Hours of Daylight – 15:11
Another flood day has come. Last week Mark cut the water off a bit too soon; our junipers didn’t get a good dosing. This morning i managed to catch him before he droped the blade back into the frame thus cutting off the flow into our little system. The water is absorbing now; slowly sinking into the dense clay soil.

News: I had a half day interview at BSU yesterday. It’s for a "web coordinator" or, possibly "web author," position. From what i can tell my job would mostly be slicing up graphics provided and combining with provided text to build thematically related pages for the SUB. The SUB is the Student Union Building. It houses a myriad amount of student stuff. The interview went, from where i sit, well. Of course i did horribly on the HTML test they offered, but i’ve not written HTML by hand (in Word on the PC no less) in about 5 years.

The woman running the show hopes to make her decision next week and make an offer by Friday the 21st. I would like to work on campus. I’d have to fight off the feeling that i was the grandfather of the group, but maybe working with younger folks would be good for my increasingly curmudgeonly attitude.

But i want to talk today about food. I eat better than you do. Annette and i have been concocting some of the best tasting meals ever out here in Boise. No, we don’t go in for big elaborate productions, but we’ve been focusing on simple dishes that maximize the fairly limited range of groceries available in Boise.

Also we’ve been using our Weber propane grill for virtually every meal. The best accessory for the Weber is the rotisserie. It’s not cheap, but it’s well made and so far has worked flawlessly. Whole chickens at the local Fred Meyer are pretty cheap, usually runing about .89 per pound. I can get a big fat one for less than $5. I’ve taken to brining the chicked per the instructions in Cook’s Illustrated magazine. I figured out a way to truss the chicken without using wires or high-temp silicone worms, and can now do the whole prep job in less then ten minutes. Brined chicken cooked on a rotisserie is a thing to be tasted. Plus there’s something oddly primal about sitting on the deck reading a book whilst my grill sends poofs of smoke upward as the chicken fat melts onto the "flavorizer" bars of the grill.

Once done we will either eat the chicken directly, or "dismantle" the cooked bird and use the meat as a part of the meal. Sometimes that $5 chicken will get used in as many as four separate meals. If the local Fred Meyer has received a shipment of pineapples (a now and then thing) we’ll slice one up, put the racks back in the grill, and sear the pineapple slices, dice finely, and combine with the chicken in enchiladas or some other "multi-modal" dish. We’ve also been using mangos in marinades and to add sweetness to the salty birds. We also grill Vidalia onions, eggplant, red peppers, corn, zucchini and sweet potatoes. I got out the pasta machine last week and extruded some fresh linguini that i tossed with diced grilled onions, fresh basil from the flower pot, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Pair that with a really cold Sauvignon Blanc…. beats the majority of the restaurants in this town.

Then there’s the deserts. Annette has been making spectacular blueberry pies (chipping away at the 11 pounds of berries we picked the other day), and peach cobblers (with blueberries, of course).

So, it’s safe to say, on at least one level, life is very good in Boise, Idaho. It won’t last, but i’m sure i’ll look back on this period at some point and feel frustrated i didn’t accomplish more, but i’ll feel pretty good about the food.