Crazy good

This week has been crazy. Today: online training, family therapy, interview at the station. That sucked up the entire day… and now it’s time for bed.

We’ve had some great interviews in the last few weeks, and another one coming up Friday. It’s good that we can keep the radio show going, even as busy as we are in the rest of our lives. What talented, compassionate people we are finding in our own community! I can’t wait to air the next few interviews (sneak peek: spay and neuter campaigns in Bend and around the world).

It’s almost Farmer’s Market time in Central Oregon

Looong day of online InfoPath training and 4 more days to go. But hopefully very worth it. Time to wind down and not stay up too late, since I’ll need to get up at the crack of dawn again.

I just realized that the Farmer’s Market here in Bend opens on June 6. That’s a week from Wednesday! And since pretty much all I’ve managed to plant so far is lots of kale… Did you know that many Farmer’s Markets allow you to spend SNAP benefits?—What a great idea!

Unless some miracle occurs soon, I’m not signing up for a ½ CSA share this year. I’ve only been able to afford it one year (last). It’s hard coming up with that $300-350 at once, even though that’s small change when you consider how much we spend on groceries, and considering that you get a basket every week all summer into fall. Hmm, I wonder if anybody still has anything available? Most of the valley CSA’s will have been full since spring. There may be a chance of going with a local one. Although if we go extremely local we get started a little later than the rest (because of our short growing season here in the high desert) and we get less variety (less berries, etc.) I liked the local CSA we did last year—until they started buying animals to raise for meat and talking more and more about it and pretty soon every newsletter was, “look at these cute pigs we’re growing to eat,” and buy our “natural” beef… It really started to bum me out. And I don’t want to support somebody with my dollars that is going in that direction, no matter how much I like them. It’s too bad. There’s a newer one closer to Bend that does mostly veggies and is not yet certified organic, but I think they’re working on it. Maybe they’ll still have room.

Regardless, you’ll find me most Wednesday afternoons this summer at our downtown market. Since that’s early release day for the kids, it will probably revolve around getting them and then getting veggies. Good exposure for them, for sure.

Nerding it up instead of gawking it up: A Settlers of Catan weekend

While others in Bend this weekend were running into and posing with Jack Black or Beck, or seeing The Shins, Tenacious D, and/or Beck in concert, my decidedly uncool (and broke) family were nerding it up playing Settlers of Catan. We even warmed up to the new game by watching Wil Wheaton play it first.

Solar eclipse viewing and naughty vegan donuts

Pinhole Projection

We actually saw part of the solar eclipse today, even though it was super overcast—well, a shadow of the eclipse, anyway. I almost didn’t bother because I was busy working away on the show notes so I could get them done prior to tomorrow.

But I didn’t really want to miss at least trying to see the eclipse. So when the kids got home, we constructed a Pinhole Projection box. After several tweaks, it worked! We just waited for periods of lesser clouds (the sky was never totally clear). It may have been cooler to have the glasses or a filter so that we could have looked directly at the sun, but then we wouldn’t have gotten the chance to run around with a box on our heads. (Sadly, those pictures did not turn out very well. Also, I tried to simultaneously take a picture of the shadow inside the box and see the shadow with my head in the box, and, well, you can understand how that didn’t work either.)

Also, the kids brought home naughty vegan Voodoo Doughnuts for their Dad and me! They’re awesome (the kids and the donuts).

The center one is the cream-filled “Cock-N-Balls.”

Vegan breakfast options in Bend = grim

Another fun day with friends. Brunch, brainstorming, looking at open houses …

We had a horrible time trying to find a decent place to eat a vegan breakfast in Bend, though. The first brunch with a “vegetarian” option had so few items on it that were actually vegan, that we passed, after waiting a looooong time (over a ½ hour) for somebody to come out who even knew what was in the dishes. Then, we went to another restaurant that prides themselves on local and sustainable, has their own garden, has a vegan friendly placard out front, and states this on the menu: “Raw, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Special Requests are our passion!”

Uh, OK. We were brought the “vegan” menu, which was actually the Raw/Gluten-Free menu, and had very little of substance on it for a vegan to eat. The wait staff was not knowledgeable and we were treated with impatience bordering on disdain. We ended up ordering tofu scrambles and one order of pancakes to split, because the only pancakes they could make were also gluten-free. It was a terribly uninspired and under-seasoned tofu scramble made with soft tofu and an under-cooked vegetable or two. For $11. It was not good, nor was it filling. The mediocre pancakes were bordering on burnt—and they offered no margarine, no jam, nothing. We were charged $5 for maple syrup. The only redeeming part of the meal was the potatoes, which were seasoned well and tasty. The bill was outrageous. The only reason I’m not naming the popular Bend restaurant here, is that we plan to write to the management and give them a chance to respond first. Ironically, I had not been back to this restaurant for several years because once, at a tech lunch I was attending, they accidentally let a push-pin fall into my meal {which I almost consumed}. They were embarrassed and comped my meal but I never went back—and I’ve told a lot of people about it over the years. But I thought it was time that I give them another chance. Ha! What was I thinking?

So that took forever. And was annoying. Because we were just trying to purchase a good breakfast, and we were polite and patient. But we had a good day in spite of it {and in spite of being hungry about 15 minutes later}.