Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

I know it's been a long while since my last post. < Hangs head in shame > Let me give you a glimpse into the past couple months, then I'll fill you in on how hectic May has been so far.

For two weekends, the Chicago Transit Authority did work on the El line tracks behind our building.

We were told we could not access our garage from 6:00PM on Friday through 6:00AM on Monday. Which is annoying, but there's street parking, right? Wrong. Our street parking is 2-hour limited, paid, or overnight regulated during winter (meaning no parking between 3AM and 7AM until May 1st). So what were we to do? I took it upon myself to write our alderman and the CTA's liaison. Never heard from either, but the next day I received an email from our building manager saying the CTA was providing parking at a lot down the street. Win!

Soon April was in full swing with more rain than we'd seen in a long time. It also got warm very quickly. By the middle of the month we determined it was time to start our next project: garden boxes for the balcony!

We bought lumber at Home Depot and had them make the majority of the cuts. This was our design.

 We finished the cuts and assembled them at home. Another step was to drill holes for the bolts which would attach them to the balcony railing.

They were easier to build than I thought it would be. Once the boxes were built, we painted them a fun tangerine color.

We left them out during the week to dry. When we came to the next weekend we finished the boxes and attached them to our railing. The first step was to drill holes in the bottom of each box for water drainage.

Next we slid the bolts through the holes. We ordered the bolts online because no hardware store had 12-inch carriage bolts. 

We designed the boxes ourselves after being unable to find any pre-made brackets which would fit on our railing. The top row of bolts rests on the railing and the bottom row is to keep the wind from flipping them up. The bolts come through from outside the railing and then we secured them with another piece of wood. I even learned how to ratchet!

We were slightly nervous about hanging them 11 stories in the air. This design was created by us - a doctor and a consultant. Who knew if it would actually work? So far, it is!

 We started our garden the next day with seeds, two tomato plants and one chocolate mint plant. Which ended up being a mistake as it snowed that week. In late April. As I saw the other day on the internet... "Chicago: Where the weather's made up and the points don't matter!" (Who's Line Is It Anyway? anyone?) So our poor tomato plants froze.

Turns out arugula is extremely hardy - it still came up! We re-planted the other seeds and were lucky the tomato plants decided to come back to life. Look at our garden now!

From front to back: Cucumber, tarragon, green bean, tomato, green onion, arugula

Left to right: Tomato, chocolate mint, cilantro

Too many tarragon plants for one box!

Green onion and arugula.

One more arugula along with a flower plant finally coming back from the snow.

We have pepper plants inside until they get bigger. 

We had extra pots so we planted a couple extra seeds inside.

We are super excited to eat plants from our garden this summer! Hopefully they keep growing!

It's a Doctor's Life... #2

Another hint your husband is a surgeon...

These things are all around your home!

For those of you not initiated into the world of operations, these are surgical forceps the doctor uses to hold a needle when suturing. Apparently practice makes perfect and A can be found with them in his hand more often than not.

Banh For Mi

Yes, folks, we are still alive up here in Chi-town. A is working nights and I have been putting in more hours than normal at work due to multiple deployments of new web and mobile app functionality. Including two overnights so far - fun times!

In between the madness, we managed to carve out some time to try our hand at making one of our newly-discovered favorite dishes: Banh Mi. For those of you who aren't familiar, banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich. It consists of a meat (usually pork of some sort), lightly pickled vegetables, jalapeno, cilantro, and a variant of mayonnaise, all on a rice flour baguette. They are SUPER delicious!

For our experiment, we brined our pork with some sriracha sauce and other fun things the day before. We also made the do chua - pickled carrots and daikon. Do chua is super easy. All you do is peel and slice carrots and daikon, knead them with salt until they're bendable, then marinate in a sugar-vinegar-water blend. Simple and tasty!

The next night A carved the pork into thin slices which we then pan-fried.

Lately Orion has been a very attentive sous-chef.

We made our own soy sauce/mayonnaise blend and even threw in some sriracha sauce for good measure. The baguettes we bought from a Vietnamese restaurant - they bake them fresh daily and use true rice flour. Super delicious! All together, it's one amazing sandwich.

Can you say yum?