saturday's void

farmer's market haul.  i'm making an eggplant stew for the locust salon on wednesday

i woke up with that all-too familiar fear of the bourgeoisie:  too many choices--what to do, what to wear, what to eat, how to spend the day.  i freaked out a little, worrying that i would somehow waste a precious day, but it turned out rather nicely.

1) primary series at 3 b yoga with gygi.  she's not my usual teacher, but she's great and it's always nice to work with a different teacher.

2) donuts from day's market & grocery shopping.  i haven't found donuts to rival top pot or mighty-o in seattle around these parts. still, it's something to do of a saturday morning.

3) farmer's market with lula.  we got about 25 pounds of organic locally-grown produce for 11 dollars.  including these absolutely divine cherry chocolate heirloom tomatoes.

saturday luncheon--salad of heirloom tomatoes, armenian cucumbers, lemon basil, sirloin strips and lemon

4) made a salad of market produce.

5) rehearsed cage's merce cunningham mesostics with christian for wednesday night's totally rad salon honoring john cage's 100th birthday.

6) went to salt lake h&m.  bought new dress for salon.  leopard.  & a few other things.  checked out the new city creek mall in downtown salt lake.

7) dinner at the tin angel.  i chose it because they serve tapas and a lot of small plates, which i love because you can try a lot of different things.  the espresso encrusted beef tenderloin with a port reduction sauce and gorgonzola was my favorite tapas, though the tenderloin was overcooked.  pretty much everything was a little overcooked, and some of the flavors were not balanced enough for  my taste, for example, a shrimp skewer wrapped in prosciutto was too heavy on the prosciutto so you didn't get the right mix of sweetish shrimp with a bit of prosciutto for contrast.  it was hard to taste anything but the prosciutto.  service was also meh, but that's normal for utah.  i can't think of any place in this entire state where i've had really great service.  but whatever.  it was fine-ish, and i'm a snob.  nice to know though, after a disappointing meal last saturday at mazza in salt lake, that we've got better restaurants here with communal, pizzeria 712, and black sheep cafe.

8) quick visit from eva.

9) bedtime snack of lula's unbelievably delicious kettle corn, with brown sugar and butter.

10)  watching dark passage with lauren bacall.

good night.

wildcrafter, artist, & urban homesteader raquel smith callis

raquel on a "garden tour spree"

raquel smith callis is one of my sheroes.  she has been involved in getting our farmer's market going, our first night gallery stroll, and getting the city of provo to allow backyard chicken coops. she is a trend setter and a trend maker and helps to make provo a more environmentally and aesthetically progressive place.  

she also makes really rad textile art and paintings.  i love her blog gritty pretty, and you can see some of her artwork, textiles, garden and home projects there.  i promise you'll be inspired!

My twentieth high school reunion is this summer (Provo High School class of '92!).

It's time to reflect! 

On the glory days (ha!) but mostly I'm reflecting about butterflies.

Butterflies and their proverbial wings fluttering and innocently causing maelstroms!

You know how a short conversation can change the course of one's life even when that conversation was never intended to be consequential? There's a large cloud of those rabble-rousing butterfly wings that have changed my course countless times. One of those seemingly everyday tiny-cause-and-huge-effect occasions is coming to mind right now...

As a teenager i froze for fashion. I wore strappy shoes and very short skirts all winter and believed it was a responsible idea to cap Provo with an enormous dome providing citizens with year round climate control (73 degrees being ideal!) Then my bishop's wife told me about her daughter's discovery of environmentalism and plans for earth day. I had never heard of earth day nor environmentalism. My mind was blown! (By the way, my then bishop's daughter now blogs here.)  All these years later I love being in tune with all four seasons and plant and harvest according to the phase of the moon. Every day is earth day. Yup, my current life style is pretty different from what I imagined in high school. 


Though I still think its awesome to wear short skirts and bare feet in the winter and FEEL the weather.

What do you want GITP Readers to know about you?

I'm on a garden tour spree.  Got an aloe vera plant on your window sill?  I wanna see it!

Here are photos from a tour I went on this last week. A garden in Orem (Provo's neighbor) that uses many permaculture principles such as aquaculture, vermiculture, etc.

And here I am with my son Ezra in our garden this morning.

raquel and ezra--outside all day, every day

  
Are you in a tight place, and if so, what are you doing to get out of it?

Have you seen the movie Girl on the Bridge? Contortionists are sexy; tight places are a requirement. But wow, when a space opens up and you can twirl with reckless abandon? I figure that's where i'll end up as a crone, twirling in the great wide open.

What do you hope to accomplish this year?

As a mother of a toddler i have quit having expectations to accomplish much. We're outside all day everyday enjoying nature, visiting with friends, in the garden stuffing our faces with berries, chomping on fennel or out in the mountains wildcrafting.

 
What inspires you?

