Ooh, how time flies!
This week: what the heck I’ve been doing for the past week, Jim Gaffigan on parenthood, slow flowers for late February and more.
1. Why Is 5 Things Friday On A Saturday?
I’ve been playing catch up this week. It’s very interesting to me how little it takes to kinda throw off my routine. This is, to me, a sign that my routine is too brittle. Or maybe I’m overthinking and this is just life.
In any event, I was sick early week-before-last (the kids were off school for President’s Day because of course they were home while I was sick) and then had to gear up for my presentations at the 2016 Northwest Flower and Garden Show.
I adore presenting at the NWFGS. I get to be goofy and hopefully edu-taining, and I meet the coolest people. This year a bunch of Survival Podcast friends said hi, and I met a badass apartment-balcony-gardening reader named Christina who has overwintering apartment-grown kohlrabi down to an art form. Another reader, Elaine, may become my quince hookup until my own tree matures.
A good time was had by all, but then I got home and somehow my domestic sphere kinda exploded and I needed a couple days to get all the wheels turning in the right direction again. For example, I bought a lot of demonstration veg for one presentation and because I get twitchy about food going to waste, immediately had to deal with it. So currently my fridge is like, Korean-grandma level full of ferments. Which I love.
And then the sun came out, and apparently I’m solar powered because all of a sudden I was like, “this is a good time to deal with that pig leg I have in the freezer, and oh – I might as well pressure can black beans and make lemon curd with the 9 million duck eggs I have while I’m at it. And maybe I should repaint the chicken coop and pressure wash the back patio and…and…and.”
Which is why this 5 Things Friday is posting on a Saturday.
2. What I’ve Been Eating
I am currently without beef. I’ve got 2 chickens, several filets of salmon and maybe 60% of last fall’s pig from Adalyn Farms in the freezer.
Looking forward, I think I’m going to start doing “Breakfast For Dinner” every other week. The ducks started laying like crazy about 3 weeks ago, and the chickens keep kinda chunking out the eggs, too – so I’m going to start subbing in egg for meat protein at more meals. Should help us stretch our remaining meat through to fall, so we buy less meat from the market.
Last Wednesday I made this mess of yum from fridge flotsam: pork belly and spicy kimchi over rice. Since then most of my meals have been some variation on this and I’m not complaining.
Red-braised shredded pork belly, kimchi, and duck egg over rice.
3. Slow Flowers Bouquet of The Week
Slow Flowers is the concept that we buy local, think global, and work seasonally with our flowers as well as our food. I’ve dabbled in the slow flower bouquet concept and I really like it. I am super inconsistent about taking the time to cut a bouquet for the house, but I thought maybe if I made it part of 5 Things Friday, I might remember slightly more often.
In any event, today I was inspired – the apricot, almond and cherry trees are all just beginning to break into flower and it’s the most beautiful thing – like the world started breathing again. So I went out and clipped a branch or two from each of the trees that looked ready to bloom.
By themselves, the branches just rattled around in my white pitcher vase (which is pretty much the only thing I ever put flowers in), so I snipped some of the blossoms from my pieris, and grabbed some sarcococca as greenery. And then I noticed some hellebore flowers and snagged a couple.
Honestly, not my most-favoritist bouquet ever – the branches are a bit more horn-like than I wanted – but I think when the flowers pop it’ll soften.
4. What I’ve Been Watching
Ok, the last few 5 Things Friday may have been a bit moody. Sorry about that. I’m not all cynic-and-cyanide, I promise. In fact, lately I’ve been cracking up to Jim Gaffigan. He has such a great take on parenthood. He’s also one of those rare clean hilarious comics – so if you like your stand-up without the sex and swearing, Gaffigan’s your guy.
If you have a kid, or kids, this is a great bit. I’ve watched it many times and it’s still funny.
5. Update On My Booze Fast
Gave up booze for Lent. That was…about 2-and-a-half weeks ago. I’m still sober! Surprised?
Nah, it’s actually not been nearly as hard as I feared. On taco night I wanted a beer like a baby wants his favorite blankie. And I’ve had several passing cravings for a cocktail – the whole process of making, pouring, and drinking. I have found sparkling water indispensible. Want a beer? Have a club soda. That’s my advice.
That’s not to say there’ve been no impacts. I sorta-kinda cancelled on plans with my mom to go for happy hour because of this Lenten devotion (there were other reasons, but my current dry state situation was a factor). And my husband got some great news at work and we probably would have cracked a bottle of champagne, except….non-drinking me. So that’s crappy, because obviously both mom-and-daughter-happy-hour and husband-and-wife-champagne-time are awesome.
