While I was gone last weekend, Chris went to the farmer's market at North Hills and got us two pounds of ground beef, two pork chops, and a stewing chicken. We only used one pound of the ground beef (it made some tasty burgers) and spent the rest of the week being lazy and eating out. This week I'm getting an early start so we'll have tasty and nutritious meals planned while we're in the final stages of stressing out about the wedding.

This morning there were lots more vegetables at the market, most of them greens. I picked up a bag of kale and two beets (with greens on) from a new farm in Hillsborough. Then I nabbed a gigantic head of Chinese cabbage and a smaller head of tat soi from a farm in Pittsboro. They say the Chinese cabbage will keep for up to a month if wrapped in newspaper and kept in a cool, dark place. This is good, because there is no way we'll finish it before we leave on our honeymoon. At least we'll have some greens to eat when we get back. Jackson Farm, the people who have had vegetables since week 1, had tons of stuff this morning. I bought a pint of blueberries, a pound of peas, two summer squashes, and a big purple kohlrabi (with greens on). Then I gave in to the temptation of the neighboring bakery table and got an oats and mixed berry scone for my breakfast. And a sample of pork chops as I picked up a pound of bacon on the way back to the car.

Now to make up a menu that makes some sense out of this gigantic pile of greens.

Senator Whitehouse for President

This morning I saw my second owl since moving to Raleigh. The first one was sitting in a tree on the NCSU campus one evening as I was walking to class during grad school. This second one was being pursued in the air across the highway by a group of rather angry looking crows. The owl was huge.

Happy name day to chris_of_egypt and gorski (even though he doesn't claim the Orthodox St. Christopher day as his own)!

Today I treated myself to one of these:

I turned Saturday's arugula, a few local eggs from happy chickens, and the end of my wedding shower bacon (a gift from Chris' sister) into this tasty quiche. It is easily the best quiche I have ever made. It even looked beautiful coming out of the oven.

Edit: My boss just figured this out. The answer was =TIME(0,INT(C4),(C4-INT(C4))*(60/1)) I know that was on the tip of your tongue.

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Dear internet,

I need help converting a long list of numbers from 00:00:00 time format to 0.00 number and decimal format. For example, I want to compare 0:12:38 (12 minutes and 38 seconds) to 10.13 (10 minutes and 8 seconds) evenly. One of the problems I'm having is that Excel thinks 0:12:38 is 12:12:38 AM. This is how the two tools export the (probably contradictory) numbers, so I really don't have the option to start over. I'd ideally like to do comparison math on them. Oh, and this is in Excel.

Any ideas?

Your clueless friend,

Amber

I need you to all recommend as many awesome songs for a wedding reception as you possibly can. Ready... go!

I got a bit of a late start this morning to find that the S&L Family Farm was already out of chicken, but I did pick up my goat milk from them (some for cheese, some for sharing) and a head of butter crunch lettuce. Jackson Farm continues to be the only booth with a good selection of produce, though more lettuces are starting to show up at other tables. I picked up some broccoli, asparagus, and arugula from them. One newcomer to the market is Double T Farm in Garner, where arlydwycka has her CSA subscription. He didn't have a lot to sell this morning but I did have a nice long chat with him about all of the questions I have about the farmer's market. He's a nice guy. I bought some green garlic from him. I then headed back to the meat tables and picked up a pound of free range Angus stew beef and kielbasa, and two grass fed pork chops. I like that Chris and I are able to have local free range meat for dinner almost every night. I also picked up another dozen eggs from the nice people at Cedar Rock Farm. They noticed my broccoli and guessed that the Jackson Farm people must be using a greenhouse, since they won't have broccoli til the end of the month. I told them I'd buy some from them, too. Glad to know that produce is starting to make it's way to North Hills.

