I feel like Susan Boyle without the talent and without the opportunities. So, really, pre-celebrity Susan Boyle.

homemakerey

Days ago I invited someone to dinner by phone message and took out some chicken and pastry dough with the assumption I'd hear back one way or the other. No response. (I'm so disillusioned with males right now.) So tonight I've been cooking up a storm to deal with the plethora of defrosted poultry I find myself with. Unfortunately this comes at the same time as the humidity from the downpour that is making my house feel the hottest it's felt in the last year.

I'd planned to trial a new chicken pot pie recipe with some pastry dough I made a few months ago. (I'd been holding out using it all in anticipation of pie season.) With the clear (silent) sign that I am no longer friends with this person, I now have a few servings of the slightly overseasoned pot pie (I never manage to overseason anything, so I'm not sure how this happened. It's still pretty tasty, though) to last me into next week.

I've also been meaning to make a Jamie Oliver chicken-in-milk recipe that sounded pretty awesome. I lacked a chicken with bones, so fudged the process and hoped for the best. (Actually, I accidentally threw in the rosemary that was meant for another recipe in my haste to season. Oops.) It actually tastes quite nice, almost coconut milk-y, which is surprising and unexpected. It will be better once it's soaked up more of the milk gravy that smells so good. It's a good thing I love leftovers.

Right now I'm waiting for the rosemary lemon loaf to finish baking. Really it was supposed to be a rosemary loaf, but I thought the lemon zest would taste lovely with the rosemary. It's very puffy and cracky in the oven right now, and the smell is nice. I'm somewhat dubious it will work out because it's a Euro recipe and I lack a kitchen scale; my conversions are probably off since various sites gave various conversions, none the same. If ever I get a job it will be one of the first things I buy. (Also on the list is some sort of mixer for bread dough and getting my serger serviced.)

I think I would have been an excellent 1950s homemaker. I just lack the foundation garments to make the dresses look amazing.

finally

When it rains, it pours.

Finally the sky opened up and it rained. The concrete was warm under my feet as the cool rain hit it. I walked back and forth up and down my driveway, splashing my feet, watching the drops fall from the sky and rooftop into the quickly forming puddles. I tried to stop the rivers from flowing into the storm drain, tried to divert it like a dam, to no avail. The smell of paint from the freshly painted deck above is hidden under the smell of moisture. I'm hoping for drop marks in the paint, revenge on my landlord for choosing today to paint. The air smells heavy and warm, mouthfuls of moist air with every intake of breath. My K-Way is soaked, still dripping from the moments in the thick of it. The brightness of the evening prevents the count from lightning to thunder, but the lessening of rain and opening of sky suggests the moment is over almost as quickly as it began.

summer foraging

One of the nicest days I had last summer was spent berry picking in the forest with my friend Sara. Then, we spotted wild cherries, ate thimble berries off the bushes, had a bento lunch on a patch of grass and picked enough huckleberries for a few cakes. We'd been talking for ages about organising another berry picking excursion and yesterday the berries were ripe enough to make it happen.

We headed to the botanical garden at UBC so she could get some berries identified that she picked and planned to make jam with at her friends' house in OK Falls. We walked back toward campus near the park; a fence kept us out of the terrain. We immediately spotted wild blackberries and I started picking them, just to see how many I could get. I got a few, probably about 1 1/2 cups. These are much smaller and sweeter than the Himalayan blackberries that invasively took over parks all around the city. (Not that I'm complaining about being able to pick blackberries in public parks.) We eventually made it onto a path through the park and started picking huckleberries.

When I was a kid we went camping often in the summer. At the time feeling like forced labour, we'd sit in a boat for hours trying to catch rainbow trout and then tromp up and down steep inclines looking for huckleberries. We'd each be passed a massive ice cream pail with a handle and told we wouldn't go back to camp until the bucket was full. But we'd reap the rewards of our hard work all winter, with huckleberry pies and huckleberry muffins. The ones we picked were a dark purple, low to the ground with small, firm leaves.

