food prep breakfast musings

To wake up early in the morning and make someone else hot breakfast (or peel peaches for their cold breakfast...essentially, anything that involves food prep) is the mark of true love.

Pianos in the Park

I went on a piano safari on Saturday. A few friends and I traipsed through Seattle. It made me almost hurt to walk through all the places I used to frequent, knowing that I wasn't just a few minutes from home, but that I had to go back across the lake. There are lots of good things about where I live now, but I definitely miss my time in the city.

 

We started at the Seattle Center, and I think this was my favorite of the lot. With the cityscape and Mt. Rainier, as well as the moon in the sky exactly how it might be, it's a beautiful work of art. 

Next we went to Denny park, where we saw the KEXP piano. It looked a little like it came from Venus.  -->


<-- Then we went to Westlake Park, which has nothing green in it except perhaps 420, and saw the most underwhelming painted piano ever (painted as a piece of art, anyway). I felt like a five year old could have been more inspired. Also, the person sleeping behind me could have been more inspired in his (or her? it was a little hard to tell) choice of equilibration location.

We also made a stop at AllSaints. I'd never been in, but the sewing machines are pretty cool. Bucket list item crossed off! Another bucket list item is to see the traveling goats in action. People in Seattle rent out goats and then the goats eat all the blackberries and brambles and stuff and then the people who had stuff they wanted gone are happy because the goats do their job.

Then we went down to the pier (we had an adventure; we went the wrong way). I got fun of because I said the restaurant name it was by "eye-vahrs" instead of "eye-vers." Not funny, especially since one of the people I was with called the market "Pike's place." It is NOT Pike's place. The market is at Pike. It is not possessive!
The piano there looked like it might fit better in South Lake Union, what with all the computer parts it had on the side of it. I thought they were supposed to be a map -- it almost looked like a map of the city...but I was assured that it was "just a tree." We investigated the piano more and then it started to really pour. It actually hailed in some places. It was weird, because I heard the thunder, but I thought it was the Blue Angels (since they were in town), and then thought, "But it's too early for the Blue Angels to be flying." Yep, I was right. Just really beastly thunder even though it was really sunny outside. In fact, see to the left how sunny it actually was. Those white specks are actually raindrops. falling. Big, cold ones. They made a line, like paint, along the overpass we were walking under. (See above.)



While at the waterfront we investigated the boats that were in town for Seafair. The gun on the deck holds 5" shells. That's about what I thought it could, but it doesn't really seem like something in a 5" could really do that much damage. Except it occurred to me that due to physics, having a ginormous gun doesn't really do anything for you except in close proximity anyway, so in that respect, perhaps 5" is best. They had a line to take a tour of the boat, but I wasn't willing to wait in it, as it was about an hour and a half long at that point, and some times of the day, the Navy guy on the pier told us, had waits of up to 3 hours. I informed my companions that the ships looked like alients. They actually kind of do...robots. Look at all that equipment on them. I wonder how old they are. Each ship holds about 300-400 people on a regular basis, and it doesn't seem like they're that big. I wonder how many feet below water their plimsoll marks are.

Then we went to City Hall (the piano is, in fact, at City Hall, and not at City Hall park. It actually made me sad to walk through that part of Seattle..Pioneer Square is really dilapidated. It could be so vibrant! But it's overrun by homeless people and it really doesn't feel safe at all. I actually thought the figure on the side of the piano was a unicorn and not a man, at first glance. Maybe I just had unicorns on the brain...

The last park we went to was Hing Hay park. Someone playing the erhu had handwritten a sign saying "Piano closed between noon and 2pm." We honored the sign, but I thought it was really lame and not very well done.

All in all, it was a good excursion. And we even helped some lost teachers find their way to the Seattle Center on the way back, and I got to cross something else off my list: riding the monorail!

"Stars"

I used to drive to Mercer Island fairly frequently, and I would always marvel at the unique tone of light in the sky over Lake Washington that you see at the time the sun goes down. When I moved away, I knew it would be one of the things I missed most.

One of the things that I liked about living in suburbia was that I could see the stars. City living isn't exactly conducive to stargazing, you know. So I thought I would miss the stars.

