Around and about

 The river is still in a rage. But what a view! This was from late March.

Bread before/after. Don't get me started on baking bread unless you really want to hear an earful because I love talking about it, almost as much as I love eating it, or listening to it crackle when it comes out of the oven and starts to cool, or getting the perfect design on top. These are magical things in my life right now.

A scene from an incredible night featuring a magical collaboration between the Spokane Symphony and local artists, playing and interpreting Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Inspiring. My favorite movement of the Vivaldi seasons is winter. But in this performance, it was fall. In real life, SPRING. Late spring.

On a cold, rainy Saturday we made our first-ever trip to Mike's donuts in the valley. The apple fritters did not disappoint. I'd like to think this is Mike himself. Does anyone know Mike?

 I came out of the hallway after vacuuming to find these two curled up in their respective places. (Luna is not normally allowed on the furniture, but she's really taken to that chair by the window, and if it keeps her from getting up on the other things, then we're OK with it.)

 I love these. I still don't know how to pronounce ranunculous.

 Friday night, eating burgers and drinking wine by candlelight at a record store. Like we do. (At Garageland, at least.)

 Fresh orange rolls. I'm declaring this to be my Easter tradition, even though I come from a long line of other delicious baked-good Easter traditions, not the least of which is hopping bunny rolls. If you're interested in the orange-roll recipe, I posted the recipe here.

RaNUNculous? RA-nun-CU-lous?

 Friday night table is set for our dinner date with PBS Newshour JUST KIDDING. But we did watch The Amazing Race, which we DVR'd from the night before.

Who needs ham for Easter dinner when you can make Pasta Primavera?  Joel made the sauce, I made the noodles. A new favorite veggie pasta dish for me. I like the idea of a pasta for all the holidays.

Friday morning bathroom - before. Generally, there was nothing offensive about this bathroom and the stenciling from the 90s. But our house is covered in this green.  I wanted something cleaner and a little brighter. Enter: Rodda paint #0622 Serene Setting...

Saturday morning - after. The wainscoting still needs some touch-ups, but I'm not thinking about that right now.

These April days have mostly been soggy ones, but if you get out at the right moment, the sun hits you and all the colors are suddenly bright and the earth smells incredible. 

Lately I've been thinking about headwinds and tailwinds. Maybe because it's been so windy with all these changes of weather. But it was prompted by an interview I heard on Freakonomics about our tendency to believe that our lives are harder than others'. The headwinds come and become our focus as we struggle to get through them. But there are also tailwinds in our lives that make certain things easier for us. We may notice them giving us a boost at first, but as they continue to push us forward, we stop noticing them. If we pause to notice the seemingly invisible tailwinds, we start to realize how well we are set up in our lives, beyond the major things we're quick to rattle off when asked what we're thankful for. This is what makes daily gratitude journals so powerful and often life-changing. I've worked to make this a habit in my life for years, but something about framing it this way really made sense to me. In case you want to listen to it on a particularly windy day (or read the transcript): Why Is My Life So Hard?

Morsels

Happy February! I always rejoice inside when the calendar flips to this short month. It's Friday morning and the snow just started. By Sunday it should be rainy. Other things the weekend brings: a visit from Joel's sister, drinks with my girlfriends (in lieu of the Super Bowl), and baking something for breakfast.  

This week, at long last, I made Dorie Greenspan's World Peace cookies. Even she admits that they're not consistent in the way they turn out - I was expecting them to be a bit bigger - but the taste is tremendous. They're my least favorite type of cookie to make, the kind where you must smoosh a very crumbly dough into a log, chill, and then hope it doesn't all fall apart when you slice them for baking. In this case it was worth the effort.

My challenge this week was to take a CreativeBug class. I don't feel like I really fulfilled it, but it did get me to do some pencil drawing throughout the week. It made me look at objects differently as I considered how to draw them. I'm still lousy at it, but I enjoyed it.

Joel took this one and I like it. This is a corner of our kitchen counter that tends to be dramatically lit this time of year around 3:30 p.m. 

The campus coffee shop on the last day of Jan Term.

Greenhouses. Nice to know something's growing down there.

The campus dining hall in early-morning glory. I've been really grateful for the sun this week.

Poor bike.

