My birthday and an awesome local find

We found the most awesome little pizzeria on my birthday. It's called Kaos Pizza and it's on Pearl St. in Denver (near DU). We went looking for an old favorite restaurant, but found it had closed, so we found this little gem instead. The food was unbelievable! It's a 100% locally-sourced restaurant (and apparently, they are the only one in the Denver area, surprisingly) with fresh food, a lovely atmosphere, and friendly staff. I could spend every afternoon just soaking up the feel of that place. But I would soak up a lot of pizza and wine, too, and that would be bad for my waistline and the concept of a juice fast. Ah, well.

 This picture was taken under the leafy arbor where we ate. The chair back you can see in front of me is at our table. They have misters running to keep it cool out here. Having my sense of smell for my birthday meant this was a really excellent place to hang out. Everything smelled really good and clean and natural. It's been 11 years since I could smell on my birthday. This was such a welcome experience. I really do attribute it to the juice fast. I decided to go ahead and eat for my birthday. So, we went out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was really fun. We were planning to eat salads, but each restaurant Jason had planned to take me to didn't work out for one reason or another. So, I ate a veggie/egg dish from Blue Sky Cafe in Golden for breakfast (Blue Sky runs a double-business by having a rastaurant in the morning and a yoga studio in the afternoon. Their food is really good and really good for your body, too.)

Then there was this incredible place for lunch. Sorry for all the pictures of me. Jason wouldn't take pictures without me in them. I feel a bit over-present on this post. This is the garlic bread and the most excellent pasta sauce we've ever tasted. We bought a gallon of it. The bread had fresh rosemary on it. We watched the dude step out of the kitchen onto the patio to cut rosemary for it. Pretty much amazingly awesome. The kitchen is detatched from the main building. It's right behind me in this picture. The street is in front of me and the main building is to my right.

 You can see the windows on the kitchen in this shot. That's where the magic happens. Seriously, if you're in Denver, try this place. It's affordable and delicious. Best pizza ever. And go this summer. It's so beautiful with the patio open!


Jason took me shoe shopping. He's the best shoe-shopping companion because he knows my taste in shoes and he also has good input himself. It was a lot of fun and I got some cheap shoes that are more like sneakers, so I wear them all the time. We also went to the book store, and the sneaky man let me buy a cookbook for a slow-cooker. I've been hoping to have a slow-cooker for a long time now. I just thought it would make my kitchen more effective and fun. Below is a picture of me with my birthday brownie (I was trying to be careful with calories, but still enjoy the day). And beside it is me with my gifts. Jason doesn't wrap presents. Nope. He kinda makes a mess and they're super easy to get into when he does wrap them. So, he let Amazon's wrapping be enough.

I got a VitaMix blender from our entire family and from Jason, and I got a slow-cooker to go with my cookbook. Both are amazing. I made fresh flour with my VitaMix the other day. About 2 lbs of flour! It's sweet! The dress I am wearing is an awesome birthday find by my mom and sister at Charming Charlie. LOVE that place. Ladies, it's organized the way we think, so only bring the money you plan to spend! It's that incredible.

 For dinner, Jason took me to Indulge Wine Bar in Golden. And they were having a party and the patio was closed and we had a long wait. Sooo....we went to Simms Landing in Lakewood. We dined on the patio and our view was spectacular!

I was completely amazed at the quality of the service, as well. Seriously, the waiters treated us like royalty. They were incredibly accommodating! The place is very well-decorated and classy. It's a really elegant place to go. And the food was amazing. Really amazing.

 We watched it get dark and our view transformed into this. It was gorgeous. We were there a long time. Behind us were lounge seats with fire pits between them so people could have more casual dining or more formal like our seating. And yet, the atmosphere was very relaxed.

 These are apparently the faces we make when we have not had wine in a long time and have a glass each. Haha. Behind me, you can kinda see the lounge seats and fire pits. Not really though. There's a bit much of a glare off of my white face!
Wine makes Jason feel suave, but it comes across like this. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Jason!
Being able to taste everything and smell everything was well worth the month of not eating food. And I am not hungry, per se, just miss the experience of eating. My friends have noted lately that I am posting a lot of comfort food on my pinterest account and then I blog about drinking juice. Yes, it's a paradox, haha. I miss those cheesy, bread-filled dishes with pasta and meat, but I am also much happier to be losing weight and experiencing summer without the allergy overload. It's well worth it, but those of you who see me on Pinterest know what I am thinking. :) My final day of the juice fast is August 3rd. Still have a ways to go.

Construction zone

 The Final Day For This House

 The house across the street is being torn down today. This is the place in some of its final hours. When we first moved into this house, we were hopeful that one day, our neighbor would tear down his house and build something a bit nicer...you know, help us out with our property value just a little. Well, today, our dreams come true! The house is cute, but delapidated. The roof is caving in (even though, oddly, in this picture, everything looks fine), the walls aren't straight, and it's in a general state of poor repair.

