purplewiz

My inlaws were supposed to be visiting for lunch, but their travel plans changed. My husband's afternoon appointment was canceled. I'm ahead of schedule on my project. And the afternoon thunderstorms started threatening about 11:30 so the deck still isn't stained. Faced with an unexpectedly free afternoon, I turned to Jim and said, "want to have a food adventure?" "Sure!", he said. Taking cues from the kind folks posting here, GourmetLight$'s comment reminded me of all the restaurants I haven't yet tried. And since I had the Gazette's Best Of The Springs section in front of me, it wasn't hard to find somewhere to go for lunch. Not to mention that I hadn't yet fulfilled my resolution to try one new restaurant a month this month. Then Genny's comment reminded me that I had been lazy and not visited the south Par Avion gourmet shop. It sounded like a day out to me! Lunch was at Walter's Bistro, chosen not only because I had heard good things about it, but also because it was close to Par Avion. The online menu is a little out of date, but the food was wonderful. I chose the ham and cheese quiche with a salad: and Jim had the Ahi tuna sandwich (with lemon aioli): For dessert, I was looking at the triple chocolate mousse cake (because I am an inveterate chocoholic), but the server convinced us to order the strawberry shortcake: He was right. The shortcake was light and fluffy, but still managed to retain the essential solidity of a shortcake. If this wasn't the best shortcake I'd ever had, it's in the top five. After lunch, we took a quick trip down the road to Par Avion. There was method in this madness, as I hadn't planned anything for dinner tonight, I was just going to wing it. I apologize that there are no outside pictures of the store, but we happened to be shopping there during the afternoon thunderstorm, and while there are quite a number of things I will do in support of the blog, standing out in the rain isn't one of them. Sadly, many of my inside pictures didn't turn out well either. It's partially the new camera, partially the photographer. I picked up a bunch of goodies, most of which were featured in dinner tonight. I thought one item would go well on endive, so I dropped by the local King Sooper (part of the Kroger's chain) to get some. You'd think with a produce section this big: they'd have some. Nope. No endive. So I had to improvise. My snack this afternoon consisted of taste testing the items we bought (well, I had to make sure they were good before cooking with them, didn't I?), the last of the bison jerky, and this: Diet Vanilla Coke. Yes, it's been discontinued for months. Thanks to eGullet and this thread, I started stocking up on it as soon as I knew, and had amassed quite a stockpile before they stopped selling it around here. We're down to our last couple of cases and I am going to miss it. Marcia.

Thai Beef Salad. It goes by different names at different Thai restaurants, but it's sliced beef, tomatoes, cucumbers, some kind of onions, and an in your face dressing of lime, fish sauce, sugar, hot peppers, garlic and ginger. I love it so much that when our local wonderful Thai place went under I spent a considerable amount of time researching recipes and balancing amounts to get it just right. Wilted lettuce is right up there. Marcia.

Here's the promised side view of the raised bed: You can see the landscape slopes away, so we built up the bottom of bed on the left. The inside is lined with bricks, and then the outside was lovingly cemented . There are two drainage pipes at the bottom of the left side in case the bed ever gets completely soaked. The plants in the left half of the bed - the zucchini and cucumbers - are those which are here for the season. Most of the plants on the right half - the greens and cilantro - will be done in another month or two, and I'll plant a second crop. The second crop never does as well as the first because the later summer months are usually hotter and drier. The exception on the right is the green onions, which are slow growers, and actually overwinter well when they aren't eaten during the winter, which happened last winter. Hungry deer will eat ANYTHING, even things they don't normally go near like onions and marigolds. There is no such thing as deer-proof, only deer-resistant. They'll even eat the hairy zucchini leaves if there aren't other plants around, but they really don't like them very much. I have two other garden beds. One is a flower bed with alyssum and dahlias, both of which deer don't like. However, I have a sneaking suspicion the rabbits love the dahlia shoots, because they should be up by now and they aren't. I've over-seeded the bed with nasturtiums (hooray for edible flowers) and snapdragons, and hope they'll do something. The other is my low water use bed, and it's the only bed not drip irrigated. The thyme, sage, and lavender grow there, with irises, dianthus, and "hen and chicks" (I don't know the official name), and the chives are trying to take over. Unfortunately, one thyme plant didn't make it over the winter and the other is doing most poorly. I used to garden yet another bed where I grow carrots and dahlias. I'm giving up this bed for several reasons, which boil down to time and not having to preserve it will make our summer relandscaping project an order of magnitude easier. All of my beds except the raised bed are "mixed use": flowers and vegetables grown together. It's another deer prevention method: don't put too much of the good stuff in one place, make it difficult to find, and it's likely some of it will survive to harvest. Even the raised bed has the tender lettuces nestled in between the unpalatable green onions and cilantro. Marcia.

