some words

I found my mp3 player finally. It was in a jar where i keep pens and stuff. It's rainy but i still wanted to go running. I made a playlist where the songs are right about the length i'm supposed to be running/walking so i didn't need to use a stopwatch. With lines like "slow down, please slow down" and "do not run," some of the songs may not have been the best choices. But "Toxic" was a very good choice; it got me through the last three minutes, probably going too fast, maybe forgetting to breathe.

Gramma is mad at me. She thinks other people live here and is always wondering where they are. When i tell her we're the only people here, she thinks i'm lying to her and that "we" are trying to pull something on her. She gets very suspicious of me. She's suspicious about the real reason i went running, etc.

Today i made green curry coconut milk with potatoes, eggplant, peas, onions, and a little carrot. It's not a very photogenic dish, at least not this time. It tastes pretty good but needs a little more flavor. Maybe more potato (somehow that would give more flavor??). And maybe the eggplant could be put to better use. I'm not very good with eggplant. Not yet.

last weekend

broccoli with peanut sauce was so good! maybe because i was pretty hungry when i ate it?

this is the rest of dinner... squash with goat cheese, corn, curry radishes, carrots (afrique du nord or something), and apple and cucumbers and carrot salad.

marshmallows in black coffee!!

I finally bought some coffee to make at home! I bought it from work for convenience. I thought it might be better if i made it at home, but it still tastes funny. HOWEVER putting marshmallows in coffee is a great idea! I'm very happy with it.

It was rainy this morning but i went to the farmer's market. Since it's October (and i guess i only blog in the fall) i thought i should buy a great deal of apples. They didn't all fit in the bowl.

And as planned i got some vegetables. Beets, a couple squashes, white corn (Farmer Jay said it was the best corn i'd ever taste), an eggplant and some carrots. I spent the rest of the morning reading through the huge stack of vegetable cookbooks i got from the library this week and i now have plans for most of the produce. Besides soups i never really had a good idea of what to do with vegetables, but in Japan we ate them in so many ways... so i've decided to learn some new things.

I can't remember what kind of squash this is. I want kabocha but i haven't seen it anywhere this year.

recipes for instruction in domestic science

one of my grandmother's school books...i found it in the utility room cabinet yesterday shelved next to the laundry detergent. copyright 1935.

 

beverages

 

eggs

 

flour/leavening

 

sandwiches/invalid cooking

enjoying spring

i really enjoyed doing laundry this week! everything smelled so good.

Grandma turned 87 yesterday

my little garden! there are seedlings coming up...i'm so excited! spinach and lettuce and some things i've already forgotten what it was i planted...

tea talk

The last two days i've been trying to drink as much green tea as i can stand.  It's the most ideal springtime beverage that i've thought of so far.  The weather is not really hot enough for iced tea yet (though tomorrow it might be!), and coffee is so perfect in autumn and winter.  Even the flavors used in coffee are really rich, cold weather foods...hazelnut, vanilla, cocoa.  Hot green tea is warming but refreshing too, i think.  At work we have 3 different green teas, but i pretty much always drink the sencha.  I'm a little sick of it but i don't really like the other ones we have... too fruity.  

On another topic i hate flying ants.

wrote last week

I get bored sometimes but my life really is a bit like a fairy tale.  At the moment, it's somewhere before or after the once-upon-a-time part i guess, where nothing really is happening.  The old Grandmother.  The tiny house, the tall trees.  

Lately there are lilacs, larkspur, and violets blooming.

Today Grandma agreed to go along to the grocery store with me, as long as she could stay in the car.  It was a gorgeous day; she said the sun was "horrible," so i gave her my sunglasses.  It was hard not to giggle when i looked at her, with her little daisy barette and big pink heart-shaped sunglasses.  She looked kind of fabulous actually.

enchanted gumball forest

Besides being featured in someone's etsy treasury, i guess the most interesting thing that has happened today was when one of my customers let me try some "raw" milk.  She said you have to buy a cow share to get it.  It tasted just like milk, but kind of really delicious.  

A lot of gumball machines have suddenly appeared at my work.  Actually, that sounds cute, doesn't it?

It's a beautiful day after the noisy thunderstorms last night.  Those were nice too.  What's not nice is that airfare to Japan in September has jumped about $200 since last week.  

how nice

balloon treasury

the great alaskan latte

I was thinking how odd that the moments in my life that now seem to belong to stories are not always the moments that felt straight out of a novel at the time.  For example, a particularly adventurous weekend in Chicago when i was a college freshmen seems very difficult to write down without sounding ridiculous, unbelievable.  I've generally never written anything inspired by any of my time overseas.  But the very boring days at the coffee shop in Alaska are super easy to write about. Maybe because it was a coffee shop/car wash.  That guy my own age who had already been married, divorced, and was now dating his ex-wife.  The other customer (as in, 2 of 2) who always talked to me about baseball for some reason... specifically the Detroit Tigers if i remember right.  And that's pretty much all there is to draw on, but it seems like plenty.  

