Madmen yourself

Since we all pretty much pretend we live inside the AMC show Madmen, chain-smoke cigarettes all day long, drink copious amounts of whiskey, and sleep with Don Draper, now with the help of the world wide web, you can put yourslef inside that world. Sort of. Madmen yourself. Go ahead. Try it here.





This was mine.

Hot Chili on a Chilly Day!

Throw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot and let it sit there for the entire day and what do you get? Spicy chili enough to feed two bike racers, one pregnant lady, a guy who has been working on his house for two days and me, a voracious eater. And that's it. No leftovers.

After dinner, C. said to me "I think we should just keep the crockpot out all winter, don't you?" And, he's right. It is the perfect cooking tool for winter meals. Lately, the days have brought cold winds, days of rain, and cold mornings. Even though Fall has just began, Oregonians are already preparing for Winter. It's really all the same to us. Once we have that last warm summer day and the rains come, it doesn't really matter if it's 60 degrees or 40. So, get out your crockpot and warm up!

The End of a Season

Today is October first. It's chilly when I leave the house and rain drops cover the ground and plants from overnight showers. I pull my jacket tighter around me and take in a deep breath of air.

In Portland, welcoming Fall is like coming home from vacation. Back to regular life. When you go away on holiday, there is excitement. Something different. A change in routine. But you are always excited to come home. You are tired. You need your regular sleep and your home cooked meals. Summer = vacation.

For nine months, Portlanders are used to more or less the same weather. Sweaters and long pants. Boots. Scarves and hats. A light rain jacket. We are used to cozy. We drink red wine in low lit bars. We snuggle up with a blanket and read books. We play board games and cook chili. We go to movies, plays, lectures.

There is excitement in the air almost. A return to the world that we know. Summer is over and we put our dresses and sandals in a bag under the bed. We can't tell one another we are excited, because we will think the other has gone mad. Why is he ready for rain? Didn't he appreciate the beautiful sunny days? The mojitos in the park? The barbecues in the back yard? And he did. And you did too. But this is the flight home. We are comfortable in our winter.

Pumpkin carving party anyone?

And it produces!

With the name of my title, I just realized why it must be called produce. Ah-ha!

Anyhow, the garden story continues. I apologize for the two month delay, but my summer job did not allow for the mid-afternoon leisure that my regular job does. And so I'm back, as Gloria Gaynor would shout, and with photos of the garden's progress.

Early spring brought radishes, cilantro, and arugula. Then came early summer with lettuce, beets, peas, collards, chard and oregano. Mid-summer gave us more collards and chard, carrots, cucumbers and broccoli. And at this moment, we have little squash, one nearly ripe tomato, several smaller cucumbers, and one bell pepper. We also still have chard coming up! Some photos:

Pendulum

High then low,
up and down,
black or white.
Day and night,
happy and sad
heaven or hell

In breath, out
top of the world,
then crashing
tip of the iceberg,
all the way in.

Cry or shout.
Just when you think
you can't sleep any longer
the sun will come out -

So you wanna be a bike racer?

I'm not sure if it's because I just don't have enough danger in my life or because I enjoy pain, but I have decided to start a new chapter of my life. The chapter is called Kate, bike racer. Am I good? No. Am I fast? Not really. Am I having fun? Hell yeah!

So, you go out to the Portland International Raceway on Monday nights, slip into something a little more comfortable, i.e. spandex with diaper-thick padding, hop on your bike and go round and round the track as fast as you can, inches away from the wheels in front of and behind you and then when you think you can't go any faster, or any further for that matter, you get to the final straight stretch, stand up out of your saddle, and sprint whatever you have left in your legs across the finish line, slobber streaming across your face.

You probably don't win and even though you're more tired than you've ever been, you wish you could just race for one more lap so you could have a do-over or that the next race wasn't a whole week away, because if you could have just jockeyed for position a second faster you probably could have taken that bitch.

But whatever.

And then the whole ride home you think about how tired you are and how much training you need to do to get better. Anyone want to join me?

Solutions

Let's cut to the chase. I have a Facebook account. Yes, I know. My partner makes fun of me daily. What's more, I have a Facebook app on my iPhone. I'm hooked. I read updates from people I haven't spoken to for ten years and stalk others whose lives are far more or far less interesting than mine. And until now, it hasn't really proved useful with the exception of preventing any of us from having real conversations via phone, or even email. It's the lazy man's conversation tool. A way to stay connected, in the least involved way possible. Hey, at least it's not Twitter.

But that was all up until this; A couple weeks ago, I updated my status to say how sad I was to find little green worms eating my plants in the garden. I very quickly received a status comment from an old friend (again, one I probably would not have connected with had it not been for Facebook) who suggested either Cedar or Neem oil as a worm/bug deterrent. I replied and asked how to apply and she wrote back and told me to follow the directions on the bottle to cut it with water, then either mix in a spray bottle or invest in a pressurized garden pump and coat both sides of the leaves of my plants.

So Chris and I walked down to Pistils Nursery, bought some Neem Oil ($15/8 oz) along with some tomato, cucumber, and pepper starts and came back to the house. The bottle has extensive directions, so we were set from there. We bought a garden pump and mixed the oil with water, waited until evening when the air is cooler and the plants are out of direct sun and applied the mixture to both sides of all our leafy plants. Finito! No more worms! What is Neem Oil, you are probably wondering? According to the bottle, "Neem oil is pressed from the seeds of the Indian Neem tree. Neem oil has been used for centuries by people in India. Neem oil is an excellent foliar plant spray." Cedar oil may have been cheaper but they didn't carry it at the nursery. Plus, you only need to apply Neem oil once every 2-4 weeks, so it will last a long time.

That same weekend, we harvested our first vegetable from our first garden. Radishes! Gloriously colored, crisp, spicy radishes. From seed to table in only 24 days. We pulled them up, washed them and sliced them for our salad.















The next day, we pulled up more, washed, and sliced them and added them to a quinoa salad with carrots, cabbage and zucchini for a healthy summer salad.















Cami came over and brought Vodka. I went to the store and brought home fresh fruit, sparkling water, and vermouth for making cocktails. We blended some ice and shook everything up. We cut a melon, set up a table on the porch and played scrabble. It was the perfect Memorial Day.