cilantro-lime fish cakes

I feel like salt cod is haunting me. I think it started with my blogger friend Mark’s post on salt cod that I mentioned back when I last posted about cod. Then in New York, I ate salt cod croquettes at Casa Mono. Even the Whole Foods we went to had salt cod in a bulk bin. Well, I’m sorry to announce that no, this recipe doesn’t utilize salt cod. It’s like my own recipe is jeering at and taunting me. I’ll just go hang out at allrecipes.com. Start posting there instead. Watch, they probably even wax on about bacalao there, too. User grandma_knitter64 is all about making her own salt cod and making the best salt cod croquettes, ’cause that’s just so here and now, ya know. Well screw you guys, I’m making plain old fish cakes with fresh cod and some mashed taters (and some lime zest and cilantro because, heck, I’m not in New England anymore).
There are about as many types of fish cake recipes out there as there are stupid blogs like mine with posts on them. I’m not sure I’m comfortable saying mine’s definitive in any way – either for me or in the world of fish cakes, but it’s pretty great. It’s crispy on the outside and super soft and fluffy on the inside with flecks of just crunchy enough red onion. Lime zest and cilantro make them kind of addicting and squeezing fresh lime juice on top before you eat them is just what I needed to get through yes, another snow storm. Accompanied by kale and cabbage slaw, it’s all a pretty great antidote.

pork neck bones with sauerkraut

My trip to New York City nearly killed me with a flake of puff pastry. I hadn’t even had puff pastry in so stinking long and then I like breathed in a litte flake and it flapped over my trachea. Like a vacuum seal. It was the worst. I’d like to say my life flashed before my eyes, but instead I just kept thinking how much I just wanted to be able to freaking breathe. My memory is terrible anyway. Well, I probably have that little pastry flake still in my lungs, because I breathed again. Wait, in a month or something I’ll get some sort of lung rot from the putrified puff pastry residing in there. At least I got to have a wonderful time and was able to eat some pretty great food. And Samantha found a glorious wedding dress.
Slow-cooked collagen is glorious in its melting rubber texture. That’s the best description I could come up with. I wish toothsome was the right word. If I could redefine toothsome, it’d be to mean the texture of slow-cooked collagen. It’s kinda like melty halloumi. But without the squeakiness. Kind of. I don’t know. It’s good though. And a spine, just like oxtail, has amble amounts of it.

braised cod

I have no idea how people bike commute throughout the winter. I’ve started biking to work again, after a long respite from it. I no longer go to mega-gym, I’m going to a much closer, much more down-to-earth, much more personal gym that a friend of mine opened and because of how convenient it is to work and my house, I feel alright about biking home in the dark and cold. I bought some real dorky winter biking gloves to try to keep my hands from freezing like they were at the end of my biking run last fall. Well, they don’t cut it. And neither do my snowboarding-in-0-degrees mittens. If it’s in the low to mid 20s in the morning, at about 1 mile into the trip, my fingers start to get really cold and numb and by the time I get to work I can barely feel the brake levers. As soon as I get into the office, the blood all comes rushing into my fingers and it hurts so incredibly bad I can’t help but yell and scream and grasp my hands in pain and pace back and forth around the office. My coworkers think I’m insane. I just think I’ll probably have some sort of evolutionary benefit from this. Either that or it’ll create some sort of permanent malfunction. Or one morning my fingers will just fall off with a big fuck you.
The first weekend of March I’m going to New York City to meet up with the newly engaged and frazzled Samantha. See, no one could possibly replace me in Samantha’s life when I left Boston, and she doesn’t want to shop for wedding dresses herself or with any of her second-rate friends, so we and her mom are making a weekend of it. We’re not only compiling possible dress shops to go to, but restaurants of course. It’s hard to know where to start. Plus, it’ll be a week after my 30th birthday, so I think we can make the case for a birthday dinner. Oh, and we’re going to the Tenement Museum. Samantha and I both have independently wanted to go there for a long time and what a perfect excuse to go (or was it the other way around?). I really love period houses and maybe especially period houses in cities, where those people’s ways of lives are so incomprehensible today. I sure hope I don’t get lectured on the evil capitalist builders who forced those poor people to live their squalid lives in those apartments. But of course I will.