Lately I was doodling along on the interwebz and I came across this link. At first I was incredulous, and my reaction was immediate indignation that Simon would roll his eyes, and then they started singing, and I was blown away. I just wish all the screaming girls would be quiet so I could have heard the 'faultlessness' of their performance.

Here, for your listening pleasure:

I don't remember ever hearing this song before. As soon as they started singing, I knew it had to be from a musical, but for the life of me, I had no idea which one. I've probably watched the video five times, and I still get goosebumps every time. They're just so....young, hopeful...sincere. I hope they keep their innocence and stick to their guns.

I watched it earlier tonight, and then I went outside to water my tiny garden, I looked up, a smile on my face. Night is my favorite time here. I love stepping out on my balcony, sensing the quieting of the world. The air is still and almost sweet. There's a summertime tang that I love. I straightened from watering, and there it was: the Big Dipper. Low, clear, right in my line of vision. Immediately, a smile was on my face, and I thought about the line, "you are the sentinels, silent and sure, keeping watch in the night. you know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim, and each of your seasons returns and returns, and it's always the same." It's not always the same...every season is different, and the Big Dipper looks different depending on where you are. Tonight, I was just grateful that I could see the stars at all. I had a bad day, and was feeling pretty blue. But then I thought, you can see the stars. Things will get better.

I hope I'm right, and that things do get better, and that I can hold my course and my aim as I go through this season of change.

THE WAITING is the HARDEST PART

I'm going to see Tom Petty. And Steve Winwood. But really, I'm going to see Tom Petty. Outside. In the lovely Seattle summer.

This is awesome...and the waiting is really going to be the hardest part. I'm not sitting in the pit, but in row 23. On my checklist of things to bring: the ticket, earplugs, and a smile that would deafen if it could talk.

That is all.

book family

My niece and nephew came to see me recently. Because my sister and I grew up in the same house, we have some of the same books...some similar sets of memories from having the same source of reading material.

Personal libraries are important...seeing what books people have lets me know their taste and books make me comfortable. If I go to someone's house and see books I know on the wall, it's almost like I have friends at the party, even if I don't know a single person there.

Which is why it gave me so much pleasure that my niece and nephew felt so comfortable at my house. There were books that were familiar to them -- books they instantly recognized -- and they also had some new books to choose from. That's the beauty of books, of sisters, of nieces and nephews, and a shared book pool back in the day.

I love books, and I love my family. And I love how both can make me comfortable, touch me in ways I never thought possible, and push me to think of new ideas.

evolution

When I was in college, having "no food in the house" meant having no bread or milk.

When I lived in LA, having "no food in the house" meant having no Cheerios, hummus, or pita bread.

When I lived in Seattle, having "no food in the house" meant having no bell peppers, no fruit, or any frozen dinners to take to work with me.

When I lived in Oregon, having "no food in the house" meant having no Fage Total yogurt, butter, granola, or onions.

And now, having "no food in the house" means having no berries, no avocados, and no green onions.

So you see, evolution is a real thing. In college, I used to have all the ingredients to make cookies in case I ever decided on a whim to whip up a batch. In LA, I wanted to always have enough muffin papers to make myself a sunday morning muffin treat. In Oregon, buttermilk biscuits were my baking "treat." And now, I don't really bake at all.

summer salad adventures

I'm eating lots of salad this summer.

Lots.

I seem to have a particular fixation on taco salad. I blame Peeks, because whenever we got together for dinner, we'd either have pizza (Papa John's, at her request; chicken bacon bbq pineapple onion) or taco salad that we made ourselves, because apparently, there is no good taco salad joint in all of P-town suburbia.





