happy birthday to me

Good and quiet.  Highlight of this weekend was finding a lovely Middle Eastern grocer where I stocked up on spices (so in love with their  ras el hanout) and finally got my hands on a bag of split urad dal and curry leaves.  I see quite a bit of curries in our future.      Awesome Husband also went a bit crazy at the Bavarian shop where he picked up some amazing sausages.  

Early birthday present was a real set of knives.  I've been wanting a proper chef knife forever but sort of intimidated.  Today I found myself with a  Wusthof chef knife, paring knife, and bread knife.  It's like a whole new world just opened up to me.  How many years have I spent just mashing and grinding things thinking I was cutting them?  Who knew you could apply like almost zero pressure to soft bread or tomatoes and slice them so thin it was sheer????   I'm going to have to take a class on proper knife skills.  And get a proper prep table that is the right height I need to properly cut if I am not wearing stripper shoes.  (yes. stripper shoes.  they are clear  with a big ole' platform and 6" heels that I wear in my kitchen so I am tall enough to actually prep food at a reasonable height.  when I have my own house I will lower all the counters to midget height.)

Tomorrow I'm planning on clearing the rest of the garden.  Perhaps the green cover crop was a bad idea. I don't know why I didn't think about how long it would take for it to all break down.  Last week I've put in 75 strawberry plants (which I may never enjoy), 16 head of lettuce, a ton of carrots,  snap peas, radishes, spinach, baby bok choy.  

 I'm starting the summer and winter squashes and cucumbers from seed tomorrow the potatoes started.  I'll just buy tomato and pepper starts :/ It's waaaayyy too late.   I'm thinking of really digging down the cover crop so I can start planting root crops in the next week or 2.  First sewing of beans will go in this week to see what happens.  I sort of want to dedicate a little section to dried beans. I've got some areas that I might as well see what happens.  I don't imagine I'll yield a lot, but it will be interesting to see what happens and just how it works.

Friday is Seattle Chinese Orchestra for my birthday. So excited.  For almost 20 years I've been going to swing events--but this year, it was Count Basie Orchestra again (nothing against saying "again" as it is always a treat) but I wanted something different this year. Can. Not. Wait.

Other things? Maybe for a later posting. or not.  Hoping to start volunteering next month.  Have to finish my BMT course in the next few weeks (that I have ignored).  Still trying to figure out what to do as a grown up. Sure, it's only been a few weeks since I've been licensed again, but I need to figure out what to do with it. 

 Still totally disinterested in pharma studies.