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.

Elliott went to a function tonight in SF and I stayed here told hold down the fort in the East Bay.  When we talked about his plans to go to this event I told him, oh no… dinner by myself and free to do whatever I want, what will I do (filled with sarcasm and anything but a hint of imagined loneliness).

After I dropped him off at the BART station I went by Subway for a meatball sandwhich dinner, alway a good back up plan and I went back to work.  I “worked” only a little.  Cleaned up the piles and moved paper around.  Then I went through some of emails that I tend to save up of things to do.  Like we want to go to a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game, so I had an email reminder in a folder, so I ordered tickets and deleted the email.  I had some SWE business to catch up on so I did that as well.

Soon the minutes faded into another and before I knew it, it was 9pm.  The lights flickered, the automatic building energy managements way of telling me they would be shutting off for good unless I called in with my secret code to override it.  I called in another hour of light but I am not sure if the system is on Colorado time or what but they shut off anyway.  Oh well, the building’s way of telling me to go home, which I did.

On the way I home with my bag of industry journals, business newspapers, and dishes from the office to wash at home (we don’t use paper plates anymore, its a green thing) I realized something.  It is a Friday night.  Elliott went to SF and I stayed at work because lets face it I don’t have anything else to do.

(more…)

I awoke at 6:30am this morning no alarm, I have finally caught up on my sleep.  Apparently going to bed around 7pm a few nights in a row does the trick.  I opened the blinds, to assist Elliott in waking up and I grabbed our computer to catch up on the blog world.  Mom had a new post to me so I read it and cried.  When Elliott woke up he asked me if I wasn’t feeling well because I was sniffling, I explained my morning to him.

 Some how between last night and this morning I decided I wanted to do a juice detox I read about in a magazine, I told Elliott I would be doing a weekend juice detox and we was pissed.  He went to Sacramento today for a boys golfing trip and he didn’t want me to experience a detox without him.  After considering his feelings for a few minutes I realized he was pissed because he didn’t want me to lose a pound unless he had the opportunity to lose a pound too.  When confronted with this analysis he admitted it was correct.  We went for a run before he had to leave for Sacramento.  While he showered I walked to the store for the first recipe, he wanted to have at least the first juice with me.  I am working from memory but the shopping list included: beets, spinach, kale, aloe vera gel, carrots, apple, orange… thats all I can remember now.  I asked Elliott if he thought it was an issue that we don’t have a juicer only a blender, as the two produce very different results.  He thought the blender would do fine for the juice diet.  I prepared the foods and placed them in the blender poured 2 giant 8 ounce glasses and smiled because the rule in our house is the person who blends doesn’t have to clean.  Oh and olive oil, how could I forget, the recipe included olive oil.  The juice/smoothie was horrible.  The only good part was watching Elliott’s gag reflex which was hilarious even though I was choking down the same strange juice/smoothie.  Elliott commented that he thought the kale smelled like he does after a run, I said I didn’t think it smelled that bad but it definitely tasted pretty bad.  Elliott eventually left for his trip and I was left to ponder my day.  I showered and made latter made myself a fruit juice, a nice break from the vegetable variety, much better.  I went to Whole Foods to purchase my lunch and dinner items, you have no idea how expensive it is to buy all of these veggies.  I came back home and made a celery, orange, lemon, kale… the rest I have put out of memory juice/smoothie and suprisingly it was even worse that the breakfast smoothie - horrible in fact.

Throughout the day I surfed the internet and read about juicing, detox, raw good diets, even learned about strange things like oil pulling.  Around 3pm I realized it had warmed up outside so I walked across the street with a blanket and magazines and partially watched a girls soccer game, it was really nice to get some sun.  Back at the house 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through my juice detox I aborted the mission and had a spoonful of cashew butter.  I then ate some chips and salsa and started to feel normal again.  I decided to walk to Safeway where I bought a greasy burrito from the deli counter and some bananas.  I then walked to Block Buster and rented the Devil Wears Prada.  Once home I ate the bean burrito and enjoyed every bite.  I still don’t feel quite right, the unfortunate part is now I am not sure if the smoothies or the burrito made me feel bad.  Oh well, I think I can nurse myself back to health with some hearty food tomorrow.  Oh I forgot to mention I also tried a dandelion root tea with lunch, it helps detox the liver or something.