Above are two salads:

L: Taco Salad Extraordinaire: Special Chili Edition
1/2 orange pepper
2 oz cheddar cheese, grated
1 cob's worth of corn
4 oz lettuce
4 oz crock pot southwestern black bean chili
1/2 avocado
2 green onions
Salsa, to taste (I love Emerald Valley mild. It's the yummiest thing ever. Ever. I will go out of my way to buy it...and that's saying something.)
chips, on the side

R: Curry Jumble Salad
1 carrot
1/2 small yellow summer squash
1/2 small zucchini
3 chicken tenders
1 tsp south african style curry (sweet? mild?)
1/4 cup milk
4 oz greens
1 dash poppy seeds
1 medium onion
salt, to taste

(basically, cook the onion and the chicken together and put the spices on it. I did mine in butter. Then add the carrots, then zucchini and summer squash. Then add the milk to keep everything from drying out.) You know...in typical jumble style.

Both are yummy. YUMMY, I tell you!

I wish I had more energy. I would cook lots more often.  I need new cooking ideas. The problem is that I usually have to see somebody do something before I can incorporate it into my own. That means I need to have lots of dinner invites where I see the prep actually happen. Thanks to all the wonderful cooks who have helped me stumble along the path to good food.

I'm going to try something new soon...and when I do, I'll post it.

unexpected yum

There are things that I unexpectedly like: for example, recently I discovered that I love green onions. I love them. I want to eat them every day. So I do, because I can.

Yesterday I stuck them in my tuna avocado (which I wrote another post about). Just my tuna avocado salad, because I rarely eat sandwiches anymore. (It's not a conscious thing, it's a listening to my body thing, but that's another post for another day.) The combination was delicious.

The summer I lived at Grandma and Grandpa's house, JT and I had an onion adventure. There were green onions growing that were three feet high. I wonder how yummy they would have tasted, if I had been brave enough to try them.

People who know me also know that I love cucumber soda, by Dry. Mixed with strawberry lemonade or by itself, it's probably my favorite drink besides water. Definitely, it's my favorite "treat" drink. A visiting teacher once gave me a bottle of it. I wondered if it was some sort of sick joke, but I stuck it in the fridge anyway and then one time I was really wanting something and it was pretty much the only thing in the fridge. So I drank it. I'm sure my face contorted, but I kept drinking it, and by the end of the bottle, I guess you could say I had been converted.

Yay green onions. Yay cucumber soda. Yay all sorts of other good things that I haven't discovered yet. Yay to yummy things.

sidekick vs psychic

One of my dearest friends in this whole world took me on an adventure in the boonies of Oregon. I have to say, since it was on the west side of the mountains, at least they were pretty boonies and not all dried up. I mean, dried up has its pretty moments, but as someone who grew up in a desert, I really do appreciate the green. This picture was taken in February.

Peeks took me to see her brother and his family. They were warm and generous and fed me yummy dinner. It was also quite entertaining, as they have six kids under nine years old. It took me a few minutes just to be able to sort out their names. One of the little boys obviously had a crush on me. Haha. I remember those days.

Anyway. My friendship with Peeks has taught me something that I knew in my heart, but that I had never consciously realized. When you love someone fully, you love all parts of them. I don't mean that you love everything they do, or that you are happy all the time. What I mean is that to love someone, to really let them in, is a choice, and you have to choose to put all your chips in the pot. No ante-ing up anymore. Go big, or go home. No reservations.

I've never met anyone like Peeks. She draws people to her. I've never met anybody who didn't like her. She's fun and fun-loving. She's generous and kind. She is concerned about how other people feel, and goes out of her way to make people comfortable. She's insightful and curious, and loves adventures and to make people laugh. She's had a lot of hard things happen to her in her life, and a lot of challenges, but she can almost always find something to laugh about. She's a great listener. When she's with you, she's really with you. She's not playing on her phone, or thinking about something else, or wishing she was somewhere else. She gets wrapped up in the moment and totally loses track of time. This is wonderful when you are the person she's with. When you're the person who's next in line for her attention, it's not always so easy to love that quality about her, and one time, when I was in that position -- the position of being Next on her list, I got really frustrated because I felt like I really needed her and she was putting someone else first. For hours. And I needed her! I needed her badly. I was out of joint for awhile, but then, as I was waiting, and waiting, and what felt like waiting more, I realized that she had been there for me many, many times. And probably, for some of those times, someone else was waiting for her, like I was waiting for her at that moment. And that probably other people had been frustrated because I literally hogged all her time.