I'm guessing you're in the Briargate area? We're across the highway to the west. For those not local, Briargate is roughly the northeast quadrant of Colorado Springs. It used to be a smallish area, but as development continues to grow north and east, the area referred to as Briargate grows. There are subareas like Nor'wood, but no one knows where they are, and it's still all referred to as Briargate. Sure, I'd be glad to talk about it further in PMs. I generally don't talk about all these changes in public because most diet talk bores people to tears. One of my own principles I set down when we started was that I was NOT going to be one of those people who shared their obsessions with anyone within earshot because I know they're not interested! I don't have any issues talking with people who are, though. My earlier posting is the very first time I've ever written about this in a public place, and it still feels a little awkward. Marcia.

Yes, I snack ! One of the many components of this plan is not to let myself get too hungry, because when your body gets hungry it goes into panic mode and starts wanting to store food for the lean times. And in my own case, it means I eat without thinking rather than eating what I really want. I haven't snacked much in the last two days mostly due to being too busy to think about it! If my body was really wanting to eat it would have let me know in no uncertain terms no matter how busy I was, so I'm not worrying about it. Snacks tend to be high protein or balanced like a meal. Ok, now I remembered the bison jerky and am nibbling on a piece! Smoky chewy goodness. I've also been consciously working to "eat clean" this week because Saturday is our friends' house party. We KNOW we're going to be overdoing it there. I've found from experience that while I can't exactly bank carbs for an overindulgence later, if I take it easy on the carbs when I know there's going to be a splurge, my body is able to handle it a lot better. If baking is a science at sea level, it's an art form here. The newspaper prints the standard adjustments for recipes every week in the Wednesday food section, but they're only a place to start. My experience is that takes some experimentation to tweak each recipe. Cookies and brownies generally don't need any adjusting, unless you haven't kept your flour in a sealed container. Then they'll need a tbsp or two of water or some other liquid because like everything else, flour dries out here. Cakes and quick breads can require anything from just throwing in an extra egg to a complete revamp. When I first tried my favorite Bisquick banana bread recipe as is it rose up way too high, spilled over the sides, and collapsed. It was tasty but ugly . Then I tried the recommended high altitude adjustments in the book. That was worse - it was a gooey, sodden mess that also spilled all over the oven. I finally ended up just working through the recipe and making changes to solve the issues I had observed. My own altered recipe worked the best! If you travel out here and go to the top of Pikes Peak, they sell doughnuts at the top made from a recipe that only works at 14,000 feet. Due to our eating plan I don't bake much, but I will be baking brownies for Saturday's party. I will get one, and the rest will be taken care of by others. Marcia.

