What a weird spring! Despite the rumor that this summer would be warm, it has stayed quite cool so far. The solsitice is only a week off, and it feels like summer has barely arrived.

The strawberry harvest is in full swing - so far we've picked over 15 pounds of berries, and I think we still have a couple of weeks left to the season. So far I've made three batches of strawberry jam (one of which I overcooked - any idea on what to do with it?) and two batches of strawberry sorbet. The sorbet has taken a little bit of experimenting to get right, but this last batch was really fantastic. To make it: (1) make some sugar syrup: combine 1 1/2 cups of water + 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and boil down until it's a syrup. (2) Remove tops off strawberries and cut roughly in half, to make 8 cups of strawberries. (3) Put these in the blender with the sugar syrup and liquify. (We had to do this in two stages, as we only have a 6 cup blender). (4) Add some booze. We used probably half a cup of Stoli vanilla vodka that we had around. (5) Put mixture in a tub or wide bowl, and stick in the freezer. Every hour or two, open it up and stir it around to break up any hard-frozen chunks. (6) And then you have delicious sorbet!

The bacon infused vodka is still infusing. The bacon is looking particularly pickled, like something at a science museum. One more week, and I'll bring it out and filter it!

We're still taking judaism classes at West Central Liberal Synagogue. I'm having trouble feeling enthusiastic about going to synagogue outside of classes, though, which is inconvenient, as we really ought to go to services occasionally.

I haven't put up any new photos from the allotment, but it's coming along. We've had poor luck with cabbages and beans, but we finally got some squashes started, and we've put out a moth trap for plum moth which seems to be really helping the plum tree. As mentioned above, the strawberries are doing fantastically. We're starting to get little fava beans, we've got about a dozen small artichoke plants, and maybe twenty corn plants that are 12 - 18 inches high. The garlic at the house is looking fantastic, as is the raspberry bush and the tomato plants. You can see a satellite photo of our allotment (and my house!) on google maps.

Our next trip to the US will be in July - we're going to split our time between Colorado and Chicago. In October, we'll be going to New York for a friends wedding, but we haven't planned that yet. Our friend Patrick is visiting in August, too.

Books I have read so far this year: On the Subject of the Photographic, by Craig Smith. What It Is, by Lynda Barry. The Museum of Bad Art - Masterworks, by Michael Frank and Louise Reilly Sacco. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende. The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson. I just re-read Bastart Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.

I am missing the following Starbuck's city mugs:
US: Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Portland (Portlandia)
Europe and the middle east: Brussels, Cyprus (2), Leipzig, Corfu, Greece (2), Mykonos, Mykonos (2), Rhodes, Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Lisboa, Valencia, Basel, Ankara, Antalya, Aydin, Balikesir, Bursa, Izmir, Kocaeli
Mexico, the Bahamas, and South America: Argentina, Brazil, Sao Paulo, Acapulco, Aguascalientes, Cancun (Red), Ciudad Juárez, Cozumel, Ensenada, Merida, Mexicali, Monterrey, Morelia, Playa del Carmen, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Queretaro, Saltillo, San Luis Potosi, Tijuana, Torreón
China: Chengdu, Chongqing, Dalian, Foshan, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenyang, Wuhan, Wuxi, Xian
the rest of Asia and Australia: Adelaide, Bogor (India), Yogyakarta (Indonesia)
You can see photos of most of these here.