Author Archives: Andrea Middleton

Currently at Reddit, I spent 10 years as a community organizer on the WordPress open source project. I'm also an avid reader, wine enthusiast, and parent of two.

I’m so glad we bought our home last year

The Portland real estate market is crazy these days — when we bought our house last year, this was the fifth formal offer we had made — but this article about how one small business owner included one free pizza a month for life in their offer on a house makes me really glad we’re not trying to buy this summer. All the stories I’m hearing are insane. 

Handsome

 Overheard from the other room this morning: 

Amelia: “Bax, come here.”

Bax, whiny: “No, I don’t want to have my hair bwushed.”

Amelia: “Don’t you want to look handsome?”

Bax: “I already AM handsome!”

He let her brush it eventually. 🙂 When done, she kissed him and said, “There, now you look cute.”

Bax, interrupting: “I look HANDSOME.”

Amelia: “You look cute AND handsome. You’re the king of the cute, and I’m the queen of the cute.”

Fun at the Milwaukee Farmers Market 

We had a fantastic time again this Sunday at the Milwaukie Farmers Market. We biked there and back (sorry, forgot to get bike photos), got some great produce (another half flat of strawberries! Hood River fruit this time!), had a bite to eat and listened to the music.

We always forget to bring our knives!
Tap roots galore. Amelia is loving these carrots in her lunch.
Much leaves, many green.
New potatoes!
The band was kinda Cajun.
Long line at the crepe booth!
Tomato starts for days.

I may eat this whole jar today 

Only slightly spicy, but full of flavor.
Yes that is a lot of kim chi.

I went to the Asian market this weekend, hoping to find some of the good brands of tamari, curry paste, and fish sauce that I learned about in that cooking class I took the other week. I only found the “right” brand of curry paste, but I did find a great, made-in-Tacoma kim chi that I’m loving as a snack. It’s from Woori Asian Foods, in case the label isn’t very legible.

I love umami-rich, fermented foods, so this jar might not last long with me in the house all day on my own.

Bad night

  

Amelia had anxiety-insomnia between 11:30pm and 1:30am (at least) last night, with Bax waking up a few times in there just for good measure. We’re accustomed to the kids sleeping peacefully through the night these days, so I’m pretty wrecked this morning — which calls for strong measures. I made myself coffee instead of tea. Watch out world, we’re all grumpy today. 

Homemade marshmallows! 

Yesterday, Tom made a batch of peppermint marshmallows, and this morning he and the kids cut them up and put them away for the big all-school family camping trip we have coming up in June.

Here are the kids, supervising Tom cutting the candy after breakfast and getting wee tastes (and larger tastes).

marshmallows right after breakfast?? Awesome!
CRAZY marshmallow face!
A close up of Tom’s cutting technique
Marshmallow face!

Then once Baxter’s sugar level no longer allowed him to sit in a chair, he whizzed off to get into mischief and Amelia finally begged to help long enough that we let her get her hands “dirty.”

Amelia got to coat the candy in the cornstarch mixture so they wouldn’t stick to each other
Marshmallows all cut up
Minty marshmallows for gourmet s’mores!

Bet you wish you were coming camping with us! 🙂

Learning face

  

We’re learning about worms, with an eye to start vermicomposting. Portland has public composting, in which you can put all your food waste into the yard waste bin and have it taken away by the city every week. Since we mived to Milwaukie, we have been putting our food waste in the trash, and it just drives me crazy. The kids are so accustomed to composting at school and from our old house that they look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them to scrape their plates into the trash. I wanted to get back to composting, but frankly was not looking forward to buying a $300 rotating compost bin and knew from experience that we wouldn’t pitchfork a pile. 

My friend got a worm composting system and didn’t keep up with it, and she offered it to me. So now we have a Worm Factory with two trays and I’m trying to learn about what it would take to start using it. 

Of course Amelia wanted to know what I was doing and then spotted a video on the website, which led to another video, and now the kids have been watching worm videos on YouTube for 15 minutes. I’m counting on Amelia to “give me a lesson” (as they say in her Montessori school) on what she’s learned while I was making quesadillas. 🙂