Farmer's Market and Canal Locks

Well, this morning (well, noonish), jmpava and I went to the Ballard Farmer's Market. Market spoils: a bunch of green kale, a bunch of purple kale, a bunch of mustard greens (a variation I'm not familiar with -- the leaves are sort of feathery), a bag of Yukon Gold potatoes and a bag of mixed small potatoes of various kinds (some red, some purple, some white), a bag of carrots, a jar of blackberry-and-wildflower honey, a couple of heads of garlic, a bag of brussels sprouts, some German sausage, a take-n-bake intense dark chocolate cake in a jar (they were giving samples, and oh my goodness, so tasty), a bag of caramel corn, and -- the biggest splurge, but one we've been wanting ever since having tried the samples the first time we went -- a half-pound of wonderfully tender brown-sugar-and-garlic-smoked salmon. They had arugula and cilantro, also, but they looked pretty sad; I'm not sure whether that's because they're not really in season, or if all the good examples got snapped up before we made it to the market. Tonight: pasta tossed with smoked salmon and some kind of green vegetable, in a very light sauce of probably olive oil and garlic and finely-shredded cheese. Possibly with kale chips on the side. I should post my kale chip recipe one of these days.

Then we went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which are the locks between Ballard and Magnolia on the ship canal. We walked all around the locks and the gardens, watched a few boats pass through, looked at the fish ladder viewing room (which had basically no fish in it, as this isn't migratory season for any of the major fish types), and had a pretty good time. Smelled like ocean.

Unkissed, by Sherman Alexie

I was going to post this on Friday, per Friday Poetry Blogging (which I have been terribly remiss about), but I forgot, and now it's Sunday. Oh, well. It seems an appropriate Sunday poem, too.

I love Sherman Alexie. I read a number of his books in college, mostly poetry, some fiction (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is fantastic), and saw Smoke Signals, for which he wrote the screenplay and which is based on The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. And of course last year I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie is brilliant: sharp and lucid and a brilliant user of words, and also very, very funny, even when dealing with topics of great anger or sorrow. He writes about a lot of things, but principally about living as a modern Native American in the Northwest.

Then I moved to Seattle, and Pava introduced me to The Stranger, where I found Alexie's (then-running) column "Sonics Deathwatch," covering the Seattle vs. Clayton Bennett Sonics trial. Which was fascinating to me, because I'd been working under the college English-class inspired sense that this was a Serious Author, and in fact he is a Serious Author, but he's also a Serious Basketball Fan, and wrote very funny, sad, insightful articles about Seattle losing its pro basketball team.

Anyway. This week, The Stranger (who is not known for poetry publishing!) printed an Alexie poem, and, well, just go read it. It's good.

Unkissed
A Fibonacci Sequence Poem

And then go find The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and maybe watch Smoke Signals with me.

(no subject)

This is a poll which will be irrelevant in, like, 30 minutes, when I put the pasta on to cook.

But people who are reading LJ right now, you can change the course of history dinner!

I'm making pasta with smoked salmon, shredded brussels sprouts, and a light oil-garlic-and-cheese sauce. What pasta should I use?

[Poll #1353920]

(For those who can't visualize radiatore, they look like this, except mine aren't tricolor.)

EDIT: I went with Farfalle, which was tied for first at the time of cooking.