veg box

It's so much fun to receive my fruit and veg box that I thought I'd make a little feature of it here on the blog. What I got and what I made with it. This is my box from two weeks ago as it's been rather busy around here. I had cabbage and cauliflower and grapes and all kinds of goodness.
A conversation with someone at my new job at Debenhams inspired the idea of stuffing my beautiful red pepper. I haven't done a proper grocery shop for a while so didn't have rice or ground beef or the typical ingredients for stuffing. No worries! I cooked up a bunch of veg; carrots, cauliflower, onion, garlic, cabbage, mixed it all together and stuffed it with that.
Pretty tasty!
There was plenty of extra "stuffing."
Which I had for lunch one day with oatcakes and for dinner another with sausages and the last of the sparkling pink lemonade which I bought as a 4th of July treat.
Nothing too exciting or fancy. Just simple, hearty, healthy meals. That's good stuff!

fruit and veg

Recently a friend gave me a lovely present... a gift voucher for a produce delivery service. I've been wanted to get a "veg box" for a long time now but just never managed to get around to it. I really do want to be someone who eats seasonally and locally (within reason, if that's okay to say) and I think a box scheme is a great way to do that.

This particular company supplements the seasonal/local produce with a few not quite so local things and you're always guaranteed to have staples (potatoes, carrots, onions, apples) in your box. All in all I think it's a fabulous scheme. For £12.50 I get enough fruit and vegetables to last me for two weeks delivered to my door.

This was my last delivery. (I think it's pretty safe to say that the bananas and pineapple were not grown in Northern Ireland.) But I'm pretty sure that the carrots, spring/green onions (I can no longer remember which is the American and which the British term) and broad beans were.
Also, hiding way down in the bottom were some absolutely delicious Comber potatoes. They were definitely grown just a few miles down the road and they were lovely!

This is one of the meals I made: I boiled the potatoes and then sautéed them a wee bit in butter. I had never had, much less cooked, broad beans before. In the States they're called fava beans. I just shelled them and lightly boiled them. You can take the whitish skins off if you want and then they look just like edamame (and taste pretty similar) but that seemed like too much effort for too little return. I had the salmon in the freezer from a time I found it on clearance. I marinated it in soy sauce and lightly fried it. Yum!

wednesday is the new saturday

Now that I've finished the ICT class I was required to do for my course I don't have to be at college until 2:30 in the afternoon. This is bliss! The same is true on Monday but I usually set Monday mornings aside to do any school work due in during the week. And now that I've started working I don't always have Saturday off, so Wednesday has become my new Saturday. Except for the hour and half I'm in class I spend it doing things like taking pictures of the beautiful flowering tree outside my window. (This is surprisingly challenging because the windows are not clean and they do not open.)

I'm so thankful for this tree! Charlotte, my home town, is absolutely covered with flowering trees and bushes and gardens definitely all spring and to a lesser extent all year long. Having a flowering tree right outside my window helps me feel more at home here, and it has beautiful red leaves in the fall.

I also do things like make big lunches, and then document them by taking pictures. I also baked a cake. A strange cake. A rosemary and olive oil cake. My feelings on this cake are undecided... I do not have any pictures of it because it took longer than expected baking and I had to rush out the door as soon as it came out of the oven as waiting for it had made me late for class.
After my class I head over to Starbucks. Wednesday afternoons are when my knitting group meets. This particular Wednesday was the launch of their new branding. Look at the fabulous new cups! It was also momentous because I discovered a new amazing combination; chai tea and caramel waffles. Y-U-M!!!
Once I sat down to knit I realised that my pattern had not made it into my knitting bag... thank goodness for free wi-fi and ravelry. I was able to pull the pattern up on my iPod and I successfully turned the heel on my first sock.
From knitting group I went over to Boojum's on Botanic to meet my lovely friend Laura for dinner. Boojums is a burrito bar. A burrito bar that actually bears no small resemblance to places like Qdoba and Chipotle. A burrito bar in Belfast. This. Is. A. Big. Deal. The whole time I lived in England myself and my American friend Rosie were desperate for Mexican food. It just wasn't available. But here in Belfast, they have burritos! It was a happy evening.
After Burritos I had home group, it was a lovely way to round out a lovely day, with old and new friends and some good, solid Lenten reflections.

