Delirity

Our local farm share started up this past week. For 24 weeks this year, we’ll be loaded up with fresh veggies and 2 dozen free range eggs. Fruit and honey will be coming from the local farmer’s market on Saturdays. I’m hoping that this means we can decrease our grocery store trips to every 2 weeks or so (for meat and bananas and whatever other random essentials we need).

We’re really hoping that embracing our farm share will help us to clean up our eating (there’s been just a little too much sugar involved recently!). When we did this 2 years ago we frequently had food that we never got to. Our goal this year is to consume everything (except fava beans)… we’ve learned a lot in the past 2 years and have a plan of attack:

1. I “process” all the fresh food immediately upon getting home. This goes something like: empty produce from awesome organic cotton bags, wash with veggie wash and filtered water, and put into the many vented containers we have. That means it’s really easy to eat stuff when we want it.
2. Anything we have a large quantity gets made into smoothies made by the vitamix we received last year for Christmas. This should really help with the huge amounts of greens we get – particularly during the first half of the season!

This week’s share (“small” since it’s the first week) contains mixed lettuces, spinach, mild mustard greens, pea greens, kale, radishes, chives, and a cherry tomato plant (which I’m attempting to grow on our back patio in a pot – cross your fingers for enough sun!). Since Jesse is out of town this week, it’s up to me to eat it all! So far I’m actually making fairly good progress on it. I’ve been making smoothies (with lots of greens mixed in!) and kale crispies (in fact, all the kale is gone now!). And, the radishes are actually mild enough to eat like a carrot!

We’re gonna be so healthy

There was a dusting of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning. It’s not quite enough for my taste, but it did actually snow. And by the looks of the forecast it’s possible that we’ll get some more. For now, here are a few pictures of the little bit of snow that is keeping me happy. I love living in a place where it snows at least a little!

We’ve had nothing but rain and wind for a few days now. I think it’s beautiful, just a little blustery so you have to dress appropriately. They’re already talking about flooding though – there are so many little streams in the area that when we get non-stop rain for several days on end we run into trouble. I remember last year there was a whole town that got cut off because of the flooding – it blows my mind that something like that can happen. It’s especially amazing since things up here are actually built to be able to handle all the rain we get!

I haven’t yet gone for a run in the rain. The cold I fought off last week is still a little to fresh in my mind for me to do anything “risky”. Maybe I’ll try it during the next good rain. I wonder if a hat with a bill is needed for running in the rain…

YouTube – Red Bull Flugtag 2008 Portland, Oregon.

After Jesse finished with clinic yesterday we headed to downtown Portland to check out the Red Bull Flugtag. Not only was it fun to watch people jumping off the barge with their inventions, it was amazing to see people covering the waterfront park, the Hawthorne bridge, the water (in their many boats) and the other side of the river.

I took last week off of work since it was Jesse’s last real break from school and I though it would be nice for us to spend some time together. Instead of going to some different location, we vacationed at home. During our time together we did a bunch of fun things:

• checked out a new park where we had a slightly unsuccessful bike ride (note: bike paths at Oxbow park are for people much more talented at mountain biking than us!)
• went for a picnic at Lucia Falls where we watched salmon and steelhead jump up the falls
• checked out the Portland Saturday Market
• caught a Beaver’s baseball game
• watched fireworks 2 nights
• went to a movie (Wanted – it was pretty entertaining)
• rented a movie (American Gangster – I’m totally impressed with this one, it’s an amazing story)

The most amazing part of the vacation (that doesn’t involve my husband) was that I got my new computer completely organized. This is the first time in my life that my music and my pictures have been completely organized – I’m really hoping this will make it easier to keep up!

And, I’ve been so on top of things that I’ve actually changed the sheets every week for the past 3 weeks. It’s incredible. And wonderful. Yay clean sheets!