Am I Being a Pest-o

I couldn't believe the change in the weather yesterday in Salem! We went from warm and muggy to cooler and muggy with rain all in the space of a few hours. This wasn't a huge surprise, as anyone who has lived here for more than a few months can tell you~ if you don't like the weather in the Willamette Valley, just wait a 10 minutes.

So, to get out of the house yesterday for a while, my husband asked if I'd like to go see Julie & Julia at one of the theatres here in town. I had totally loved reading My Life In France Julia Child as it had so many reasons to enjoy it~ the whole story was enchanting! On the other hand, I had only read the first two chapters of Julie & Julia as I was disappointed in the swearing and rabbit-trails that had to do with the author's friends relationships. Thankfully, the movie seemed to try to take the best parts of that book and much of My Life in France and intertwine them with fairly seamless continuity. My husband asked if I had cried at all to which I answered "well, of course" then he confessed he had gotten teary a few times just thinking about the passion that Julia Child had for food. The fact that we were spending a Tuesday afternoon at the movie theatre was part of the joy of being out~ it always feels a little self-indulgent to say goodbye to the teenagers at home and head off to someplace to be entertained for a few hours. Whether you get the opportunity to see it in the theatre or wait to watch on DVD, this is a movie for those of us who call ourselves "foodies"!

Of course, coming home afterwards having to make a couple of dishes for our Ecuador team reunion potluck made me immediately think of food when we left the theatre. I ended up making a tossed salad with ingredients from our wonderful CSA box that got delivered last Thursday. It's always fun for me to see what the folks at Gardenripe drop off since it's when I am at work. Last night's salad included romaine and mixed greens, fresh peas that I blanched right before adding, green beans that I had roasted the day before with some elephant garlic and shallots and a very pretty yellow summer squash. I took some homemade balsamic vinegarette and homemade ranch dressing, so people could choose which one they'd prefer on their salad. I also made a chocolate/cinnamon cake with a mocha icing.

The girls and I went to work out today and followed the workout with a trip to my favorite Salem grocery store- Salem Grocery Outlet on Lancaster Drive. It always makes me wonder why everyone doesn't shop here! They have the best prices on so many things, but even more exciting is finding stuff we've heard about but never tried. Today was "stock up" day for us as Cari has decided she wants to make & take her lunch to work instead of eating out (gee- what a concept). We found all kinds of wonderful bargains! The newest try is orange-strawberry mango yogurt from Rachel's. I am looking forward to trying it with some granola for breakfast tomorrow morning!

I've been trying to figure out some recipes to use some of the produce we've been getting, so this afternoon I made a batch of pesto. It's so much less expensive to make your own, and it's easy to pop in the freezer~ You can either put it into ice cube trays or just put 1/4 cup blobs on a silpat on a baking sheet. After freezing them for a couple of hours, the blobs are ready to be put into a ziploc bag and kept until you need them. Go get some basil and make some pesto~ come the middle of January you can pop some summer goodness over some pasta~ how good is that!