Taking a Dump

I know that sounds rude, but I really just mean a dump of photos. Sorry to disappoint if you're into that kind of thing. Lately I've been getting creative with food, pictures of which I'd like to share.
Chili is fantastic for several reasons: dried beans are cheap and nutritious, and chili (and soups) freeze well. This chili was delicious. It had, besides the usual tomatoes and beer and spices, butternut squash, quinoa, corn, carrots, and garbanzo, black and kidney beans. Speaking of delicious and nutritious...
A parrot smoothie. Pear+carrot=parrot. I've been making smoothies like there's no tomorrow because I am now a proud VitaMix owner. In case you're unaware, VitaMixes are extremely powerful blenders, the kind bars and cafes use to crush ice in mere seconds. It makes killer almond milk and blends stringy vegetables like kale into smooth liquids. Most mornings I throw in half an apple, some OJ, spinach, and 1/4 of a banana with some ice and protein powder. I've been using rice protein lately because there's no sour aftertaste like whey, although the texture is grainy.

No blog post would be complete without a cute cat picture:
I was searching and searching for her last night and couldn't find her until Greg went into the bathroom and I heard "Kim...". She is so unbelievably adorable sometimes.

Two more food photos, the first is of homemade sweet potato and spinach gnocchi with tomato sauce, also homemade (the other ingredients I forget, but it was tasty). Sometimes the photos don't rotate, so you'll just have to rotate your head.
Pears poached in white wine and orange juice with cardamom and other spices, with Greek 'gurt:
GP believes I suffer from a legitimate food addiction and I am starting to believe him. He's done a surprising amount of research on it.

In other news, life is going quite well. And by "well", I mean it's moving along at quite a clip. GP and I recently celebrated our two-year anniversary, and I made us a delicious living room floor "picnic" to celebrate:
Tortilla "rolls" with lox, avocado and sprouts, red, black and white quinoa salad with cranberries and other stuff, homemade Raincoast Crisps and goat cheese, Greek spinach salad, and chicken kebabs. Not pictured are the almond cookies I made, served with a blackberry/yogurt sauce.

Job things are starting to move, and GP's mum is moving out of her house soon, which means we'll be able to start moving in soon, which means GP won't have to commute an hour every day for work anymore and which also means I'll be able to have a little garden this summer if I get started right away!

I already have gotten started, actually. Today I dragged GP to Seedy Saturday and bought some seeds I am very excited about: poppies (ha, almost typed poopies), flowering sweet peas (almost typed 'sweat', what is wrong with me?!), sugar snaps, heirloom spinach, 10 ever-bearing strawberry plants (YUM), and indeterminate (trailing) tomatoes. Here's a picture of the latter:
You can't see them, but they're in there! They have to be started inside and transplanted when they're big guys and it's warm enough. I'm very excited about them; they're a variety called "Soleil", developed by the grower I bought them from. They're supposed to be very sweet orange fruits. Sounds good to me! For some reason GP just can't match my enthusiasm about this project, which I don't really understand. I love that I have the power to actually GROW things. I think it's amazing and I don't care how weird or nerdy that makes me sound. These puppies are supposed to germinate in a week to ten days. If I post a picture of tiny green sprouts at that time you'll know what they are. Also, if all these seeds germinate (doubtful), then I will have a great many tomato plants on my hands. Good thing my faithful blog readers like tomatoes....... Right? Are giveaways appropriate for a blog with only twelve followers? Who cares?! Count yourselves lucky.