Whew, I don't know how you folks with 'regular' jobs do it! I spent an entire week proofreading and going through submissions in a coffee shop instead of at home, and I feel like nothing else got done. Thank goodness for lower temperatures, I guess, or the garden would have withered away into nothingness.

I stayed at home today and really enjoyed all the little tasks I would have found un-noteworthy a week ago. I took a bunch of photos a few days back, hoping to get around to a big garden update, but... I haven't, yet. The above is what I brought in this afternoon -- two cantaloupes, kale, herbs, onions and green onions, carrots, and tomatoes (also broccoli and green beans, not pictured).

I think this is really interesting: the onions had practically died off in the heat of the summer (there was no life above ground, although the roots were still going), but they seem to have entered a 'new' year of growth now, so I can enjoy green onion tops for a while now! The downside is that the new growth seems to be fueled by the onions themselves, which have started to go soft (I'm guessing that's down to conversion to sugar or somesuch).

Oh -- there's also a zucchini in that picture. I tore out most of the dead plants, but left one offshoot which still seemed healthy, and I've had a few nice squashes off it recently. My Brandywine plant on the side of the house is covered with huge tomatoes which I'm really hoping will ripen before the frost hits. I brought in the biggest today, since it's started to turn red (which means it will ripen indoors now). I thought it might be a two-pounder, but no such luck -- although I think 1.5 pounds is still a personal record! And to think that I'd given up on this seedling a few months back.

I also used my at-home time to tend to the little plants I keep on my kitchen window-sill. The succulents in the glass jars are doing fantastically well -- they must love all the sun they get. The jade was a cutting I rooted in water after Beany, uh, pruned it from the original plant. I'm really pleased with how well it's recovered!

My Johnny-Jump-Up that keeps going is still going (surprise!), and today I cut off the flowering top (the stem had grown very long and was dying near the bottom) and planted the bottom, which has a mass of roots and a few little baby shoots. I also rearranged a bouquet, pulling out the dead blooms and trimming up the lingering ones.

And now I have to tend to the soup on the stove. Sorry to have abandoned the blog for so long, but I'm glad my being-out-of-the-house has re-energized my housework! Hooray.

You guys. I. . . I want to be able to break it to you gently, but. . . I'm not sure how to say. . . it's the first day of Autumn. September is two-thirds over. Looking back through my calendar, I can't find actual proof, but I'm pretty sure Winter was waayyyyy longer than Summer this year. Well, crap.

-- Luckily, I made applesauce the other day, so I'm not entirely unprepared for this change in seasons. It's a mixture of Red Barons and Haralsons (picked the other week by my own good self) -- no sugar added, just a bit of lemon juice and water cooked down with the apples on the stovetop. It's pretty amazing, not to brag. It's not so much that it's thicker than store-bought sauce, but there just seems to be more pectin -- it's more substantial.

-- Today wasn't quite the whirlwind of fun of yesterday, but I did manage to get myself to Coffee News Cafe for a bit of being-out-in-the-world. While I was in the area, I stopped by Wet Paint, a really lovely art shop. Would you believe they sell bento boxes there? (They're selling them as eraser boxes, but I can't be fooled.) All Christmas and birthday shopping this year can take place at either Big Brain or Wet Paint, thank you.

-- I really do like baking my own bread. It's different every time -- not better or worse, just different. The flours I've used in the past couple of loaves came from the Seward co-op. I use not-quite three parts white bread flour (I can't remember the milling company -- it's local, possibly Whole Grain Milling? -- but it's much less 'white' than what I've used before) to one part rye. This time, I added sunflower seeds to the mixture on the outside, and it's amazing how so few seeds can alter the flavour.

-- I brought a large mirror home from my parents' house a while ago, and it went from sitting in their garage to sitting in my trunk to eventually sitting in MY garage until this morning. It was blocking the lawn mower in, so I carried it (the mirror) into the house and leaned it against a wall until I figure out what to do with it. In the meantime, Beany is smitten. She's never met another cat as cute and charming before! My little Narcissus.

-- Speaking of the lawn, it's looking much better than it had been -- ants and sun take their toll in the height of the summer. My 'plan' to 'let' it grow long and 'recover' was a clever plan indeed. In other exciting garden news, I picked the first of my cantaloupes, and I think I'll cut it open tomorrow. I keep thinking I need to do a big garden update. Right after I finally post about my zine, I guess. . .

Well, what a day I've had! I left the house just before ten this morning and arrived back at 8.00pm. I did whatever I wanted to (after returning some trousers, which was more of a chore), and the entire day had a real holiday feel to it. That keeping-oneself-busy-while-traveling-alone thing. Except I get to sleep in my own bed.

-- I started the fun with lunch/brunch at Maria's Cafe. I had the huevos pericos, although I can also recommend their Saturday special (minus the meat, of course). You can't go wrong with plantain.

