The Artichoke Experience: My first dinner in a new kitchen.

So you're a hockey fan and your favorite team has already been eliminated from the finals.  If you're like me, that means your favorite time of the year is over, right?  WRONG!  Why?  Because its the end of May and its ARTICHOKE season.

Artichokes are a fascinating item.  They are a member of the Asteraceae family along with thistles, sunflowers, asters, and gerber daisies and it is actually the flower of the plant that you are eating.  Since I now live in a zone 8 climate, I can't wait to grow some, they actually get really gorgeous when you let them bloom:

Source: Wikimedia commons.

I have to admit that before today, I'd never had one, other than in dips and canned ones in salads, but as of tonight I am in instant convert.  Blatantly ripping off of Ms. T, I used this recipe and roasted some artichokes this very evening.  (I put them directly in the oven with the foil on, but I should have put them in a dish because they dripped all over my brand new oven and caused the whole place to be smoky.)

Ugh these granite counter tops are ugly.

The whole meal was very filling, but I have to admit I started with some impressively large artichokes, so you might need more than one per person.  Each one of mine was about the size of a softball.  Zach described eating them as being "like the crab legs of vegetables."  In a way they really are like eating crab legs.  Time consuming, messy and they do leave a lot of "bones".  But, served with a side of walnut quinoa (recipe follows) and garlic butter to dip, my first artichoke experience won't be my last!

You can really only eat the bottom of each section and then the center.  Be sure to cut off more of the tips toward the center than I did, it got a little sharp in there.  

Mr. Z chowing down on his artichoke and quinoa.  

And now for the Quinoa Recipe, which is very easy and fast becoming my favorite side dish:

1 1/2 c. Quinoa (Red is fine, so is white)
2 c. Broth
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 c. walnuts. chopped
salt
pepper
butter or olive oil

Sautee the onion in some butter or olive oil. Near the end add the walnuts and toast them.  Turn up the heat and add the broth.  Bring it to a boil and add the previously rinsed quinoa.  Cook according to package directions, approximately 15 minutes.  Serve and Enjoy!

Portland to a Pittsburgher

Here I am in Portland.  I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm a fugitive or a refugee.  Sometimes it feels like one, sometimes the other.  I ran away from everything and everyone I knew...but then again everything here is so nice I feel like maybe I ESCAPED....

New Living Room. New Sneakers.  Had to buy something comfy to walk in.  They're for skateboarding.  Good to know, I guess but its not like running shoes would be any less poser-y since I don't run either.

Its the same country though...what could be different? Many, many things.

It rains here. Shocking, I know.  One should expect these things when moving to a subtropical rainforest.  Its been raining since I arrived.  My Pittsburgh connections tell me that its been raining nonstop for a week there, too.  But I know its not raining like this.  Every hour or two the sky opens up, raining so hard I always expect it to flood.  It certainly would flood if it rained that hard in Pittsburgh.  When it stops raining, the streets are dry within fifteen minutes.  Where does it all go?

My first answer to that question would be "inside trees".  The trees here are so large, even in the city they cover the sidewalk with shade(that is, if it were ever sunny, of course).  I remember walking down bare sidewalks in the Pittsburgh summer praying for a tree.  That will never happen here.  A canopy stretches up and over you nearly everywhere you go.  A layer of moss covers everything.  Trunks, walls, random other things.

Your Typical Oregon Retaining Wall.

The very next thing you might notice upon arrival (if you were painfully, painfully allergic to dairy) is that non-dairy options are everywhere. In fact, options are everywhere. Meat-free.  You can get vegan anything anywhere. There's a vegan-only food cart.  A gluten-free one.  Coconut milk ice cream.  Gluten-free beer!  There are other fun food options such as an Asian soup-bar where you order broth, grab up some raw meat or veggies from a bar and cook yourself a soup right there in the restaurant.  Another place had elk burgers.  A cucumber (instead of a lemon) came in my water at the Lebanese restaurant.

Why so many options?  Because everyone likes to eat, and everyone is so nice.  Happy.  Smiling. Takin' it eeeeasy.  They want to give you things and talk to you.  Someone, perhaps Chuck Palahnuik (but maybe not), said something about this being the "serial killer capital of the world".  It definitely has that serial killer-y feeling.  Maybe its just because I'm not used to it, but people being nice to me always feels wrong.  Also I think there are a lot of serial killers here.

Its the second highest "year round" waterfall in the USA.  Sounds impressive until you see the difference between it and the first one (Yosemite Falls).  Raining SO hard I only could snap 2 pictures at the risk of damaging my camera.

Things to do abound.  A two hour trip yesterday involved going to Multnomah Falls.  This week we are driving to the Oregon Coast.   But I miss each and every one of you.  For real.

Final Countdown: Packing the Cube and Saying Goodbye!

Yesterday our Relocube came.  Its like Pods, but less famous and about 1/3 the price.  I can't say if its as good until I see all my stuff in once piece on the other side of the country, but I do know that if they screw it up or lose our cube, we get 7,000 dollars which is far more than anything in there is worth.

Our cube.