shrimp scrambled eggs

I’m a total homebody who hates traffic…it’s really hard to get me to go snowboarding on the weekends. Even though I’m doing something fun, if I spend a day up there, I feel like my weekend is thus reduced to only one day. It’s like I need two days of mulling around the house and doing my mundane activities to feel relaxed. Pretty dumb, I know. In any case, I was swayed into going to Beaver Creek yesterday knowing full well that because of all the snow the mountains got over the past few days, the traffic and crowds were going to be awful. We left at 6:15 and 15 minutes into our drive the cars started getting backed up. I almost made Joe turn around to bring me back home. But I made it, the day was gorgeous and sunny and warm, and there was tons of really deep, untouched snow. Great, I was glad I bucked up and went. Then I realized my phone was missing and wasn’t in the car when we got back to it and Found My iPhone revealed an unfortunate result…

My friend Chris was still up at the resort, about to leave, when I discovered this and he quickly strapped back in, caught the chair with less than one minute left to last call, got 1/3 of the way up the mountain and came to a halt. No more running lifts. He asked around and very nice, no-nonsense ski patrolman Adam offered to snowmobile Chris up to the bottom of the lift where my phone was. But after searching around, they didn’t find anything. I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME.

honey almond cake

Whoa look, something sweet on here! I told you I failed my Whole30. I’m going out with bang. A somewhat Paleo-friendly bang, with a whole food, deliciously ethnic cake to celebrate my impending trip to Spain. That’s right, I’m turning 30 and I’ve decided I can’t stand not having seen the world anymore. I even signed up for a Spanish class, which I would have done regardless of my decision to go to Spain. I always regret not having continued my years of middle and high school Spanish. I was so happy to drop the class when I did, but only because I was so overworked. But I’m determined to get back into speaking Spanish and how convenient it will be in Spain when I can ask “¿Dónde puedo conseguir una Torta de Santiago?” and not have to consult Google Translate.
This morning when I opened up the front curtains, I saw that the neighbor’s and our lawns were flooded. At first I thought that perhaps he was just smarter than I and thought to water his lawn in the midst of this winter drought, while our lawn withers away. But I went out to investigate and after tromping barefoot through our pond-yard, saw that all the water was coming from an irrigation pipe under his yard. Sweet! Have fun sucker! How wonderful it was to find our sump pump in the basement spewing water, our downstairs bathroom flooded, and the little closet in the basement where we keep all our outdoorsy gear equally flooded. Awesome. The backyard looked pretty great with sleeping bags and backpacks hanging on branches out to dry.
I first made this cake back in Boston for a ridiculous tapas party where I cooked for hours. There was so much food you would think I would’ve learned my lesson never to make approximately ten times what any one person could ever eat. Nope, I’ve replicated that kind of spread many times since – Thanksgivings, Christmases, Super Bowl parties… on and on, and the more I’m thinking about it right now, the more I want to have a tapas party. It’s been so long! Chorizo! Mackerel! Shrimp! Potatoes! This cake! Because it’s lovely and impressive and it’s grain-free and that’s so hip.
I hate blanching almonds. I’m just not fussy enough about that kind of thing. And when I really should be using Marcona almonds anyway for this cake, I feel okay about leaving the skins on. Besides, the almonds are ground fine enough that you don’t run the risk of getting sheaths of skin suctioned on your teeth. If you’d rather buy pre-blanched almonds in almond flour form, that’s cool. Are all almonds you buy pasteurized? That’s so irritating.

honey almond cake
adapted from lots of recipes for torta de Santiago

6 eggs at room temperature, separated
1/2 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 1/2 lemon
9 oz almonds, finely ground

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, beat egg yolks, honey, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and lemon zest until combined. Mix in the ground almonds.

2. In a separate mixing bowl, and with clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the almond mixture.

3. Line a springform cake pan, or just a regular cake pan, with parchment paper. Grease the sides. Pour in the batter and bake for 30 – 35 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.