In that moment of frustration and irritation, I told myself, "you love her. You love this dear Peeks of yours. Yes, you're upset about this. Yes, you wish she would just get here already. But think about how often she has been there for you, when you needed it most; listened to you, when her back was aching; taken time to love you when she probably really would have rather been in bed." And that's when I realized that I could be mad, or I could be loving. If I was going to really love her, I needed to love that quality about her, and accept that she wasn't always going to be there at exactly the time when I wanted her, because she was probably off helping some other person feel good about themselves. I needed to appreciate her for her ability to heal people. In short, I needed to love her wholeheartedly in spite of this one attribute that was so beautiful when I had access to it, but was so annoying when I wanted it and couldn't have immediate gratification, even if we had planned for me to have gratification at a certain time and location, and the agreed upon time had passed.

Once I accepted this, I felt lots better. I was more patient. I tried to consider all the other people that she was helping, who needed her, whether they realized it in the moment or not. Because she's a beautiful person, inside and out. She cares and loves with everything that's in her. I decided I wanted to be more like her in that way -- the way of truly looking outside yourself and listening closely.

Peeks and I are kindred spirits. I tell people I'm her sidekick. Apparently I need to learn to enunciate, because people always think I'm saying, "I'm PK's psychic" instead of "I'm PK's sidekick."  We were fast friends from almost the moment that we met...we had an instant bond. She helped me through a lot of things I was going through, without being judgmental. She listened, and she loved. (With me, those two often go hand in hand.)

Loving fully isn't always easy. But I've learned that sometimes you just choose to love someone, and then when your choice is made, you stick with it, no matter what, even when things aren't always easy. As long as you know they love you back and they'll be there for you when you really, really need them, people's true love can see you through ups and downs in relationships.

Love is a beautiful thing. It's a choice. It's a blessing. It is real, and it is a gift. It's not always easy, but practicing real love - love that is kind, unfeigned, unsarcastic, and true - is one of the most satisfying things you can choose to partake of. I knew this about family members, and other people in my life, but I never really realized how much of it was up to me until I met Peeks. So thank you, lovely lady, for showing me one more way to have happiness in my life.

family time in late spring

My sister and her family came to stay with me for a weekend a couple of weekends ago. The weather was lovely, and we had a great time.

On Friday, we went to the water and hung around. We had a great time splashing about. The kids waded, and I dipped my toes in. There were ducks with purple iridescent heads and lots of little kids running around. The sun was hot and the water was cold.

We went out for Chinese, which was actually really good -- lots of different tastes. But then one of my least favorite dining experiences happened: they literally forgot about us at the end. I kept trying to catch the waitress' eye and almost went over and said something. It's true that they were really busy, but it was ridiculous how long we sat there. I felt like it was long enough that they should have been paying *me* and I completely did not succeed in enjoying the moment and not being bugged by it, as you can see evidence of, unfortunately.

After reading Scrambled Eggs Super, we went to bed, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we had eggs and bacon and blueberries with our Cheerios. Then we all trundled into the car and went to the waterfall. The kids didn't really want to go, but I think they were glad they went in the end. We had a good time taking pictures and found at least six different kinds of berries on the way down.

The waterfall is beautiful. The last time I was there, it was in September, and it had a very different feel. Also, we couldn't walk down the little path, because it was closed. But it was a good time, and I'm glad we went.

Here are some family photos (above) and some photos of the waterfall (below). The spray was nice and cool, and there was actually a double-rainbow, but the camera lens doesn't pick it up very well. The elevation of the falls is approximately 270'.

I wondered how old the tree that got stuck at the top was before it got sent down the river. Then I wondered if they put it there on purpose, as, if you look closely, it appears that the tree is being held up by the electrical wires. I dismissed that idea, and then set about trying to determine how tall the tree was, but my proportional geometry failed me and I said "big enough" and gave up.

