what else we do

I've been missing the ocean lately.

My grandmother used to live on the Oregon coast, off highway 101 in an area called Neskowin. She sold her beach house about ten years ago, much to the dismay of her only granddaughter--me. I spent a lot of time with her at the beach as a child while my mom was working on her degree and one of the things I most remember about that house, besides the stunning view and giant floor to ceiling windows, was how all the colors she used reflected so well the state of the ocean itself. The glassware she used was a deep, royal blue and the tiling in the kitchen and bathroom ranged from the same dark blue to a shiny teal. The teal tiles were my favorite ones, partly because the Pacific has accents of teal in the summer, and partly because there seemed to be less of them than any other color. 

raining in the windows

The weather at the moment is being ridiculous and temperamental and I don't approve, at all. This morning was perfectly sunny and wonderful until I realized there was an embankment of stony clouds directly North and they were bearing towards Brown's Addition rather quickly. Since then it has gone from sunny to overcast and windy with rain, hail and more sun in between.

The current condition is overcast so in order to cheer up after losing the sunshine...again, I've got a picture.

This is three of the four bowls that make up the set of my favorite mixing bowls ever. I originally purchased the first one at Goodwill a year or so ago and came across another component of the set at an antique store a short time later. Finding the rest of the set became my mission while thrifting and right before Christmas I came across the third (and biggest) bowl at an antique store. Janae was with me and ended up buying the bowl for me as a Christmas gift. The last bowl was also a present from another favorite person of mine. Mitch and I were up in Hillyard on Valentine's Day checking out the antique stores and he spotted the bowl tucked away in a corner and bought it for me as a Valentine's present. The best part? The turquoise color perfectly matches my future KitchenAid mixer.

cordial gentlemen and a three-legged dog

What happened? Wasn't it February just a few seconds ago? Anyhow, despite the months moving rather quickly a lot has been happening lately. M and I signed up for produce deliveries from Full Circle Farms, a company that delivers weekly (or bi-weekly in our case) boxes of about twelve different kinds of fruits and vegetables, many sourced locally. We learned about the program through our friend Mary-Kate who works for Full Circle and just got our first delivery this last Thursday.

Among the greens were a few I had never used before, namely rainbow chard and arugula. I'm still figuring out exactly how to use the arugula but my chard adventure was successful!  I found this Red Pepper, Sausage and Chard Risotto  recipe and set to work. 

Compiling all the ingredients was easy but having never cooked risotto before I didn't realize how long it would take to cook. Usually with rice you can put a pot of water on the stove, add the rice and come back in 20-40 minutes to a steaming pot of white fluff. Maybe it isn't quite that easy, but to a hungry cook, standing in front of the pan adding scoop full after scoop full of broth to the risotto, making regular rice seemed like a walk in the park. However, the result was definitely worth it. 

I wasn't sure how M would feel about the chard and greens in the dish but not to worry, we were both satisfied with dinner as well as watching Elton John on Saturday Night Live. Today we ended up using the leftovers to make burritos...which seems to be what we do with all of our leftovers lately. Somehow wrapping something in a tortilla makes it all the more delicious.