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I have to say, my thumbs aren’t green. The same olive skin and nail-bitten thumbs are still with me.
Nevertheless, lo and behold, I managed to pull off growing spring mix lettuce from seeds! From seeds … I still can’t believe it. And what’s more, it’s edible. I actually ate this. I also tried planting some romaine lettuce, but that was a fail. And, for a while, I wasn’t really sure about these greens. I think the slightly cooler weather helped.
The rest of my garden has been not quite as noteworthy. My beans are done. My romaine is pulled. My squash, unsuccessful. On the other hand, my chives are coming back, again, I think the cooler weather is helping, plus the added shade of the spring mix as it grows. My carrots were also stuck in non-growing mode for a bit, but they’re actually on the mend. We pulled one the other day just to see if it was actually growing under the ground as well as it was growing over the ground — and it was! A tiny bugger, but it’s given me hope that the others may produce something edible if I can keep from plucking them too soon!
I’m sure I have two thumbs. But I’m not sure they’re green. But I’m going to find out. I’m not particularly handy or nurturing by nature, but I’ve always wanted to give a garden a go. I want to watch my food grow! So, with house in hand and idea in mind, I stumbled across a few blogs and websites, including the local Watch My Food Grow, and I got enough inspiration to make my own garden!
With some recycled materials (read: crap laying around the shed/yard), a lot of dirt, 3 seedling plants (2 tomato and 1 basil) and a handful of seed packets, this is what we made:
garden: 3 days
garden: 8 days
We even got our green on this weekend at Lake Worth’s First Annual Conservation Expo. It was great to see this effort from the city, and I imagine it won’t be the last 🙂 While we were there, we even picked up a rain barrel from RainLife Rain Barrels, and the city is offering us a $30 credit!
I recently stopped by Fortune Cookie to pick up some foodstuffs. Oriental foodstuffs, that is – as if you didn’t figure that out already. I mean, come on, Fortune Cookie. You know they’re not selling gnocchi here. Cute-but-trite store names aside, I love going to this place. It’s your typical asian grocery store. The aisles are skinny and packed tight with more brands of soy sauce, mirin & rice wine than you could imagine being on one shelf. Noodles are in every shape and size, and made of rice, buckwheat flour, or tofu. And would you like those fresh, dry or frozen? Because they have it. And, instead of tomatoes and cucumbers in the veg section, there are fresh bunches of bok choy (bok choy, baby bok choy, Chinese bok choy…), huge daikon radishes, packages of brown & white beech mushrooms. Not hungry? Maybe you need a new dim sum steamer, or a pack of 50 chopsticks, or some sake.
On one of my recent trips to Fortune Cookie, I had the pleasure of meeting the owners.
“$13.99” owner said.
So, I handed him my credit card. He swiped the card, read the front of it and quickly looked at me with an interesting grimace.
“Cara. Your name? That’s not very Asian,” owner said.
“Right. Ok. Well, that’s my name,” I replied with a smile. I didn’t want to jump into the I-was-adopted details at the moment. What did he expect? Ling? Sumiko? Yin?
“And, what’s your name?” I asked.
“David. And that’s my wife, Donna.”
Well, well…that’s not very Asian.
In a relationship, you often do things by default of being with that other person. Not that you hate it. Not that you love it. But, you do it because you like being in a relationship with that person – and that’s what they are into. Like going to watch The Proposal when you feel neither romantic or comedic. Or stopping for lunch at a sushi restaurant – when you don’t eat sushi. Or dieting.
I’ve been on a diet by default for four – or is it five? – weeks now. The Pace household has been eating on the leaner side these days. Given the humidity down here, I can’t imagine why we’re not just sweating off the pounds. I was never much into saunas. Anywho, we’ve been eating whole wheat everything, eggs, turkey, cheese, fruit, flaxseed…. The list goes on. And ice cream, cookies & cakes of any sort haven’t touched our kitchen in awhile now. (Well, ok, I did sneak a small package of Maria biscuits in the grocery cart last week.) The upside is that JP is doing a lot of cooking these days. He’s even taken to dish duty more than usual – which I wholeheartedly appreciate. (Dishes suck. But I can’t stand to see them in the sink at night, so I must do them before I go to bed every night.) And, the diet seems to be working. For JP, at least. Me? I’m trying not to count anything…
However, I cheated recently. On my diet, that is. In a moment of weakness, I grabbed some food to go at Wendy’s. Come on, who can ignore the vanilla frosty!? And when the fries are good – they’re goood. It was so gross and good at the same time. I’ve decided this is why fast food exists – to let us know that we’re human and can succumb to the marketing powers that be at food chain companies, and at the same time, make us appreciate real, fresh food.
After I received my food, I thought, “Should I tell JP?” No. I’m sooo cheating right now. Damn, this french fry tastes good. But, not really. But, I’ll have one more just to be sure. Ugh, it’s sooo salty. Salt is good. Maybe I should go to the gym today? Wait, I don’t go to the gym. I mean, do 2 visits in the last month count as “going” anywhere? I’ll just take the stairs up instead of the lift. That’ll do.
So, that was my moral dilema of the week.
Switching topics, it’s imperative that you all go buy Regina Spektor’s new album, Far. I actually listened to the entire album on NPR, then picked up the CD on Sunday afternoon. (Yes, I actually bought a CD. Unwrapped the plastic carelessly, pulled out the disc carefully, and put it in the CD player lovingly.)
Here we go... 
What did you say!?