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ok, so maybe I do get some street cred for not having A/C. It’s awfully hot out there. it’s not hot, say, when you walk out of your office building and go sit in the sun for a few minutes until the heat sinks into your bones. It’s hot when you go home, bake eggplant for an hour while simmering a tomato filling to stuff in them, wash dishes in warm water, and then go to the gym for a run before heading home to sleep spread-eagled on the bed in as few clothings as possible with a fan pointed directly on you. to my credit, I will say that I am pretty good at managing the hot apartment schemes – between closing the shades when I leave in the morning, opening them at night, and blowing night air into the apartment starting as soon as I get home, at least my apartment isn’t any warmer than the out-of-doors. and Man I love ice water. it is the best.

I spoke to my brother last night who DOES work outside, and he said at least he’s working outside and not inside hot sticky close electrical rooms like some of the guys. I still need to touch base with my mom and make sure that she’s doing her best to weed only under trees and near fountains. For that matter, there MUST be some fountains that need inspection, don’t you think?

(in case there are some readers from far off lands that aren’t familiar with this heat wave we’re having, hi! feel freel to introduce yourselves in comments! and yesterday we had a high of 99 or something with a heat index of 110, today it will be 103 with a heat index of 115. but! bright side! tonight it will get down to 79 degrees, which is downright sleepable – none of this low 80s stuff that is so sweatifying. Excellent.)

sat. night michelle, delia, and I went to a show. we saw peaches and the eagles of heavy metal and it was so rock’n’roll awesome. dan aaron would have LOVED it, I’ve never seen so many people outside of my family throwin’ horns! \m/

peaches was especially wild. people were asking me how to describe her and I didn’t know what to say, exactly, so I said “she’s, well, she does punk feminist electronica, sort of. with a lot of gender bending. and her lyrics are pretty confrontational.” the thing is, I expected a le tigre kind of show – a lot of girls, but not many guys at all. there were a LOT of y chromosomes at this show. we were surrounded by guys who Really Really got down. lots of dancing and singing and fist pumping and whooting. it was nuts, and fun, and weird, all at the same time.

the ONLY bad thing about the show is that it meant I wasn’t able to eat dinner at the surprise birthday party for Ron. it was so fun to see him (and Caroline, natch) even for a short period of time, and I wish we could have spent more time hanging out. I wasn’t able to attend their game party either, so I think all of this means I’ll just have to play rude and invite myself over to their house sometime for some Q.T.

we went to an amusement park!

and went on rides!

and played superhero!

and got so tired we fell asleep in the car!

and then there was a birthday party!

with the famous apple stack cake! faithfull prepared by moi from gramma’s recepes in the wee hours of the morning!

for these guys!

and then I totally passed out! sitting up!

is there such a thing as a pragmatic idealist?

probably in the same world that allows an anticonsumerist to become a mary kay lady.

–> oh, right. that’s MY world. ahem.

mustard greens, wax beans, cubanelle peppers, potatos, green peppers, napa cabbage, lettuce, oregano, basil, radishes, watercress, and CORN!

I tucked right into the corn:

What, you don’t eat your sweet corn raw? you are totally missing out.

last night I finished off my old lettuce, chopped old radishes, and sauteed all the cubanelle peppers and kernals from 2 ears of corn (ate for lunch today). I also had to toss the old sage b/c it was getting all dried out. sad, my first toss. I found out when I was picking up the share that the thing I thought was chard from week 3 was actually BOK CHOY, which I LOVE (esp, when sauteed with butter, nutritional yeast, and tofu [which I’ll be buying and freezing over the weekend as prep]), so that was a nice surprise.

