Labor Day Weekend

Sunday, after church, we ate at an organic pizza restaurant called Lupi's Pizzeria in downtown Chattanooga. It's a funky restaurant with art for sale on the walls and eclectic music playing on the speakers. The pizza was delicious - the crust was perfect and the sauce was fantastic. We only had a cheese pizza, but next time I may add some veggies. There WILL be a next time. Finally good pizza.

Then we made our way over to the farmer's market. I've been to this particular market twice on visits with my sister and couldn't wait to bring my husband there, too. They have veggies for sale, but it's also a craft fair, and they sell cooked food, and there's a variety of live bands playing, too. I always come away from this event feeling inspired - either to cook, or to make something, or to perform. I'm so glad that we're living so close to it, I'm sure we'll go for the rest of the year every Sunday after church.

Well, of course I couldn't resist buying some veggies.



Baby yellow crook-necked squash, bell peppers in burgundy, orange and red, and a gorgeous eggplant.

On Monday, I packed all these veggies up, plus a lot of other little things, and carted them all up to my sister's place. We had a Labor Day Picnic. I think this is the first time our two families enjoyed a holiday together - even one so innocuous as Labor Day (innocuous for me and my husband, since we're unemployed). The crook-necks got cut in half, seasoned with olive oil and lemon pepper and grilled to perfection. The peppers were roasted. The eggplant was admired and almost became part of one of my sister's paintings. She made hamburgers from meat she ground herself, sesame marinated chicken, corn with basil butter (OMG) and we had a food orgy. I brought some mole verde I had also bought at the farmer's market, and it was scarfed up on chips. Some of it made it onto my sister's hamburger. I had a bacon cheeseburger with basil butter.
Are you drooling yet?

Then I got a call this morning saying I had left my camera at her house. Oh boy. 57 miles away. Not that it would have helped this post: I only took one picture. But subsequent posts are going to be a bit boring until I can figure this out.

All in all, despite the camera left behind, we had a great time. Thanks, Melody!

Saturday: Workday

I woke up yesterday morning to a painfully messy kitchen. I had stayed up late (10 pm) on Friday night watching Glee, which I loved BTW. I missed the first episode while I was in Singapore, and they ran a repeat of it, and I happened to catch it. Can't wait for the new season to start!

Anyway, so I knew I had to clean up the kitchen, but when my husband declared it a workday, I knew I was gonna finally get some other kitchen-related tasks finished, too.

After running the dishwasher with the previous day's dreck, I got to run it a second time with the "good" dinner plates that have been taking up floor space in a plastic bin. I washed all 936 pieces (it actually took a little over 2 loads) and found a place to put them in the cabinet - away from the dust.



This meant some minor rearranging, and I went around and around trying to decide what to move. Finally I came up with this solution:




This cart now houses, in addition to the Snapple, my two large Ikea jars of flour (whole and white) and a medium jar of sugar. There's some other baking-related items relocated to this piece of furniture, so it's thematic, mostly. Not counting the Snapple, of course.
That pretty piece of batiked fabric is an apron my friend Sharon Martin made me before she left Singapore 2 years ago. If you're out there, Sharon, Hi!




The pass-through had been an area for collecting stuff that didn't have any other home, making it impossible to use the toaster oven without causing a fire hazard, so I had more decisions to make before all that stuff got put somewhere and now we can use the toaster oven. The toaster oven which I think is too big, but now I guess I'll just try and live with it since it has such a nice home...I'm all indecision here. But at least the pass-through (misnamed, now) looks nice.


So I'm falling asleep Saturday night, and the thought comes to me that maybe I could allow myself to feel that this is home. It was a revelation. Of course, we wont be staying in this apartment very long (so she says) but the feeling of being home was surprising in that it has been absent for a while now. I'm not sure what it means, but I woke up this morning feeling happy.