The ones on the west coast are significantly different than the ones I remember from my childhood. These are on high shrubs and pinkish red, slightly translucent. We picked for hours, each filling 3/4 of a massive handled yogurt container (1.75L). One of the biggest surprises for me was finding one wild blueberry bush; I picked every last one from it! We eventually made our way toward the bus, picking along the way, until a man walking his dog mentioned that the parks people fine you if you're picking berries from the park. He used to pick mushrooms and was told it wasn't allowed in a provincial park. I was dubious but mildly fearful, yet still walked away with a whole slew of berries without guilt.

The berries are all safely stored in my freezer. With the blueberries and rhubarb I got last week and the orange olive oil cake I baked on Thursday, my freezer is filling up. Hopefully these berries (and the pending blackberries I hope to get in August) will see me through the dark days ahead.

downer

The last few weeks have been more difficult than I've let on. This month has sucked and the suck doesn't seem to be lessening.

My grandfather's death was expected, yes, but it has still left me in a state. I can't go into it without falling into a significant depression. Suffice it to say things will never be the same again.

Family issues remain. I am jealous of people who have families that function, that have siblings that actually answer the phone and want to see them.

I also discovered my rent will be going up 4% in October and possibly more since my landlord measured the kitchen to replace the counters and cupboards. I could be paying another $70 per month and another 4% next April. I need to figure out a longterm solution because this is stupid.

Today was really the topper of the month. After talking just yesterday about the possibility of being a front runner for a position at work, today came word that funding was cut and there would be a series of bumps that will likely eliminate the position I'd hoped for. Before I left work yesterday I spoke with someone and expressed my worry that something would happen to make full-time work further out of my grasp; she said I shouldn't worry. Today... she actually called me to her office to express her shock that less than 24 hours after our conversation I had a reason to worry. Obviously anything could happen, but right now I feel like I've been kicked enough.

Uncle. Seriously.

Karma better be super awesome pretty quick. It would be really nice to feel like something is going right in my life.

I don't really know what to say anymore. For the longest time, writing has been one of the few ways for me to actually delve into what's going on with me. It's been kind of cathartic, putting stuff out there so I don't need to deal with it in my head all the time. But on my way home today I didn't see the point of writing about the stuff that's been going on with me, the stuff that's swimming in my head, drowning my voice. It doesn't matter what I write because it doesn't change anything. I'm still as neurotic and self-doubting and hopeless as I ever was, so what's the point?

loss

He was gone shortly after my last post. I now have no living grandparents and it makes me feel a little lost in the world.

waiting

When I talked to my mom last week, I suggested I visit soon because Mom was sounding kind of down. Yesterday I bought a bus ticket to visit my parents next weekend and was looking forward to a couple of days with them on my own.

Tonight I called my mom to let her know, so they can pick me up from the bus. She said she wasn't sure that would work out.

I talked to her on Sunday, the same day she had spoken to my grandfather, who was kind of disoriented and garbled into the phone. This is why she sounded down, the worry about her father. She got a call from my aunt today that he's still really disoriented and that we should probably brace ourselves for the end.

Really, I've been bracing for this since Omi passed away. I've come to terms with this. None of us thought he'd make it through the summer. Still, I hate waiting for the inevitable.

adding spice to the everyday

What a lazy day.

Today I have done very little, though perhaps others may beg to differ. I haven't really ventured away from my door, less than 30 feet, and this may be why I feel lazy. I had one of those mornings I quite like, when I wake up ridiculously early (not by choice) and wander around the house for an hour or two and then head back to bed for a nap. I was up the second time by 10am, but still it felt like I was being slothy.

My laundry hasn't figured out how to wash itself (stupid laundry), so I had to do it myself this morning. I managed to watch the two movies I had out of the library that are due back sometime soon. (I can't really remember what day it is, so I'm not sure if I'm already late with them or not. Date has become less important recently.) The fruit and vegetables I've collected as of late were deciding whether or not to teach me a lesson, if they should go bad or hold out for a couple more days to see what I'd do with them. I felt it unkind not to deal with them when I noticed how listless they looked on my counter and on the shelf in my fridge.