Good Morning! Breakfast was, predictably, the same cereal and cottage cheese. I'm a creature of habit. The only difference is that I added some toasted onion powder to the cottage cheese for a more savory taste. Once the onion powder was mixed in to the cottage cheese it looked just like plain, so it wasn't worth taking a picture of. I really like cottage cheese - I even like it as an omelet filling with chopped green onions. Here's today's coffee: Through the years I've managed to amass quite a collection of coffee mugs. I've bought very few myself; they've been personal or corporate gifts or freebies at technical shows. Even though I prune the collection regularly they still take up two shelves. This mug is very special to me because it was a gift from a friend my junior year of high school. It's moved with me for all these years; my friend's kids are now about the age she was when she gave it to me! The other side of the mug says "Santa's Back". Thanks so much - it was great to follow along with your blog and see that even though you and I follow different eating plans (because we have different needs!), the basic sanity shines through. What the masses want is an instant cure with no change (because change is, by its very nature, difficult and painful), and the diet industry is happy to sell it to them. They forget that the diet industry doesn't care if they lose weight or gain weight or are healthy or not, all the diet industry wants is their money. I'm with you - they're a scourge upon the planet but apparently they fulfill someone's need. We've been here for about 10 years, and while things are better, it's two steps forward, one step back. I'm glad to hear someone else say this, though - sometimes I wonder if I'm just being too picky! I'm afraid my experience at Gunther Toodies was not as good as yours - I only ate there once, but the meal was so bad that we never returned. Maybe we just hit them on a bad day, because they've since opened yet another location out at Powers and Woodmen. Believe it or not, I haven't yet gone to Par Avion down south. We used to have the other Par Avion up north on Barnes, which was sold and turned into The Gourmet Pantry, which then closed; and we also had Cunningham's, which is also now closed. I simple didn't need to . But I have a feeling that's going to change very soon! Thanks so much for saying this - people don't believe me when they ask for good local restaurants and I tell them most of best local places are chains! In fact, several of the outlets here are beta test restaurants where they roll out anticipated menu and decor changes to see how they fly before making the changes chain-wide. Colorado Springs LOVES its chains. I have this year's "Best of the Springs" from the local newspaper in front of me. Most of the Reader's Picks in the restaurant categories are chains. They voted the local Rock Bottom Brewery as the best new restaurant; the Elephant Bar won that category some years back (and I think it won a second year even though it wasn't so new by then). To be fair, most of the newspaper staff's picks are local places. We're working our way through them. I do agree with your Mom; it just doesn't pay to get attached to local places. We lost the extraordinary Royal Thai a couple years ago (and I'm still sad about it), and even Mayfield's, that bastion of better dinner that had been around forever went out of business a year or so ago. Here's the Sandwich Sprinkle page from Penzey's (I don't work for them, I just spend a lot of money there!) with ingredients. Thanks for the pointer on the Lemon & Dill - that sounds like it would be wonderful over green beans. I'm with you on the Hellman's/Best Foods mayo! I'm not sure where the geographic dividing line for the two names is; our grocery stores carries both. I buy whichever is on sale and I have a coupon for! Yes, Joann has it right: it's our paper shredder. By putting it in a prominent location we tend to keep up with the shredding which helps the clutter and paper accumulation problems. Marcia.

A quick picture of the kitchen: It's reasonably sized, but even for being as large as it is it's really not set up for two people to cook simultaneously. The work triangle is all behind the island and the pantry is off to the left, so if there are two people around, we're constantly tripping over each other. I'm afraid this is the way the kitchen really looks from day to day. It's ripe for a remodel, but that's not going to be happening, and a remodel wouldn't help the clutter issue. What's great is that the kitchen does have a great deal of storage area. In addition to the cabinets there's the pantry: The pantry looks more full than it is. All the items on the shelves are towards the front, and if I gave everything a good shove towards the back the shelves would probably be about half full. The spice cabinet. The deep freeze, out in the garage. I usually spend it down during the summer and restock for winter, but it's pretty full because Safeway had a spectacular meat sale a couple weeks ago. There's also one more pantry out in the laundry room that I use for bulk food/soda storage, cooking equipment storage, and general stuff storage. It's a junk closet, basically. And our cats: Oreo.... ...and Abbey. Oreo weighs about 17 lbs, Abbey about 10 lbs, and that's about right for each of them. Neither of them are "food cats": they like their treats, and Oreo is especially fond of cheese and has been known to steal bacon bits off salads that have been left unattended on the kitchen table, but neither of them are obnoxious or persistent about it. It makes for a more pleasant dinner time . Tonight's tea is Celestial Seasonings Sweet Coconut Thai Chai. It has some flavors reminiscent of Thai iced tea. The mugs are from the Fat Beagle pottery in North Carolina. Marcia.

Tonight's dinner: Deconstructed chicken paprikash: chicken breasts seasoned with salt and pepper, then liberally coated with exquisite grade Hungarian paprika and smoked Spanish paprika, drizzled with olive oil, then grilled. Topped with caramelized onions and a dollop of sour cream, garnished with chive sticks and a chive flower. Sides were grilled zucchini sticks seasoned with Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle (it works magic on zucchini) and a chopped vegetable salad of cucumbers, celery, green onions, tomato, and cheese crumbles dressed with a traditional vinaigrette. (Side note: I love terms like "deconstructed" - it makes straightforward dishes sound so complicated and sophisticated!) A great deal of today's cooking activities involved spilled liquids of various sorts topped by a thunderstorm which started just as I went to put the chicken on the grill and ended just about as we sat down to dinner, dessert was the usual square of chocolate and this: which we sipped out on the deck watching the sun set between showers. The lawn and the garden will be happy. Marcia.

