let summer foods console me

Opening the fridge this evening, to add the leftovers of my dinner of pan-fried young broccoli with garlic and new red potatoes with butter and black pepper, i noticed how full it was but how everything was staying so fresh, particularly the lovely veg I got at the farmer's market on Saturday.

Then I also realized, wow, the overwhelming majority of stuff is not only organic, but local too. You have just got to love summer.

So there is:

• half a leftover flax/hemp oatmeal pancake
• dog food components (cooked)
• a serving left in a pkg of tofu
• some dregs at the bottom of a hummus container
• leftover spicy bean mash (from a heirloom local bean mix)
• toasted amaranth & coconut pudding i made last night
• a pkg of tempeh
• nice big pack of fresh spinach linguine (better eat that tomorrow)
• apricots, figs, 1 peach
• green, red, yellow peppers
• beet greens & beets
• 1/2 a cucumber
• basil
• a big bag of green beans
• potatoes
• a little bit of lettuce
• 2 flavours of yogurt (the lemon's almost finished)
• milk
• eggs
• 2-3 cheeses
• miso
• peanut butter
• dog cookies

(the freezer has mostly bread, more dog food, and some blackberries I picked in the park this morning and decide to preserve for the dark days of winter).

What's in your fridge today?

breakfast right off the bush

How refreshing it is to gaze in awe at huge cedar trees in a misty forest and pick wild blackberries just a 15-minute walk away from a busy downtown street. Everytime G and I have walked in Stanley Park this past week, she's had to wait while I reach up into the huge cascading blackberry canes to find the deliciously sour nuggets.

This morning, as most people were heading off to work, the park was quiet and it seems no one had yet come along to find the ripe ones, so I scored myself a huge handful that I savoured as Miz Whitey pulled me along in search of wildlife.

dreaming of soft sleep

So my resolve to buy new only those things that are of hygienic concern (bed & futon sofa mattress) has not been too difficult to maintain. As the photos in my new album show, it's quite easy to quickly decorate in an affordable/live simply, if eclectic, way here in Vancouver.

Antique desk $50, chair $5

Of course my aching body may not agree with the "easy" part as shopping at yard sales (where people set out used/antique things for sale on the front lawn of their houses or apartment buildings) and on craigslist, freecycle and kijiji when you don't have a car means you've got to walk these things home. Well, that is of course "got to" if you're as... uh... frugal/thrifty as I am.

The only item not carried by foot was the futon frame, which I had intended to carry for the 7 blocks home (with the aid of my poor sister M), but it turned out to be just too heavy and we had to call a van taxi. Actually, it might not be that much heavier than my gorgeous limed (solid!) oak 1950s bookcase, for which I paid only $11, but I picked it up the morning after I (alone) walked the bookcase home for 1 km and I had no energy left!

Love my new bookcase & the thing is strong enough
for that monster TV my nephew gave me.

Anyway, my new bed arrives tonight and my muscles are very anxious, because to recover they really do need to sleep on something soft, rather than the deflate-while-you-sleep air bed I've been on for a week.

G-dawg, on the other hand (paw?) is napping quite comfortably in her new antique beef & pork packing crate bed, dreaming of squirrels, no doubt. 

world's brightest office?

So here I am, trying to work, sitting cross-legged on the floor (on a cotton mat provided by my sister E) of my new empty livingroom/office. My monitor is perched on the small box that housed my Mac Mini (hard drive), the keyboard is on my lap and the mouse is set on a soft CD storage book, which is mounted on a Radiohead box set.

I should really try to get as much work done as possible in the next couple of hours because the white drapes that were supplied with the apartment don't do much to filter the sunlight that will soon pound directly in and bounce around the white walls.

The G-dog is fast asleep on the other side of the room, over by the balcony door. Yesterday I ran her around a bit too much I think, considering we were still quite jetlagged. This morning she seemed a bit more herself, enjoying the many squirrels we saw in Stanley Park, which is but a 10 minute walk from our new home.

(Opps, she just woke up to chase a fly, they don't put screens on windows here.) Maybe this evening I'll have a chance to get down to the dog beach and finally introduce her to the ocean.