Three Weeks of Harvests

I don't have much to say about this garden update, but I felt like sharing some photos.

Two weeks ago:

Teensy thinned carrots, radishes, padrons, lemon cucumbers,
jalapenos, tomatoes, and lots and lots of beans.
(beans being pickled in the jar in the back)

I felt like taking a pretty, artsy-like shot.

One week ago:

Tomatoes, padrons, and a lemon cucumber.
The padrons are currently being pickled with the jalapenos
from the week before. They smell awesome.

Today:

Padrons, tomatoes, lemon cucumber, radishes, a funky
little carrot, and assorted beans.

The harvest doesn't vary much from week to week, but it's amazing to me how much we're picking - the sheer volume is the main reason I feel the need to document every time we harvest. Compared to our city-dwelling friends, we're not exactly doing "small space gardening" with our luxurious ~50 square feet, but compared to our home-owning-friends, we're squeezing a lot into a small space. It's crazy how much comes out of our little corner of the yard! 

How's your garden? Do you garden in the yard? On a balcony or fire escape? On your kitchen counter? Share photos and story in the comments!

Thinning

A few weeks ago, it was time for a little carrot thinning in the garden. This is our first time growing carrots, and the concept that you have to thin them out (and more than once!) was new to me. We thinned them at the beginning, but as they've grown, we've had to continue thinning to make room for the remaining ones to grow. Turns out, carrots need room to grow underground and if they're not thinned, they don't grow.

Before thinning: it's just a big bushy carrot top forest!

I forgot to take a picture afterwards, but it didn't actually look that different, despite removing nearly half the carrot tops. And since we were in the garden, we decided to do a little more harvesting.

Parsley, basil, assorted tomatoes, radishes,
padrons, assorted beans, and lemon cucumbers

Rainbow chard and red russian kale

Radishes and carrot tops

We tried to use the carrot tops for a pesto, but it turns out that they're a bit too fibrous...it was a straight-to-the-compost-pile concoction. Luckily, we'd made parsley and basil pesto first, and already had way more than we needed for our pesto pasta dinner. And some of the carrot tops had little teeny carrots attached - sometimes when you thin carrots, what comes out of the ground isn't really edible. But this stage of thinning produced some adorably tiny little guys!

Salad featuring the tiniest carrots known to man, as well as
radishes, lemon cucumbers, tomatoes and chard from our
garden. And yes, that's a glass of Westvleteren 12.

More garden updates to come!

ICYMI: Blogged at Disqus

In case you missed it, here's a link to my blog post on the Disqus blog about finding community at the BlogHer conference this year. Community is incredibly important to me, and working at Disqus is invigorating...working for a company that builds products to make better online communities and a better internet? Hell yeah. Working to make our company a great community of its own? Hell yeah. Connecting in real life (IRL) to communities I'm a part of online? Hell yeah.

<3

The Bloggiest

Well. BlogHer 2014. Ahem, I mean #blogher14. It has come and gone, and I'm still thinking about it. In fact, I have so many thoughts, and pretty much all of the feelings, that I'm having a really hard time writing about it. There were so many fucking fantastic women, all in one place, having conversations that were funny and irreverent and horrifying and heartbreaking and inspirational and well you can see why all the feels.

Because I'm still processing, and because I've already written one serious post (which is far more than I usually write), and one silly post, I guess this one is somewhere in between. So...here's Day 2 and 3 of BlogHer 2014, mostly in pictures. But with a little actual content at the end.

TwistedShotz. These are shots. Sorry, I mean shotz.

They are sugary sweet and three of them in quick succession will give you a nice little buzz.

Helen and I did the Yoplait Greek #tasteoff challenge, where you do a blind taste test of both Chobani and Yoplait Greek yogurt and see which you like better. I eat Chobani quite often at work (when we're out of Fage - so spoiled), and also I'm pretty sure I was solely responsible for Yoplait's success in the 90's, so it wasn't hard for me to tell the difference. I prefer a more sour Greek yogurt, so I chose the Cho. Helen preferred Yoplait, and also didn't know which was which, so I consider myself an extremely talented yogurt connoisseur. I wonder if there are awards for this.

