Is anyone going to be in town labor day weekend?

Help! We need someone to pick up our harvest box from the beaverton farmers' market on Saturday September 5th! You can keep half of whatever's in it! :o) We're going camping and wont be back until Monday night. Let me know, please! Thanks!

Rowen's Little Red Wagon

CSA Harvest Box: week 8

This weeks goodies included lettuce, chives, sweet corn, loads of cucs, potatoes, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, green beans, and hot peppers. We were a bit nervous about the hot peppers as we don't have much tolerance for any heat. We asked the farmers when we picked them up what we should do (just give them away?) and they said to cut out the membranes and seeds and grill the heck out of 'em. They also told us that the tip of the pepper is milder than the base- interesting! Anyhow- we grilled 'em up (along with bell peppers and pineapple chicken) and they were very mild and tastey.
We didn't do anything "special" with anything else this week- just steamed, boiled, enjoyed raw, whatever was appropriate :o) Still so yummy!

Boy Meets Spaghetti

Rowen's first try at Spaghetti! It wasn't NEARLY as messy as I thought it would be. But he LOVED it! He's not a real big eater- but he plowed through this pasta. Momma's boy!

Who said a chair is for sitting?

CSA Harvest Box: week 7

Last week's share included lettuce, beans, fresh basil, summer squash, a honkin' big cucumber, blueberries, and new potatoes. (Blueberries somehow escaped the picture!) Our first produce casualty: the basil. It was a crazy weekend (this is the august 1st box) so I just threw the whole bag in the fridge before running out the door again- and the basil suffered too greatly to save. It was too cold or something and went brown and slimy by Monday- oops! Had to throw it out. :o( The zucchini also went mushy in a couple spots, (I think my fridge is set too cold and they partially froze) so I had to cut away the mushy bits. But it wasn't a lot! I made zucchini boats for the grill. Cut them in half, scrape out most of the inside, squish out the water, dice it up and saute' it with red onion, red pepper, bread, garlic, jack cheese, basil, salt & pepper, etc. (Next time I'd add tomato & more spices) and put it on the grill for 15-20 minutes. Yum!Another fun use for zucchini that I learned from my smart culinary friend Tracy: slice off thin ribbons (raw!) for salad! Very tasty. I also made ribbons of carrots- I like eating them in salad better that way then biting big chunks of carrot.

The green beans we just steamed and ate, I chopped the cucumber and mixed it with rice vinegar and a sprinkle of white sugar for a cucumber salad which was way yummy. The potatoes we diced and grilled again with leek, garlic, salt, pepper, butter.... mmmmm.

On to this week's veggies!

Simple Things that make me Happy #3

Turning the compost- seeing the steam rise and knowing it's working, smelling the sweet earth!

5th Anniversary!

Oooh! It's my 200th post! Neat. ;)

Sorry, there's no pictures to attach.... just an ooey-gooey sweet story.

I can hardly believe we've been married 5 years now. A "couple" for 7, and good friends for 9. Holy smokes! The "big day" was the 31st, and it fell on a Friday this year. Perfect chance for a great date! Well my friends, my darling husband did not disappoint. Early in July he told me not to plan anything, or check the bank account online because I would see some purchases and it would ruin the surprise. I was in the dark all month- seriously he did a great job of surprising me! He's absolutely the best hubby ever *floating heart bubbles*

So- Friday he calls me around 11 or so and asks me what I'm doing at 12:3o. I told him as I hung diapers on the clothesline "uh... probably feeding the baby lunch... why?"

"because you have a hair appointment at 12:30."

"What?"

"I made you a hair appointment. It's all paid for- go have fun."

"Seriously?!?"

"Seriously!"

"But what am I going to do with the baby?"

"It's taken care of. Have fun!"

:o)

I tried to take care a few things around the house before running out the door (like putting real clothes on and getting lunch out for Rowen) when there was a knock at the door- my relief apparently- ....wait a minute..... it's Matt!

He took a half day off work and was there at our door. Awww.... sweetie :o)

So I went off to my hair appointment (haven't had my hair done in 6 months... yikes!) and it was really nice to be pampered.