I was also thinking about how the views from my various workplaces get so etched in my mind.  The very lovely house/law offices across the street from the dry cleaners where i had my first job.  An Arby's.  Fred Meyer (and an awareness of mountains to my left).  Some nice tall trees above the houses along Joy Road and the sushi chef who would back and forth in front of them several times a day.  The hill and a decrepit set of stairs leading up to east campus.    Now a Sunoco and a church steeple and whatever weather happens to be on its way here.  

violet season

I love the violets that are blooming in the backyard.  On Thursday i went out and picked a whole bunch to put in little vases around the house.  Now there are probably 3 or 4 times as many growing...although this thunderstorm is probably washing all the purple out of them.  I also made some tea (but forgot about it in my baking frenzy) and tried to make candy violets again, but actually forgot about those too.  They kind of just turned into overcooked sugar with little bits of spoiled plant material inside.

But i tried several recipes from Harumi Kurihara's cookbook (which i drove all the way to the OTHER library -- like 2 miles further away -- to get).  The recipes were quite delicious.  I don't know how long Gramma will put up with Japanese style food, though.  

She also had a recipe for cream cheese muffins, made in the microwave.  I never dreamed i'd try a baking recipe made in the microwave, but i was intrigued by their apperance.  And actually they were pretty good, though i didn't have any baking powder so i used baking soda and substituted brown sugar for white... but i'm not sure it was any easier than baking them in a regular oven.  

Later i decided to make a loaf of bread, which i am very happy with.  I finally figured out the reason i burn everything in Gramma's oven.  It's just too hot.  If i set it to 350, it's really more like 400.  And the very simple solution is that i just set it to a lower temperature.  I can't believe it took so long to figure that out.... but i did, and now i can make a gorgeous loaf of bread.  Now i might try melonpan again!

Today i just made salad.  Little brownies with ice cream for dessert; i brought a couple home from work, since mysterious no one bought a single one this week.  Too small maybe?  But they were much cuter.

"cute and pop"

eico hanamura

i like that the artist seems to have pink hair.

if there's anything mysterious or adventurous...

Last week Hannah and i were walking through the old village and discovered a wonderful shop front.  It's quite decrepit but that's part of the wonder.  We thought we should open a something there.  The windows are covered so i have no idea what's going on in there, besides christmas lights.  

I saw the monestary in the distance on the way there, and thought our days would be more fun if we spent more time in good places, like monestaries and the strange streets of town.  

But i'm afraid our admiring of our little shop front was cut short when i spotted a machine in a nearby shop's window with the words "photo" and "sticker" on it.  It was a very thrilling discovery hidden by a giant moose mural, but alas it ended up the way discoveries of this nature often end in this part of the world.  The sticker picture machine was out of paper and nobody could do anything about it. 

sunny monday

Today we went to "Pita Cafe!" It was yummy... i stil feel garlicky though.  That carrot smoothie looks really good now!  I just ate my leftover chinese noodles from lunch with Laura yesterday and they made me thirsty.

I got some fancy printer paper today and printed out some more notebook covers.  It really makes a big difference.

I also got some ribbon and bracelet clasps and voila!  Jewelry..ish.  

So armed robbery at Farmington Hills Target?  Then i guess i'll stick with Wonderland.

Oh wait, they said the same thing just happend at my Meijer.  Oh well.

And to Hannah:  if you still have tons of pellegrino bottles sitting around your room, i think you sould put a flower in each one of them and tie a ribbon around it.

I got a new bar of LUSH shampoo today, and some Angels on Bare Skin.  I look forward to my shower!

make stuff

Hannah and i have been trying to make notebooks.  Once the ink-wearing-off thing is solved, i think it will be a success.  I was surprised at how many useful photos i had for this project.  All of those pictures of food are finally coming in handy!

it's not the blog, it's the world

Last night i was looking at the poupeegirl jiten.  I wanted to figure out which style suited me most, but i can't really read the descriptions.  So i looked around and found a translation!  So i'm definitely not a pop gal girl, a cool girl, or a love celeb girl.  Not much of a mode girl or a high brand girl either. So i'd say i'm a combination of the rest of them.  Sweet girl, natural girl, "mote" girl (what is mote anyway?) , maybe a little sometimes street casual girl, and a bit "romantic rock" girl, although neither the most romantic nor the most rock styles appeal to me very much.

Hannah's mom gave me some strawberries today and i have eaten them all.  They were so delicious.