-- After eating, I walked about a mile to Big Brain Comics. For some reason, I'd never gone there before, but I've now got my Christmas wishlist completed, I think. I had to cross the street on the way back in order to walk in the shade, because the sun was so warm. I don't expect many more days like that this year.

-- Upon returning to my car, I drove first to The Wedge co-op for provisions and then to Robotlove for silly things. Yes, I used to have a website called Robotlove -- I think it's fate that such an awesome store shares the name. After Robotlove, I headed to Powderhorn Park (see the photo above):

-- By this point, I'd had to make such taxing decisions as: Which Jeffrey Brown book should I buy? Organic vegan gummi bears or organic jelly beans? One ridiculous Japanese-style toy or two? So I had to have a little lie down on my blanket in the grass. I read comics and zines and watched people canoe in the little lake. And I saw somebody taken away in an ambulance! (It wasn't related to the canoing.) In the first photo, taken from my hillside perch (Powderhorn is basically a big bowl, with the lake in the middle), you can see the Midtown Global Market in the distance and some of the downtown buildings even further off. Nice view.

-- After the park, I drove to a coffee shop for caffeine and wifi. I made sure the internet hadn't got up to anything dangerous while I was having fun and looked up movies on imdb. I ate a cookie I'd brought with me. Then I walked across the street and checked out a garden center, where I wanted everything but bought nothing.

-- The coffee shop had been chosen for its proximity to the Riverview Theater, so I strolled over there and paid two whole dollars to see Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters). I can't believe I've become the sort of person who will see a subtitled movie just because I assume it'll be better than the English-language offerings, but it seems I have. And it was. I would say, 'Two thumbs up, fine family fun,' except it's about prisoners in a concentrations camp. But I enjoyed it.

-- To round out the day, I went to The Evergreen, where I had vegetarian wonton soup and fried rice with tofu.

Now I don't know what to do tomorrow. I suppose there's always St Paul. . . if only I hadn't spent all my money today! I guess I'll just have to eat leftover fried rice and gummi bears and remember the good times.

I've been keeping myself surprisingly busy this past week. Doing things, seeing friends, all that stuff. I did an on-the-cheap bathroom 'remodel':

Okay, that's just the curtain. But you can see what it looked like before here and what it now looks like here. I feel like I should say that there really were hand towels before as well (just dark blue ones), but I'd removed them for the photo, because I wanted to play with the image in Photoshop.

-- I really don't like the brown tiles in the bathroom -- they look so cheap to me -- but I finally realized that I was not going to have the means to create the bathroom of my dreams any time soon. So I settled for an inexpensive quart of paint, a curtain that was on clearance, and a couple of new Ikea hand towels. Does the job rather nicely, even if I do say so myself.

-- It might be worth mentioning that I update my flickr almost every day; there's certainly a picture for every day, since I started the 365 project in August. I'm guilty of usually either reading a person's blog OR keeping up to date with her flickr account, not both. But in case you get annoyed when I wander away from here for long stretches of time. . .

-- I picked broccoli yesterday, so much that I actually blanched and froze a bagful. I'm going to make myself wait until the most miserable day of winter to eat it. The cool weather we had for a couple of weeks really spurred on the growth of the cold-loving crops, but it's been warmer again this week, which I hope will speed a bunch of green tomatoes on to ripeness before we get frost.

Okay, so I'll do two posts right in a row. To catch you up on all the almost-but-not-quite interesting things I've been up to in the past week.

-- I bought that mug in Duluth, as a memento of the trip. As I was paying for it, the store owner informed me that the artist lives and works in Stillwater, which is -- of course -- practically down the road from where I live. Bah. But then that's how I'll always remember Duluth: You think it's one thing, but it turns out to be. . . not that thing.

-- I thrifted that glass jug in the photo especially to use for milk. I usually buy a half-gallon carton and use about six cups of it for making yogurt. Then I feel weird about the remaining two cups hanging out at the bottom of the big half-gallon container. So, problem solved -- and made more photogenic!

-- Speaking of making yogurt, the story of my latest batch should convince you to give it a try: I pasturized the milk on the stovetop and then put it into the container I use in the oven. Then I forgot about it for a while, and it had cooled down considerably by the time I noticed it sitting there (I usually mix in the starter when the milk has gone down to 120 or 110F, and it was just over room-temp at this point). I preheated the oven for a couple of minutes and stuck in the pot. Ideally, I would now continue to preheat the oven for a minute every half hour or so, which I did. . . a couple of times. Then I went to have coffee with my friend Jim. Oops. I remembered about it when I got home, and it had conveniently turned itself into yogurt, despite my neglect. So yogurt making does not take much skill.

-- My friend Alex came over for dinner yesterday (see dinner here), so I hid all my clutter in closets and let some light into the place. The cats aren't usually allowed in my bedroom, and you can see they were very excited about it.