I'd like to second this. Or you could end up with an 18 lb block of ice that used to be a turkey three years ago sitting at the bottom. Don't ask how I know. Marcia.

That is truly a thing of beauty. My mouth is watering! Marcia.

One of the many things I didn't get done yesterday was hard boil (hard cook) some eggs for snacks and lunches. I have a lot of eggs right now because they were on sale for $0.34 USD a dozen last week at SuperTarget: The red thing in the water with the eggs is an egg timer. One of issues of cooking here is altitude. We're at roughly 6500 ft. above sea level, which means water boils at roughly 198F. (It changes a degree or two based on weather/air pressure.) This means that the rules about timing eggs that work so well at sea level don't work here - a three minute egg is raw. I really like this timer for boiling eggs - it is roughly egg sized and shape, and as the heat penetrates it, it turns dark. There are lines for soft, medium, and hard boiled eggs, and while it takes a little calibration to determine if you want to stop the cooking when the color reaches the line or a little before or afterwards, after that it works wonderfully. When the eggs are cooked through, it looks like this: After bringing the water to the boil, I've found that I can't take them completely off the heat because the pot cools down too much. I leave them on the burner turned all the way down as low as it will go. One of those eggs was featured in lunch: I love egg salad (egg, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper) on rice cakes. Rice cakes are all about texture, I love the contrast of the creamy egg salad with the cripsy rice. It's also really good topped with a slice of fresh tomato and slices of fresh avocado, which I'd've used if I had any. I also ate a piece of cheese because I was still hungry, and figured I didn't need to take a picture of it . Another issue of altitude is dehydration. The air here holds less water, so 12% humidity here is a lot less damp than 12% humidity at sea level. I am always carrying around a glass of something to drink: It goes with me everywhere during the day, and I fill it multiple times. This is iced tea, but I've since switched to ice water. We always carry at least two bottles of water in the car no matter where we're going because dehydration can sneak up on you. Marcia. edited because when you leave out words you also leave out meaning

Catching up with comments: Thanks the good wishes - so far, so good. I had had my old camera for about five years, and I'm sorry to see it go because we've been through a lot together, but my goodness, technology HAS marched on in the meantime! I looked up square foot gardening since I wasn't sure about all the concepts, and I guess this is somewhat similar. The soil around here is very poor - it's either sand or impenetrable clay - and vegetables need a much richer mix. Our yard is also sloped, which makes it difficult to keep soils and water in place. A raised bed made sense to contain the improved/enriched soil. The soil level drops about 6" - 8" by the end of gardening season because the plants use it up. I'll try to take a picture from the side for another view. The raised bed also has the advantage that the rabbits haven't climbed up into it yet. It probably makes them feel too exposed. The deer, however, have no issues walking right through it. I use pretty much any sauce/seasoning I'd serve with beef. Red wine or brandy and shallot reduction sauces, compound butters, peppercorn sauce, it all works well to my palate. I'd also like to try a balsamic reduction sometime because while bison is very similar in flavor to beef, there is a unique flavor component that is subtle and hard for me to describe but which would seem to go well with a slightly sweeter sauce. Thanks for the compliment, but I'd be a terrible diet book writer. I couldn't tell people that I had a magic plan that would solve all their ills which wouldn't require any change to make it work and keep a straight face. If I ever did write a book (who knows? weirder things have happened), it would have to be more along the lines of a memoir or maybe an exploration into the philosophy of it all. I live in the north end of town, so many of my favorite places are, sadly, chains. The local dining scene up here has been grim, but it's slowly and steadily getting better. Pueblo Viejo seems to be making a go of it in a doomed location - it's mixed Mexican, but they make an absolutely killer Chile Colorado burrito. The Pork Chile Verde burrito is also excellent. Lemongrass Bistro is Vietnamese with some Chinese, and if I remember the report correctly from the newspaper, it's run by the person who used to run Saigon Springs downtown. We have two good sushi places: Jun, which most often wins the "best of" award and has opened a second location, and Sushi Ai. Caspian Cafe is located in a former Denny's at I-25 and Garden of the Gods and serves Mediterranean food. I had a good meal there, but I won't go back on nights when they have a belly dancer - she was often in the way of the waitstaff and nearly clocked a couple of people the night we were there! I'm hoping/planning to do dinner at one of the local restaurants this week. Coffee is difficult at this end of town as most places close at 9pm, 8pm or earlier on Sundays. This leaves Starbucks for "late night" - they close at 10pm. This is why although I like the local Pikes Perk and their coffees, I don't often go there. They're always closed when I'm in the mood for coffee. My current favorite is It's A Grind; while it's a chain, there are only two local outlets, and I like both their coffees and their passionfruit iced tea. We don't get to downtown very often because by the time we drive down there (I-25 through town is under major reconstruction and to say it's ugly doesn't even come close) and find/pay for parking, we can be most of the way to south Denver. Yes, you do have to be careful about overcooking; since bison is so low in fat, it cooks faster than beef. That's why I usually cook it at a slightly lower temperature, to allow me more leeway in the timing. It didn't really need the butter, since it was cooked to right around medium rare and was very juicy, I just really like chive flower butter . The heat from the steak melts the butter and releases the gentle oniony flavor, and it's really pretty with all the lavender and green flower bits against the pale yellow butter (which I did not capture in my picture). You're absolutely right - if I didn't really like what I was eating, I wouldn't be eating it, I'd be out finding something I do like and eating that. Life is too short to eat bad food. (I love those tea mugs, too - they're big but comfortable to hold.) I'll have to give this a try, especially on a rainy day. I'm all for anything that gives great results that doesn't require a lot of work! Marcia.

