Some of my coworkers wanted to know what my home office looks like, so I put a few pictures on Flickr (click the picture below for a couple more). It's pretty basic, but it works. I am especially excited about my new keyboard tray, The King. It is made locally by a small company based in downtown Portland, and it is a quality product. At first I thought it was pretty expensive, but upon researching other keyboard trays, they're all in the same price range. At least it's tax deductible.

I don't always have flowers in my office (though I should--they make me happy). The bouquet in these pictures was from our local farmer's market. It's composed primarily of dahlias. Previously I hadn't known what dahlias looked like, but now I'm a fan. They're so pretty! There's actually going to be a dahlia festival in Portland in a few weeks, but we'll be in California. Not that I mind; I'd much rather see our friends and family than a bunch of flowers.

We're still working on unpacking our cooking supplies and have been eating pretty simply, but I've got a few things to say about food:

When it was rainy a week or so ago, I got a craving for lentils, so I made lentils with ham and rosemary in our slow cooker (recipe from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker). They turned out pretty boring and definitely not worth making again. But the cornbread we had on the side (recipe from The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook) was very good (not surprising given the amount of butter and sour cream).

Patrick requested that we get some greens on our most recent visit to the Wednesday farmers' market, so we got a beautiful bunch of rainbow chard and made baked eggs with swiss chard for dinner, along with Nigella's garlic potatoes from How to Eat. We once again overcooked the eggs a little bit, but it was still a tasty dinner. I especially liked the potatoes. We used banana fingerlings from the market, roasted very simply with cloves of garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Good stuff.

Today has been overcast and rainy in parts, which made me feel like baking something! I ended up making salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies, which turned out just as Deb described them. I prefer my oatmeal cookies chewy, rather than crispy, but these are still very good. I have eaten three already (I had to sample the different batches to make sure they were baking right!).