(I should mention that yesterday morning I met up with Nathan, Augusten and Lily at the UBC farm to hang out and check out what the farm had for sale this week. I picked up a bunch of radishes, two large tomatoes, a small bag of blueberries, a bag of sugar snaps (or sugar peas if you prefer) and a bunch of kale. Nathan and the kids go weekly to wander around and to see how food grows, and Augusten especially is pretty into growing stuff. They had bannock and jam and we wandered around, looked at the chickens (and when we couldn't see the rooster we assumed the low clucking in the hen house was somehow related, that naughty rooster), checked out the children's plots, and headed home, all done before noon. It was a lot of fun. The produce that I left on the counter from the farm wasn't looking so lively this morning.)

First up were the bananas, which normally I'd throw into the freezer for banana bread cravings, but decided to address them immediately. I have a book out of the library, The modern baker by Nick Malgieri, and flipped through it for suggestions. The cocoa banana muffin recipe looked pretty nice, so I made 18-ish of those, plus two half-sized ones for testing, but since they had to be tasted immediately out of the oven I am reluctant to count them in. They turned out quite nice and I'm going to try out a few more recipes from this book as soon as I get more butter and flour to see if I should buy this for my collection. It has a similar looking cake as the Dorie Greenspan one that I love, the one with the chocolate cake with fluffy white icing, so it already has that going for it.

The remaining fruits and vegetables were dealt with quite easily. The radishes are trimmed for eating, the sugar snaps rinsed (and I've been pecking at them all day), the mango chopped up, the blueberries rinsed and picked through, the green pepper chopped up and ready for something. The kale, though, was a test project since I've never actually made anything with it before. I had seen a mention of kale chips ages ago and it's intrigued me ever since. After I rinsed the leaves, I tore the kale into bite sized pieces, tossed it with a bit of olive oil, salt & pepper and minced garlic, and laid it on a cooling rack set in a baking sheet. In 25 minutes I had crunchy kale chips that I'm not sure are going to last tonight. So tasty. I know I should cook with it since it's a dark green and dark greens are good for you, but it's hard to get into leafy vegetables sometimes.

Oh, I should probably also mention that yesterday was a pretty great day, all around. After I got home from the farm I went to pick up a gift for Terry because it was his birthday. He and Kathy picked me up for his birthday plans, which started at a driving range in Richmond. The Elvi were out in full force, three of them hitting balls with us for a couple of hours, one in a very Elvis outfit: a yellow Polynesian-looking shirt, white slim pants and black ankle boots, finished with the regular Elvis rings and his 1950s shades. Imagine him hitting balls beside you. It was Terry's attempt to add exercise to his life, but he's never golfed before so it was pretty amusing to watch him struggle with directions. We all headed off to meet up with a few more people to see Transformers, which was full of plot holes that didn't let your brain rest for even a second. We went for late night all-you-can-eat sushi after and stuffed ourselves full until we got kicked out. The Elvi are like any other boys' club and large portions of the evening involved them groaning at whatever cheesy joke one of them made. They're a fun bunch, the Elvi. I love listening to the politics of the Elvis Tribute Artist scene; the sketchiness of some promoters always astounds me.

Even with the laziness today, it's been a pretty good weekend.

happy hour (again)

Today I commuted to work on a bike. We'll see how this goes. I'm crap at riding a bike. So slow and out of shape. Boo.

My friend said she was thinking of selling her bike, so I bought it without even riding it. It is a pretty comfy ride, so hopefully the hills to/from work flatten a little the more I ride. Riding home is substantially easier that riding to work.

After work, I met my friend and we rode from work to my 'hood for drinks. We actually stopped at my house so I could drop off the bike, since the restaurant is two blocks away and they have pints for $4 and I can't ride and drink. I forced a highball of Pimms and ginger in him before we headed over; I kind of love how easy it is to drink. It tastes like summer!

Sitting on the patio at the restaurant was lovely, the bamboo rustling beside us as we people watched. A beautiful husky sat with his people at the next table and I kind of wanted to get a dog at that moment. As we got tipsy I realised how nice it was to live where I do.