4/12.
Well, outside of getting engaged, this month has been mercifully slow.
March was incredibly busy, but now that it’s April, I’m in standby mode. This is usually about the time of year where Ryan starts getting ordered out for wildfire assignments and I have to be ready for any last-minute calls about local fires, so everything outside of work starts to come to a halt.
Of course, as soon as we wrapped up all our early spring plans and prepared to spend the next several months on standby, we were treated to a bit of a late-season snowstorm.
At least Ochi enjoyed it!
Ryan and I had a chance to check out a new taproom called Harrington’s Tap House that just opened up in Flagstaff. It’s attached to the home brew supply store, and it’s a pretty decent place! Two of our friends just bought a new townhouse near the taproom, so a bunch of us got together to enjoy some beer and board tames.
Outside of Harrington’s, we met up with some friends at Wanderlust Brewing for a recent evening, where Ryan, Ochi and I got to meet a sweet wolf dog while enjoying our beers and some live music.
I recently accepted a third permanent spot on the schedule at the studio! In addition to my 6 p.m. Monday and Wednesday classes (which I’ve taught since we first opened more than three years ago), I’m now teaching 6 a.m. Tuesdays. It’s going to be a lot to juggle, but I love my yoga teaching job enough that I’ll make it work.
Ryan and I spent a recent Saturday morning grabbing brunch at Toasted Owl with some of our friends as well. I had the vegetarian tamales, which are always an incredible pick.
With the whole return-to-office thing that happened earlier this year (especially given my new permanent yoga teaching slot), Ryan and I have been trying to find new recipes that we can prepare ahead of time with minimal day-of assembly. One of my friends, Yuri, recently made this chickpea salad, and I loved it so much that I started making it myself. Ryan and I use regular mayonnaise instead of vegan mayo, toss a whole bunch of fresh dill into the mix, and then stuff it into a tortilla or layer it on top of a piece of bread. It’s awesome with sliced havarti cheese and sprouts!
I’ve been really busy at work lately. Outside of preparing for fire season, we’re preparing to launch a new website powered by a new content management system. Content management systems are my jam (and most of what I did during my stint in Chicago) so it’s been a fun and productive way to spend my in-office hours. Manually moving a website from an old CMS to a new CMS is a bit of a feat. Our forest’s website has more than 700 pages that need to be transferred, so I’ve been slowly working to map out our new site structure (using a combination of tools… including sticky notes!) and start creating and populating pages. This Herculean task has been taking up all of my time!
I had my friend Zoe over one night for a cooking night. The two of us made a gluten-free cassava-flour-and-egg pasta (from scratch!) with a tomato basil garlic sauce (also from scratch)! For my first ever attempt at gluten-free pasta, it actually turned out pretty good. We started with this recipe from Otto’s Naturals, and then modified it with olive oil and water to make a dough strong enough to hold up to my pasta machine.
And, finally, here’s a photo of Ochi being a goofball the other day.
I hope your April was wonderful, and I hope your May is as well!
