Summer 2022 Balcony Gardening Bust

 I wrote here last year about my balcony garden, which was relatively successful in spite of probably insufficient sunlight.  I got some cherry tomatoes (as did various critters who visited), and I got loads of basil.  This year was different.

I think part of the problem was that I decided to branch out and grow kale on the balcony.  I bought three starter plants from a nursery, and at first, they looked like a smashing success.  Then came the whiteflies.  For those who have never had the supreme pleasure of seeing them, they are tiny white flying insects that feed on the bottoms of plant leaves.  When you water the plant, they all fly up like a disgusting cloud, but never seem to be deterred for long.  Evidently, they enjoy kale as much as I do.

After it became apparent that they were destroying the kale plants, I pulled up the sad, skeletal remains of the kale and threw them out.  They then decided to settle for my mint (a new mint plant this year, since my old faithful plant finally died).  They haven't killed it yet, but it's not for lack of effort.

Tomatoes were another real disappointment; I didn't get a single one.  My mom suggested that I may have inadvertently bought a determinate variety of tomato and that a heat wave may have destroyed all of the tomatoes as they were developing.  It seems plausible, given the weather over the summer.  I kept hoping they would develop, but after listening to two podcast hosts based in Canada talking about their tomatoes, I realized the chances that my Virginia tomatoes were just delayed were slim.

My basil has fared better than my other plants this summer, but I didn't have the copious amounts I did last summer.  I've even had to buy bunches of basil from the farmers market to get all the pesto I want.  I'm not sure what went wrong, but it's a disappointment.

According to the interwebs, marigolds may help repel whiteflies, so I think I'll try planting some of those next year with the hope of protecting all of my plants.  Otherwise, I guess I'll have to be careful which tomatoes I get and hope for the best for a bumper crop of basil.

Large Produce Purchases Are What Happen When You're Busy Making Other Plans

 Hmm.  Well, I know I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't remember how long it had been!  In a nutshell, life has kept me busy.  I did ultimately start working again, but, having anticipated that it might not be a good long-term fit, kept some other application processes going.  Between my current job, interviews for other jobs, and paperwork associated with other opportunities, I've had a pretty full schedule.

This isn't to say that things have been all bad!  For one thing, I finally have a job offer I feel optimistic about.  Also...a couple weeks ago, a 5-pound box of mushrooms came into my life.

There is a mushroom vendor at our farmers market.  They sell a lot of small containers of fresh, pristine looking mushrooms.  I buy them sometimes, but mushrooms are somewhat expensive compared to some other foods, so I've never really gone all out on my purchases.  But!  They sometimes sell a 5-pound box of mushroom "seconds".  The first time I saw one of these at their stand, I was intrigued, but told myself that I didn't have the time or the plan to deal with quite so many mushrooms at once.  After we left, of course, I immediate regretted not having gotten it.  Then, the next time I saw one of these boxes, I had arrived about a minute too late, and someone else was buying it.  So, when I saw it again a couple weeks ago, I jumped to buy it and declared the next week "mushroom week."  

Getting through all of the mushrooms was a fun challenge, but a challenge all the same.  I love mushrooms and will happily eat them for several meals a day, but I'm not sure Scott is quite as enthusiastic about them.  I finally got to try a recipe for dry rub mushrooms, which was interesting, but I might not try again.  I also got to make a tart absolutely laden with mushrooms, and more than one egg dish with mushrooms.

There will almost certainly be a next time for this mushroom venture, although I've promised Scott that I won't do it immediately.  Next time, I will make a mushroom stew recipe that my dad and I both found in the NY Times and marked for future reference.  Also, next time, I'll know that oyster mushrooms keep much better in the fridge than pioppino mushrooms and plan my order of consumption accordingly.

In the meantime, though, there is a large box of mangos I bought last week from an Indian grocery store to enjoy.

Balcony Garden 2021

 

Behold, this summer's balcony garden!  Our balcony gardening was fairly limited last year.  We were pretty late in acquiring any plants at all because we were dutifully staying at home except for essential outings.  Then, by the time we did decide to buy plants, moving was looking like a distinct possibility, so I didn't want to go too overboard.  I bought a few herb plants and moved them with us last summer.