I tried a new recipe for Sticky Malaysian Chicken with Pineapple Salad on Wednesday. Fun, cheap and easy!

This one just 'cause her birthday is next week. Photo taken last week before she headed back to Boise.

Catching up

I've written, like, five posts about why I haven't been blogging lately and they're all crap, and I'm realizing that blogging about not blogging is the number-one reason I haven't been blogging. Because it's really boring.

The short version of those scrapped posts: insomnia is the pits. I've spent over a month now with an epic case of insomnia that is just now starting to become manageable, thanks to a book with a super-cheesy title and a supportive partner. I have almost gotten to the point now where I'm actually thankful to have to face this - particularly the root of it - because it's teaching me a lot about stress and anxiety and life beyond insomnia. I'm meditating and changing my internal dialogue and all sorts of other calming things with the power of my mind. Better yet, all this introspection and mindfulness seems to be building a tremendous urge to be creative and active and social and to open myself to new things, if only to refocus my energy and attention on that which is life-giving, and to prevent myself from Googling insomnia forums.

Since my last blog entry, a lot of life-giving summer has happened. We enjoyed a weekend of baseball and family time in Seattle. While there I got to visit both Essex (for cocktails) and Delancey (for pizza), which had long been on my list due to my appreciation of all things Molly Wizenberg. I picked a bunch of cherries, completed my first (and only, so far) canning project, and made bread with my own sourdough starter. I visited my family in Boise. I went to a David Bazan show, and an art opening for my friend and former professor. I finished knitting a pair of socks. I read "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler while finding the title hilariously ironic since I read most of it during sleepless nights. We over-nighted at the lake; we picnicked by the river. We rode our bikes to Sunday brunch and around downtown. We celebrated many family birthdays. I embroidered a shirt for my dad. I planted dahlias, which are now blooming, and tomatoes, which I'm now harvesting. We started watching Stranger Things. We revisited our favorite spots at Bowl & Pitcher. We went to friend's wedding, and to a beer festival. I invented new recipes with my CSA haul. We've taken many walks at sunset, and have driven along the Palouse. We are watching the summer Olympics.

David Bazan

Home from our morning walk - magical June when both peonies and roses are blooming

I love the smell of my hands after touching a tomato plant

A bottle of wine and a piece of river to ourselves

Sourdough starter

Pizza at Delancy

Father's Day present

Making cookies with my niece

Cocktails at the lake

Bing!

Luna loving life

Classic

Boutique pensione bathroom in Seattle

 A few things yet to happen: a roadtrip with the dog (Boise again), a river float/paddle, swimming (!!), and a Spokane Indians baseball game.

Aside from that, there's that festering need to be creative I mentioned above. The other day I challenged myself to commit to a Creative Hour each day. It could be 20 minutes, too, but an hour is a good goal for me. This helps me think about my creativity each day and gives me freedom in how I want to explore it, depending on my mood. This could be anything from trying a new recipe to picking something from a Pinterest board to continuing on the sweater I've been working on. To be honest, I probably already spend an hour on a lot of these things without really thinking of it, but having that "creative hour" lens really makes me feel that much more intentional and willing to branch out.

So that's that. I hope to check in here a bit more, use a camera that is not always my phone, and show proof of my work. That's what I always intend to do, but in summertime, it's sometimes nice to let these things just sit in reflection mode a bit longer. Speaking of reflection, Joel said something perhaps unintentionally profound to me the other day when we came home after a bike ride. He said, "You can ride up any hill as long as you're in the right gear." I thought about this later and how much that spoke to what I'm going through right now. I've had to do a lot of adjusting lately to account for variations in sleep and energy, but I feel like I'm finding a mode and frame of mind that is helping me get through this chapter, however long it lasts. Our ability to adapt is a gift.

Oof

Upon the purchase of our house, my eldest brother told us - in a congratulatory way, I'm sure - that we would never have a free weekend again. Ha, ha. I went away for a few days earlier this month for a conference, and when I returned, Joel had done all these little projects that brought me much joy - everything from hanging up a coat rack to touching up paint inside and out. A new doorknob for the bathroom, too. He repainted the front steps this past week. And me? I'm doing the one thing I know how to do right now: weeding. And looking up how to right all the wrongs of sprinklers, landscape lighting and deck railing...and the number of my nearest handyman. But let's not bore you, eh?

