in the nest

So among our Americorps members, I am what you would call the baby of the group.

I am the youngest (well except for one, but since Josslyn has an actual child of her own I’d say she has trumped me in terms of life experience!) and I’m also the one who still lives at home. While we were offered subsidized rent as part of our deal with Americorps, I just could not justify it to myself to pay rent to live six miles from my house, in spite of wanting to bond with my team (fortunately, we’re bonding anyway!)

I have to say, the totally bossy brunch I had today probably would not have happened were I living on my own.

The perks began on Friday night. I was tooooooooooooootally beat and I came home and perk #1:

1. Sometimes my mom makes me dinner :D

In fact, my mom had the day off (she has a government schedule where she works 9 hours a day and thus gets every other Friday off) so she cooked me a fairly elaborate and super awesome dinner.

My mom and I have a whole different thing with cooking. I have an obsessive mental inventory of what farmer’s market acquisitions we have in the house and at what point I have to worry about them going bad and kind of just throw things together based on what I already have on the house.

My mom, however, researches recipes, and obtains the necessary ingredients and measures stuff. Weird.

We had beautiful farmer’s market baby sweet potatoes (didn’t even know they existed! I wish I’d gotten a picture of them before they got cut up, they were vair cute) and my mom’s research led her to a recipe for sweet potato salad with crystallized ginger.

Man. Researching has its perks, y’all.

I never would’ve thought to combine crystallized ginger, green onion, sweet potatoes, and an Asian dressing, but I was ON IT. IT WAS SO GOOD.

I love crystallized ginger. My best friend, if she is reading this, is gagging. She loves ginger in all its forms except crystallized. A texture thing. Mystifying.

My pathetic contribution to dinner was a tomato salad.

The salad was enhanced by fresh herbs, however, which brings me to perk number

2. Deck garden! Home= deck, deck=planters, planters=fresh basil and oregano whenever I want it.

As for the protein, another recipe found by my mom, Oven Barbecued Salmon.

So delicious! The rub was great and the fish was great. It was wild salmon, the only kind that tastes good, IMO. Which brings me to

3. Costco membership! The thing that makes fresh Atlantic salmon cheap(ish)

And so we return to brunch, where the salmon lived on. I knew I wanted it, but it was brunch, so I thought potatoes and then I was like “How bout a cook potato-salmon hash thing?”

So I chopped those guys up (and nuked the potato slices for like 2 1/2 minutes until soft).

Meanwhile cooking up some diced onion in oil

And then that looked a little skimpy so I thought of another funnnnnn ingredient in the house, something I never would’ve allowed when I was living on my own…

4. Farmer’s market impulse purchases!

There were actually *several* this week, which is lovely, but at the moment I am highlighting:

No, not tomatoes, just eco-friendly reusable-packaged fresh black eyed peas and lima beans. How cute! I really liked the pink and green color scheme in the final dish.

My mom and I went halfsies on the final product. I plated mine up with some apple and cinnamon…

Then enjoyed it along with a yogurt and something produced via the ultimate comfort of home:

5. Coffee maker!

Yes, I spose I could’ve had a maker when I was living on my own. But, but… counter space! Coffee beans $$$!

So for the next year at least, I bask in the comforts of being the little baby bird still in the nest.

And occasionally some bizarre communication, like this note I found on the table the other morning:

Not, “You are now able to give blood.” Not, “I’d be nice to donate blood!”. Not “Do you have time to donate blood?”

“It’s time.”