I definitely wanted to do some balcony gardening this year. We currently have basil, cherry tomatoes, parsley, and my faithful mint plant.  One wrinkle of balcony gardening in our new home is that our plants get less sunlight than they did in our old place, mainly because we have a solid brick wall on our balcony here, as opposed to rails that let the light through.  I basically learn all of my gardening lessons the hard way, but may do some things differently next summer in light (haha) of our gardening circumstances.

Basil:  I'll grow this again next year.  Summer is basically incomplete for me without copious quantities of pesto.  It took some experimenting to help the basil plants get sunlight, but one of them has done extremely well with the planter raised off the ground, closer to the light.

Cherry tomatoes:  I really love the idea of cherry tomatoes and plan to keep trying.  This year has actually been reasonably successful.  The plants have a lot of brown leaves, but they are producing tomatoes.  Pollinators seem to be able to find our balcony, so I've stopped resorting to toothbrush pollination.  Unfortunately, other critters have been able to find the balcony, too, and sometimes take bites out of the tomatoes while they are still on the plant.  It seems to matter little whether the tomatoes are actually ripe or not.  I'm guessing squirrels are the perpetrators, although I did once see a chipmunk scuttling across the brick wall.

However...I think the cherry tomatoes would benefit from much more light than our balcony offers.  Our plants grew very tall very quickly, which I suppose could be a characteristic of their variety, but I suspect may have to do with them trying to reach more sunlight. The result of this is unwieldy tomato plants that spill over the balcony wall and sometimes appear to be fighting with the shrubbery behind the balcony.  I will try growing cherry tomatoes next year, but may try to find a variety that is more shade-tolerant.

Parsley:  This was a disappointingly underperforming plant this year, no doubt in part because it was visited by a parsley-eating caterpillar.  I'll probably try planting another herb in its place next year.

Mint:  How can I complain, when it keeps coming back year after year?  As long as this mint wants to survive, it has a planter with me.

I'm thinking of adding some shade-tolerant plants next year. I've read that leafy greens are generally okay in the shade, so I'm thinking of trying kale, particularly since I eat a lot of it anyway.  Short of a true crisis, it's hard to imagine what would make me want to move at this point, so I think I'll have plenty of time to figure out gardening on this particular balcony.

Vegan Meringues: A Sticky Partial Fail

 Although I'm not vegan (or even vegetarian), I've been somewhat interested in vegan cooking and baking for several years.  I had read before about using the water from canned chickpeas ("aquafaba," if we're being fancy), but had been extremely skeptical until I saw it being used on The Great British Baking Show. After watching contestants construct vegan pavlovas, I decided I would try scaling down a bit to make some vegan meringues. I consulted the internet for recipe ideas and learned that in addition to using the water in canned chickpeas, I could potentially use cooking water left over from cooking dried chickpeas (or even other dried beans).  This worked for me.  I do occasionally used canned chickpeas, but more often than not, I'll just cook a batch of dried chickpeas and keep them in the freezer for when I want to use them.

It came time today to cook some more dried chickpeas, so I carefully drained them over a large bowl and let the cooking liquid cool to room temperature.  I beat the liquid in the bowl of my mixer with a little bit of cream of tartar.  It was fun to watch because they really did look like egg whites becoming fluffy.

I put them in the oven, and they became dry and even a little crispy in less time than the recipe suggested.  I tasted one, and it was a little sweet for my taste, even though I had added less sugar than the recipe called for.  Still, it was tasty and had a cool texture.

However, a few hours after taking them out of the oven, they are becoming sticky and messy.  I warned Scott that if he wanted to stress eat meringues, he would have to do so soon.  I'm thinking it's possible that the humidity is a contributing factor to the sticky mess, but I don't know.  It was an interesting experiment, but I think I have to count this as at least a partial fail and think hard about whether I want to spend precious recreational cooking time trying again.

Pandemic Daze: What To Spend Money On When You're Not Traveling

 Like many people who are fortunate enough to still have discretionary income, our spending habits have changed during the pandemic.  We've been sticking close to home since March (with the biggest adventure being moving to our new home in August), so travel spending in particular has decreased sharply.