Everything! Wait. That's not true! The rampant ugliness of our sprawling built environment is very uninspiring. But then i challenge myself to change my perspective about beauty and embrace strip malls and chain link fences. But vinyl fences can go to hell (there are many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use, and disposal.)

What is your favorite leg wear?

In the summer: bare legs under two skirts. Two skirts are handy when you're always harvesting something; one skirt becomes an apron to gather up fruit or transport freshly laundered clothing to dry on the line. In the winter I love wearing tight corduroys under tunics.

what you can't see with your eye

carne asada & taco al pastor

1.  the taste of summer in a carne asada taco from the taco paraiso truck at the provo farmer's market.  (city of provo, let us have food trucks please!)

2.  cecily in the tub singing adele.

3. dolly parton's melismas.  what happens in between each note.  the genius & soul & hallelujah of it.

4.  waking up every morning when moses gets in bed with us.

5. the smoky smell of lula's camping gear.

6. beethoven on the piano late at night when christian is playing.

7. shaved fennel.

8.  ingrid's skin & eva's chicken tikka masala.

9.  richard linklater.

10.  spring birds at 4 a.m.

date night & a little kvetching

cocktail hour, provo style

today was a day where i really, really, really, really could have used a strong drink at the end of it all.  or, if i were a character on mad men, i would have started in drinking hardcore at work already.

but, like  a good mormon girl should, i opted instead for frozen yogurt hour,

the good, stiff tart variety, with c., for date night.  i got tart dragon fruit and plain tart while c. got lychee tart and plain tart.  i topped mine with lychee fruit, mochi, mango and yogurt chips.  c. used lychee fruit (lots--he loves it), blueberries, mochi, kiwi. strawberry, mango, and blackberries.  he's a food snob and won't touch the yogurt chips.  i love the cold waxy bitey swaggy mouth feel of the chips in the frozen yogurt, but in no other context.

(i think i'm coming down from the excitement and craziness of the last month, and was feeling really bummed out about the lack of life in provo parts today.  i made c. drive up and down center street tonight, hoping that some new sophisticated establishment had magically popped up while we were in nyc and seattle.  don't get me wrong, i love it here a lot ((i mean, you already know i also hate it here a lot)), but sometimes get bored with the lack of night life, &. . . . yeah.)

but here's what went wrong today:

1.  work.  ugh.  i won't share details, but i'm feeling discouraged about it and like i should make a change.

2.  shoulder.  double ugh.  had to leave yoga it was so bad.  i couldn't hold a downward dog or child's pose.  i couldn't even do my hair or put on my dress without a lot of pain.   i suppose i should have sat in meditation and breathed in yoga instead of following the class practice but

3.  forest fires are ablaze in utah and the air is horrible. i had a raging headache and kept sneezing my head off.

4.  found out some bad news about someone i love.

5.  neglected the children for the fifth day in a row this week.

6.  didn't get writing or submitting done today (yet!)

on  a more cheery note, some food and  things went right today, maybe even more goodies than baddies, (but most of the wrong happened in the second half of the day, so it's fresher on my mind).  here's the good stuff:

pedicures & lots of red

1. my brother dave is in town for the utah valley marathon.  we got pedicures together  (he didn't get red toes, though.)

2. after pedis, we went to communal for lunch, hands down my favorite restaurant in utah valley (it holds up super well next to james beard chef maria hines' restaurant golden beetle, where i ate last week in seattle--here's my first blog post and my second  blog post on golden beetle.  here's my blog post on the oyster bar the walrus and the carpenter.)  we sat at the bar of the open kitchen and watched chef justin do his thang.  i had the lucious grilled zucchini sandwich with housemade lemon ricotta and a fantastic spring salad with shaved fennel (fennel is the most glorious vegetable in the world to me right now.)  dave had a shrimp po boy.   c. shared my sandwich and had a cup of roasted pepper/tomato soup and we all had the sumptuous boulangere potatoes (dense little fingerling potatoes sauteed in some sort of veal/balsamic reduction with caramelized onions and housemade bacon.)  chef j. treated us to an array of sorbets, including our favorite, the blood orange and clove sorbet and the white peach/vanilla. 

3.  red.  i put new red sheets on the bed and found a perfect cheap red lipstick from maybelline today:  red revival.  it's the first really good non-designer lipstick i've ever found for myself.  not too orange, not too brown, not too purple, not too pink.  just right.  i got out my old red purse and a new coral red on my fingers and toes, wore my red sandals. 

4.  listening to white stripes right now with c., and one more episode of holmes on the dvr for tonight.

5.  borrowed a copy of the artist's way from diana at work today.  more on the significance of this later.

6. got out of the house today--went to work today which, although it was frustrating, at least got me out of my summer lack-of-schedule malaise.

7.  knowing that things will be better tomorrow--the air, my headache, the farmer's market, and my ability to be more present with the kids.

legwear:  bare, tipped with new red toes.

looking forward: to trying something new.

inspiration: shades of red.