two ripe strawberries

leff helped me harvest this huge bounty of berries this morning. as per the norm with food right off the plant, they were very much themselves. read:  they were the most strawberry of strawberry tasting. super delicious!

yeah, it's almost august and the yield is two whole strawberries. uh huh. yep. *thumbs up*

shakshuka and a cat

got a lot to talk about that i still...can't talk about. so, hey! have a shakshuka recipe

and look at my sleepy cat. aw.

this is saturday

henry four eyes,

a cat bookmark from a kansas thrift store,

some baby strawberries

and a witch wanger.

july

july is not supposed to be like this. this autumnal. 

i am not supposed to be able to have a fire in july. but at least all of the junk mail (mainly unsolicited cc applications) has been destroyed.

witch boats

i wasn't aware until yesterday but, apparently, if you don't crush up the ends of your eggshells, witches will use them to make boats so that they can sail off and and cause storms.

this is fucking awesome and you can bet that i am going to continue to not fully crush up my eggshells. take to the sea, tiny witches! 

indoor grilling

the weather was pleasantly shitty today. (it kept all screeching methheads, moss people and salt water rednecks indoors) i am glad that we have an indoor grill though. otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to continue charring our way to brilliance. (hahahah, ah god.)

new marinade this week was yogurt based.

agua fresca

"DRINK MORE WATER" all concern trolls scream. fine, noted. but i will only do so if there's other stuff in it. cue the reign of the agua fresca. 

while this strawberry, lime, cucumber and mint concoction is not technically an agua fresca, it certainly is pretty.

cucumber, mint and lime is a true agua fresca but it is sadly blurry. (no less delicious, however.)

now here is an agua fresca in focus and it is strawberry vanilla.

what's that saying? i drink, therefore i am? ha, no. but if you add gin to the green drink and vodka to the strawberry one, you'd have a stew party going. hopefully sans concern trolls.

today was grocery day

can you BELIEVE how scintillating every bit of news i can leak is?! yes! this is my jam! CAN YOU STAND IT 

i would have bought bonne maman marmalade as well but it was not available for some weird reason. fucking love that jam. (not a paid advert.)

also, just to show you how goddamned lazy i am right now, mayo with sriracha already added.

it's only in the house because it was, like, $1.50 and i'm always mixing sriracha + mayo for deviled eggs and budget spicy tuna roll and, god, i cannot be arsed to do much of anything right now. (WON'T SOMEONE JUST [REDACTED] ALREADY JESUS CHRIST)

and now i go back to waiting. later.

tuesday

things are still the same here. i still water the herbs with a pink elephant.

we still do things by hook or by fart.

and i still laugh at how ridiculously quaint this place is.

supermoon and bbq

perhaps you heard about that supermoon last night. (of course you did. supermoon trends like no other moon. supermoon can't stop.) here's a picture that leff took of it.

sidebar:  when i was little, i looked for the man in the moon. then i learned about the rabbit and his mortar and pestle and looked for that. now i can see neither at first glance and just imagine it hitting my eye like a big pizza pie. tippi tippi tay.

if you don't live in a marine environment you may not know that supermoon causes super low tides.

it is gross. but the smell of dead sea stuff reminds me of vacation so *shrug*, i suppose.

not gross at ALL were these korean bbq chicken skewers that leff made on the grill. they were super fantastico!

we also made lemon dill fish, peri peri chicken skewers, pizza, roasted peppers and "hobo pouches" of potatoes, carrots, onions and herbs with the same coals. (hobo pouches were courtesy of my stint as a camp counselor. oh, the things i can cook with just some foil and flame.)

BEST NEWS EVER

i can now talk about one of those things i couldn't talk about. not one of the nice ones, well, ok the end result was great. suffice to say, my dad got his biopsy results back and HE DOES NOT HAVE CANCER!!! BEST NEWS BEST NEWS EVER

i'm now going to down several orange blossoms in celebration. HOORAY

it is finally summer

july is half over and the temps are finally correct. 90+ today HOORAY. (in c, that's the 30's.) perfect time to make some of chotda's mint lemonade. 

for you readers in the tacky, here are some tips for dealing with heat since there's no such thing as ac in this fucking place.

1) sunlight is your enemy. cover all your windows completely. make it so dark inside that you feel like you are in a cave. do this when the outside temp is the same temp as the one inside your home. do not slack on this. (it barely gets above 78 in the casa on super hot days because i am not insane enough to open windows or enjoy sunlight.)

2) if possible, don't use electronics that heat up (battery operated things are a savior). also if possible, cook outside or go out to eat. if you are grilling and want to try out that medieval eggs in the fire thing, make sure that your coals are on the cool side, otherwise your eggs will explode. go figure.

3) swamp coolers. make one. 

now stay out of my way if i go outside. you wa state people are fucking weird when the sun is out and it's warm enough to enjoy life and i'm tired of it. 

NOW we're done with this holiday

two grilled chicago dogs. the front is nathan's, the back is a hebrew national dog. they are both wonderfully charred. 

both are super delicious but if i am completely honest with you, i prefer the hebrew national. so. fucking. good. 

the morning after

and so ends what is, hopefully, our last fourth of july in this fucking state.

*eyeroll*

hottest grils but no hot girks (sorry, inside joke)

we have been grilling. this morning we had peri peri chicken and grilled corn on the cob for breakfast. 

i am not lying when i say to you that this is the best chicken that i have eaten in a long, long, LONG time. it was better than nando's. here's the recipe that i used. do know that it works perfectly well if you chuck it in the oven or use an electric grill but there is just something magical that happens when it's been cooked over coals. 

we will continue to grill over this long weekend. updates may occur depending on how drunk i am. 

serious dogs

i like one thing about the fourth of july:  the good hot dogs are on sale. 

happy early fourth if that is a thing you do. i will be eating hot dogs and watching czech movies, "jeeves and wooster" and probably "lovejoy" because that mullet just won't stop.