In our pre-pandemic days, we went to New York City pretty frequently, at least once a year.  Every time we went, we discussed the idea of getting a cronut at the Dominique Ansel Bakery.  For the uninitiated, a cronut is a cross between a croissant and a doughnut, which debuted in NYC to great acclaim in 2013.  By "great acclaim," I mean long lines to get one.  While I imagine the line situation must have eventually subsided, we always concluded that we were too tired and stressed out to make a special trip out of our way (and probably stand in some sort of a line) to try a pastry.

I'm not sure at this point when we'll next travel to NYC (or anywhere else, for that matter).  But a few weeks ago, when I was perusing the food section of the NY Times, I noticed a story about how the Dominique Ansel Bakery was going to start shipping cronuts, at least for a limited time.  Scott and I decided this was our chance to try them.  I signed up for emails to alert me when they were ready to start taking online orders.

I saw the first alert email about 20 minutes after it landed in my inbox; I clicked on the link and found the cronuts had already sold out!  About two weeks later, I got a second alert.  I was faster that time, and managed to land a box of four cronuts.  I got a bit of sticker shock when it came to shipping, however.  Overnight shipment for the cronuts ended up costing nearly as much as the cronuts themselves!  I considered dropping the whole idea at that point, but felt like we were already too intrigued by the idea of ordering cronuts.  Plus, we hadn't been spending money on travel.

The second surprise was that even after ordering, we had about a two week wait to receive them.  They finally arrived late yesterday afternoon.  Here's what we got:

According to the literature they sent with the cronuts, flavors change every month, and are never repeated.  Our particular cronuts are filled with chestnut ganache.  And they are delicious!  But, I probably won't order them again.  There's the expense factor, of course.  Also, as delicious as they are, they are almost certainly better fresh from the bakery, as all fried foods tend to be.  It also turns out that four cronuts is a lot for two people--they aren't huge, but they pack a powerful punch and sit like lead weights in the stomach.  Of course, one day when we aren't social distancing, it may be easier to go in on a box with two other people, thereby limiting both the expense and the calories.  But I think in the future, I might be more receptive to visiting the bakery in NYC, whenever I may go again.

A Gift Finally Enjoyed

 Over 40 years ago, on the day I was born, one of my aunts and her then-husband bought me a bottle of wine.  They used the label on the bottle as a sort of gift tag, so it was easy to distinguish from any other bottles of wine my parents may have had around.  I think this is a clever gift for a baby, provided the parents have space to store it.  It spent decades tucked away in my parents' linen closet.

The one funny thing that nobody could have predicted is that I'm not much of a drinker.  I'm not a complete teetotaler, since I will drink, but I have a hard limit of one drink per occasion.  Often, on occasions when I drink, I'll do something like have half a beer and let Scott have the other half.  I like the taste of some alcoholic drinks, but they're not as much of a treat for me as some other things (like chocolate!).  I also don't seem to get the buzz that most people get from drinking.  And, even at my advanced age, I've never truly been drunk.  My recollection is that nobody remembered the bottle of wine by the time I turned 21 (which happened when I was studying in Mexico anyway), and even if anyone had, I wouldn't have necessarily made a beeline for it because being able to drink legally just wasn't that big of a deal for me.

It did resurface at some point, though, and my parents brought it up a couple of times when I visited.  Finally, maybe a year or two ago, they asked me to take it with me when I left.  I took it, and it sat on my kitchen counter.

Then we decided to move.  There is nothing quite like moving to make me thin out my belongings, and I decided that this bottle of wine shouldn't move with us.  So, I decided to give it a try...and it tasted really good!  I was surprised by how good it tasted to me, since as I said, alcohol is typically not a big treat for me.

We've been drinking small amounts of it with the chocolate we eat for dessert most nights.  The flavors go well together, and it's fun to think of people picking out a bottle of wine for a new baby.  I'm glad I'm getting to enjoy this gift at long last, after all these decades.

