Neighborly Gatherings

It's taken some adjusting to get used to my new city. After leaving all my earthly possessions, friends and community in San Diego, moving here for a guy and then breaking up, being unemployed for 3 months, moving again within the city, my dog escaping--getting hit by a car and having to put her down, family drama....well, you can see that Seattle was not shaping up to be the move I was hoping it would be. I searched for a room to rent on Craigslist, packed the few belongings I had and moved into the basement of a home in a suburb north of Seattle. (For those of you not from Seattle, living in basements is fairly common--but it just sounds dreadful!) I've been here just over a month and fortunately things are working out wonderfully. I have to admit, my biggest concern looking for a place to live was the kitchen. Would I be able to use it? Were there sufficient cooking supplies? Will there be room for my ridiculously insane amount of spices, oils and other food stuffs? My new roommate has been gracious enough to not only let me use her kitchen, but to also let me use the ingredients from her small garden in the back yard. SCORE! I do hope in the future I'll have lovely dishes, cookware, and a camera better than the camera phone I've been using to take pictures...but all the more reason "low brow" is in the title of the blog.

My move in date was just in time to settle in and get ready for the annual block party/get together. I highly recommend organizing one with your neighbors if the tradition is not already in place. Not just to prevent you from calling your neighbor "man," " dude," "ma'am," or "mister" each time you bump into each other taking out the trash or walking the dogs, but to get together to try new foods, share recipes, update each other's lives, learn who's traveling where, who is separated, who is looking for a new job and to meet the newbies in town. I learned that the gal living next door to me works for allrecipes.com! Hello....I love that website and I was happy to be rubbing elbows with her!

Seattle, you're not so bad. (Ask me how I feel in the winter....things could be drastically different!)

What to Eat in the Summer Heat

It's hot right now in Seattle....the kind of hot where sweat is beading around your forehead and dripping from your thighs when you're just sitting there. Cooking is not an option. I'm hungry but want something light and cold and I linger in front of the fridge longer than I should to feel the coolness waft over me. I pull out green leaf lettuce (from my roommate's garden), goat cheese, a green apple, a lemon, balsamic vinegar and a bottle of sauvignon blanc. I've never put these ingredients together before...but this is what happened. I tore up the lettuce, forked some chunks of goat cheese on top, chopped up about 1/4 of the green apple, squeezed half the lemon over the mix and splashed some balsamic on top. I wanted to mix the balsamic with some olive oil, but apparently I'm out of oil. I poured myself a glass of wine and dove in. To my delight, this was a brilliant concoction that I will definitely make again. This would be a unique salad to bring to a party or summer BBQ; some tasty additions might be dried cranberries or dried cherries and some slivered almonds. It's supposed to be record breaking heat all week...what else will I be inspired to make?