Now, you can top this cake how you’d like – you can get fancy and make an egg white frosting or dust with powdered sugar (if you make your own of course – or not, if you love that GMO cornstarch) or you can go nice and simple and drizzle extra honey on top. That’s my favorite.

country style pork ribs confit

I thought I had the flu. I self-righteously didn’t get the flu shot. I would have gotten so scolded. Turns out that it wasn’t the flu, but perhaps a case of food poisoning? Or just some weird bug? I had eaten at Jonesy’s EatBar – shrimp, on a Monday. What an idiot. I didn’t have to read Kitchen Confidential to know better than that, but I just forgot. But really, they shouldn’t be serving me fish old enough to make me feel like death. I often knowingly choose to eat questionable food, but thoroughly questionable I’m kinda pissed about. Besides, just because I’m lazy and eat questionable food myself doesn’t mean that I want to go to a restaurant and pay out the nose for questionable food. I will forgo that place from here on out. It was nice knowing you Jonesy’s.
January Whole30: totally failed. The other two times I’ve done it, I didn’t even come close to failing. It was easy, I felt great, I didn’t even want to stop. But this month, I wasn’t in the right mindset and all my excuses seemed really viable in that state. Bleh. At least I’m not worse off for the time I did spend doing it. But still, I feel like the worst New Years resolutioner. At least it’s 60 degrees right now. I feel good about that. But I don’t feel good about the boatload of chocolate chips I just ate. Dammit.

one-pot mustard and lemon chicken

One-rimmed-baking-sheet chicken. Whatever. This is easy chicken. Perfect weekday night dinner. Joe’s sister Louise requested a recipe of her own on here – one that would be nice and simple. This is a good example of what I might do on a weekday night (you know, because I don’t always make ridiculous dinners on a Tuesday). It’s to the point, but not lacking in flavor, and super good. And look, it’s carrots again. That’s another thing I do; obsess over ingredients.
It’s tough for me to settle on a recipe that’s simple like this. Should I have included onions? Other root vegetables? I guess I feel like it has to be like the definitive one-pot chicken and carrot dish. The BEST way to make them together. Or, at least the best way to make them together with a mustard lemon sauce. But sometimes it’s just nice to have a different way of making your normal weeknight meat and vegetables. You don’t want to marinate the chicken overnight, even if will make a wonderful difference; you don’t want to roast the vegetables at one temperature and the chicken at another; and on the other end, you don’t want another dinner of steamed broccoli and boring chicken. It’s shocking how many dinners I eat that are seasoned only with salt. I sure do love salt. Salt and fat. But I’ve got a reputation to upkeep here. I’m fancier than salt. I use lemon and mustard. Watch out.

roasted carrot and caramelized onion soup with caraway

Sometimes it’s the little details that make me happy in a recipe. Like nicely roasted carrots and caramelized onions in an otherwise very simple soup. And homemade chicken broth. And then, anything with caraway seeds in it is superlative in my book. The best seed.

za’atar

Spice mixes are fun. Making spice mixes is fun. You learn so much! Oh that’s how they get that flavor! Plus, if you make them in advance, as opposed to just adding spices to a dish as you’re making it, you’ll have a little jar with which you can now have a real nice way to impress people. No one is impressed with individual spices. Everyone is impressed with a jar of homemade za’atar. Well, you won’t be, because you’re going to make it and it’ll be old hat then.
Advent has begun. Every single day a Christmas activity must occur. I’m currently making cinnamon and clove scented pinecones. They’re sitting on the stovetop making the kitchen smell so wonderful. I also made cinnamon ornaments. Lots of cinnamon here. Also on the agenda is getting our Christmas tree from the wilderness, paper snowflakes, watching He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special, talking a walk to peer at fancy Christmas light displays in a fancy neighborhood, etc. I’m not in the mood to make Christmas cookies this year. Not like last year. I’m sure it’ll hit at some point, but nothing much this year. I might have gone overboard last year. I am going to make some sort of toffee concoction for my department’s Christmas party at work on Wednesday. Toffee almond salted something. It’s a homemade candy competition and I better freaking win. I should have made it this weekend because I tried making it last night and all was going well in the pot until it just separated and then it crystallized and now I have like one more chance to try it and I’ll probably ruin it again and cry.