Pandemic Daze: Grocery Shopping Continues To Evolve

Even before our governor issued a stay-at-home order, we hadn't been leaving our home for every much, but weekly grocery shopping is still an outing.  We may get to a point where we decide that it's best to order groceries, but for now, we like going to the supermarket so that if one key ingredient we want is out of stock, we can regroup on the spot and choose something else.

That being said, there have been some changes at our supermarket in the past couple of weeks.  One change is that they limit how many people can be in the store at once.  This week, we were able to go right in, but when we left, we saw a line of people waiting to get in.

Other changes are at the checkout line.  There are lines on the floor now to show people where they should wait in order to maintain social distancing.  There is also a plexiglass barrier between the cashier and the customers.  And this week, our cashier told us they couldn't handle reusable bags that customers brought in; basically, if you brought your own bags, you did your own bagging.  This is fine--I certainly understand how stores would develop such policies under the circumstances. 

More people were wearing face masks (mostly fabric ones, not the disposable kind that nobody has been able to get for weeks).  I have mixed feelings about the DIY face masks, and I'm on the fence about whether I want to make them for us or wear them.  Maybe that should be another blog post at another time...

Our store was pretty well stocked, but there are still shortages of some items.  Unsweetened almond milk, for instance, is something that inexplicably seems to sell out.  And the places on the shelves where toilet paper and disinfecting wipes are usually found are completely bare.  The ongoing toilet paper shortage is somewhat of a mystery to me; after all, we're dealing with a respiratory illness, not rampant diarrhea.  Nonetheless, it does seem to be a real situation, one that might also warrant a separate blog post at some point.

Pandemic Daze: Grocery Shopping

We went to the supermarket today for the first time since Saturday.  This is also the most contact we've had with other people in several days, which is sad considering we can't even get together with friends right now.  But I digress. 

The supermarket wasn't terrible today.  I wasn't as crowded as it sometimes gets during even normal times, which I attribute to some people ordering groceries rather than going into the store.  It was also much better stocked today than it was on Saturday, which I attribute to the store setting limits on the number of certain high-demand items that people could buy.  Many of these items made sense; one of these items was packaged salad greens, however, which makes me think that people who don't make salads regularly don't understand what short shelf life those have.

In spite of the limits on items, some things were in short supply or nowhere to be found.  I did not see a single roll of TP or a single container of disinfecting wipes.  We bought one of the last two boxes of Kleenex on the shelves.  The store was down to its last few jars of peanut butter.

In other cases, the thing that was missing was the less expensive option.  The bulk bins with the ladles are closed due to sanitation concerns, so you couldn't get the bulk nutritional yeast (which we love to put on roasted veggies).  However, you could buy a prepackaged canister of the stuff at a considerable markup.  The least expensive olive oil was long gone; however, there were many "fancier" options still available.  There was no store brand butter on the shelves, but there was still a good supply of the imported European butter.

Ordinarily, I'm not very germophobic, but that has changed due to current circumstances.  When we got home, I disinfected our phones, the pen I was using to cross things off my list, and my house key.  I also threw both of our jackets and all of our reusable bags in the laundry.

We're lucky in a lot of ways.  We're not rich by any means, but if the less expensive item is missing from the supermarket, we can sometimes buy the more expensive option if we need it.  Similarly, we have enough money to be able to buy extra of things we think will be essential to our well being if we get to the point that we can't leave our apartment.  Also, we have a washer and dryer in our apartment, which means we can do laundry whenever we want.  What worries me is some people have very little margin for dealing with even ordinary inconveniences, and something like this pandemic may prove ruinous to them.

Life's Little Triumphs: I Found A Decaf Cold Brew!

Hmmm...I could also say that one of life's little triumphs is that I'm carving out some time to blog.  But that's another story for another day.  Moving on to the decaf story...

My desire to drink decaf came as an unwelcome surprise a number of years ago when I had multiple terrifying episodes of fast heart rate out of nowhere.  I never actually thought these episodes were caused by caffeine--after all, I had been drinking caffeine for years with no problem--but it did seem wise to get rid of any substances that might in any way contribute to the problem.  I gave up caffeine (including decaf coffee, which of course is not totally free of caffeine) cold turkey at that time.