Zach's brother came to help us load the cube.  He was good at both lifting and real-life tetris.

 Saying goodbye to old pals isn't always easy...especially if they don't have e-mail.  Hermes is an old friend who is always there when we need him. 

Final Countdown: Pittsburgh 1 week and counting.

The last few weeks have been so, so busy!  Packing up and saying goodbye is really time consuming and draining.  However, the last two weeks in Pittsburgh have been the most fun I've ever had here.  Zach's graduation parties, family gatherings and farewell dinners with old friends. Pictures follow:

Zach's Grad Party at Pittsburgh's Hopfbrauhaus.  We did not consume as much beer as we appear to have.

Zach eats a Rocket Pop on his Graduation Day.

Boating at Twin Lakes Park

Making cheese raviolis with Tess with my Grandma's ravioli press.

All of this is making leaving Pittsburgh so hard! I don't know if I'll actually miss living here, even though it was somehow voted "Most Livable City" by Forbes magazine again.  I'm definitely ready for a new environment, but leaving the people that I love so much is really, really difficult.  Maybe I'll be back someday.  Maybe...

Pretzels: Another Alton Brown Success

You did it again, Alton!  I don't think I've seen his show more than once or twice, and I don't find Iron Chef America all that entertaining, however I keep finding myself loving Alton Brown's recipes from the Food Network website.  Today's awesome success was no exception, Ms. T and I made Pretzels(with a few creative changes to the recipe)! What a great way to spend one of my last weekends in Pittsburgh!  Head on over to Silver Linings Saga for the whole story.  Me?  I'm just posting pictures!

Many of the Pretzels ended up going to Zach's parents.  Here a Pretzel is turned into a bun for a chicken patty.  They are quite versatile!

Here's a wonderful photo of how they looked fresh out of the oven in Ms. T's kitchen.

A few of them we made into cinnamon pretzels by brushing them with butter and sprinkling them with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar!

Side note:  Ms. T you may have just converted me to Picasa. 

Book Review: The Messies Manual

In light of signing our next lease for what I would consider a "big girl" home, I have decided that my housekeeping needs some help.  We're going to be living here.  While I haven't been there yet, it doesn't strike me as a place where you should leave your socks in the living room, or your cake plate in the bedroom.  For months on end.  Plus we're going to be having roommates, and I really want to keep everything orderly. Last Friday I decided to grab some how-to books on housekeeping because, well, maybe its not as straightforward as just cleaning up all the time.  One of the books I selected happens to be a classic on housekeeping and organizing.  Sort of.

The first thing that you need to know about this book is that if you do what the author of this book says, your house will be clean.  She very thoroughly outlines some of the reasons why "messies" (or people who aren't natually clean, neat and organized) are the way they are.  I won't go into it here, but there are brief moments of genius, as well as brutal accounts of people who are probably just like you (if you're a messie).  You might be slightly embarrassed and/or shocked as she accurately describes the odd reasons you do what you do. She then takes you through several steps and presents very well thought-out ideas for organizing and cleaning your home.  Honestly, I'm ready to try it out when I get to Portland. 

The second thing you need to know is that the woman who wrote this book, published it for the first time in 1975.  After Twenty-three years of bad housekeeping AND reforming herself well enough to warrant writing a book.  That being said, some of her views struck me as a little archaic and pre-feminist.  The book is aimed at women, and even though she does state numerous times that husbands and children should put in their efforts to keep a house clean, clearly in her mind the woman is the default housekeeper.  Which is fine, it's a little like taking advice from your grandmother.  Great advice for cleaning but not really accurate at describing a modern lifestyle.  For example, she talks at one point about cutting daytime tv out of your life, describing the people on judge shows and soap operas as "immoral losers."  I wonder how she'd feel about people today with an internet porn addiction.  Or wasting time on Facebook.  Or Blogger. HAH!

The third thing you need to possibly consider is that this is technically a "Christian" book, and it is found at Christian bookstores.  While she doesn't talk overwhelmingly about religion, you are going to have to mentally snip out the parts where she talks about "the Lord" if you're the kind of person this is bothersome to.  Eh, just keep reading, its worth it.

A few things I kind of disagreed with, but they are probably moot points.  In order to keep a clean house she sort of expects that people will make sacrifices such as not owning pets with long hair (fat chance) or even not baking a cake from scratch, which she describes as "old-fashioned" (side note:  I baked 2 cakes from scratch this week, it wasn't a problem).  I'm sorry, I'd rather be caught dead with a messy kitchen than with a BOX cake.  Yuck.  She also describes mixing your own cleaners as being too time consuming.  Excuse me?  How can pouring bleach or vinegar and water into a bottle together be time consuming?  In addition, making your own household cleaners is safer for the environment and pets and about 400 times cheaper.  I'd clean MORE if i had these quick and cheap cleaners on hand all the time.  

All in all, its a recommended read for anyone who wants to change their habits of being messy or a packrat or both.  The Messies Manual by Sandra Felton, Revell Books, 2005.  ISBN 0800759796

Ceramic fish are here!

I finally went up to Center for the Arts and collected my ceramics.  Here are some fish I made out of stoneware: