More veggies

Uh oh, we got a lot of veggies this week and I'm all by myself to eat them! Steve's on a road trip back to WI (and I'm jealous). Turns out, when he's gone I turn into a bit of a workaholic.

It's been HOT here. Like, yucky hot I sure wish it would be cloudy and rainy. The worst part is that we don't have air conditioning, but it does get pretty cool at night so that helps. But still, I wish it would just be rainy.

This week's veggies:
Leaf lettuce, carrots, green onions, garlic scapes, radishes, shell peas, cabbage, beets, basil, parsley, garlic, and something that is either dill or fennel. I shelled the peas and ate them raw, they were so good.

Summer and veggies - CSA week 1

Our CSA started today! This is week 1 - and it seems smaller than a 'small' share from the CSA we had in Charleston, but it's hard to say if that's going to be the case every week. In the box we had:
1 bunch carrots, 1 small bunch radishes, 1 bag dried beans (fun!), garlic scapes, green onions, 1 small head green lettuce and 1 small head red lettuce, 1 kohlrabi (I knew what it was but had to google ideas on how to eat it), 1 small head garlic, dill, and cilantro.  Also hitting town this week - fresh strawberries! We stopped by the roadside stand to buy some tonight but they were all sold out. Steve's going to go back first thing tomorrow morning. We had big, delicious salads for dinner tonight, using a bunch of the items from the CSA, and I cooked up the kohlrabi - greens, stems, and root in a long, slow saute with some of the garlic...I'll bring that as part of my lunch tomorrow since Steve didn't love it ('better than mushrooms but I don't love it' was his official word on it).

Last week I was in Spokane for work. I loved the city, but it was a bit hot for several of the days (95!). The hard part of the week was the meetings that started at 6 am (!!) every morning (the 'breakfast meeting') and went until somewhere between 5:30 and 8:30 pm. Including Saturday and Sunday. Ugh. That's exhausting.  Another downside to long days/weeks of work travel is that I don't have as much time as I'd like to make progress on school stuff. I'm using some of my newly acquired exchange time to take off work on Friday and work on school stuff Friday-Sunday.

Also - Steve's not working yet but is becoming quite the awesome house-husband. He's been doing all the cleaning, grocery shopping and errands, and he detailed the truck, organized the garage, and preps dinner during the day so we have great dinners at night...last night he did a dry-rub chicken on the grill with garlic and dill potato wedges in the oven. It was go good!  I'm a lucky girl. : )

Week in review

So I survived my first week at the new job. New jobs are always hard - new faces and names, new job duties, so many forms to fill out, and in this case, so many rows of cubicles to not get lost in. I came home after my first day with an intense headache. But, it's going well overall. I have a 'cube with a view', which is good and bad - good because we're on the 6th floor (top floor) and overlooking downtown, and, as it turns out, the Olympic Mountains in the distance when it's clear out. It's bad because the way my space is set up right now, my monitors are in front of the windows and when it's nice out I'm blinded by the brightness. I'll rearrange, eventually, or start wearing sunglasses at work (that's a joke!).

The work is interesting and really challenging already. I like that, though it's tough and I'm mentally exhausted at the end of the day. All the people in the office have been really nice and helpful. I'm heading for my first work trip this week, to Spokane.

Fun things - Friday night we went to a local place called Uncork and Unwind to celebrate my first week of work being done. It's a restaurant and wine bar with awesome outdoor seating (and it was gorgeous out!) and they feature a lot of local/PacNW wines AND have live music. Perfect.

Saturday Steve made surprise plans for us for the morning/early afternoon...and even packed an awesome picnic lunch.  He took me to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma! We got there right as it opened and spent the morning enjoying the gorgeous weather and the park. There's a huge park outside the zoo too, and we drove through that, stopping at overlooks of the Puget Sound, rose gardens, and other fun sites.

Today (Sunday) I worked aaaaallllllll day (ugh, starting at 6:30 am) while Steve took advantage of another nice day and went for a long motorcycle ride to the coast and nearly halfway around the Olympic peninsula.