This is the same house from my yard. You can see the planters I put in earlier this year. The trailer in their yard (to the left of the house) is where the homeowners will be living until the new house is finished. I think they're planning to move back into their home in just a couple months. They're building a duplex because, apparently, we live in the land of duplex homes. Seriously, almost every house in our neighborhood is a duplex, there are even a few quadruplexes. Our "neighborhood" is more like a zoning nightmare that leaves things up for grabs. We technically fall into three different zoning areas, so none of them claim this space and it is officially zoned as "the country." Some neighbors own chickens, goats, ducks, horses, etc. Some neighbors have chain link fences, some have nice cedar fences, some have picket fences, some houses are mansions, some literally have walls made of tarp. This neighborhood is truly an interesting place. In the past few years, our street has begun to pick itself up. First the house beside us was built--a fancy duplex with nice landscaping, then we began remodeling our house (a process that won't be done for several years as we still have landscaping, replacing of the fence and the house's siding, rebuilding the front and back porches, and adding a carport), and now our neighbor across the street, Keno, is knocking down his home and making his space more presentable. I have hope that this place has a lovely future.

The Garden

This is my garden today. Off to the left of it is my compost bin I purchased through Craigslist for only $50. It is a really nice double-sided composter. Since I am doing a juice fast right now, I am making a lot of compostable waste...you know, the stuff that usually makes your trash stink? Well, throw it outside, layer it with newspaper, cardboard, yard clippings and dead leaves and it doesn't really stink, you have great dirt for next year's garden, and your garbage can ceases its stinking and messiness.

This is my garden a little closer up. I should take a picture with me standing in it some time. You can't really tell from the picture, but the plants are getting absolutely huge! On the right is the corn, next to it is soybeans and okra, then asparagus ferns which won't produce for a couple years. There are tomato baskets (the red things) and between the tomatoes, basil is growing. It's a companion plant for tomatoes. Further left at the back are my artichokes, tomatillos in the front, and then peppers, garlic, onions, lettuce and other greens, and back where you can't see is all of my vines, so cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupes, watermelons, squash, etc. Beyond the end of the garden are my raspberries and blackberries.

These are my greens from the other end of the garden. Close up, I have kale, then collard greens, then broccoli. In the second row, there is rainbow swiss chard, then lettuce. And between the greens are my carrots. They're thriving! Everything is. I am wildly surprised. I fully expected this garden to grow maybe 25% of what I planted. But everything, with the slight exception of habaneros and a few herbs, are growing rapidly!

This is one of my zucchinis. This plant is currently making about 6 of these beauties. These things grow like a weed in Colorado. I have a really tasty and simple recipe for making them into an appetizer. Then, of course, there are all the zucchini breads and things like that, and it's pretty great in juice, too. Maybe tomorrow I will give a quick run-through of my favorite zucchini recipes. You can never know too many when running a garden in this state!

My raspberries! One of my favorite memories as a kid was going into the raspberry thicket in our back yard and just eating raspberries, then picking rhubarb and sitting in the shade. As a kid, you can fit all the way back in the thicket, so you feel invisible. I planted two raspberry bushes in the hopes that by the time I have kids big enough to hang out in the yard, there will be a thicket worth getting lost in for a while. For now, I have these green little guys waiting for the sun to turn them red and juicy. In a couple years, I also hope to have enough of these to make pies and jams and preserves.

Cantaloupes. Yum! There are flowers all over these bushes. I started them indoors in about March. They're not as big as I would like, so next year, I think I'll start cantaloupes, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, celery, carrots, and soybeans indoors in January. Then, they'll be plenty large by June and ready to bear real fruit. This summer, my vines are kinda doomed to a life on the ground, but next year, I hope and plan to get a trellis built so they can climb and the melons can be held in a kind of makeshift hammock made of old shirts and sheets and such. I'll put it on here when I finally get that done.

Lettuce and broccoli. We've had several tasty salads (well, Jason has, I have had LOTS of juice) from the lettuce here. When this is all gone, I plan to put in red lettuce in its place. Having lettuce in the yard is never a bad idea, and the fence we have around our garden is a rabbit fence, so we might as well go crazy growing things.

Fridge Installation Gone Full Construction Zone

New fridge after the battle for installation.
Looks really nice!

Old fridge waiting to be removed

This past weekend, we obtained a new refrigerator. We found a deal through Excel where they'll pay you $50 for an old fridge as long as it still functions, which ours does, but is on it's last leg. So, in a couple hours, Excel is going to come get the fridge and pay us for it. Jason's brother, Jeramyn and his wife, Tamara, have a fridge they wanted to get rid of, so we struck a bargain. In exchange for the fridge (and the work to move it into our apartment), we helped them paint their entry way (and set up/take down scaffolding).
Here's a picture of the old fridge and the new fridge. Old fridge is on the left, new one on the right.