An incomplete list of things I have to do (written down so I don't go crazy):

- Find rental equipment for the DJ. Anyone know of a good rental place for speakers, etc?
- Design Frederica Mathewes-Green posters, send to printer, hopefully by Sunday
- Run to Whole Foods today, buy goat milk and make chevre before Friday
- Get at least one more deposit done for the OPF, check on previous deposit
- Put all ads in ad book mockup, design covers, ask Tony to write history for All Saints ad, design All Saints and St Thekla ads, followup with everyone who didn't send me enough information, get updates to Shell
- Measure small tables at church, call rental company to reserve linens
- Ask Catherine if I need to get my fabric dry cleaned before flying to NY (are you reading this?)
- Continue to eat, sleep, go to work, go to church, and meet up with all of the people who want to see us
- Pester everyone who hasn't rsvp'd for the wedding and/or rehearsal dinner
- Continue to gently encourage (ha) Chris to get his list of stuff done
- Schedule time to meet with trainer and dance instructor
- Get my fasting blood panel done, maybe this Saturday
- Figure out how much I owe the guy whose bumper I scraped on Thursday while delivering a Very Large Check to my reception hall mail check
- Try not to forget to go get our marriage license
- Write Deliver thank you cards
- Sunday: turn in receipt for flower reimbursement; show St Thekla ad to girlgenius21
- Go to Free Cone Day and drown my troubles in ice cream

Yay Pascha! The cheese pascha turned out much creamier and more mildly flavored than in previous years (my kulich was excellent, if I do say so myself). It had the consistency of soft cream cheese. I've never been a huge fan of the kind made with farmer's cheese, but I like this one a lot. Chris likes them both. Cheese pascha will never go to waste at our house.

I tried making my own quiche crust using the yogurt dough recipe in Nourishing Traditions (thanks for the books, aviendha1979!). It's tasty, but the dough never got as thin as I like my quiche crust to be. I'll be eating it for lunch all week so maybe the texture will grow on me.

I'm operating on 3.5 hours of sleep, there is a mound of dishes in my kitchen that need to be washed before I can make today's potluck dish, and I'm going to Mass with Chris in an hour. Somehow I will make it through today without falling over... I hope.

There continues to be a distinct lack of vegetables at the North Hills farmer's market, but this morning there was such an abundance of meat I hardly noticed. I bought a 2.5 lb boston butt from Sofia's Farm. The brats I bought from them last week are still in the freezer. I also picked up another dozen eggs from Cedar Rock farm, where they showed me the latest pictures of their chickens. Tomorrow being Pascha, those eggs will probably all be gone by the end of the weekend. This week there were two new vendors: Meadow Lane Farm in Louisburg, which is selling pasture raised Angus beef and also some goat meat, and S&L Family Farm, where I picked up a whole roasting chicken and talked about cheesemaking. I will probably buy some goat milk from them next week so Chris and I can try out the chevre culture he brought home. Of course, if that doesn't work there's still the Celebrity Dairy booth. I swung by Jackson Farm again for a couple more sweet potatoes and some more asparagus, but that was really the extent of the produce there again this week. There were booths selling landscaping plants and orchids, for some reason, but little actual food. I'm hoping it gets better as we progress into the season. At the very least, S&L Farm seems to be a farm after my own heart, and they've got a second CSA season starting in August.

Now it's time for church.

Chris and I will be married a month from today!

So I just came home from the 12 Passion Gospels service, where we walk out of the church in silence while Christ hangs on the cross, to find that the Rock of Love 2 tour is playing outside so loudly that it's noisy in my apartment. I really was not expecting to have to deal with Bret Michaels this evening. I might have made other arrangements.

And besides, isn't it Thursday?

Map from my house to the concert location.

I think I probably should have let my fromage blanc drain for one extra night before mixing in all of the ingredients to turn it into cheese pascha. It looked firm enough, but when I mixed everything together it took on the consistency of pudding. We lost a little bit of it through the cheesecloth after moving it into the mold. I hope it'll firm up enough to be presentable on Sunday morning! If not, I'm sure it's still tasty. It was all I could do to keep from taking a big ol' spoonful last night while putting it together. Fortunately I had Chris, the Catholic taste tester, around to let me know that it was indeed as yummy as it looked.

My recipe filled the mold plus an extra bag hanging in the fridge waiting for me to clean out a flowerpot. And that was after we removed a container of plain fromage blanc for spreading on bagels after Pascha. I highly recommend making this cheese! It's cheap and easy.

