Roundup (mostly cooking and books)

I'm still here, no Austin in sight. They lowballed Matt so it looks like we are going to keep looking a little closer to where I already have a job. But I still am having urges to sell furniture. There is a trip to Reno and a storage unit cleanout somewhere on the horizon... I just had to have the transmission rebuilt in my car so all that stuff up there is looking mighty sellable.

Now I am in the throes of cooking projects. I have invested in some Indian spices and am working on diversifying my vegan cooking (the January resolution hangover). I am pretty happy with lentils and garbanzos as protein sources, but I still need to work on white beans, I basically only like them as Italian-style with pasta and lots of garlic. Bean diversification is in progress!

Also I still hate chard.

My mom gave me David Lebovitz's most recent book to read and now I want to buy all his cookbooks too! I have made the chocolate yogurt cake things twice now, they are basically a lovely moist chocolate muffin that goes great with coffee. He was the dessert chef at Chez Panisse, among other things, and it's a light memoir about living in France. I went through a travel reading phase and still go back to read Peter Mayle on French food, but this book was one of the few food-related memoirs I've read that made me want to actually cook 3/4 of the recipes in it. Julia Child and Jacques Pepin wrote my two favorite food memoirs, My Life in France and The Apprentice, and they are both AMAZING books. But while they completely inspire me and make me want to cook, they never really make me want to cook what they are talking about. This guy does. Clearly I need to spend some time perusing his blog.

I'm making a chicken curry-ish thing tonight with carrots and tomatoes, we'll see how it comes out. I've also been experimenting with desserts some more, I have 2/3 of a batch of the Barefoot Contessa's chocolate buttercream recipe sitting in my freezer because it is insanely rich and I have to figure out what else to put it on. Might need to bake myself a birthday cake at this rate just to use it up!

Garden pictures should be forthcoming soon, it has been cold and dry but we are getting some more rain soon so I need to get planting!

Back In The Office Again

It's that time of year, the organizing and fresh-starting season is nigh and my office needs some love. There is a doom-worthy file cabinet in the closet and I may just have to empty out the whole closet at this rate and start fresh.

The desk and bookshelves are under control right now, and I love my cushy red reading chair, but I need a solution for the wires in that corner, as they are looking pretty ratty right now.

But here's the rub: Matt just applied for a job in Austin. Yes, the one in Texas. And that's a 26-hour drive from here. California is big, but when you add in Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas, that is SO FAR AWAY.

So how much time do I invest in getting my office just-so, and how much do I spend trying to decide what we can take and what we will sell on Craigslist? I know it doesn't matter until they offer him the job and he takes it, but it is a crazy idea to have in the back of your head... If I had to get rid of most of this stuff, what would I keep?

The whole thing is just making me desperate to go to Reno and clean out the storage unit up there- if it didn't fit in this house and was still good furniture, we stuck it in a shipping container behind Matt's dad's garage. And I am dying to get up there and sell a big batch of perfectly good furniture, because at this rate, we may never have a house that it all fits in again (the Reno house was quite spacious). We went from around 1800 sq. ft. with a two- car garage there to 1100ish and a one-car garage down here, and this house was already partially furnished (hence the awesome bookshelf and desk in my office, those are MINE NOW).

Updates and pictures of furniture as events warrant. Right now I am in limbo. And it is killing me in the getting-projects-done department.