Forgot my phone

When i went skiing today at Heavenly. It was a lovely four hours offline.

Reclamation

Under the pavement, the forest.

Getting older

Isn't all bad. Sometimes you're awfully cute.

HERB GARDEN!!!

Just planted.

From left: basil, sage, lemon balm, rosemary. (Japanese maple providing the fork in the road background.)

Another singlespeed as cargo vehicle!

I love loading up bikes with random shit and riding it around.

The Great Brussels Sprouts Massacre of 2014

Longtime readers of this blog know that brussels sprouts are one of my favorite foods.

So I was really excited to grow some.

And they bloomed, from seed, with impressive vigor, and lasted through Sacramento's cold snap, and dry winter.

 But then, didn't do a damn thing except look pretty. No fruit whatsoever.

So today I finally tore them out.

Going to plant some stuff today: random extra seeds I had in the garage, and an herb garden out front.

Grill and fry extravaganza!

Singlespeed as cargo vehicle!

Res ipsa loquitor, no? (Well, res ipsa loquitor if you click on the picture to see the whole image.)

After

See "Before", posted last week. Pulled out the pretty but non-producing Cavolfiore cabbage, and the prodigious but dry and fibery radish.

 

Not sure if I'll plant a summer garden to speak of or not: too many balls in the air.

Fresh OJ

c'mon: who doesn't like a nice glass of fresh squeezed orange juice?
The Valencia tree in the yard is just now sweet enough to juice and eat (the navel tree was good around Christmas.)

Hot salad!

This is the dinnertime food spread that J and I refer to as "hot salad" since most of the ingredients get cooked first. J has a Burner camp buddy in town, and we're feeding shit up!

Clockwise from bottom left:

• pan fried cauliflower with fresh lemon juice from the back yard
• caramelized onions
• pan fried zucchini coins
• flash fried red bell peppers (with almost a full head of garlic) 
• fried salt and pepper tofu (with almost another full head of garlic)
• lettuce from the front yard garden, three different kinds (baby oakleaf, red sail, and one I don't remember) 
• dressing
• fresh roma tomatoes, with fresh basil from my mom's herb garden
• leftover shishito peppers from Mother restaurant, a delicious new vegetarian restaurant in downtown Sacramento

A damn fine meal, if I do so say myself.

Construction debris flying about in the garage, family detritus in the neighborhood, and a future full of possibility. Big times!

Before

 

See followup post "After".  

This is the last shot of the "full" garden before I pulled a bunch of stuff out. For a look back at where it came from (these plants were all from seed) check out this post. 

Black bean tofu artichoke heart roasted red pepper stew!

Confidential to Room 318

The person getting minimum wage to clean up your room service tray from the hallway doesn't give a shit what you thought of your burger.

 

(click on the image to see the whole note if your browser view cut off the right side.)

And we'll all flot on okay...

On a Horizon Air Q400 from SEA to PDX. Only one more flight to go today, back to SMF.

Board Room SEA

That's a triple espresso with a shot of vegan dark chocolate syrup. GOOD MORNING!

Adventures in P-traps!

A new installment in the plumbing chronicles:

I've cleaned out literally hundreds of P-traps. This one (at my otherwise delightful friend H's house) is definitely in the top ten nastiest I've seen.

That's a solid halfpipe of gooey smelly soapy gel-y hairy foulness. The sink now drains great -- woo!

Amazing skiing yesterday at Breckenridge, but today my back is sore, and the road conditions sucked, so headed to Watercourse for lunch, and then probabl ywander Denver a bit.

Ohhhhh, City, O City (POST # 1,000!!!)

City, O City in Denver: still the absolute best damn vegan buffalo wings on the planet. (sample size =/>75)

HOLY CRAP, after posting this, I realized that THIS IS MY 1000th POST!!! (Only fitting that it should be food porn.) 

Sacramento gardening porn!

Living in an apartment in South Lake Tahoe has made me miss gardening. A lot.

Blowing back through Sacramento to fly out (three back to back to back trips in a row) but took some time to prune the citrus, and harvest a bit from the winter gardens:

This is the front yard: fennel, three kinds of lettuce, and some (unproductive) broccoli in the back. 

Same bed, from the other side: three varieties of kale, and (already harvested) broccoli. 

Back yard: from left (along fence): fava beans, cabbage, radish, and in far right near the other fence, brussels sprouts (which unfortunately don't look like they're going to produce.)

To get a sense of how the garden is progressing over the months, take a look back at this earlier post of the back yard and this earlier post of the front yard.

Tahoe

I'm not especially sorry that my season pass is blanked out this weekend for the holiday weekend: Heavenly is largely on wind hold, so what few lifts are open are likely going to be jam packed.

Did some great skiing on highly variable conditions yesterday with friend Z at Kirkwood. Including skiing my first (intentional) black diamond run, and going off piste for the first time (intentionally) except for some easy tree skiing long ago at Alta.

An upshot of the consistent high wind is the beautiful scent of Jeffrey pine it brings in the windows, which I have every one of wide open in my apartment. Nature's air freshener!