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to bring to the potluck, and I think we've got Pascha food pretty well covered. The kulich adventure starts Thursday night.

I was skeptical at first, but the cheese drained overnight (producing a prodigious amount of whey) and it looks just perfect. We'll have to weigh it tonight and make sure it's the four pounds I need. I'm excited to turn it into cheese pascha and let that drain until Saturday.

Edit: Yes, I kept my whey. Every container in my house that isn't filled with cheese is filled with whey. I'm considering trying my hand at making ricotta later.

Having tried unsuccessfully to find farmer's cheese in the grocery stores the last few years, Chris and I decided to try making our own. Chris has been making his own yogurt lately, and there were a couple of failed tries at mozzarella, so we'd been looking forward to this one. We went with a fromage blanc culture from the brew shop and started it yesterday afternoon. When I woke up this morning and peeked inside the pot there was a thick layer of whey, so I assume it worked. Later today we'll pick up either cheesecloth or butter muslin (or both) and start it draining. Cheese pascha, here we come.

I did manage to make it by the new North Hills farmers market this morning, and while it wasn't quite as sparse as I feared it didn't really have a ton to offer, either. I don't know if this was a function of the types of goods represented or if it's just that it's too early for loads of vegetable bounty. There were only about 10 or 12 booths and only a handful of those had any vegetables at all. Regardless, I did manage to buy some good stuff for the week. I picked up some garlic bratwurst from the pastured pigs at Sofia's Farm in Bonlee (south of Siler City), a dozen eggs from the pastured chickens at Cedar Rock Farm in Castalia (northeast of Raleigh), some green garlic, asparagus, and sweet potatoes from Jackson Farm in Godwin (near Dunn), and a spring salad mix that includes chickweed from a farm whose card I neglected to pick up. That last booth was mostly selling non-edible things, but I was tempted by the little boxes of salad mix. The eggs are going into this week's cheese pascha and the quiche for my basket. The sausages are probably going to be eaten by Chris unless he doesn't get to them and they're still around in a week when I can eat them. Celebrity Dairy was also there, and I'll probably pick up some goat cheese from them if I make it next Saturday.

Today's list:

Return library book
Get cash from ATM
Send bookmooch books from the open post office
Check out new North Hills Mall farmer's market, buy lots of eggs if they have them
Pick up mail from PO Box at closed post office (remember to bring door code)
Liturgy
Flowers/palms decorating for tomorrow
Take checks to Kinko's?
Write thank you cards
Think about going to gym and realize there isn't enough time
Vespers
Dinner
Watch Chris start fromage blanc for cheese pascha

I don't talk about this much here because I'm sure you would have all been sick of it four months ago, but wedding planning (plus honeymoon, moving, conferences, and a possible job change) is what I'm thinking about lately. Yesterday we received our candles from Sts Mary and Martha Orthodox Monastery, so we were able to cross another thing off of our to do list. Ordering our candles from the nuns gave me an opportunity to write them a note and fill them in on all of the excitement since ariellejuliana and I visited them in September. Plus, we received the best smelling cardboard box ever in the mail filled, as it was, with a pound of beeswax. The candles ended up kind of unceremoniously shoved into a bag that is kind of collecting wedding day things and kind of storing shower gifts. My whole dining room is filled with boxes and bags of things, and these aren't even the things I already own that still need to be packed. Messy house = constant low level stress.

So on our list of things left to do we have: make crowns, pay for reception hall, sign contract for rental items for reception, fly to NY and get wedding dress (woo!), pick a song to dance to, take more dance lessons, acquire food for rehearsal dinner (in addition to pig), figure out how we're getting from San Juan to the little island of Vieques and back at the end of the week, gently encourage Chris' brother to move out, and a bunch of smaller things. Mostly I want to figure out what the flow of the weekend will be to make sure we haven't forgotten anything major, and also to make sure that all of the players in this wedding weekend have the support they need from me. Then I just need to figure out how I'm going to move all of my stuff into Chris' little townhouse in the month of June, knowing that the conference consumes several days in the middle of the month.

Whee.