Bellevue Blog and Food Challenge

Here's a blog I discovered this week, written by Bellevue resident/Israel native Nurit Asnash:


http://www.familyfriendlyfood.com/

Professional in a way I can only dream about, it contains lots of recipes in an extremely user-friendly format. I am curious to see how she responds to the United Way of King County challenge to create meals for a family of four on 22.00 per day. This is the average amount of food a family is given when using the services of the local food bank, according to Bellevue Reporter.

Her children are 1 and 5, and mine are teen and tween, so I think if I take the challenge it will be, well, more of a challenge. We'll see..

Find more information on the challenge here: http://www.uwkc.org/

And to view the recipe for the fabulous dessert that made me take notice in the first place, feast your eyes here:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2009/04/pavlova-with-lemon-curd-and-berries

Ink, Grass Roofs and the Easter Bunny

Maybe it was passing the neon pink closing signs fifty times a day.

OK I'll admit I've been drifting in a rather bored fashion of late. Was the whole Red Apple theme played out? Had I hit the bottom in terms of finding anything of interest around the 'hood? Inertia was plaguing my soul. I felt alone. Worse, I was beginning to feel weird. Like, what is this obsession with my neighborhood?

When I was young I wanted to be Samantha on Bewitched. Now I was Mrs. Kravits keeping an eye on things--looking for the Blue Bug in Stod's Parking Lot, puffballs lurking around the corner, garage doors sending coded messages.


Then things started happening. We're talking ink and lots of it. First, a big article on the front page of the B section in the Seattle Times on Wednesday. Next, Mustard Seed and Newport Hills Drinking Liberally Group on the front page of the Bellevue Reporter. No typos, and a well-written article on the latest democrat trying to unseat Dave Reichert in the Fightin' 41st District: Suzan DelBene. Well, they spelled her name wrong, but still, lots of ink. And I was there!


On Thursday I introduced myself to Pastor Paul of Newport Hills Community Church and secured a site for the April 25 Earth Day info fair and community garden kick-off. Not sure yet about the swapmeet part of it. It sounds like a lot to organize in a short time.

On Friday I visited my sister-in-law in Ballard and met up with Vic Opperman, the founder of Sustainable Ballard who is very keen to get a Sustainable Bellevue going. What an inspiration. Got a tour of the Ballard Library green roof--awesome!







This morning my daughter and her friend roused themselves early to go help hide eggs at the Newport Hills Easter Egg Hunt and I made friends with a neighbor very interested in biodynamic farming, who introduced me to the Easter Bunny.

Happy Easter everyone!

Politics is alive and well in Newport Hills

The first Monday of every month Drinking Liberally holds a get-together at Newport Hills' third place, The Mustard Seed. Last Monday we were introduced to Darcy Burner's successor as the nominee challenger to David Reichert on the eastside. Suzan del Bene spoke and took a lot of questions. It was packed.

I came across this while looking for images of Third Places: who knew that icon of iconoclasm, The Seattle Stranger, would have ever ventured to our shores? I just love their investigative tones as a way of combating incipient suburbaphobia. This is from last summer's race between Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert:

We are someplace called Newport Hills, which is about a 20-minute drive east from Seattle, sitting in what the SECB (not sure what this refers to) guesses you would call a blue-collar strip-mall bar. It’s called the Mustard Seed and the back looks like this:

Remember: he's 20 whole minutes east of Seattle



While the front looks like this:

We’re still waiting for Burner to arrive, so the SECB checked out the spread, which is not promising:

Memo to the Burner campaign: American flags are great and all, but they’re even better with food on them



The SECB spotted Blaire Butterworth, doing his second tour as a top Burner campaign consultant:


Note to SECB: Next time you cover politics in our neighborhood let me know and I'll buy you a beer or three!

Bug Update

Bug Update: Blue Bug is still there.

On April 25 this will be the site of the 1st annual Blue Bug Swap Meet and Earth Day Fair.

Of heatwaves and hedgehogs

At the end of the month I'm going back to Barnsley in Yorkshire to visit my friend Melly. She lives next door to a Victorian park in a house filled with stained glass windows. A family of hedgehogs lived at the back of the garden. It was extremely hot and I don't think we left the garden for three weeks. We drank a lot of strong iced tea.

Close up and in the shimmering light the colored glass would later inspire paintings.

Bright Lights

Well, here's my winter garden. It's Bright Lights chard. Withstood everything a Seattle winter could throw at it. I have to say it's never thrived, despite what all the experts say about growing chard in the winter here in the northwest. We had a bit of it at Thanksgiving, but it hasn't been what I'd call a bumper crop.

You might want to click to enlarge, but then again you might not want to.

Blue Bug

I've got my eye on you, little blue bug! You haven't left the parking lot since my post about the Earth Day event. I'm becoming quite fond of the little guy.

Click to see him grow.