-- That little grey cat tried to help with dinner by bringing me a nice almost-dead mouse right before Alex arrived. I'd noticed Beany being very interested in something behind the stove (where the pipes come up from the basement), so I thought I'd let her investigate. Then, the day before yesterday, she and I were in the basement, staring off into space (well, I was), when I heard tiny scritching noises. I turned around, and there was a mouse perched on the pipe that runs across the wall. Beany was VERY interested. I think she sat down there for about three hours after it disappeared through a hole in the wall. And apparently she found it yesterday. It or one of its many siblings, I'm sure.

It's funny how you can be in blogging mode for weeks on end and then suddenly slip out of it, no? I think maybe flickr has been stealing away my attention, along with, oh, the rest of the world outside the computer. There are several things I make at home rather than buy, and whenever I start thinking, 'Hm, haven't had to do anything tedious for a while. . . ' I'm suddenly out of coffee, yogurt, and bread all at the same time. Which is what happened this week. I made English muffins:

Not bad, eh? I used Alton Brown's recipe and the set of muffin rings I thrifted earlier in the summer. I used a cup of skim milk instead of the water + powdered milk combo he uses (the reason for which he explains in the episode that recipe comes from). I also used half bread flour, which might be why they seem not quite like English muffins -- more like something of a cross between that and crumpets. But I like them.

That said, I probably won't make them again. Too much work (standing over the skillet, flipping, etc, etc) for something I can buy cheaply and still enjoy. Loaves of bread are another matter. Of course, I said I wasn't going to make yogurt again after the first time, and we know what happened there. . .

Ah ha! I have remembered not to forget to show you the bag I'm taking to Duluth this weekend. Turns out it's a real pain to photograph. . . something to do with the subtlety of the fabric, I think.

-- Oh wait, did I say subtlety? What I meant was the opposite of that. Get a better look at the pattern here. Would you believe I thrifted some four or five yards of that? When I found it, I almost laughed out loud, wondering what on earth a person could use such a loud print (and on canvas, no less) for. Then another part of my brain, which must have been waiting for just such a find, shouted, 'Luggage! You must make luggage with this!' So I did.

-- Full disclosure: I Photoshopped something out of the photo above, because it was bugging me. Bonus points if you can figure out what it was (there's an obvious clue left in the photo that I couldn't be bothered to remove, which is why I'm mentioning it at all).

-- Would you believe -- after the fuss I made yesterday about never knowing what I feel like eating, I had a definite craving today. 'Party sandwich!' I think it was the same voice that shouted 'Luggage!' at me. I don't know where it comes up with these things. A party sandwich consists of processed American-style cheese (Colby-Jack in this case), lettuce, and tomato on a tiny, bland roll (an omnivore would also put slices of deli cold-cuts on his or her party sandwich). Disappointingly, the supermarket didn't have single sandwich buns in their bakery, but this bolillo was an acceptable substitution. Also, it should have been a pale, watery tomato rather than a robust Brandywine, but you have to make do with what you've got.

-- Later on, with my afternoon tea, I had a sliced apple with peanut butter in my newly thrifted face bowl. Let's hope the League of Vegetarian Superheroes doesn't change their policy from 'nothing with a face' to 'nothing in a face', or my application is sure to be rejected.

-- Not that you have any reason to care, but I can't find the remote for my DVD player (which is used to play CDs in my now-TV-less living room). It was in none of the three places I looked, so I guess it's missing for all time now. I suspect Beany's made off with it so she can listen to Glenn Miller in the middle of the night. She never remembers how to work the buttons on the machine itself.

-- On the topic of having irrational thoughts and suspicions about what Beany gets up to. . . I was moving boxes from one side of the basement to the other a while back, in preparation of painting down there, and as I stacked the boxes underneath the fusebox, I noticed that the door wasn't latched. 'Better close that,' I thought, 'or Beany will climb up here and start flipping switches.' I swear part of my brain actually thinks she schemes while I'm not looking. And I can't prove that it's wrong.

My brain is so confused. I worked most of Sunday, but then everybody had Monday off, so I went over to my parents' for lunch before coming back home to do more proof-reading. And I leave on Thursday for a 'weekend' in Duluth. It's like the days just got all jumbled up this week -- better luck next time, Time!

More and more lately, I've been feeling a bit 'meh' when it comes to mealtimes. I want to eat some I'll really enjoy, but nothing seems particularly attractive. And I've had no motivation when it comes to proper cooking -- I guess a lot of people feel this way most of the time! By the time dinner rolled around yesterday, all I wanted was one of the biscuits/buns my mom had sent home with me and a peach.

Come to think of it, bread and fruit are the only things I've actually had cravings for lately. Perhaps my body needs more delicious carbohydrates.

This is what I had for dinner tonight. I'd had a yam sitting on the counter for a few days and kept half-heartedly thinking about chopping up some garden produce for baked BBQ veg, so I finally got around to it. I actually started making everything around three in the afternoon, thinking that if I just got the stuff made, it would be on hand if I felt like eating it later. And I did, and it was tasty.

Luckily, once I'm in Duluth I won't have to think about what to eat. Pies for every meal.