savory spiced nuts

My aunt Suzanne made some wonderful spiced nuts one Thanksgiving she came to our house for when I was little. I remember thinking they were the absolute most wonderful things – and this coming from the string-cheese-for-dinner-girl – and how the herbs just smelled so, so wonderful. I forgot about them for a long time, but then when I started getting into cooking for myself in college, I remember each time I would use thyme I would think of those nuts. I don’t have too many nostalgic food memories, if anything most of them would be traumatizing memories anyway, reminding me of all the ridicule I’d get for only eating bread and butter at Thanksgiving, but man those spiced nuts still stick in my mind. Probably good I don’t have too many childhood food attachments. Otherwise I’d still be eating frozen Eggo waffles, just the edges of frosting-less strawberry Pop Tarts, Tupperware bowls full of Better Cheddars, and ohhh man sour cream and cheddar Ruffles. My poor mom. Totally just gave up with me. Worst kid ever.
Tomorrow I’m going to make pumpkin pudding, I believe. My friend Samantha had been listening to me with my nose stuck up in the air about the necessity of making a pumpkin pie with fresh roasted pumpkin purée for the past like 4 years so she finally did it in a Thanksgiving practice run. They turned out terribly, apparently. I’d like to blame it on her and say her palate just isn’t sophisticated enough…but that’s not true at all. I feel like I let her down. And what a let down. All this time, leading up to this one stupid pie, and the two pumpkins she’d gotten were crap. I must convince her to try again! It’s okay, you’ll get a nice pumpkin!! Nature is good! So, I thought I’d make one from scratch and send her pics along the way, just to show that indeed she somehow picked the two worst sugar pumpkins in the whole store. If this pudding is any good, perhaps you’ll see it later. I’m thinking it’s going to be with coconut milk and cardamom.

celery root and onion rösti

I’m having a real crabby week. And it might have started Saturday. A high school kind of moody, little things are getting me down kind of week. I had a meltdown at the gym. That was real cool. I am sick of my bum wrist… both bum wrists and I don’t want to have to think about them anymore and I’m tired of getting setback in trying to get betterstrongerfaster. I’m going to be the worst old person, when all sorts of things start to ache and give me problems. Saturday I got mad when I tried to make this recipe. I burnt it. And I got mad at our stupid stove whose biggest burner isn’t big enough for my cast iron pan so the rimmed edge hangs off and doesn’t allow the pan to heat evenly. The edges of the rösti were only lightly browned, and the center was black, but I still ate most all of it. It’s pretty great, so I remade it on Sunday for some friends I had over. I don’t think they thought I was too weird for taking pictures, and they gave it their thumbs up.

spaghetti squash and caramelized onion cakes

fallfallfallfallfallfallfallllll!
In other news, I might move to Dallas. I am not happy about it. Joe is looking at a company down there for a job. I don’t know. We’ll see. But I can bet you their fall sucks. What the heck am I supposed to cook down there besides bbq (oh that could be good…). Do winter squash even grow? DO THE LEAVES EVEN CHANGE THERE. It’s just a hot, humid, flat wasteland. I’m too afraid to look back at my blog posts around the time of the Denver move. I think I didn’t want to leave Boston, either. I’m apparently inflexible. It’s hard to even get me to go out at night.

coconut milk indian chicken

Oh how I wished to be able to call this tandoori chicken, because I love tandoori chicken. I based it off a recipe that called it tandoori chicken. But it’s not. And since I’m a self-professed food jerk, I could not call it such. First, no tandoor was involved. Never could be. Who the f has a tandoor. Second, this chicken is marinated in coconut milk. Tandoori chicken demands yogurt. And boy do I love yogurt marinated…anything. But I’ve been craving something with coconut milk for a while. And actually, for better or worse, you can’t tell it was marinated in coconut milk. It just tasted like it was marinated in the most godly substance on earth. Seriously, it is so good.
So since this is kind of an interpretation recipe, or something, guess what – I used all ground spices. Gasp. I did not toast and grind whole spices. Generally if I make Indian food I feel absolutely compelled to do this. It’s like this OCD side of me. The same side that likes to make my own butter, my own fermented pickles, my own bacon, all that crap. But it was hot this weekend. And even though I bought new boots, fall isn’t here. It was bathing-suit-all-day weather. And ground spices sounded nice. This recipe, despite a ton of spices, is real easy. It was a perfect lazy weekend recipe. And you know what? I bet you could use some curry powder and garam masala and be pretty darn well off – but just know that this combo of spices is really damn good.