Normally my Wednesday's aren't quite so full. And despite the cold and wind and rain, and the fact that my boots seem to no longer be water proof, it was a good day!

friday night and saturday

I was rather domestic this weekend. After working at the nursery on Friday I came home and crashed. I had plans to meet up with friends but they fell through. So I caught up on all my American Thursday night shows and then I made a big pot of what turned out to be amazing vegetable stew.It's onions and leeks and peppers and chilli and mushrooms and peas and carrots and sweet corn and celery and canned tomatoes and I served it over couscous and it was very happy.
On Saturday I met some friends at the market which is always fun and had lots of samples (hello Toffee Apple Bread, I love you!) and some freshly squeezed juice. Then I went into town and purchased an amazing find at the pound shop.
Look at these jars. They are nice and big and pretty. (I love glass!) and they were only £1 each! I've been wanted canisters for a while as flour and sugar stored in their bags does not send me to my happy place. I started with five, but I'm sure I'll be heading back for more!
Saturday afternoon was spent cleaning (boring) and baking (fun!). I made a double batch of banana bread and one half made a proper loaf (hiding in the background) and the other half made banana chocolate chip muffins. So happy! Saturday evening I babysat. Great to be back in the saddle again. British TV is just as bad on a Saturday night as American... Phineas and Ferb anyone?

things that have made me laugh, or cringe, recently or just random things I feel like saying

1. Being given a horribly wonderful lime green "I ♥ Ireland" t-shirt by one of my favorite people, Shelby, age 7. (The heart is a little tri-color and I've worn it to bed every night since she gave it to me.)

2. A lady I have recently started babysitting for told me that I had the perfect name to be a country music star.

3. My new cerise dress. It's wonderful!

4. Getting a ticket for driving a car with an expired registration.

5. Baking cakes for my sister's bridal shower.

6. My computer has begun to die. (This kind of fits into both categories because I've decided that when it goes I'm going to get a mac.)

7. Finally seeing two movies I've been wanting to see for a while. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and He's Just not that into You. I liked them both.

8. Last night when I got home from a full day of bridal shower and family gathering and movie with my sister I had a glass of wine and finished off a bag of dark chocolate covered pretzels.

9. I think that women who wear heels all the time must have gone through some sort of training or boot camp to be able to endure the pain. I wore maybe 2.5" kitten heels for the better part of the day yesterday. My feet are still not quite back to normal.

10. I'm reading the Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien and I'm loving it. The writing is beautiful and still very Irish (not that the two terms are mutually exclusive but if you've read a lot of Irish fiction maybe you'll understand what I mean). I've found some of the content surprising for books that were published in Ireland in the 1960s. Anyway, I'm adding her to my favorite authors list.

oh, um, something about the deer we need for the venison... tacos

This has been a week of new experiences... On Sunday night I experienced my first snow-thunder storm. (I didn't even know that was a possibility!) Tonight I made tacos for dinner where I was babysitting not with ground beef or ground turkey... no, with ground venison. I didn't have any. I'm undecided on whether I would eat venison or not and I didn't want my first experience to be mixed with Old El Paso taco seasoning.

i don't really feel like doing an update

Sorry! I know one is overdue, I just can't be bothered (to use the British phrase). Here are a few somethings I do feel like sharing though:

1} I wore flip flops for the first time this year at Kairos on Monday the 21st of April.

2} Weather here is very unpredictable.

3} I made Rice Krispy Treats yesterday and discovered that marshmallows here come in pink and white and the pink ones are faintly flavoured. (Don't ask me what flavour they are though, I couldn't tell you.)

4} I love the Tate Modern. I spent a whole day there two Fridays ago now (I think) and had a lovely time. Looking forward to an exhibit by Cy Twombly in the summer. I had never heard of him before, but greatly enjoyed his pieces. He is both a painter and and sculptor. I was also inspired to write a children's story with watercolor illustrations after watching a short film there about ants carrying pieces of confetti after Carnivale.

5} I'm mostly listening to A Fine Frenzy these days. I especially love this lyric: "Like an apple on a tree, hiding out behind the leaves, I was difficult to reach, but you picked me. Like a shell upon the beach, just another pretty piece, I was difficult to see, but you picked me." And she has a beautiful voice. I'm also loving The Weepies.

6} I don't know what I'm doing when Transit ends in July, but am strangely at peace about that.

7} Got sunburned last Saturday walking along the river for several hours with Kirstin.

8} The Holy Spirit is breaking out in my church in Charlotte... It's strange watching videos about it online and wondering what's really happening.

9} I'm aching for more... More of Jesus, more life, more courage, more creativity... A fuller life.

10} Here are a few things I've loved this week from Ephesians:

"God can do anything you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or
request in your wildest dreams!"

"Thanksgiving is our dialect."

"Drink the Spirit of God, huge draughts of him. Sing hymns instead of
drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over
everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master,
Jesus Christ."

i'm really into getting over myself

And it’s a good thing because yesterday I got an opportunity to do so. I have run out of clean pants and wore a pair of jeans that I can only wear with heels. (I actually had to have them hemmed so they were short enough to wear with heels.) So I wore my black boots. Just one problem, it’s a 45 minute walk into town. Up hill a good part of the way. I made it to the office with a manageable level of pain. Took the boots off while we were there. Then, on the way home, once we got past the town center it was too much. I had to take them off. So there I was, walking home in red striped socks, with my jeans rolled up so they wouldn’t drag on the concrete. It was pretty humiliating. You could tell by the expressions on everyone’s faces that they were trying not to laugh until they got past us. It was pretty hilarious!

On a more triumphant note, I made dinner on Tuesday with Frances and successfully cooked an entire meal without a recipe. Yeah! I really can cook!