teresa

I have had a day within a day and I would like to share it with you.

After leaving work, a little later than I should have I came home for a first.  Our first herb garden!  Elliott had to go out of town for an off site meeting so that left me to complete our seed planting.  Many of the seeds required soaking which was reminiscent of the wedding flowers, every cup out of the cupboards, filled with water and spread out on kitchen counters.  We didn’t get organized early enough in the weekend because of our special date to see the nerdcore movie so we didn’t start our soak until Sunday.

Tonight I had to prepare the pellets of soil by soaking them in water and then plant the seeds as instructed from 1/16″ to 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep.  I certainly hope that this measurement is not critical because I found this placement of the tiny seeds to be sketchy at best.  I started out spreading out the 3 seeds throughout the 2″ diameter pellet until after 2 or 3 I decided they could all go in the same hole in the middle.  I felt like a sushi chef, hunched over, with a spoon corralling the seeds from the glass and pouring them into the hole in the dirt, completing each implantation slowly and deliberately.  I kept a chart to know which herb was planted in which pellet, we have 2 of each including herbs like sage, basil, chives, mustard, and many more totaling 12.  We purchased the kit from www.herbkits.com.

After the herbs where planted and the lid installed  I walked to the grocery store in my “flip flops, flip flops” to purchase the remaining items I would need to make a broccoli salad.  Now all of this may sound normal to some of you but for those of you who really know me lets take a second to appreciate that I am starting a garden and cooking!  These are truly phenomenal steps for me.  I have had few hobbies at best the last few years and none of them have included cooking or gardening.

The cooking has been inspired by our recent efforts to go to the farmers market each week.  We started this as a step towards increasing our sustainability - buy local food.  It turned out it has also inspired us to eat more fruits and vegetables and to try new things.  So each Saturday we go to the farmers market, select our inspiration for the week (which has included a variety of mushrooms, eggplant, purple potatoes, green beans…) as well as our staples dates nan or focaccia for our weekly pizza dinner and so on and we are off.

So this week we bought broccoli which inspired us to make a knock off of the Costco broccoli salad.  The recipe I used is a blend between 2 I found on the internet:

• http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001949broccoli_salad.php
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

The second one suggested blanching the broccoli which before today I would have thought had something to do with this Golden Girl . But now I know that it means to drop food in boiling water for a short amount of time which I decided was a good suggestion.  I also followed the instructions to cool the broccoli in a bowl of ice water, the crackling of the ice made this step fun.  I modified the recipe slightly, this is a confident cooking move that Elliott taught me.  In lieu of red or purple unions I used the white onion I already had in the fridge and caramelized it using brown sugar (another trick Elliott taught me).  This is partly because Elliott doesn’t like red onions and partly because I already had white onion and didn’t want to waste it, besides it allowed for creativity.  Also I decided to exclude the bacon so the caramelized onion would add some extra flavor.  I liked the dressing of the second recipe better using honey instead of sugar.  I did use white instead of apple cider vinegar because we currently have an overstock of 2 bottles of white vinegar, a good reason why to check your cabinet while making your grocery list.  I included peas and will use raisins, although those are at the office so I will have to add them to my lunch tomorrow before enjoying.  The end product looks like: 

All of this was completed with the sound of the waterfall from our courtyard for better or worse and the slight breeze through the apartment that every once in a while catches the vertical blinds and sends them dancing into each other for a few moments, “click clack, click clack”.

Tonight I will turn in by myself and will look at the soft glow of our sun in a jar.  A pretty cool gift that my Vistage group gave us as a wedding present along with some other goodies.  The sun jar is a solar panel with rechargeable batteries and a little light.  It charges during the day and lights up at night, pretty cool.

To more nights full of planting and cooking, who knew how fun it could be!  Of course the only thing that would have made it better besides raisins and a green thumb is Elliott.

Its funny how traveling within the US can still seem foreign.  First of all I am not sure why but apparently they do not believe in toilet seat covers in Colorado.  Until today we had been all over, public, private, one-holers and fancy restrooms - none of them had toilet seat covers.  Funny thing is the toilet seats have been cleaner than seats I have seen anywhere before which to me might seem like a contradiction.  Today I went to the restroom in the lobby and went to sit down, indoctrinated into the Colorado way, when I saw toilet seat covers next to the toilet paper, I was amazed, seat covers!  While we are on the topic I also saw my first dual flush toilet in a restroom in a building of artist studios, where we had stopped to enjoy a coffee.  The building was very “green” and these toilets allowing for #1 or #2 flushes are very popular, it was cool to see one in person instead of in a magazine.

Another observation, while driving today.  Nearly all cars going only 5-10 mph over the speed limit.  All in their own lane, charging along happily and friendly.  There were a few cars who were in a hurry, but these people were not the majority.  After driving in California for a year this felt strange.  This is typically the scene only after passing by a speed trap and it usually only lasts 45 seconds.

Our honeymoon although not to a foreign country has still provided some interesting cultural experiences.

Logging on from Vail I would like to capture some of my memories.

First off many things have come to mind that believe it or not I did not manage to fit into my recent wordy posts.  Two moments I will never forget at the wedding were on separate occasions when Brad and Russell came up to me and wanted to genuinely welcome me into their family.  They said they were so happy that Elliott and I were together and that they wanted me to know that they were happy that we were married.  This made me feel so welcomed into the Goodwin family.

Reflecting on an older post we have now flipped the outlook of in a week from now, which has become a week ago we were… at the rehearsal, and tomorrow that will be a week ago we were married!

For a honeymoon update things are perfect.

Ok not everything is perfect, the hotel was a little rocky at first.  The key didn’t work, we had to return to the lobby and when we did get in we couldn’t find the bedroom (sounds ridiculous but true).  They didn’t deliver the luggage because we ‘didn’t give them our room number’…  The shower takes awhile to warm up (which I feel is karma telling me to save water and energy by taking short cold showers… an inconvenience I have not yet adopted in my efforts to reduce my personal footprint).  The maids are emphatic about cleaning and turn down services which we have finally remedied with the do not disturb sign.  And there is a detector of some sort probably smoke that blinks all through the night above our bed. 

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