Helen, educating me on the Kardashian game. It looks incredibly stupid, like it might actually kill your brain cells, and I cannot download it for fear of getting sucked in. Those Kardashians are good. They know what they're doing. They will rule us all.

We rocked out at the tiggly booth. I'm pretty sure that tiggly is one of those products that's made for kids but the parents secretly play with it once the kid goes to bed. Maybe if they're intoxicated, but also maybe sober.

Thanks to Bridgestone Tires for the Disqus-colored manicures!

Obligatory swag haul photo. This year, despite driving to the conference and therefore having nearly unlimited ability to Take All The Things, I tried really hard to only take things I would actually use.

Highlights include Monopoly, Trouble, Ziploc Gallon Size Freezer Bags, convertible coaster/trivets, a sturdy tote bag, a hell of a lot of Bona floor wipes, full size Pledge and Pledge for your floors, and a bunch of Efferdent (for Will's hockey mouthguard) and twenty four double size rolls of Angel Soft holyshit. (I know -- exciting!)

I had fun teaching Helen the "show up in the last 20 minutes of the expo and score big" game :)

Two hungry girls and their cheeseburghers at the closing night party.

Rocking out in the daylight to 80's-90s jams with DJ Run. As in Rev Run. As in Run DMC.

Yup.

I was going to say that the dance party really got wild once it got dark out, but this group of ladybloggers was going wild in the daylight too. It did feel less awkward after dark.

The Rev said such things as, "I swear to God I'm here to have fun!" and "I haven't smiled this much in a very long time." and "WHERE MY LADIES AT?!" (um, right here in front of you, Rev, maybe get those eyes checked out), which was pretty super fun. He was smiling a lot. I think he had a good time with us. Thanks, Rev.

We certainly had a good time.

Really sweet string lighting and a whole lot of dancing women. It was a nicely decorated party, and I can appreciate that.

Those burgers and fries taste so damn good late at night after a few beers. Jury's still out on Gogurt.

Oh, and then this happened:

WHAT.

On our way to brunch on Sunday, we passed the parking lot where a mere 10 hours before, we had been eating junk food and jumping up and down to songs we danced to in middle school. 

Quite a transformation.

Post-BlogHer brunch requires three drinks.

I'll be honest: after Chicago's somewhat lackluster performance, I wasn't entirely looking forward to this year's conference. Chicago felt too big, too empty. I was worried that the BlogHer conference had jumped the shark. Oh, how wrong I was. This year felt lovely. It was cozy and warm and full of energy. The 10x10 speakers were (for the most part) wonderfully articulate, inspirational and thoughtful (yeah, maybe don't watch this one at work). The Voices of the Year almost all made me cry (just found this recap of quotes featuring moi - fun!). The mainstage keynotes were fucking fantastic. The food was pretty good too. 

I met some rad ladies I'd only met on the internet before this weekend (hi, Ginger Warrior! whaddup, FireMom?). I hugged women I haven't seen since last year (oh hey there, Tabatha). I sat next to Elise Bauer at lunch. I decided that I really want to talk to Kara Swisher in person and make her be my mentor, and I still regret that I wasn't able to hug The Bloggess and thank her for that post about HR. I met some brand reps that were really cool, and who I hope remember me when I finally email them several weeks after the conference. I basically accosted BlogHer co-founder Jori Des Jardins for the second time in four years, to thank her for starting this thing (sorry, Jori). I basically lived in #BlogHer14 for three days. And I went to a party that I'm not allowed to talk about.

One drunk night I started typing this blog post. I wrote, "blogher is nothing if not a place to encourage yourself to put yourself out there." And I think that's what this whole BlogHer thing is all about, really. 

If we met in San Jose this year, thanks for taking the initiative to follow through on our "Oh, I'll check out your blog! Here's my card, too!" interaction. I really did like your dress, and I really do hope I'll see you on the internet (like when I finally get it together to go through the biz cards and visit all of your blogs). It was really fun to meet you. I mean it.