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August 28, 2006

Looking for a new nanny

Brittain's moving on to other things, after staying with us for a year. So we've been interviewing for a new nanny. Actually, we've had great luck - so far we've interviewed three great people. Last time we ended up interviewing many people that we didn't like at all. This time we've liked everyone - one has already taken another job, unfortunately. But we have two others we're considering, and a third we're interviewing today. So we hope to make a decision this week, because we can't do another week like last week! Matty's back from vacation, but got a job (yay!) so she can't be our backup anymore. She's going to be terribly busy. We'll still call her for occasional weekend babysitting, that's for sure. Anyway, Jeff's taking today off to watch the kids, and tomorrow we have a trial day for one of the potential new nannies. We'll get through somehow.

Posted by ktingey at 05:34 PM | Comments (7)

Perils of mommying

For the past week I've had a pair of shoes near the back door. Sometimes I tried to put them on, usually when I had my hands full, but there was something in the right one, so I would just find a different pair. This morning there were no other shoes there, so I put down what I had in my hands (full compost bin in this case), and finally dumped out the contents - Ethan's little lemon car was wedged into the toe.

Posted by ktingey at 05:20 PM | Comments (2)

August 04, 2006

new Thai place

I guess the number of Thai restaurants in Portland is kind of a joke, because there are so many of them. A new one just opened on Hawthorne, where Coffee People used to be (finally driven out by Starbucks, no doubt). That makes 4 Thai restaurants on one street, in the space of about 20 blocks. Anyway, we went there last night and it was pretty good.

I'm no restaurant reviewer, but here's what we thought: the food was definitely a cut above average, if slightly less spicy than one might expect. The curry we had was particularly good - a green curry with lots of complexity for the amount of heat. The prices were very good, the venue was nice enough, and the service friendly.

Our server had to handle not only a come-on from two guys at another table, but also the fact that when they came in, they asked if the restaurant served sushi. I thought that was a little crass, like asking for lasagna at a French restaurant, but what do I know? It turns out that they may actually be expanding to include a sushi bar, which makes me skeptical.

Despite the relatively low prices, I think they're trying for slightly upscale. They didn't seem to do family style, but rather expected each person to order something. Which is fine, but family style works better for our, well, family. They were accomodating but had to bring out what looked like a kitchen ladle to allow us to give Ethan some soup, and they didn't have any small bowls for it. Not a big deal, really. It was a little odd that our soups came out after the other stuff, but that could be partly because somehow we miscommunicated with the server about what we wanted.

One nice touch was that shortly after we got settled, they brought out four little cups of broth for each of us, so we could taste the base of each soup - vegetarian, but then you could add meat as well. Ethan gamely tried all four, though he only finished the Tom Kha one (Jeff's favorite as well). We ordered that one, with chicken, and Ethan declared it his new favorite food, even better than bean and cheese burritos, even though Cha Cha Cha was right across the street (his words). I don't expect that to last, but it seemed like a ringing endorsement to me.

Posted by ktingey at 09:15 PM | Comments (6)

August 01, 2006

Nasturtium pesto

Inspired by a lunch special I had a few weeks ago at Bread and Ink, I made a pretty good dish that used lots of nasturtium blossoms. I basically made a pesto with about 1/2 cup of nasturtiums (I threw in a few leaves too), 1/4 cup of basil (more or less), a few mint leaves (more might have been nice), a clove of garlic, the zest of one lemon, some salt, some olive oil and butter. I chopped it all up in the mini food processor, then added some grated parmigiano reggiano. We had it with cheese ravioli. Unfortunately, Ethan wouldn't try it, because he prefers "regular pesto." But the rest of us liked it. It was very colorful because our plethora of volunteer nasturtiums come in red, orange, yellow, pale yellow, and peach, and the basil is both green and purple.

I write these things down here so I can remember them if I ever want to make them again... Jeff was very skeptical about the lemon, and the lack of MEAT, but he quite liked it and said I should remember how to make it. Molly came over for dinner on the spur of the moment, which was nice. Ethan had a new friend to play Leaping Lizards with, and we got to have some company.

Posted by ktingey at 07:38 PM | Comments (17)