One thing I wanted to mention is while at Safeway the cashiers were really playing up their donate to breast cancer program.  I donate each time I go to the store, I gave this morning when I bought the veggies.  Tonight though they were announcing each donation over the speaker system and crowds of cashiers were clapping and celebrating.  I thanked the cashier and said I thought they were doing a good thing.  He shared with me that the general manager is a breast cancer survivor.  I told him my mom is fighting it right now.  It took everything I had to not break down into tears right there.  A year ago I would have maybe given a dollar, and probably never thought twice.

So I didn’t make it through the weekend detox and for whatever reason today has been an emotional day for me, I guess that is what I get for reading mom’s blog first thing.  Tonight I am going to drown my tears with more toxic food, probably some cereal, and The Devil Wears Prada, spread out in the bed as Elliott will be back tomorrow.

Today I passed on an opportunity to go after my dream job.  I was so sad I sat frozen for minutes debating what I knew I had to do.  A few weeks ago I read of a request in the ASCE (Civil Engineers) newsletter about a show looking for a female engineer co-host.  The same opportunity passed my email box again this week this time through SWE (Women Engineers) saying they had a rep in California and so were doing interviews of California women engineers.  The information I received explained it is a show that will be on the Discovery channel and the program will be about inventions or ideas to fight climate change.  It’s a great opportunity to do something truly fun within my career and also genuinely good in so many ways, from climate change to inspiring young girls to be engineers.

It sucks that I couldn’t follow my gut on this one, because I really really wanted to go after this opportunity.   But the other information they sent me said it would require a huge time commitment with 3 week shoots in November, January, February… five months, three weeks off each from work, ya I can just imagine Pete’s reaction.  The funny thing is Pete and I just had a great talk about what we want to be when we grow up and I shared with him that what drives me is to do good, and here is an opportunity calling my name to do something good and I turn it down because of my work commitments.  So bye bye dream job (I am hamming it up here, I am really not that sad about it anymore, but figure for the blog a little dramatic flair is appreciated) for whatever reason now wasn’t the time for me to go after one of the opportunities of a life time.  I guess I already got a pretty great opportunity this year, hence moving here so I suppose that is fair.

On a truly positive note, we had a new employee start yesterday.  She is fabulous, smart and fun - who could ask for more.  She even took us up on going to lunch, better than our last employee.  I think she is a keeper.  She is from China.  Today she brought in a moon cake to share, from the Chinese Moon Festival last week.  Jon was down from our Reno office so the 4 of us split it for dessert - she knows how to buy me.

It is amazing how easy it is to blog on BART. Went into the city tonight for a lawyers engineers architect accountants dentists women’s dinner. It was great, nice to meet some non engineers. The women were beautiful all in suits feminine and professional - it was nice to see - I do not get to interact with professional women very often.
I had a few glasses of wine, dinner and delicious dessert, fortunately the friendly gal next to me kept me from devouring the entire thing which I fully intended to do.
One of the ladies stressed me out and wanted to walk me to the bart station, I think she wasa counting how many glasses of wine I had! I made it to the bart safe and sound all by myself didn’t even stumble, trip or twist my knee.
Side note: over the weekend I burned my cheek with my curling iron, I look like Elliott beats me. I think that’s why I have been getting so much sympathy. I considered burning the other side so I at least looked symmetrical, kind of like semi permanent make up but I talked myself out of it.
Anywat gotta run almost to my final destination Dublin/Pleasanton station.
All is well here, way too busy and close to a major melt down at work but other than that things are great!
Will report back soon.