Joel aglow from the reflection of primer.

In the midst of all this, I have been very careful to not let my life get too consumed with my new to-do list. Here are some non-house things I can share that might have some morsel of intrigue for you. Maybe not.

Knitting this Strathcona scarf, in turquoise. This will be my summer scarf.

No more stovetop kettle for me!

Making hot water for coffee and tea with my Bonavita electric kettle, which I bought with birthday money - one of those where you can set the temperature - with a gooseneck spout for dainty pouring. Joel says I'm becoming a temperature snob (and he's right), but truly, I love drinking green tea now because of it.

Reading All the Light We Cannot See.

Making desserts from this gem of a cookbook called Flourless (so far almond-butter chocolate chip cookies and strawberry rhubarb maple cake, which we consumed so fast that I didn't think to take pictures) - thanks, Mom!

Poppy surprise!

Between Two Lilacs

Mourning William Zinsser. Since first reading his On Writing Well in high school, the mere mention of his name reminds me to cut the clutter from my writing. He is also the primary reason it takes me as long as it does to compose an email. Or anything, really. This tribute is touching.

Working out at the bar, which is a really fun thing to tell people. But seriously, it's a workout.

Watering my plants, and recycling my wine bottles, with Plant Nannies. 

A house with a name

This house is now our house. It's a very fine house. With one cat in the window (not visible), one dog on the front steps (visible). Built in 1909, part of the historic Booge's Second Addition (we just learned!) in Spokane, Washington.

On the day we closed, the thing I anticipated to be the most difficult - the part where I get a giant cashier's check from the bank - was, in fact, the easiest. No, the hardest thing about closing was signing my name with my middle initial. Boy, that really threw me. And signing my name while the closing agent was still talking was also difficult. Signing my name 15+ times is just plain difficult, no matter how you look at it. But, it happened. Everything is signed and the documents are presumably at the courthouse now, and we already have the keys, the same keys we've carried for seven years. But now we can change the locks, I guess.

It feels special, surreal, responsible, and weighty, like we've really invested in something, because we have, and not just in this little piece of property. Time will tell what this moment means for us.

***

Considering that cashier's check, it was fitting that it was on this evening that I made what Joel called a genuine hobo meal: franks and beans. We celebrated beforehand with bubbles, of course, but I had been craving baked beans for a good number of months. The beans were cooking on the counter all day and only needed to be doctored up with sweet and spicy ingredients. I started with a recipe from Melissa Clark for fake baked beans with crispy bacon, but substituted some links of grilled Aidell's chicken andouille sausage for the bacon. I also added smoked paprika, per the recommendation of the Wednesday Chef. I loved it, and even went so far as to say I'd eat this for breakfast.

We are storing up our energy for the months ahead, when those home shows I used to watch on PBS as a kid (Home Time, This Old House, etc.) gain new meaning, and friends with tools and trucks become our best. This will be fun.

Smoky Fake Baked Beans with Chicken Andouille Sausage

Original inspiration - Melissa Clark
Secondary Inspiration - Luisa Weiss

1 lb. pinto beans, soaked overnight and cooked all day in crock pot with:

• 3 smashed garlic cloves
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 dried bay leaves
• 3 whole cloves
• 1/2 yellow onion, kept in tact
• enough water to cover by 1 inch

When the beans are tender (i.e., when you get home from work), transfer to a large pot on the stove. I removed a little bit of the liquid; it wasn't scientific, but there was still a lot of liquid, so I just took out a cup or two.

Heat the beans back to a simmer while you add...

• 1/4 c. ketchup
• 1/4 c. molasses
• 3 T. apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp. Coleman's mustard powder (I just like their packaging; any variety will do)
• 1/4 tsp. Tabasco, or to taste
• 1 tsp. smoked paprika
• Salt to taste (I added a couple teaspoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, if not more, which is less salty than other salts)

Simmer for 45 minutes or until it's to the thickness you enjoy and it is unbearably tasty. When you're about ready to serve, go grill those pre-cooked sausages and get them a little charred. We served up the beans in a shallow bowl and cut up the sausages into coins and mixed it all together, sliced some baguette and assembled a simple salad on the side. PERFECT. If you're the literary type, go read Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat and learn why eating beans is vital.