roasted tomato mackerel with pickled jalapeños

My tomato plants suck. Or I suck. I don’t know what I’m doing. Watering too much, not enough, not feeding them enough, feeding them too much, no clue. One has crinkled brown leaves with blotchy looking tomatoes. Another only has a few tomatoes on it. Two others are small and spindly. And my zucchini plants have this horrid white mold on the leaves. I breathed it in yesterday and felt like I was going to die. Good riddance, I’m sick of zucchinis anyway. But I don’t know how to cut them back without dying of mold ingestion. Buying tomatoes at Whole Foods for this recipe pained me. Pained me. But holy crap are they good. Hey, the jalapeños are mine! I’ve got so many! And they’re so spicy. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking with this recipe. I can’t handle heat.
I just found out last week that Biggest Loser won’t have a fall season this year. What am I supposed to do. I already gained an hour of my life back when they dropped last season down to one hour and I wasn’t happy about that. I’ve had Tuesdays free since whenever the last season ended and now I’m going to continue that through till like January? wtheck. Well, not really true – I like MasterChef. It’s so stupid. WalMart is the official grocer of the show. The hosts go on and on about how beautiful WalMart’s USDA Choice steaks are. I want to kick the TV. I need to watch PBS cooking shows. I’m so f-ing sick of regular TV and their snappy editing where I don’t learn anything. I’m going to watch Simply Ming. I’ll learn about potstickers. And all about what a giant douchebag he is.

roasted eggplant and garlic salad

Roasted eggplant and roasted garlic salad. I don’t know how best to write that. Does the roasted apply to garlic if I only have it in front of eggplant? Is it redundant to write roasted twice? AHH I don’t understand. But rest assured, the garlic is roasted. Sweet, sweet roasted garlic. And it’s mashed around to evenly incorporate amongst the eggplant. God I love this salad. And I can call it a salad because there are some raw elements. Otherwise I would just call it roasted eggplant and garlic. Boring.
I went to two pig roasts the other weekend. Back to back pig roasts. Well, one was a pig smoke. My god were those pigs good. I’m going to have a pig roasting party of my own. Oh yeah, and did I tell you that I went to a hog butchering class? If you followed me on the old twitter you’d know. Anyway, I made a friend at that class, and who also went to one of the pig roasts I went to, and we’re going to make it happen. He’s like a pig maniac and apparently a smoker master. So…I think we’re going to have the best pig roasting party of the year. Be there or be square, buddy.

watermelon gazpacho

Pretty sure this will be my last watermelon post for a bit. And hopefully the last fruit one for a bit, too. Not positive on that last one. I haven’t posted anything with cherries in it. And I like cherries. Really like cherries. Shoot. Uh, I’ll incorporate meat. I got it, don’t worry. Ohhh man, then peach season is upon us too…
My garden’s at the point now where if I am busy for a couple days in a row, it gets completely overgrown. Tiny little zucchinis turn into like county fair blue ribbon contenders. My arugula keeps fighting me, trying to bolt. I’ve pretty much given up on my broccoli rabe. I can’t keep up. But man, a veggie garden is the most fun thing ever. It makes me feel like such a city slicker – being so amazed and amused at the plants. Not that I am or was a city slicker. And not that I didn’t have a veggie garden growing up. I don’t know, those little plants still make me giddy. I can’t wait until I have a house of my own. Then I will turn the backyard into a produce aisle. I saw my first pear tree the other day. I was by myself and I squealed out loud at those little pears just dangling from the branches.

watermelon rind pickles

Watermelon rind pickles. I am so trendy. A freaking hipster. I’ve even been wearing my dark-rimmed glasses the past week. (My contacts were digging into my eyeballs and oh yeah I forgot to order more.) Get ready, I’ll be getting thick, blunt bangs and a sleeve tattooed. Reading ‘zines and seeing shows. Right. My ‘zines are National Geographic and Smithsonian. I’m no hipster. I’m like a freaking pioneer. Though I’m not sure of what proportion of progressive to historic. Equal parts both? Making butter from raw cream? Olde tymey yet so cutting edge? So yes, I’ve taken the dive into pickling. I have a feeling I might have to get into other forms of preserving, what with more apricots than I know what to do with. The only thing is that I’m kind of lazy and canning feels like it’ll be more of a process than it really is and it takes me a while to get motivated enough to set it all up and start. These pickles had been crowding the fridge in my giant Dutch oven, waiting to be canned, for way longer than I’d planned… it was really annoying, actually.
Oh hey, it’s July. I hope I am making the most of this summer. I’ve hiked rim to rim to rim, backpacked in the mountains to escape like 110 degree heat, been biking to work most days, pranced around in my bathing suit in my backyard, planted a lovely little vegetable garden, taken after dinner barefoot walks, been to baseball games, eaten gobs of ice cream, and gotten disgustingly sweaty running during my lunch hours and simply blotted myself off with paper towels before going back to work. Then hung my sopping running clothes about my desk to dry. I am the best coworker.

