Author Archives: Pamela

All my tomatillos are volunteers. Mom gave me actual tomatillos a number of years ago and I didn’t use them all and composted some and I’ve had them ever since. I yanked out tons of plants at the beginning of the summer. They love my garden.

No acorn squash volunteers this year. Last year I had a bunch.

I’ve got lots of pumpkin vines but few pumpkins. The ones that form have gone rotten. Except for this random one that’s climbed up into the middle of the sunflowers and is floating there. We’ll see how that works out.

The Roma tomato has about 12 greenies on it. I have a volunteer tomato that has a few green ones, too. The other two have lots of flowers but don’t look promising for putting out anytime soon. The cucumber vines are going nuts but I don’t see anything that looks like it’s going to make a cucumber.

This has is a sad year for gardening.

Seattle Art Museum

Bob and I went to Seattle for a quick trip. The main excuse was to cash-in our long-standing date to see the Seattle Sounders with Hannah and Andy. Remember Motel Doom? We were supposed to go to soccer that trip but sadly had to be giant flakes.

But we love Seattle so while we were there we did a combination of museums and visiting friends. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Seattle so besieged by tourists. There were herds of them in Pioneer Square and duck boats driving by every 10 minutes. And lots of tourists in the museums as well.

The weather was grey with a driving mist. We had rain jackets and I wore fleece.

The Seattle Art Museum had a really lame Kurt Cobain exhibit which was basically a heavy-handed attempt to get young people into the museum. Other than a few interesting photos it was all landfill.

The Andy Warhol and Imogen Cunningham exhibits made up for it.

The Sounders game was super fun. Especially since I hadn’t seen a soccer game in about three weeks. I love going to the stadium and all the hoo-haw. There was a brass band and all kinds of food. You could get your face painted with glitter and/or green in your hair. Turns out that color isn’t called booger. It’s called “rave green.” They have garlic fries at the stadium. I wish I’d known and I would have insisted we eat dinner there.

Sounders won. Two awesome goals. Great trip.

We just got back from a quick trip to Seattle. I’m super tired but more to come.

We met Caren for lunch. We ended up going to daiso where among many treasures, I bought this snack food.

Remember my Nutella snack food product in Germany?

This was almost as good, however, the stick to chocolate ratio was wanting.

These are the sticks. I’d already eaten a few before I realized they each carried a message.

I also took a photo of the ingredients which came out blurry but it says, “Does not contain pig fat.”

Good to know!

This is Toes. I couldn’t get a good picture of his feet but he has 6 toes on each foot. He’s the new next door cat and he likes to hang out in our yard. He’s very friendly and I like him a lot except he poops in my yard, even when I’m standing right there yelling: Hey! Do I poop in your yard?

There’s a hazelnut tree between the two houses and at this time of year there is a frenzy of squirrel activity. They are so excited about hazelnuts that they have zero fear of me which really freaks me out. I’ll be standing on the deck adjusting the hose and one will tiptoe by with a giant wad of hazelnuts in his mouth.

I watched Toes and a squirrel nose to nose. Toes stared at the squirrel and the squirrel fearlessly gnawed on his hazelnuts. “Eat him,” I shouted. I don’t like squirrels.

Toes’ owner told me that Toes had tangled with a squirrel before and the teeth and claws convinced him to have more peaceful ways.

My Romas. You think anything will be ready before summer ends?

This week I decided to try a new thing for lunch every day.

On Monday I had a grilled vegetable sandwich.

On Tuesday I had Korean Twist tacos.

Today I had a big a** sandwich.

Menu: Big A** Sandwiches

Since I started writing this post I lost the ability to spell sandwich. Everything looks wrong. Sanwich? Sandwiche?

When we ordered we were warned that a “handful” of fries would be on the actual sandwich.

We were also advised to “eat like a burrito, if you try to unwrap it, it will just explode everywhere.”

We had to unwrap it and then re-wrap like a burrito.