I forget how long that lasted, but I do remember what led me to start drinking small amounts of caffeine again.  Having exhausted my sick leave (and some of my annual leave) trying to figure out what was causing the heart issue (inconclusive in the end, but likely related to my thyroid), I caught two colds back to back.  To the utter annoyance of my colleagues, I decided to work through these colds since I had no sick leave to speak of and desperately wanted to have enough leave to take a vacation at some point.  But working while sick is exhausting and something had to give.  I started drinking caffeinated tea and decaf coffee at that point.  This has mostly stuck through the years.  I've had fully caffeinated coffee a few times since then, but I actually like taking in a lower amount of caffeine.  I find that my energy levels are more even throughout the day, and I spend less time desperate to find a bathroom.

So this is all fine and good, but when you go out for coffee, the decaf situation is pretty disappointing for the most part.  There is usually only one variety available, and sometimes you're stuck paying for a specialty drink because they're out of brewed decaf.  And nobody every seemed to be able to offer iced decaf.  You could get an iced decaf latte or other specialty drink, but you had to pay more for it.  And wait for them to make it.  I was never sure which part bothered me more.

But!  A new coffee shop moved into a recently constructed apartment building near me.  And it has the holy grail of decaf cold brew!  I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw it on the menu.  It's become my go-to order (although as it gets colder outside, that might change for a few months). And the coffee shop in question has become my go-to coffee shop because it offers something that the other coffee shops near me don't.  If anyone else has been looking for decaf cold brew, the coffee shop is PJ's.  Looking at their website, it looks like most of their locations are in Louisiana and Mississippi, but it also looks like they're working to expand to other parts of the country (like where I live, for example).  They also have good brownies, so if you do happen upon one of their locations, be sure to stop in for your cold brew and chocolate fix!

2019 Balcony Garden

Summer is technically over--though it doesn't always feel like it--and I haven't written yet about this year's balcony garden!  If this year had a theme, I would say it's the triumph of insects in finding what they need.

This year, I started out with mint (which came back again), basil, cherry tomatoes, larger tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini.  The ever-hardy mint, basil, and cherry tomatoes did great.  I thought the cucumbers were going to do well--the plant grew quickly, and I had a bumper crop of them a couple years ago--but aphids quickly killed the plant.  I'm not sure how aphids found a cucumber plant on a random balcony, but they did.

The zucchinis were a disappointment, too.  I didn't get a single zucchini out of the plant this summer!  I think part of the problem was that the male and female blossoms on the plant seemed out of sync, reducing the chance that the female blossoms would be pollinated.  Maybe if you want zucchinis you just need to have more than one plant?

I bought the larger tomato plant (I no longer remember the name of the variety) because it was described as being "prolific."  The plant itself has looked healthy this entire time, but I got a grand total of one tomato from it.  Oh, and there's a green tomato on the plant now, which may or may not be edible before the first frost.

But more about the insects' triumph.  My cherry tomato plant is actually still producing on a very small scale, but most of the tomatoes came in July.  A few weeks ago, I found a scary-looking caterpillar on the cherry tomato plant.  I looked this up (I think my Google search was "fat green caterpillar on tomato plant") and learned it was a tomato hornworm.  The article I read said that in spite of its alarming experience, it didn't bite or sting, so you could just remove it from your plants.  I decided I didn't feel like dealing with it, and the plant was on the way out anyway, so I decided to cede the plant to the caterpillar.

Another thing the article mentioned was that wasps sometimes laid their eggs on tomato hornworms.  So I wasn't too surprised when a few days later, I found this:

I actually feel sort of sorry for the caterpillar (what a way to go!) but I'm amazed at the variety of insects that have managed to find my balcony garden and get what they need from it.  I do hope that once the wasps hatch that they find what they need somewhere else, however.

Life's Little Triumphs: Scavenging Season Is Upon Us!

There is definitely a money-spending side of me, but there is also the side of me that loves getting something for free.  And in the summer, that free something could be berries!

Earlier this week, I was taking a walk with Scott when I noticed ripe berries on some mulberry trees.  Very fortunately, I had a plastic bag with me so I wasn't confined to just gobbling up what I could on the spot.  Mulberries can be tricky to pick since they're on trees and there are a lot of high branches, but I'm tall enough to be able to get some of them.  I went picking again today, and got a pretty decent haul.

