Scrumtrellescent

For those who may be curious about my recent CSA intake: this week was especially good!
Yesterday, we got:

• Bok choy
• Lettuce
• Zucchinis
• Cucumbers
• Radishes
• (White) Carrots
• Corn!
  
• Peaches

This scene looked a lot prettier on my kitchen table (the colors didn't really come through), but I did the uncreative (yet delicious) thing and put all the veggies in an awesome salad (adding a few grocery-bought veggies such as tomatoes and avocado). And I'm saving the corn for dinner tonight.

Leaving for California tomorrow! San Clemente Beach, here I come!!

Chairs stickers: Unveiled!

Because I know you have been waiting with bated breath, I will now unveil the ripped-vinyl coverings I chose for the second chair:

For the seat, a Goethe-Institut sticker from my high school German club days. (Some of you may remember those days.)

And for the back of the backrest, more nostalgia from my undergraduate days--the college radio station from UC Davis. Sadly I was not cool enough to work there, but I had friends that did (and were)!

Fifties'd Out

Today I unwittingly went with a 50's theme. First, for work today I wore a retro scarf in my hair, as I have admired all the cool kids doing:

A couple times the wind blew the scarf ends into my face and it seriously freaked me out both times -- I thought someone behind me was reaching for my face (with silky-soft hands).

Actually, if you want to know, this way of wearing the scarf (with the long parts hanging down in the back) is not exactly on-trend. The style seems to be to wear a shorter scarf, and leave the ends sticking out kind of like a bow, at the front of the head, and not the back (like this girl). Ah well.

Then, I finally used my Groupon for the Film Biz Prop Shop, which is this cool thrift store of props donated from movies that were filmed in the city. I bought a pair of 50's diner chairs. The funny thing is, I can't carry more than one at a time (damn you, Ari, for not being here!), so I had to make two trips (one yesterday, one today) carrying each chair on the subway. I kind of felt like I was doing some kind of performance art, what with carrying my own chair onto the subway and sitting on my own chair while waiting at the subway platform.




The chairs have a few rips in the vinyl, so I have covered one rip with this delightful vintage picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Still deciding what to cover the other rips with.

So I watched Chasing Amy last night (romantic comedy), and rated it three stars on Netflix. Then, "based on my rating," Netflix recommended Silence of the Lambs (violent, disturbing, horror film).

HUH?

SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONNNEEEEEE

It just dawned on me: since Ari's been gone at camp (1 1/2 weeks), I have been eating the archetypal bachelor's diet.

• Sunday night: Takeout Chinese
• Monday morning: Cereal
• Monday afternoon: Leftover takeout Chinese
  
• Monday night: MORE leftover takeout Chinese, followed by cereal for dessert
• Tuesday morning: Cereal
  

Yes, since the weather's been over 90 degrees (and only our bedroom has decent a/c), I have been on something of a cereal kick. (I usually eat oatmeal in the morning, but it just makes me sweat even more than I already am.)

I have also discovered the joys of mixed vegetables + General Tso's bean curd = $9.00 and feeds me for three meals.

Yikes. This is starting to look pretty pathetic. My excuse is, I'm just getting by until I leave for CALIFORNIA on Saturday!

HP7P2 Spoilers! Sort of.

I finally saw the last Harry Potter film yesterday. Despite the film's overblown "IT ALL ENDS" tagline, I have to say that it was kind of a big deal for me that the series was finally ending. And unfortunately, I don't think the final installment was particularly powerful. I felt that the final scenes (Snape's secret love of Harry's mother, the white void that Harry goes to after he dies) were fairly uninspired, and the choice to have all of the same actors play themselves 19 years later was kind of silly (Jenny and I couldn't stop laughing).

Maybe we just weren't into it as much as we should have been. But does this picture look like the picture of someone who wasn't into it?

Happy anniversary to me, and me alone.

Today is Ari and my second anniversary. Hooray! Except...he's out in the countryside somewhere (I don't even know which state, embarrassingly enough) working as a camp counselor for the next two weeks, without even cell phone reception!

So I texted him "happy anniversary," but I don't think he'll get it for another week or so. Nevertheless, in some ways I'm kind of glad not to see him, since I went to the Adirondacks last weekend, which was a GREAT trip, but which also was responsible for giving me 12 mosquito bites. So right now, I'm intermittently scratching myself like a lunatic all over my body (shoulders, legs, neck, ankles), which perhaps is the not the most romantic way to behave on an anniversary.

Bridgehampton

I got to spend last weekend in the Hamptons, courtesy of Ari's aunt, who has a summer house there. We were in Bridgehampton, to be precise. (There's also Southampton, Easthampton, and some others, hence the name "the Hamptons." I never knew that before coming there!)

It was basically a weekend in paradise. No really. The sun was shining with clear blue skies, we found some bikes in the basement and biked to the beach, swam in the pool, cooked dinner together and ate it out on the patio, and then biked some more to Sag Harbor the next day before taking the train home (a 2-hour trip from Brooklyn). The only minor mishaps were my getting knocked down by a monster wave and getting some painful scratches on my back, and then Ari taking a spill on the bike (it was too small for him) and him also getting some pretty nasty scrapes on his elbow and knees. Battle wounds!

The tide came in really high at the beach.

Sag Harbor

I think the best part of the weekend was how quiet it was. And the fact that I probably only looked at my watch twice.

CSA update!

My friend Micki works at a CSA near Columbia, and thanks to her connections, four of us decided to go in on a share of fruit, veggies, and EGGS! (Yes, I actually went up to the farm and met the chickens and confirmed that they were happy and ACTUALLY free range, so I don't have qualms about breaking my veganity for these specific eggs.)

I've been getting the food for about five weeks now, and it's a pretty interesting haul. Although I have to confess that Ari, the cook of the household, gets much more excited about it than me.

For fruit, which has been mighty tasty, we have gotten:

• blueberries (The best)
• strawberries (small and super sweet)
• rhubarb (Ari made rhubarb muffins out of the stalks. The muffins were essentially cinnamon muffins but with rhubarb bits. Very tasty)

For veggies, we have gotten:

• radishes
• 1 whole beet (more to come, I believe)
• carrots (only 3 carrots, actually, once we divided up the share)
• epazote (interesting green; apparently it reduces gas after eating beans)
• LOTS of varieties of lettuce
• rue (which is apparently toxic in large quantities and can give you blisters...we decided not to eat it)
• purslane (kind of tastes sour, but good in small quantities in salad)
• mint
• cilantro
  
• chives
• green onions

Ari loves to make salad dressings from scratch, so when we get a lot of greens, we generally just make a huge salad, which is kind of awesome. I usually feel very healthy afterward!