Working on summer

I had to go in to the office today to turn in receipts and such from last week's mostly successful workshop with our grand nonfiction visiting writer. He was fabulous. I need a friend like him in Flagstaff--he tried the Dr. Pepper braised Hog Jowls. He ordered the green beans with the miso, blue cheese and crispy wontons. He shared with me the chacuterie of sausages. He wanted a bite of both my duck and my mac and cheese. I have few fellow eating friends here in this land. I think they're all vegetarians. Which is good. In fact, I'm working on being more vegetarianish (I can't commit). I finally found a pasta salad I can like--blanched veggies, shaved Parmesan, shallots and lemons. I plan to make that for Erik's mom's birthday. Or shish kabobs. I'm thinking, why not have all the vegetables at the store on the kabob since in my land, it's always season. I'm going to put poblano, turnips, yellow squash, regular mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, vidalia onions and red bell peppers on skewers. If I can't live seasonal-appropriately in Flagstaff, I might as well make the best of it. We might have bread with the kabobs too. Why eat Lebanese only when you can eat Lebanese and Europeanish? There might be a reason. I'll let you know.

I took Max with me in his sling to campus. He loves to be squished in that thing. We walked the equivalent of a mile in it with no ill-effects except my shoulder is a little sore and I almost fell off my shoe. Also, I'm exhausted. Then we went to Wildflower bread company. I never know what to order there. I chose the Med salad. Vegetarian! And not bad but not good for you. Four pounds of dressing later, I'm actually stuffed on just salad.

Then to the market I went to procure all those shish kabob vegetables. Now, what I really want is for Erik to take me out to BBQ at the Smokehouse. This will take some hefty persuasion since we have no money but perhaps I can file it under "research."

Speaking of which, I'm off to write about choice and food. Updates later.

Last night's dinner recipe at the Dinner with Poets, Pages and Vowels blog.

Also. Note the ugly ads. I pushed the monetize button to see what happened. They sent me a $4,230 check just by clicking. How could I resist? It's because I'm such a reliable blogger. Once a month. That's what those advertisers prefer.

The ads are faintly embarrassing. We'll see how much embarrassment I can take before I make absolutely $0 real dollars.

P.S. I pushed publish and the ads changed to include both vegetarian restaurants and shish kabbos. Cute little ads.

P.S.S. I bought Zoe peaches because she loves peaches. I kept telling her it wasn't peach season yet but she really wanted some and when I saw them at the Farmer's Market store I relented. When she got home from school, I offered her one. She jumped in excitement and found the least hard-as-a-rock one. She took a bite and said, I don't think peaches are in season yet. I reminded her her last peaches were eaten in Italy. We might be at a bit of a disadvantage here.