I have special affection for mulberries because even though I'd probably seen them plenty of times in the US without realizing it, I first became aware of their potential as a food the first time I visited Syria in 2001.  I bought some juice from a street vendor that I thought (from looking at the source fruit) was blackberry juice.  It was delicious, and much sweeter than I expected it to be.  Someone told me later that it was probably made of mulberries.  I also saw some big, beautiful mulberry trees in Uzbekistan.

Later this summer, I'm also hoping to score some free wineberries and blackberries (hence the need to carry plastic bags with me).  Summer has its limitations, what with the humidity and the mosquitoes, but berry-scavenging is something I can get behind wholeheartedly.

12 Days Of Cheese

Out of all of the holiday sales and specials that we have to choose from, the one I'm most excited about these days is the 12 Days of Cheese at Whole Foods.  I'm not sure when they started it, but I became aware of it a couple years ago, and I've eagerly anticipated it each December since then.

For the uninitiated, the 12 Days of Cheese is when Whole Foods marks a different cheese 50% off for twelve days.  They distribute a cheese schedule ahead of time, so you know what you'll find each day.  Like all sales, I'm sure the intent is just to get people in the store with the hopes that they will buy more than just the cheese...but you get to decide that!

In years past, at least in the Whole Foods near me, you had to search for the half price cheese.  This year, they displaced the half price cheeses prominently.  The good part of this was that I spent less time looking for them; the bad part was that a couple days when I went to Whole Foods, they had sold out of the half price cheese.  I decided that on days when I was really interested in the half price cheese, I needed to go there early to make sure I could get it.  Fortunately for me, by the time the 12 Days of Cheese rolled around this year, my semester was winding down, so I had more free time to go on cheese runs.

This year, I managed to buy cheese on 6 of the 12 days.  This might seem like an excessive amount of cheese for two people, but (a) you can buy small amounts of some of the cheeses, (b) most cheese lasts a while in the fridge, and (c) for me, there is no such thing as an excessive amount of cheese.  Every year for New Year's Eve, I make an appetizer dinner, and I was very happy to have pre-bought all the cheese I wanted for it.  "Fancy" cheese is one of my vices at the moment, and I'm happy to be able to combine it with my love of bargains.

This Year's Balcony Garden

It's that time of the year again when I get to blog about my balcony garden!  I'm a real amateur gardener, but I do enjoy taking care of plants, and I'm thrilled when food results from my efforts.

This year, I started with yellow cherry tomatoes, green zebra striped tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, basil, and the feisty free mint plant.  Things are going a little differently from last year, and I'm not always sure why:

1.  Unlike last year, the tomato plants this year are thriving.  We're already getting plenty of ripe yellow cherry tomatoes.  The green zebra tomato plant is producing less fruit (and we haven't gotten any ripe tomatoes from it yet), but at least the plant looks healthy.

2.  On the flip side, our cucumber plant was sort of a bust.  It succumbed to the aptly named powdery mildew, and we only got a few small cucumbers from the plant before that happened.  So unfortunately, we were unable to recreate last summer's bumper crop.

3.  Unlike last year, I'm not seeing as many bees on our balcony, and pollination has been a problem, particularly for our zucchini plant.  The zucchini plant appears healthy, and has both male and female blossoms, but the tiny zucchinis at the base of the female blossoms are just withering up and dying.

4.  Among fellow gardeners, that might raise the interesting question of why we have so many tomatoes.  The answer--which I learned years ago after having a healthy tomato plant that yielded exactly zero tomatoes--is that tomatoes are easy for gardeners to pollinate in the absence of bees because don't have separate male and female blossoms.  This means that pollen doesn't have to be carried from one blossom to another--agitation is sufficient.  I forget where I read this tip, but you can agitate the blossoms with an electric toothbrush (bonus points for using a cheap crummy one that you don't use to brush your teeth, of course).  I have been advised that using an electric toothbrush on my tomato plant makes me appear...eccentric, but I don't care because I'm getting a lot of yummy tomatoes.