I got the roast turkey and I ate half and then faded. I wrapped in plastic and put in the work fridge. I’m not sure how good a cold turkey and fries sandwich is going to be tomorrow plus it will ruin my vow to try something new every day. But I’m also thrifty and I can’t bear to throw away a half ton of roast turkey on a cibatta with fries actually on the sandwich.

Molded Foods! Turns out these little things are refreshing and not too sweet. Another 20 servings remain! Probably not my favorite dessert but I would try it again. Especially since I still have an extra box of lime Jello from when I had my colonoscopy. Why didn’t we use the cranberry Jello we already had? You can’t eat red or purple things before a colonoscopy. That’s today’s public service announcement.

I feel like I need to set an entire day aside just for fixing things. There are so many chores around here. I need to clean out the shop and try to put a shelf back up. Did I write about that earlier? I can’t remember and I’m too lazy to look it up. This shelf that held a ton of stuff fell down. I’m sure the two are not related. And I need to fix the window shade in my room and fix the window sill that’s all warped paint from before when the window was leaky.

I always think I’m going to do those things but end up writing all day or doing writing related stuff and then never getting around to it.

But I hate to set a day aside because remember the home improvement project? I won’t get everything done and then I’ll be frustrated that I wasted a whole day and still had stupid projects that weren’t done.

I bought peaches to make a pie but they’re too hard for pie making. Now they’re going to be ready on Wednesday and while it’s within the realm of possibility for me to make a pie on a weeknight, it’s really not my favorite project to tackle.

This happens to me with pears, too. I buy them for a recipe I would be willing to try on the weekend but they’re not ready. And when they are ready I’m too busy and then the following weekend they are mush.

When we moved out of our apartment because we bought a house, I took it upon myself to dig up some of the iris at the apartment. No one paid any attention to them and there were plenty there.

I planted them in our backyard and the patch has spread but lately has been looking pretty pathetic. I’ve helpfully outlined it for you in yellow but when I cropped the photo sort-of ruined it. There are some bare patches and it’s tough to weed. Some were growing under the water feature (means=old stinky birdbath) and the rhodie.

I remember I dug some several years ago and started a new patch across the yard. I decided to go ahead and dig the whole patch up, thin it out, condense it and amend the soil a bit.

What was I thinking. See that tiny bit that’s dug up? That took an hour and I was completely bored after 20 minutes. It’s terrible dirty work. And now I have this giant mound of bulbs that I just threw in the shade. I can’t remember what the wiki said but I don’t think you’re supposed to let them sit around for a week which is what I’m doing because I am out of time for this weekend.

Today we picked up our (cover your eyes Keetha) salmon from Salmon Guy. He did some work on our house and we got on his mailing list. Every summer he goes up to Alaska and fishes. Then he brings home the goodies and we have salmon for months.

4496 words this week. I finished a story. I didn’t submit it yet but will do so next week. I made all my writing goals and exceeded my money raising goals.

I think I’ve thanked everyone but HUGE! thanks again for supporting Clarion West. If you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket and somehow managed to miss all my many informational posts on the matter, drop me a line and I will make sure you are parted with your money and Clarion West benefits.

Meanwhile, Innsmouth Free Press has posted a micro-interview with me to accompany my story Estelle Makes the Casino Run.

This is only a fraction of my mold collection. I’ve got Christmas tree molds and wreath molds. If you need to borrow some molds, get in touch with me.

Remember when I was going to do molded foods?

I know, it was a pretty brief project. It was more fun planning it than actually doing it.

Last week, I started a project to de-clutter my kitchen cupboards and within the first 3 minutes found this box of Cranberry Jello from when I was sick one time. And I remembered molded foods and quickly abandoned the de-clutter project in order to research the molded foods project.

Look at this article about Jello molded foods.

I decided my creative masterpiece would have berries and then a second layer of coconut milk.