curry apricot relish

Am I allowed to eat just fruit in the summer? Fruitarian? Good, thanks. Because that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing the past couple weeks. Colorado cherries and apricots, nectarines, peaches, blueberries, blackberries, watermelon, um I’m gonna barf. Those cherries are especially going to get the best of me. I CAN NOT STOP WITH THEM. I’ll look down at my little bowl full of pits and stems and be genuinely shocked.
Because of the 4th of July, my CSA delivery moved back to the Monday before. That means that I’m going to be getting whole new bags of apricots and cherries a couple days sooner and I kind of panicked when I looked at how many apricots I had left. I considered canning them. Pickling. Dehydrating. Grilling. Desserting. Something. But decided to make a relish of sorts. It was tempting to make another fruit salsa, as I do have quite the affinity for them. But curry was calling to me. And, while salsa could probably be called a relish, it doesn’t work the other way around. So, yes, it’s a fruit relish.

butter

omg. I think I might need to become Amish. Or a sister wife. Quit my job, forget my ambitions, forgo my goals, and live like it’s 1842. Some generically old date. I’ll garden, preserve, pickle, smoke, dry, cure, take my turn at animal husbandry… yeah, and churn some freaking butter. With my handheld antique butter churn. Boy is it cute.
Too lazy to ⌘T my way to finding out if I mentioned this in my last blog post; I just started a raw milk share from Ebert Farms (careful, there’s a cow mooing noise on that page. Horrible.). Last time I made whipped cream with the cream. Dangerous. Gone in one serving. This time I decided to make butter. I have some long dead distant relative’s old butter churn that’s just like half-assed decoration in my kitchen and I decided to put it to use. You can use a hand mixer, but pff (no, don’t worry I will support your use of a hand mixer if you don’t just, ya know, have a butter churn lying around). *Update: my favorite friend Samantha and my fellow blogger bud Danielle from Paring Down Looking Up both mentioned that you can just shake the shit out of cream in a (sterilized, of course, if it’s raw cream – let’s be safe here) mason jar.

roasted poblano pork burgers with pipián

Oh hi! Hi!! I’m back from the Southwest. What a freaking trip. I can’t believe that I was waffling on it. Yeah, 10 days was a long time; I’m such a homebody. If I could have brought my cats along I would have been 100% happy. Hiker cats. But wow was it worth it. Now, I am obsessed with ancient Puebloan Indians. And the Fremont Indians. OBSESSED. I want to start growing heritage varieties of corn. And squash. And beans. And just to diversify my Native peoples interests a bit, all manner of ancient potato varietals. And more importantly, I want to scout out ruins and petroglyphs and pottery. All off the beaten path. Bushwhacking (cactus whacking?) please. I found this woman’s blog and we followed her instructions to this one hike up the Vermillion Cliffs near Kanab, UT (not the ones in AZ). Easily the most wonderful hike I’ve ever done – it was full of petroglyphs and pictographs and dinosaur prints, not to mention gorgeous red rock cliffs. Oh yeah, and lots of mountain lion poop. EEK.
Needless to say, I’m in the mood for Southwestern-y food. Loosely defined. I kept wanting to pick cactus leaves (leaves?) and bring them back to our little condo and cook them. Instead we ate out like every night. Barf. I can not handle that. My stomach feels so terrible doing that so often. It didn’t help that one of the people we were with has megasweettooth. And if someone says “ice cream!”, I can’t help myself. So much ice cream that week. I have megasweettooth, too… Coming home means that I can get back into the swing of cooking all of my meals. God I love that. And what a welcome surprise it was to come home to all sorts of produce in my (completely overgrown with weeds) garden! Arugula, mesclun greens, baby swiss chard (too big to be microgreens), radishes and their greens. So wonderful. I’m concerned about all the peppers I planted… I have a bad feeling I may have picked any little seedlings when I’ve weeded. I think the dirt I got from the fix and flip house two doors down was completely full of weeds. Duh, I guess. So the garden has been absolutely ridden with weeds and I’ve been trying to pull them all to give the little veggie seedlings a fighting chance, but I’m afraid I may have picked the pepper seedlings, since they’re kind of indistinguishable. Not sure. They do take a long time to sprout, but ugh. I’ll probably have to buy plants.