Tonight I am going to finish off the corn before it turns to starch. (there’s a corn-purists school of thought that says the only way to eat fresh corn is to put a pot of water on to boil, go out to pick an ear of corn, and then RUN BACK to the house while shucking it to launch it into the pot and avoid any starching of sugars. I am not a corn-purist, but I do try to eat it as fast as possible.) I also want to do something with the watercress from wk 3 – it’s so good tasting, I really do want to eat it up before the weekend. Maybe a big watercress salad? according to this webpage, watercress is the healthy superfood. awesome! in light of my love of cheese, I will make this cheesy watercress pate and also b/c I have almost all the ingredients already for this watercress and pear soup I’ll make that too. Plus Farmer Joy posted a recepie for braised napa cabbage with shitake mushrooms that sounds so good, that’s on my list to make early next week.

leftovers:
week 2: potatoes, radishes
week 3: watercress, potatoes, kale, bok choy, beans, beets

What with the holiday, it was all I could do to just get through last weeks lettuce – I actually ate half of it last night and the other half today. the basil and parsley made the most divine pesto ever (though I should have added more oil, and I didn’t have parm cheese so I used nutritional yeast instead, which WAS yum!).

Now that I’m thinking about it, I should use the potatoes to make either spicy horseradaish mashed potatoes, or roast them with garlic and oregano, or both. I found a good recepie for mustard greens but I left it at home and all I remember is that it includes mustard seeds, so I’ll pick some of those up as well. whoo! I’d better get to the store and then home to cook! I was going to do yoga, but with all these big plans, shoot, all bets are off.

the following have improved my life by roughly 10,000%:

last night I bought a fan for my kitchen window and it is amazing. usually my kitchen is a sweat house when I cook, and last night with the exhaust on it only got up to about 85 degrees and slightly humid (instead of sweat pouring down the back of my neck rain forest conditions). Honestly, Wednesday night Nick and Elly stopped by and I had my kitchen door closed and the windows were all steamed up b/c I was foolishly boiling beets and rice at the same time. I wanted to show off my can-o-worms but we could only spend maybe 2 minutes in there before we were redfaced and hot as heck!

I am a tiny bit worried about it falling out of the window while I’m at work and either killing an innocent bystander on the sidewalk below (like the superintendent’s child) or smashing the gorgeous and amazing geranium I’ve got going like gangbusters below it. Especially as I installed it upside down so I could get it into the TOP of the window (the plants need the windowsill!). And by installed, I mean: lodged it between the window and windowsill and extended the sides until it fit exactly into the window. there are no brackets or such holding it in place. I bought the one that was almost 2x as much $ as the cheapest version (and still, it was just $30) because it’s got an air filter/bug screen built in and it has a very fancy temperature gauge and a self on/off so I can make it come on automatically if the kitchen gets up to 90 degrees (not uncommon, sadly).

the fan is responsible for about 9,975% of the improvement. the other 25% is due to:

this amazing beet salad I made night before last:

beets! granny smith apples! balsamic vinegar! drunken goat cheese! a touch of olive oil! I had a cousin of it at aurora and jesse’s house and LOVED the idea. it’s amazing.

and look who showed up at my office today: WORMS!

which means: yay! can-o-worms photos for you all next week!

because I firmly believe that chiropractors (like any other doctor) can swing wildly between quack and miracle worker, I tried so hard to find one who was recommended. sadly, my insurance might be kind of lame, because every single recommended chiro is not included on my plan.

So I took a leap of faith and picked the nearest one off of the insurance webpage and am going today at 3PM to get fixed up. I told the story about falling off of the toilet to the receptionist and she said there was another patient who had the same problem! I guess it’s more common a situation than I had thought. even if it is a pedestrian occurance, it is still HILARIOUS. so silly. (y’all know, there was a period of, like, 1 hour when I thought about not telling anyone what had happened re: the toilet. but it is TOO FUNNY not to tell everyone I meet.)

after my “spinal adjustment” I’m going to head straight up to get my veggies for the csa and then will return home and attempt to get some work done to make up for my wild afternoon. oh, it’s so great to be a consultant: the only white collar professional that has to fill out a time sheet weekly. snort.