and things got pretty darn sweaty. I spent a lot of time outside in the shade in my lounge chair and on the deck drinking summery cocktails and grilling (chicken! flatbread! eggplant! steaks! pizza!) .
I took Friday off and cleaned some gross parts of the house (e.g., bathroom fixtures and vents) but also spent some time organizing my recipe binders, and then more time in the backyard shade making phone calls.
On Saturday night, we toured the Spokesman-Review printing press. As of today (Sunday), the paper has moved all of its printing production to Spokane Valley, so yesterday was the final print run in the big facility downtown.
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| Ink pipelines |
Also of note, the CSA haul is keeping our eating life colorful and fun, from roasted fiddlehead ferns, to colorful quick pickled radishes and carrots, to lemon balm simple syrup, to raspberry-rhubarb biscuit cake.
I promised an update on my sock project last week. The update: I frogged it. That's knitter-speak for "I ripped it all out and may or may not start over." I realized I had added an extra 12-stitch repeat in the pattern, which created a math problem right after I had finished turning the heel (i.e., I was over halfway done with the frickin' sock). I thought I could probably figure out a work-around, but the thought of having to do the same thing for the second sock made it 100% not worth it. So, perhaps I'll return to it in time, since the pattern was fun, and knowing it calls for 12 few stitches, it should go slightly faster.
Some recipes I recommend from the week:
The rhubarb-raspberry biscuit cake (Martha Stewart)
This grilled chicken and tzatziki (from Smitten Kitchen, perhaps my favorite grilled chicken marinade of all time) with this grilled yogurt flatbread
Also, I have recently become a fan of eggplant. This week I learned that it's amazing when grilled. I took two Chinese eggplant (the long skinny kind), cut it in half length-wise, brushed all sides with veg oil and salt and pepper, grilled each side on high for a few minutes to get a good char, then moved it to a cooler part of the grill until a fork meets no resistance (a few extra minutes). Then I cut it up into smaller chunks (let it cool for a minute or so) and toss it in a tangy vinaigrette with lots of herbs (I made a nuoc cham sauce and tossed it with pickled carrot/radish and basil and random greens and chopped peanuts, and served along with grilled steak, pictured above). The eggplant is creamy and savory and takes to the other flavors really well. This whole process was written up in the latest issue of Milk Street mag which doesn't pay me to write about how often we use the recipes in that magazine.
And with that, the first week of summer is in the books! Woot.
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