Camping, Bean Salad, and Full Circle

I guess the title of this post gives it all away. I've never been very good at titles, even in poetry.


We went camping in Idaho last weekend with some of our friends. Click here for pictures.


We made an enormous four-bean quinoa salad. Quinoa, black beans, kidney beans, edimame, cannelloni, cilantro, green onions, grape tomatoes, and an olive oil and lime dressing. So freaking good, and super easy too. Should last us a while.

We bought a Groupon for two Full Circle boxes of veggies and got our first batch delivered today...organic lettuce, spinach, apriums, grapes, mushrooms, and avocados. Typically, each box would be about $22, but thanks to Groupon they were each $3.50 :)

Platters

We've started making snack plates for lunches and random snacks:

This one features a red pepper, a slice of leftover pizza, a plum, and a few wedges of brie. Another one had an apple, slices of cheddar, crackers, baby carrots, and part of a chocolate bar.

I love bite-sized things. :)

Back to Blogging

I'm going to try blogging again.

Last week I finished my last class, submitted my thesis (a 56-page poetry manuscript), and read at the graduate reading (in lieu of walking in the graduation ceremony). I'm done with the MFA program, fairly well settled into marriage and Spokane, and ready to start some new things. Some of those new things:

• Working full time. Ideally, I'd like to keep working part-time at the Writers' Center at Eastern and do part-time freelance editing. Ideally. I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to get into the editing scene, but I hope to start making connections this summer. Working doesn't sound too appealing to me at the moment, but I'm very aware of how necessary it is.
• Reading for fun. Oh, how I've missed fiction. Right now I've got a couple novels by Laura Kasischke, one of my favorite poets, and I like the first one quite a bit so far. I started a Goodreads account to keep track of what I'm reading. Isaac and I went to the library the other day as well, and I grabbed a bunch of magazines to peruse (Utne, Poets and Writers, The Herb Companion, Islands, and Real Simple). I think grad school just made me more excited about reading/learning, rather than burning me out. 
• Exploring more organic/natural/DIY options. I made my own muesli (oats, wheat flakes, coconut flakes, flax seed, almonds, sunflower seeds, brown sugar, and all-natural craisins). So yummy. Also, as of today, we have a little herb garden on this weird ledge thing outside and to the left of one of our living room windows. We've got sweet basil, Spanish mint, and rosemary. I can't tell you how excited we were when we realized we had the little ledge thing. We heard that growing indoors during the summer can attract bugs, but the plants would probably get stolen if we put them on our front lawn.
• Figuring out cheap but meals. For the rest of this month, we're down to about $15 for groceries. How to make $15 last for 8 days? Tonight we're doing a simple pasta sauce with canned tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms from our stash of dried ones, leftover brats from a barbecue, garlic and shallots, and fresh basil :)

It feels good to turn a new page. I'm really grateful for my time in grad school--this last quarter especially I had great classes and enjoyed the work I was doing--and I plan to continue writing regularly, but I don't feel sad at all to move on to the next thing.

And an update on Isaac: He'll be done with his BS in Economics at Gonzaga U. in December. After that, we'll probably stay here until the following summer and then possibly move somewhere else for him to go to grad school. He's planning on getting his MBA, but that will be dependent on how he does on the GMAT this summer (he wants to go to a good school). I'm glad we'll be in Spokane for another year or so, but we're excited to try someplace else out too!