New fridge inside. So much better
for organization!

Old fridge inside. Not many shelves or spaces
for organizing and storing things.

Our old fridge began making these awful "ka-chunk!" sounds whenever the cooling system would turn off and this week, it's developed the trend of whining and making a high-pitch sound. A couple weeks ago, we went to get ice cream out of it and found a tub full of cold mush. It's time for a new presence in our kitchen. This old fridge will get to live a new life somewhere else until it finally gives up the ghost, and we get to be the proud new owners of a previously loved fridge that meets our needs much better!

New freezer! So orderly! I know where
everything is!

Jeramyn standing beside the disassembled
stairs inside our house. This was as
the guys were re-installing the stairs.

The new fridge is the exact size of the space we had available, and a bit larger than our entry way. Jeramyn and Jason ended up taking off the stairs (wooden stairs) in our basement entry way, and removing the doors from the fridge just to get it inside. It took from about 10am until 5pm on Saturday to get the fridge even into our apartment. It was 105 degrees outside and the house was almost as hot inside.

Then, there was the issue of the microwave needing to move 1/8 inch. The fridge fits in its place with no extra give room whatsoever, but the microwave caused some consternation. The picture on the left is as far as we could get the fridge in until we moved the microwave.


See the space here? Crazy, right?











Yeah, the entire microwave was removed twice and re-installed twice just to make space for that little overlap! The fruit of our labor finally paid off with a nice, snug fit between the appliances. The only small issue remaining which needs to be addressed is that the microwave doesn't really want to open well.

The way the hinge opens means it runs into the side of the refrigerator each time it's opened. Some cabinet will have to be shaved off and the microwave moved probably another 1/8 inch to make this a better fit. Luckily, we really don't use the microwave that often, so we have no real rush about that. I am just so excited to have such a system for organizing our food. Bins for everything and even a water dispenser on the door. Aren't we fancy? :)

Some of this and a little of that

Hello! We've been a little busy around here lately. I have made no new progress on the understanding of my old fashioned (and lovely) sewing machine. But I DID get another family heirloom. My husband's parents were in town this last weekend and his mom brought a family heirloom to share with us. It's a rhubarb plant. I guess it's been in the family for several generations. It's from Illinois and belonged to my husband's great grandma. It has traveled many miles and lived a long time to make it to our house here where we've begun to baby the thing. Not expecting much off of it this summer, but hoping for a lot next year!

We also have begun to recognize the scope of the work our yard is planning to be for us....and it's a bit daunting. Our goal this year is to simply return the yard to a workable place (of course, learn a bit about gardening, too) and make it something we can start to really make positive changes to next year. This year's basically all groundwork. The video really explains it well, I think. The front yard's a bit more put together, but it needs to change a lot, too. For one, we'd really like to be the kinds of homeowners who can park their car IN a garage. It'd be cool, especially since we have massive hail storms that move through the area from time to time. Our siding is a testament to that!

I figure if each day, we make some part of this home stand up a bit straighter and shine a little more, eventually, the whole thing will come together. It's already come SO far!

We've been experimenting with pizza dough recipes, too. Found our all-time favorite, I think. It's called a stracciatella pizza crust. It's basically crispy where it should be and chewy in the middle and really pretty easy to use. We make the entire recipe and divide it into pizza-sized lumps of dough and freeze them. Best pizza dough yet, and we are kinda turning into homemade pizza officionados. I would rather make pizza than buy it for SURE. I am never disappointed by the homemade stuff any more and I know what's in it. I should be more clear, the homemade pizzas are better than anything else and I don't have to take the risk of going out and paying for something I don't really LOVE, plus, some of those really delicious pizza places charge like $3 per topping...I mean, really?! A good pizza has to have at least 5 toppings. Who wants to pay $15 JUST for toppings? Not us. So this is the new thing. My husband does the crust and I make the sauce and assemble the toppings. I love cooking with Jason, so this is quickly becoming one of my favorite meals.

Best toppings we have found for pizza: fresh (very thinly sliced) jalapenos, home-roasted red peppers, some of a fresh pineapple all cut up, fresh mozzarella (that comes in the containers with water), kalamata olives, and fresh basil when the pizza comes out of the oven. Trust me, it's amazing! A white-sauce pizza is also really amazing with some olives, artichokes, thyme, cream cheese, and pineapple. Wow, writing about pizza is making me pretty hungry. I started this post a few months ago, and now that I am smack in the middle of a juice fast, this sounds unbelievable. Well, in a month, it will be!