What a Wonderful World

Last week was the anniversary of my husband's father's death. It has been 8 years since he passed, and his death has affected my husband and sister-in-law deeply. I didn't have the honor of meeting the man, but I hear we would have gotten along famously. As a tribute, my sister-in-law and I decided to carry on the tradition of getting tattooed. This event was something that we started last year - she got a Celtic tree on the inside of her wrist and I got a Scottish lion with my grandmother's maiden name on my shoulder.

Still fresh, peeling and bubbly. HAWT. 

While my grandmother would vehemently disagree if she were still alive, I believe it to be a way to immortalize her and her heritage. Well, then I went to Scotland myself and fell in love with the damn place and needed my own way to remember it. So Jeff and I drew up a composite of two different Scottish thistle images and made it our own. Here is my newest piece of art. And I love love love it.

Jeff's sister has a couple pumpkins she's planning on getting on either her neck or her feet. But the girl sprained her ankle the day before and wasn't feeling up to hobbling in, so I'll gladly share her tattoo with my small group of readers later.

ANYWAYS, the anniversary of the day that Jeff's father died begins with a wild story. My husband's best friend is a state patrolman. That morning, Jeff's sister called in a panic, telling us that the best friend had been shot at work and she was watching one of his kids because his wife was picked up in an unmarked car and she didn't know how he was doing or what had happened SO PLEASE come over because she really didn't feel like being alone. All the way across the river (she lives in Vancouver) we listened for breaking news of an officer being shot, and heard nothing. We got to SIL's house and she had two different news stations on. Nothing.  Poor Jeff started to think the worst had happened.

And then we got the phone call.

Apparently the friend was in a weapons training exercise, and had shot himself in the leg. His safety was off and he was pulling the gun out of the holster when it went off. The guy shot one more round of targets, limped back and was rushed to the hospital. After an hour of surgery, he was back to joking around and being himself. SERIOUSLY. This guys has been a cop for what, 5 years now? Isn't putting the safety on the number one rule?

After all that stress and hilarity, we all needed a drink. So the three of us dropped the kids off and headed over to Eastburn, a bar on Burnside, ran up a $60 tab (but only paid $20 thanks to a bad ass Groupon deal!), met with the head chef and drew on the tables.

Icy goodness

What's this, two posts in a row? Why I never!

So, getting back to this heat wave. If it is not completely obvious, I hate the heat. I love snow, I mostly tolerate rain and I think 70 degrees is perfect.

One solution, or at least, a way to deal with my heated, suffering self, is ice cream. More specifically, a sundae.

Coconut milk ice cream + mini Oreos + sprinkles + homemade "whipped" topping made of coconut cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. With a damn cherry on top.

Summer has hit Portland.

Having a CSA is seriously saving our monetary lives right now.

I'm being challenged to use up the vegetables we're getting in order to prepare for the next week's share. Sometimes, I fail (fennel, I'm looking at you). Sometimes I win (hello, newfound love for collard and kale chips). Each week is an adventure in frugality and utilizing what we have. The last big push to stock up on dry staples such as rice, beans, pasta and such has allowed us to live the past couple weeks without buying much at all. But the reserves are running low.

This week's share

At the moment, we have in our fridge, just from our CSA:

1.5 bags of fava beans

1 bag of kale

1 bag of collards

1 head of lettuce

1 onion (it still had the dirt on it from being plucked from the ground!!)

1 bunch of carrots

1 fennel bulb
1 bunch of gorgeous carrots

some heads of broccoli and cauliflower

I'm finding that you can make pesto out of pretty much anything. A favorite of the household is Isa's edamame pesto, so I cooked up some of the fava beans from last week's share and threw them in the blender with basil, macadamia nuts (it's what I had!) nutritional yeast, water, olive oil, salt and pepper. While not as tasty as the edamame pesto, it surely made a delicious base for the "let's use up all these vegetables" pizza. It had broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, onion and soy curls draping its beautiful self.

The pizza crust I use is from Emeril and it's so easy and delicious.  Seriously. It deserves its own fan club, even if Emeril is not somebody I'd like to meet.

Some other ways I've been using up this bounty of green? 

I know this sounds like a total hippie statement, but try kale chips. Seriously. And sprinkle them with nooch. You won't regret it.

Lots of pasta, of course.

Have a lovely week! It's getting hot here in Portland, so I'm trying to keep my cool. Hardy har har.