Here are my assembled goods. See that bowl in the back with name? That has nothing to do with the molds. I bought chocolates but since Bob is a choco-fiend and I like to take my time, I divided the bag into 2 bowls and labeled mine. Then I ate half the bowl so Bob better watch out.

The molded foods aren’t ready to be unmolded yet so you’ll have to be in suspense until tomorrow.

The first thing I learned is that I made a s#*t-pile of molded food. I didn’t fully understand how much this was going to make. How much Jello are two people going to eat? I’m thinking one serving each and we’ll be just fine.

And it’s not like pie. If you tell your friend, “Oh, I made too much pie” that person will be at your front door 15 minutes later. If you tell someone you made too much Jello, they’re going say, “You’re kidding me, right?”

The second thing I learned is that it takes a lot of babysitting. I didn’t know how long it would take the first layer to firm up so I was checking it every 15 minutes. If you try this at home, you’ve got at least 90 minutes. Then the Jello will be syrupy and ready for the berries. I think the coconut layer is a disaster but we shall see. You don’t know if you don’t try.

I couldn’t feed my sourdough last weekend because my kitchen scale died and I’m not sure about the proportions without it. I don’t understand why it didn’t warn me its batteries were low. I took the batteries out and wrote down all the information: “look like big nickels.”

Tonight at the grocery store it took forever to find them.

I didn’t realize I needed the kind for “utiliser dans.”

Bread making returns this weekend.

This was a surprise I found out in the garden. The potato, not the Ewok. The Ewok is there for perspective.

It was in a spot where I did not plant potatoes and did not spread compost. In fact, until very recently it wasn’t even garden.

What do you think? Squirrels did it?

I’ll probably make a potato salad this weekend. I harvested a bunch of other potatoes in an area where I planted potatoes on purpose. Actually what happened was I had a bunch of old grotty ones in the vegetable bin and was tired of looking at them so I ran out in the rain and threw them in the ground. And they magically transformed into new potatoes.

At some point earlier this year I bought either Triscuits or Wheat Thins for the snack area at the office. I think it was Wheat Thins. There were some seeds included in the packaging.

“What a stupid promotion,” I thought. But then I saved them and they sat on the counter forever and then I threw them in this pot one day, fully expecting that nothing would happen.

It’s supposed to be basil. They’re so tiny seems doubtful they will grow into anything useful before it gets cold. We shall see.

The pumpkins keep bursting out of the ground. I put a ton of seeds in thinking most wouldn’t sprout and they took so long I thought I was right. But now that the ground is warm they just keep coming. I had to thin them out once already.

Also, I’m thinking about canning peaches. I’m sure I would hate it while doing it but Bob and I eat tons of canned peaches during winter, might as well make my own. I have the jars and canning equipment. I’m still trying to talk myself into it.

Crepes! (Hi Barb and Nell – the two people on the far right).

This morning we met Erin and her friends at the Farmer’s Market at PSU. I very rarely go to this one so I don’t know all the food vendors.

Turns out it was hard to choose: biscuits and gravy; pizza; curries; organic oatmeal with dried cranberries and raisins (you may be sneering but I happen to love oatmeal); breakfast burritos; crepes plus the tamales and spicy sausages that we have at the Wednesday Farmer’s Market downtown. Plus several baked goods proprietors.

I finally picked crepes: the Don Juan which is mozzarella cheese, bacon and caramelized onion. She asked if I wanted natural or buckwheat.

I said: what do you suggest?

She thought buckwheat might be a little intense if I’d never had it before.

“Don’t experiment with your breakfast,” glasses guy in the photo above advised.

Delicious. After I ate it I wished I was still hungry so I could try something else.

Clarion West Write-A-Thon Update Week #5

3820 words for this week, some of them good. I have a story almost ready to be submitted and I will try to do that before the Week #6 update.

Feeling left out and wishing you could donate? All the cool kids are doing it.

There’s info about the Write-A-Thon here and my donation sponsor page here.