Crazy Week and Rule #16

So, usually when it starts off as a crazy week and you complain about it to everyone you know, it starts getting a little better. Instead, my week just got more insane. After being in extreme pain and hardly able to move with my "broken spine" my family got attacked by a dog. By family I mean Opiedog, Mom, and Dad (who got the worst of it and saved Opie's dear life!). My sister was safe and sound in LA. Aside from daily hospital visits, and concerns over my dad's health, my family was also attempting to entertain my 16-year-old cousin, who is here visiting and I am sure bored out of her mind. Between Ryan and I helping out with everything we hardly had a chance to explore all of the various food options while avoiding the supermarket.

We did manage to live off of our bi-weekly farm bin from Organics to You, went to a farmer's market, ate a few things from our garden, and shopped at a cooperative food store. In all honesty, most of our meals were at my parent's house and cooked by my mom. We even lucked out and brought my mom some of our farm fruit and she made us a pie (she definitely got the short-end of the stick in that deal!). See some pictures of our adventures below. We realized that farmer's markets are a lot more accessible in Portland compared to the middle-of-no-where we live. If you need something a lot more driving is required compared to venturing to the local supermarket. Also, some items are hard to find outside of the supermarket, such as tortilla chips to go with Ryan's homemade guacamole, which is still oddly sitting in our fridge because we had nothing to go with it. Usually this would be gone in mere minutes.

The PIE


SO many spices. We bought some saffron for a sauce we were making.


Sampling food at the PSU Farmer's Market


One of the first pepper's from our garden


Our next week's rule is another exciting one: Rule 16: Buy your snacks at the farmers' market. I snack a lot so this one is going to be tricky for me. At the farmer's market this weekend we were reminded how expensive things are. We bought two buffalo steaks for $40 (a real splurge for date night!). I really wanted some nuts to snack on but they were $7 for a tiny little bag. I think we will be snacking on a lot of fresh veggies and fruit this week! If it's not from the farmer's market and it's not part of a meal we won't be eating it this week!