5.  The basil is doing well (such a wonderful hardy plant!), and of course I'm delighted with my free mint plant.

Breaking The Blogging Silence With A Few Pictures

So.  Blogging has been a challenge for me lately, which is a pity, since it's something I enjoy.

There are a couple reasons for this, I think.  For one thing, I'm taking two science classes in an eight week period of time.  These are the last of my prerequisites before going back to grad school in August.  On the one hand, this is pretty much an exercise in checking off boxes at this point.  I'm already in a graduate program, and there isn't much pressure to ace these classes.  On the other hand, since it's two of them in a compressed time frame, there are lots of little boxes to check off along the way.  This leaves me feeling pretty busy and like there's always some task I need to finish.

The other reason is that I've fallen into a transition mentality at this point.  I find transitions stressful--even ones that I think will ultimately be good ones--and it's hard to think of blogging material when I'm stressed out about what's coming next.  I'm starting school again--what will it be like to be a full-time student in my late thirties?  I'm leaving a job I care about--what if I regret doing that?  And how much notice should one give when you've actually been pretty sure for months that you would leave?  On top of that transition, we're looking down the barrel of a possible local move to make Scott's commute more manageable.  Local moves are not the end of the world, but any sort of move is expensive and disruptive.  Plus, we would need to find someplace to move to.

All of this is to say that my mind has been mush lately, but I still want to blog.  So in the interest of putting something in this space, I'll put in a few pictures that I like!

Heh heh.  I took this one back in April, but I like it enough that I'm adding it to the blog now.

This was possibly the prettiest chocolate bar I had ever seen.  But, since it was chocolate, I ate it anyway.

I always love seeing turtles.

Groundhogs are pretty cool, too.  You can't really tell from this picture, but these were babies.  I had never seen such tiny ones before.

And for something that makes no sense at all...what sort of cat drops her toy mouse in her food bowl?!  This happened this morning, and I'm curious what will happen when she rediscovers it later.

This Tops My List Of First World Problems

For the next week or so, I will be dealing with the fallout of  the king of all first world problems: pepper-infested feta cheese from Whole Foods.

I buy crumbled feta cheese pretty frequently to add to my salads in jars, and this week, I also have plans to add it to a casserole.  Whole Foods was horribly crowded today, and I had to reach over someone's head to get my tub of feta cheese.  In my hurry to get through the shopping and get the whatever out of the store, I didn't look closely enough at what I grabbed, and discovered the revolting truth once I got home.

I'll admit that I've always thought black pepper was pretty gross.  I have approximately 200 assorted spice bottles in my kitchen cabinet, so it's not that I'm against spices in general.  Just black pepper, the once spice that seems to be pretty universally enjoyed in the US.  But even putting aside my own personal distaste for black pepper, isn't it weird that pepper-infested feta cheese is even a product that is sold?  Does this mean that people were willingly contaminating their own perfectly good feta cheese with pepper before it was sold mixed together?  Did Whole Foods use a focus group to come up with this idea, or was this a pet project of some employee with idiosyncratic eating habits?

I have no desire to enter the fray of Whole Foods for a second time in one week, so I'm stuck with my weird, speckled feta cheese for now.  I'll see if my salads are better for the feta, or worse for the addition of black pepper.

Be Like The Mint Plant!

This will be my third summer in my current apartment, and for the past two years, I've grown small balcony gardens.  We've had an unusually chilly spring here, but I'm finally convinced that the plant-killing cold is done for the season, so I decided to buy a few plants at the farmers market today (yellow cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and basil--I'm hoping to buy a few more plants TBD). 

I haven't spent much time on the balcony lately.  Really, the last time I remember spending an extended period of time out there was in the fall when I decided that my dead plants from the summer were becoming too unsightly and I dug them all up.  My various planters spent the winter on the balcony, and I had noticed looking out the window that one of them had several green shoots growing up.  I just assumed that a bird had dropped some bird seed in the planter and that we might get a sunflower, but I didn't think too much about it.

