new kitchen new city

After months of being busy and having almost no time to cook I'm thrilled to have a brand new kitchen (spacier than the 267 Court joint), 6 hungry mouths, and a whole lot of time on my hands. I'm not paying rent the few transitional weeks that I'm living on the couch, so I don't need a job, just to make myself useful around the house. Elizabeth, Cara and I are staying with Josh and Zach at their Portland house/gallery/studio, The Appendix, for the summer, and Travis is also here until the 19th . Were trying to live cheaply, which means eating creatively. There is a great garden out back which is just getting started and should be a primary source of food pretty soon. There are also four chickens, which lay eggs on a regular to sporadic basis (Zach reported that the last egg he ate had no yolk in it, which the internet informed me is also known as a wind egg, which you can read more about here). Josh recently came into a number of random pantry items which range from useful to horrific and everything between, so we're off to a good start. After making one spicy cabbage stirfy tofu dish I note several missing spices and bike off on a grocery mission. Elizabeth directs me towards a Mexican convenience store that she knows has sponges and cheap fruit.

I am delighted to find every kind of pepper I ever dreamed of (I grabbed some whole arbol peppers and ground guajillo) and cumin and a host of other spices each between 69 and 99 cents for about 3 times as much as you get in one of those spice jars. They also have Queso Fresca and Oaxacan cheese, pickled jalapeno's and cactus, and of course lots of tortillas, all of which I pick up. I grab a chili lollipop for the ride home.