I've been feeling guilty about making the same stuff all the time, so I decided to browse through my old Gourmet magazines on Saturday to see if there was something that had peaked my interest previously to make for dinner. I settled upon Chicken w. Sherry-Vinegar Sauce, which was quite easy and had the added bonus of being able to be made with things already in our kitchen.

Then on Sunday, I got creative with a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine that we randomly received in our mail on Saturday. The recipe was for Ravioli w. Zucchini, but we had squash from our CSA, so I threw that in instead. And well, we didn't have walnuts or scallions, so pine nuts and garlic filled in just fine. Very tasty overall.

And for those of you who are into cookies, my old roommate Liz has started The Black Cat Cookie Company, on the side of her regular lawyering gig. I got to taste them for the first time last week and boy were they good. They're selling at craft fairs around New England, as well as online. If you know me, don't be surprised if you see these pop up in your mailbox around the holidays!

Well, we've gotten the bulk of our packing done (camping takes up lots of bags!), and my next post will probably be photos once we get back. Wish us luck!

P.S. Sometimes, being a Mets fan is depressing. Like when they loose 8-9 to the Nationals after having had a 5 run lead.

Yesterday was devoted to cleaning and errands. I woke up early, and after reading a bit, I got the urge to file away all our papers that have been covering our desk. And from there, I was unstoppable. There was Swiffering of the floors, and of the fan blades to get all the dust off them. Then cleaning up all the wires hanging around our phone. And of course, laundry. And pruning our dying basil plants.

Then, it was on to our errands. A trip to Paragon to secure a camp stove for our camping trip next week. And a flashlight. And then there was the matter of the our cats. Our cats seem to have issues with their litter box. Mainly, that they don't quite know where their asses are in relation of the side of the box. Leading to pee on our bathroom floor on a fairly regular basis. They have made it clear in the past that they do NOT like a covered box, so we decided to search the Container Store for a box with really high walls. It worked well until today, when one of our kitties couldn't seem to get into the box at all. Hmmm.

Today, while trying to figure out what to do for breakfast, we ended up going to Red Hook to finally check out the Red Hook Ballfields. Now that's a tasty brunch. Mmmmmm, pupusas. After stuffing our faces on pupusas, tacos, corn and agua fresca (watermelon, yummy, tamarind, weird), we walked off the meal by strolling through Red Hook all the way to Brooklyn Heights. Hope they come back next year because I can't wait to go back.

Yesterday I had my last open water swim of the summer, the Brooklyn Bridge Swim. It was a lot more fun than last year - it was slower going across the East River, but there wasn't a really tough current coming into the finish. And I finished a lot better than last year so that was nice. And I got interviewed by NY1! Thankfully you can't see the algae/dirt from the river that was still on my face on the video.

And this morning, shortly after I woke up I got a text from my bro seeing if we wanted to go to the Mets game. Pedro was pitching, so of course I did. Our seats weren't the best, as you can see from the photo above, but it was nice and cool and it was a good game.

I'm writing this post from my laptop with its brand new hard drive. Now, why do I have a new hard drive on my 6 month old computer? Because I got evil bad sectors so I had to send my laptop back to Sony to get it fixed before I got screwed later. Sony was supposed to make this nice and easy and I was just supposed to drop it off at FedEx and they would automatically send it back without me having to pack it or pay for shipping. But that didn't work so I had to foot the bill, though I'm suposed to get reimbursed. One week later, and it seems to be running just fine. Though now our wifi is kaput so Sam is trying to revive our Apple Airport that we inheirited with the apartment.

In less whiny news, we celebrated the long weekend by doing very little up at my parents weekend house in the Berkshires. Unless you count cookin, including helping my mom make peach jam, a summertime tradition. And we're very excited that in two weeks, we'll be heading out west for a road trip from LA to Salt Lake City via Joshua Tree, the Grand Canyon, and Zion and Arches National Parks. If anyone has recommendations for stuff to check out while we're out there, drop a line.

Oh, and can I just state again how I love the CSA? Today, we had leftover gazpacho (made using last week's pepper and tomato), fresh corn, roasted green beans and beets (using beans from last week and beets from this week), and stir fry using peppers (this week), garlic (this week), and squash (last week). Of course this ended up being way too much food so I'll be munching on the stir fry tomorrow. And best, we followed this with vanilla ice cream topped with fresh raspberries. I feel so healthy eating our oil covered veggies!