Later, after lunch at a cafe, in which I determined that it is better to get a hamburger or breakfast at a family diner/cafe instead of Asian-inspired salad (one would think I would not have had to learn this lesson, but apparently my desire to believe in diner salads hasn't yet been sufficiently quashed), we played Pandemic a couple of times and then, after Princess Furball, we went to bed. It makes me glad that my friends and I have hauled all my picture books everywhere...now I can share them with the people I love. :)

birds, not on wires

On a recent walk I took with my sister, who I have nicknamed after a bird, I saw a couple of birds that I have never seen before. One was black, one was brown. One was alive, the other was dead. Sometimes you can slow down and notice mundane things when you're with people you love. I knew the general type of one of the birds (the dead one, which was clearly an owl, even to the untrained eye), but I had no clue on the other. There were a couple of the black-red-orange birds hanging out on some cattails, but the owl was solitary. It was strange; the owl must have died fairly recently. He (she?) was right under a telephone wire, just next to a phone, so I wondered if maybe he had been on a wire and gotten electrocuted, or something. But the body hadn't decomposed at all - for which I was grateful - but the body seemed really awkward. By the way, owls have ginormous talons. Just saying. You can't see them well in this shot, but they're there, and if I were a mouse, I would have trembled in terror.

Here's the black bird in action.

I think as I get older, I'm changing. I used to hate birds. HATE them. With an intense and gloriously-fire-hot passion. But now I kind of admire them. (Except crows...shudder. The other day, I saw an entire murder of them. We're talking, fifty of the things in one tree, caw-ing up a macabre to-do. It was uber creepy, I'm not going to lie.) They have to try to hard to adapt in this crazy world we live in. They find interesting hiding places and manage to hide from cats and humans and other birds and airplanes and snakes and all other sorts of bird-eating things. So really, it's amazing that there are any left at all. Except pigeons and crows. One species seems too dumb to die out and the other seems too smart to allow itself to become trapped.

*And how about I throw in a random picture of a beautiful moon on a beautiful warm night in central Washington to round things off?

exhibit favorites

A couple of months ago I went to the art museum to see an exhibit about masters in Venice. It was actually pretty cool, and had some of the works of art that I studied back in AP Art History on display, in addition to some really cool ancient instruments. Like a giant sax/bassoon thing that curved in a million places like a snake but was wood. And ancient clavichords. And other such things.



There were some pretty cool pictures there, too. Here are a few of my favorites. The one with the cow-looking creature that I'm pointing to is, I believe, actually called "The Ox" and it's by Van Gogh. It's a little creepy in person, I suppose, because everything looks a little dingy and hopeless in the shading, but you all know how I feel about paintings with cows in them.

The one at the top left is St. Mark's in Venice, by Canaletto, I think. The landscape is beautiful, and also has the requisite cow in it, if you look hard enough. And the last one, I don't know who did it, but I loved the light. It seemed like it was early morning, and maybe the one sister was catching fish for breakfast and the other is keeping her company as she reads her book. I was struck by the relaxed nature of the painting, and kind of longed for days when we were smart-phone and technology free and the biggest thing to do in the morning was go down to the river and fish for awhile. I realize that life has other problems that come with it, but it just seemed so relaxed, and a time where people moved more slowly and appreciated smaller things in life, and really valued conversation and relationships--maybe because back then, most people didn't have a whole lot of things and didn't really have an expectation that material goods would come their way, so they didn't let it interfere. Maybe I'm just making stuff up. Either way, these paintings were beautiful to see, and if you're ever in Portland, you should go see them. The Canaletto won't be there, but the rest are part of the permanent collection.

cloudy day

I went out with a friend on a cloudy day recently. I should note that I have learned my lesson, and I always wear sunglasses on the cloudy summer days, because the light is that much harder on my eyes then.

We went on an adventure; we went somewhere that neither of us had ever been before: Bainbridge Island.

I had heard that Mora's was the place to go for ice cream, and that it was worth the ferry ride over just to have the delectable deliciousness that is their locally made ice cream.

Most everything that is in the ice cream is from the island...the cows that the cream came from, and the blackberries in the "mora" (that's what they call the blackberry flavored ice cream...which is delicious, of course).

It took awhile before we actually got to Mora's. It involved a really long stop at a subpar cafe (mostly labeled such because it took almost 40 minutes for them to bring us a sandwich).

The ferry ride is worth it for the view alone.

This is the city that I love. :)