But other than that, I really haven’t been too affected by not drinking. I am sleeping a lot better and I feel just generally up and positive. Both very good things.
How have you been this week? What have you been up to?
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I’ll take a 5TF even on a Saturday. It’s amazing “how little it takes to kinda throw off my routine,” isn’t it? I’m awfully glad to hear it’s not just me.
What are you fermenting?
thanks for the Jim Gaffigan video! Very funny, my daughter asked me what I was doing, laughing at the computer.
Oh, and wow – that’s a lot of duck eggs!
You have a superbly unique way with words, Erica…I ‘see’ your pen producing more books. And, please do NOT apologize for being thoughtful… you are often at your best then… IMHO. And I don’t think you’ve ‘lost’ anything during temporary boozelessness…. mom happy hour and hubby celebrations are actually not date-dependent … I’ve moved holiday dinners out a few days when work precluded the attention I wanted to devote to them. They were just as delicious and festive…. flexibility makes the flow go better 🙂
yay! i love 5TF on saturday!!!!! that rice/kimchi/egg/belly looks fantastic – great work!!! great work also on the fast – and yep. i cant get enough of sparkling water. our version of safeway sells it in cans and i used it to transition from any and all soda. it totally worked. i like the plain version. i love the Slow Flowers gal – she is really terrific and i can really get behind her movement to local flowers/what is in season. your bouquet is beautiful and not horny! yay!
That is such a lovely little bouquet. I have pretty much all of the components of that in my yard, yet I never would have thought to put them together in such a delicate pretty display!
I’ve been wandering the yard wondering what I was thinking about some of my (at the time so brilliant) editorial choices last year. A lot of stuff has gotten moved around to what will hopefully be better homes for everything. I’ve started to come to terms with the scale of the yard (big) I am working with and things are going a bit better in the design department (hopefully).
Thank you for the shoutout Erica!! I was thrilled to meet you in person, especially in a setting like the NW Flower and Garden Show. I came home from my long weekend in Seattle ladened down with new toys, new plants, and plenty of new ideas for my balcony garden.
I saw your non-drinking post too late to start for Lent but I am doing it now. I concur that fizzy water is the best. My husband is going to carbonate some water in one of our 5 gallon beer kegs so I will have plenty!
I miss my wine but, like you, have noticed that I am sleeping better and waking up earlier.
That comedy bit was awesome!
“Quince Hookup,” that has a nice ring to it! I loved our chat and look forward to many more.
Oooo, I am SO envious of you with being able to have livestock.. and fresh eggs. Yum.
Ref: fizzy water, why buy it when you can buy / get the neatest machine called a Soda-Stream?
They’ve been around since the 1950’s but the machines are now smaller, sleeker AND cheaper.
Filter your water, pour it into the big bottle which comes with it plus a tank of gas and off you go.
It takes very little gas to make the big bottle of water fizzy and you know there is nothing in it.. except your own water. Yes, your supplier will get you new gas bombs.
Off to read your other posts, I am at home sick with Citrus poisoning, why knew that they could and DO cause such reactions? Be careful if you have an asthmatic or bronchitic child or elderly person as they have caused me big problems.
Best wishes from London where it’s 5 degrees and raining and very dreary.
Slow Flowers are an awesome thing.
Not a thing that I do in winter because: Winter. Coniferous branches, paper birchbranches, and flowering dogwood branches are What’s Available and… they can be super-pretty, especially with Norwegian Spruce spilling all over everything, or juniper berries to spark a little bit of somewhat muted colour (we did that for our wedding, three years ago) but… they get old pretty quickly. We won’t have flower-flowers for another month or more. Still, I love the idea (and the practice) of putting together cut flowers based on what’s actually blooming *right now*. Can’t wait for scilla and magnolias! <3
We've still got heaps of meat in the freezer – more due my lack of forethought when it comes to thawing the stuff out than anything else. We're doing fish with last summer's tomato-peach salsa tonight (with rice).
I'm experimenting with making Kefir! 😀 Mesophilic cultured dairy is the BEST THING EVER because it actually seems to work. (I haven't had a lot of luck with thermophilic yoghurt in the past, so something I can literally just forget about on the counter for 2-3 days, and they strain through a mash bag is… magnificent. I want to try some thicker mesophilic cultures like matsoni and filmjolk and see how they turn out but, for now, this is AWESOME).