At around 5:00 we packed up Rowen for his very first "sleep over" at Nanna & Pop-pop's house! We dropped him off and headed out on our date *more heart bubbles*

Matt drove us out to the sellwood area to a little Italian restaurant called Portofino. It was very romantic and completely delicious- (we highly recommend it!) we shared gnocchi with truffle oil & parmesan as an appetizer (the best gnocchi I've ever had, hands down) and then shared a pesto rubbed flat-iron steak with fried onions and spinach, and seared scallops in a creamy herb/oil sauce... with pasta... I can't remember exactly what it was just that it was soooo good I had to close my eyes while eating it just to take in all the flavor! Yeah. Then, as our anniversary tradition, we left there to go somewhere different for dessert! You see, we had cheesecake on our wedding day. (That's right, a beautiful three tiered new york cheesecake!) so we have cheesecake for dessert every anniversary. If it's not on the menu where we're having dinner, we go elsewhere! Of course, Matt had this all planned out- and we left for the Pearl. We sat outside Via Delizia and ordered a caramel cheesecake, a chocolate something or another (that was to die for) and two coffees. We talked and enjoyed our freedom do dawdle without the baby!

Funny thing these days: all we talk about IS the baby. So I printed out 160 conversation starters (the internet is a beautiful thing) and cut them up into little fortune-cookie sized papers and put them in a bag. Any time the conversation returned to Rowen we had to draw a question and start our conversation over again! It was fun and a good way to reconnect. It's hard to date when you're married! Let me know if you want the questions, I'll email them to you! ;) Some are serious, and some are downright dorky. Anyway, we talked and laughed until about 9:30pm when we decided to head home for the night. Poor Rusty was all alone in the hot hot house, after all.

Matt said later that it's a good thing I'm directionally challenged, or I really wouldn't have been surprised for the last bit. Driving "home" in the wrong direction, Matt pulled into the Waterfront Marriott and instructed me to get out of the car. "Huh?" I'm so slow. "Seriously?" Oh yeah- my darling hubby reserved us a room downtown for the night! While I was at my hair appointment, he packed everything we'd need for over night, drove down there (with Rowen!) set up candles and 2 dozen roses and the bottle of wine we bought on our honeymoon to celebrate with on our 5th anniversary, our wedding toasting glasses, and of course: a fridge and my pump! What a guy! We actually decided to save the wine as a keepsake and not drink it- especially since an old co-worker dropped off a bottle of champagne for us when she heard we were celebrating our anniversary. How sweet! Oh, and he didn't forget Rusty in the hot hot house, either: he had his dad pick him up after we left! So....

he did good :) Didn't he? It was all very romantic and sweet and fun.... don't I have the best husband ever? (You don't have to answer that) ;)

I love you, honey! Thank you for a wonderful and memorable evening!

CSA Harvest Box: week 6

Well to be perfectly honest, I only cooked a couple of times last week! It was just too blazin' hot. We went out Wednesday night, to my mom's Thursday night, on a date Friday night (our 5th anniversary! I'll blog on that later...) Matt's 10 year HS reunion was Saturday night... so the only things that were eaten from harvest box week 6 were the potatoes, some leeks, a couple cucumbers, and the blueberries. We still have lettuce, zucchini, parsley, tons of little cucumbers, and the rest of the potatoes and leeks. Because of the weather, we got nearly the exact same thing in our bag from THIS Saturday, so we have some serious veggies to eat this week! Hopefully we'll get through 'em before the go bad. Or before I'd have to freeze them: I'm determined to let nothing go bad!!

So- the one meal I did use last weeks veggies on:
i diced up about 4 of the new potatoes and put them in a foil packet with leeks, olive oil, salt, white pepper (Matt's not a big fan of biting into big cracked peppercorns, like some of us!) and whole garlic cloves and threw it on the grill with the steaks and artichokes (not from the harvest box, but from the farmer's market- you can't beat the price on artichokes at the farmer's market! yum-o!) anyhow- the potatoes were SO good, we're actually making them again tonight for company! Matt said he would have paid $50 for this meal. Now that's a compliment :o)