So imagine my surprise when I went out on the balcony to plant this summer's crop of plants and found that the mystery plant in the planter was mint!  Sure, we had mint last summer, but I uprooted it in the fall!  When the plant appeared to be extremely dead!  Not to mention the fact that it spent the winter outside in the cold, receiving no water or attention from me.

So, I guess we're getting mint as a freebie this year, which is pretty cool.  I had been on the fence about growing mint this summer because even though I like the idea of having it, I didn't use it all that much last summer.  But apparently the mint decided for us.  I have to admire its tenacity, and if just being a plant on the balcony doesn't suit it, I can see it having a side career being photographed for inspirational posters.

The End Of A Cheap, Tasty Era...And Maybe The Beginning Of A New One

One of the amenities of where we live is proximity to a taco truck.  It's about a five-minute walk from our apartment, and we frequently took advantage.  We referred to it as the taco truck, but it had plenty in addition to tacos, including pupusas, fried chicken, and various platters.  It was a reliably quick and delicious meal.  I particularly enjoyed the tacos because they reminded me of the ones I ate in Mexico when I studied there as an undergrad--marinated meat, onions, and cilantro.

This was a Friday dinner favorite, in particular, when we were always tired and hungry.  I took a few hours of leave on Friday afternoon to work on a class project.  I passed by the taco truck walking home, and was crestfallen to see that it had just closed!

We had been bemoaning the lack of additional taco trucks within an easy walking distance of our apartment.  But then we walked by the taco truck on Saturday and saw a sign on it advertising the grand opening of El Rey Del Sazon.  The sign provided a phone number, but no website or other information.  We're hoping this will be taco truck in the same location.  We've just become too spoiled to go back to our pre-taco truck days.

What We Eat When Nobody Is Watching

This may be wishful thinking on my part, but I think everyone must like a particular food, or combination of foods, that other people find odd.  The food combinations I like for which I've received the most grief commentary are bananas with cheddar cheese and peanut butter with dill pickles.

I never thought bananas with cheddar cheese was such an odd combination, but my roommates my freshman year in college set me straight on that when they saw me eating it.  And, truthfully, even though it's a delicious combination, I don't know of other people who eat it.

Peanut butter with dill pickles is a slightly different matter, since I know I am not alone in eating it.  My dad eats peanut butter with dill pickles.  I think I had some commentary about that when I was a kid, but it eventually occurred to me that maybe he was eating peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches because they tasted good.  I was convinced when I first tried a bite.  I also saw an article about peanut butter and pickle sandwiches a few years ago, so I know there are people outside my family who eat them, too!

My latest odd inspired combination, which I finally tried yesterday after wondering about for a while, was peanut butter with Sriracha sauce.  I had it on a rice cake, and the flavor was somewhat reminiscent of Thai food, while being quick enough to put together to provide instant gratification.  Scott witnessed this, and promises he'll try the combination...sometime.  I'm now trying to decide which other unsuspecting friends and family members I should try to bring on board for this strangely delicious snack.

And Then There Were Tomatoes

I wrote this summer about my (mis)adventures in balcony gardening.  Even though it's technically fall now, balcony gardening season has continued, courtesy of the unseasonably warm weather we've been having.  In my opinion, this is really the only upside to the weather at this point.  This summer was a challenging time for me, and I'm anxious to put it completely behind me and move on to fall.

However, the upside of continued balcony gardening has its own very specific upside.  I finally have tomatoes!  After a string of cherry tomato plants inexplicably died over the summer, I tried a beefsteak tomato plant.  It stayed alive, but it took a while before it did anything else, like grow taller or blossom.  However, now it's huge and full of green tomatoes!  Just in time for a first frost (if the weather were a little more fall-like)! 

Eventually, three of them ripened, so I'm happy that we got to enjoy at least a few tomatoes from our plant.  At this point, I'll either be stuck with an extra long summer that refuses to move on (but plenty of ripe tomatoes!), or I'll get my wish for fall weather and learn to embrace fried green tomatoes.

Best Laid Plants

Contrast the following two pictures from my weekend:

Three large, juicy cucumbers from my balcony plant...

And the puny haul of wineberries I got from the wild plants I walked by today...

It's probably a good thing I don't have to rely on my hunting and gathering skills to survive.