A quick post this morning: Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday, so it was not worth photographing . Except for the coffee: I have my priorities. In all the excitement yesterday, I forgot that my latest shipment of coffee was delivered: I love the Rio Grande Roasters coffees. I discovered them on one of our trips to New Mexico. We had met friends for dinner at Ambrozia, an excellent restaurant in Old Town. The dinner was wonderful and the company even better, but what really reached out and grabbed me was their after dinner coffee. It was exceptional. On the menu they stated that they served New Mexico Coffee Roasting Company coffee. I asked the server which of their coffees we had, and he was unable to find out. Fast forward to a stop at a grocery store to stock up on road snacks for our drive home (and various New Mexico green chile related products). In the coffee section I noticed they carried "Rio Grande Roasters" coffees, and the Thunderbolt sounded really good. So I bought about a quarter pound. Imagine my surprise when I brewed a pot and discovered it was the coffee I'd had a few nights previously! A little research turned up that Rio Grande Roasters is another label of the New Mexico Coffee Roasting Company, which is now owned by Victor Allen. The best discovery of all was that the coffees are available to order online, which keeps me happily supplied. Behind the bags is my coffee set up. To the left is the KitchenAid Pro Line grinder. I've been very happy with the coffee it produces - a nice, even grind. It's aimed at people like me who are looking for something more than a blade grinder, but who aren't so far into coffee that they're willing to spend the thousands of dollars for commercial grinders. In the middle is the espresso machine - it works reasonably well for a consumer model, and to be honest I just don't use it all that often. To the right is my workhorse coffee maker, the 4 cup Cuisinart. It makes a darned fine pot of coffee. I'm a little behind with things around here due to the chaos of yesterday, but I'll be back as soon as possible to answer the posts/questions! Marcia.

One thing I didn't mention in my essay above is that movement (or exercise, to use the old-fashioned term!) is another component of this lifestyle change. We swim 3 times a week, and I've discovered that afterwards the body really wants a reasonable dose of carbs to help recover. Tonight I fixed one of my favorites: Strawberries sweetened with Torani SF vanilla (I love that stuff!) and topped with yogurt creme, which is roughly half whipped heavy cream folded with 4 oz. sugar free vanilla yogurt. My husband and I also have a nightly ritual of a shared mug of tea; it's just one of the nice things we do together. Tonight's tea is Celestial Seasonings Golden Honey Darjeeling, one of my favorites. It has a lovely floral note I really enjoy. (And the new camera seems to be taking good pictures! Yay!) Marcia.

On Food, Cooking, And Why We Eat What We Eat Some folks may have noticed a marked lack of carbohydrate-laden foods in my lunch and dinner postings. The reason is simple: we have followed a reduced carb eating plan for the past two and a half years. This is because roughly two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with insulin resistance. To make a long story very short, this means my body does not handle large amounts of carbs well. The last research I did states that this is genetic in origin, having to do with the "thrifty gene" that enables us to store fat for the lean times. (A Google search will bring up lots more details.) Unfortunately, at this time there is no cure; fortunately, it can be controlled by controlling one's carb intake. Of course, the minute I heard this I thought "oh, no, you mean Atkins?!?". My doctor, who was the one who suggested investigating the reduced carb approach, said absolutely not - I also had elevated liver levels that made Atkins a bad idea for me. I realized pretty quicky that if I was going to make any changes - and it was actually that *we* were going to make changes, since if I was changing how I ate my husband was going to have to change along with me because I was NOT cooking two meals - I needed to be honest about what changes I was willing to make, what I was and was not willing to give up. And it would be me who made those choices. This meant that most published, pre-scripted diets were not going to work. While most of them usually had some sound research at their base, all of the ones I read started exhibiting food prejudices when it came to the nuts and bolts of the diets they were selling. For example, they would state that all X is bad and should NEVER be eaten, except for this particular X, because THEY like it. Well, if there are going to be exceptions, I'm the one who is going to choose my exceptions. I also couldn't do a NEVER/ALWAYS plan. I just can't. I can do a most of the time/once in awhile plan. I'm smart enough to know that "once in awhile" doesn't mean "every other day". So I turned to the web to read everything I could on the current state of knowledge regarding insulin resistance and the effects of diet on weight and health. Things sure had changed since I was a kid and it was all just about "will power". Along the way I had an important epiphany: food was NOT the problem, food was the SOLUTION. What if I could find foods that were in plan that I liked just as well as those I was not going to eat all that often? This realization dovetailed nicely with a separate, unrelated realization I'd had before this problem hit the fan: I'd become a lazy cook. I'd always loved cooking, I'd always been inventive, but due to personal issues unrelated to food and moving to Colorado where the continuous cornucopia of good and fresh and interesting foods just wasn't available, dinners had become starch with bottled sauce and meat. Boring. The result of all of this is a reduced carb plan pieced together from the research I did, tweaked and modified based on our own experiences. From The Insulin Resistance Diet, I lifted the basics of 30 grams of carbs per meal, balanced with at least 15 grams of protein. While that doesn't sound like much, 30 grams of carbs is a cup of cereal in the morning, two slices of bread at lunch, and another serving at dinner. Put that way, it doesn't sound so bad. I added that my goal is to keep it under 100 grams of carbs per day - that adds another 10 grams for the random carbs found in everything. This is 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of the daily recommended carbs in the current government pyramids; hence, reduced carb, not low carb or no carb. We don't always hit those goals, but you have to start somewhere! The majority of what we eat then became protein and vegetables. Fat was also important, as it is fat and carbs that create that sense of fullness, so without enough fat we'd never feel full. There's a lot more to it, of course, but the bottom line is: it worked for me. My blood work is boringly normal and I've lost 130 pounds. Or I should say it's still working, as we're not planning to stop eating this way - we LIKE the food and we like the results. And the food has been wonderful. I still seek out new recipes and foods that fit in the plan, and have become a much better cook for it. I discovered that I love kale. I found out how good pureed cauliflower is - never mind the carbs or lack thereof, it's GOOD. I learned that while I have a sweet tooth it's not a sugar tooth, and many of the artificially sweetened products satisfy my desire to experience the taste of sweet very nicely. This doesn't mean that we never splurge and eat off plan. In fact, we plan these splurges, usually once a week. We have found that it's not what you do once a week, it's what you do for those other 20 meals that makes the difference. I won't ever say that this is the right eating plan for everyone - I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist, and I'm convinced there is no single best eating plan for every body - all I know is that this is what works for me. I truly enjoy the food I cook and eat - it's important to me that this change isn't penance or punishment, but simply a change of lifestyle. Things cannot get better without change. There's a lot more to it of course, but I've tried very hard not to put everyone to sleep! Marcia.

My avatar is Oreo, and he's 17 lbs of pure doofus . I had planned to post some cat pictures this evening, but in the grand tradition of the unexpected happening during one's foodblog, my digital camera died tonight. Fortunately, it died after the dinner photography, but in plenty of time to get a replacement. Now I just have to get comfortable with the new one....and of course I'm going to be testing it out on cat pictures! Marcia.

Dinner! I thought I'd highlight one our best local foods with dinner tonight: bison. I'm fortunate that Black Forest Bison is just down the road. They were not comfortable with me taking pictures inside the store without the owners being there, so I didn't take any, but there are a couple of the interior on this page. All of their bison is flash frozen, but it defrosts very quickly in cold water. I bought two NY steaks for dinner tonight: Bison is VERY lean, so it cooks more like chicken than beef. It's also very easy to overcook and turn into shoe leather. I also bought some bison jerky for snacking: Don't look too closely or you'll see the bite out of that piece. It was wonderful . I preheated the grill on high to get the cast iron grates nice and hot, then turned it down for awhile before putting the steaks on the grill, and cooked them about three minutes a side. The steak is topped with a coin of chive flower butter (butter, chive flowers, salt, pepper) and some lavender sea salt. Served up with a portobello mushroom filled with pesto and grilled until soft...a little too soft because the sides were starting to collapse. The pesto is homemade from a year or so ago. I freeze what I call "protopesto" - basil, garlic, walnuts (my husband doesn't like pinenuts) and just enough olive oil to hold it together - in ice cube trays. When I'm ready to use it I defrost the appropriate number of cubes, add more olive oil to get the consistency I need and add parmesan cheese - in this case, I topped the mushrooms with it. A bite picture: Dinner also included by a tossed salad. A number of times in the Dinner! thread I've mentioned that I didn't include a picture of my tossed salads because they're rather unphotogenic. Now you know why. This one was prettied up and arranged for the camera, and I still managed to miss the lettuces hanging over the side. At least the lettuces were homegrown, fresh from the garden! Dessert was a square of Lindt 70% chocolate (those are Jim's fingers): and a chocolate-raspberry soda made from Torani sugar free chocolate and raspberry syrups. Jim had a vanilla-raspberry soda. Marcia.

mizducky, thanks for the link on the potential hazards of sun tea. I especially liked this one: No kiddin'. I'm afraid that sun tea is one of those risks I'm just going to keep on taking. I do wash the bottle well with a scrubby thingie between batches because the tea sediment sticks down there, and maybe that's why I've been ok. Marcia.

When I was growing up, we were told sun tea was better because the long slow brewing time and the gentle heat of the sun's rays made for a less bitter brew. Honestly, I can't taste a difference at all ! I make sun tea because it's so easy: tea bags, cold water, set it out in the sun and forget about it for a couple of hours. I figured as long as I was taking a picture of the sun tea, I might as well include some scenery! This is what the tea looked like when I brought it in: Today's tea is Lipton Green Tea Orange, Passionfruit, and Jasmine. I'm not as fond of it as hot tea, but Lipton's Green Teas make dandy iced tea. I also really love their mint tea iced. Like breakfast, today's lunch is very typical: A deli meat chicken and cheese "handwich", and some broccoli with dip - today's dip is Marie's Super Blue Cheese dressing, to which I am hopelessly addicted. Sometimes there are also cauliflower florets, but last week the grocery store was out of the mixed bag, so I just bought broccoli. I'm off to start dinner prep, and Chufi, thanks for asking, I'm planning to go into more about cooking and the like this evening when I'm not trying to do too many things at once! Marcia. edited because spelling suffers when you're in a rush

Wow, I'm glad to hear that you and your brother were ok after that accident. Even a minor accident can rattle you! It's good to know that the car's systems were working and did their job to protect you. I admire your dinners and I am jealous of your garden - it's been a great blog! Marcia.

Thanks Bruce (C. sapidus) for fielding the zone question! The hardiness zones are a good guideline for selecting plants that do well in your geographic area. Depending on your own specific microclimate or level of stubbornness, you can often get plants from outside your zone to grow. For awhile we had a dwarf orange tree that produced small but intensely flavored oranges. Of course, we grew it inside in a huge pot. The tomatoes that do best here are thick-skinned and fleshy - Roma types and cherry tomatoes. I've tried to grow thinner skinned versions, like Early Girl and Beefsteak, and they ended up thick-skinned and tough anyway. From right to left, the three varieties I'm growing this year are: Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Viva Italia Romas, and Sugar Snack cherries. They were in wall o' waters for a couple of weeks. I usually leave them in there until about June 15, but because we had had such unseasonably warm temperatures I took them out a full week early. This is the rest of the vegetable garden: From top to bottom: - three zucchini plants - two mounds of cucumbers - row of mixed lettuces - row of cilantro - row of mesclun greens - row of green onions All on drip irrigation. The lettuces need thinning again, so they're going to feature in dinner tonight . Jean Blanchard, you'd asked about herbs. Other than the basil I have sage, thyme, chives, and lavender. They all have something in common: they're very strongly scented, which means they're far less attractive to our local garden pests: and I was about 6 feet away from the rabbit when I took that picture, and it's a little hard to see but he's still *lying down*. I took the picture of the deer this morning while I was standing in our front door. You can see that neither of them are the least bit concerned that I'm there. I put out some sun tea to brew today, too: I make it in a sport bottle because my husband doesn't like iced tea, and while I do like it, I can't drink a half gallon before it turns. So I make a smaller batch every couple of days. That's the view from our deck, with Blodgett Peak in the background. Don't look too closely at the deck or you will see why it desperately needs restaining! Obviously the deck guys didn't start the restaining today, so I'm going to take the opportunity to run some errands. Marcia.

Good Morning! My weekday breakfasts are usually very dull, and consist of: A cup of cereal, half of which is high protein/high fiber (GoLean Crunch today), and the other half of which is some kind of tastier flake (today it's Safeway Organics 7 Grain Flakes, which is better than I expected it to be). A nice dollop of breakfast protein, usually cottage cheese. And the part of the morning which means everything, my coffee. It's currently It's A Grind Sumatra, with heavy cream and Splenda, but I have some coffee on order which should be arriving sometime this week. I love breakfast foods, but I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, so most mornings it's more or less the same foods. The coffee is non-negotiable. Marcia.

Hi, I'm Marcia, and I guess it's pretty obvious that I'm blogging this upcoming week :-). A little bit about me: I'm 42, married to a wonderful man named Jim, no kids, two cats, and currently living in Colorado Springs, CO. I grew up in northern New Jersey (a small town called Wyckoff, for those who may have heard of it) and previously lived in California in Silicon Valley for almost 10 years before moving here. So what's the great flyover? To paraphrase the Urban Dictionary, it's the middle class midwest, land that only serves to keep the two coasts apart, which is only "flown over", not visited. Eating well here has definitely been a unique challenge, but I like to think I've risen to it. It just takes a little more cleverness, determination, and flexibility when the whole area isn't exactly a foodie paradise :-). But we're not without good food, which comes in many different guises! The teaser picture of my tomatoes symbolizes the challenge for me: I work for my homegrown tomatoes every year, struggling against a climate that people love but tomatoes hate (dry air, cool nights), weather (hail), garden pests (deer and rabbits), and a very short growing season (May 15 – Sept. 15, zone 5). But I do it because I LOVE homegrown tomatoes, and the glory of the late August harvest makes it more than worth it. I'd planned on blogging about a normal week punctuated by a good friend's house party, but it turns out our deck contractors are doing the deck repairs/refinishing this week (weather permitting), so I expect a certain amount of chaos - besides the house party. It's getting quite late here, so I'll go into more about what we eat and why later today. Since I'm not exactly an early riser, although if the deck guys start early, so will I .

Pizza bones - those wonderful crusts from each slice of pizza. I could (and have!) spent hours dismantling them, eating the soft insides, gnawing on the chewy outside....and often I look around and people just pile them up and throw them out. I don't even need any of those dipping sauces, I just want to savor the crusts. And the skin from roast chicken or turkey - so many people I know remove and toss it! Oh, it's so wonderful, crispy and crackly (has to be eaten right away before it goes cold and gummy). And pineapple cores. When Mom brought home a rare fresh pineapple, my sister and I would chew on the cores for a treat. Nicely sweet and LOTS of fiber! And even a lot of the real trash of vegetable ends, celery leaves (I don't like them), mushroom stems, elderly carrots gets used - they all go into my bag of frozen garbage for stock. I think having a goodly amount of vegetable matter in with the chicken carcasses is one of the secrets for a rich and full flavored stock. Marcia.

For me, the highlight of the Korea episode was the arcade scene: I *finally* got to see what the arcade version of the Taiko Drum Master (US name) video game looks like. When they started showing the Dance Dance Revolution machines, I wondered....and there it was! I'm so addicted to the PS2 version of this game, someday I want play the arcade version (a good enough reason to travel for me!). And yes, I'm over 40. (Ok, the food looked great, too, especially the kim chee. But it didn't hold the same degree of excitement.) Marcia.