Early spring is the time to be hopeful. I've started the veggie garden again, and although there's always a lot of work to do, I'm hopelessly optimistic. Just as baseball season has started, and the Seattle Mariners are 3-0. It's easy to have delusions early in the season. It'll be a while before they are mathematically eliminated from post season contention, the dream can last until June, no? Same with the garden. Last summer was a bad one for the garden. First I managed to kill a bunch of tomato starts in the greenhouse. Then I didn't prepare the garden beds sufficiently, and the weeds got the upper hand. Plus I was busy working, and it was a hotter than usual summer, and I'd rather do almost anything else than be outside in the heat. But this year will be different. Mostly because I'm intentionally trying to make things easier. Instead of weeding and preparing seven or eight long  garden beds in the backyard, I'm only doing five. To...

I've discovered a new cheese. In my quest to stay healthy, I have to watch my salt intake. And, to my great dismay, most cheeses have a lot of salt. But this Middle Eastern cheese( made in California) has about 75% less salt than Cheddar or Swiss or Mozzarella, and is delightfully melty. Even though it's called " Sweet Cheese" it is not sweet, but is used as an ingredient in  sweet Middle Eastern desserts. I think it would be great on pizza. I found it at the DK Market, 720 Lind Ave SW, in the enchanted city of Renton. The DK remains my favorite place for grocery shopping. You can't find everything there, some things still need to be purchased at regular supermarkets like Freddy's, QFC, or Safeway. But the DK is great for fruit and vegetables, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Mexican cheeses, a zillion varieties of olive oil, Polish chocolate, baklava, Ethiopian flour, rice noodles, Indian toothpaste, etc. In addition to the great variety of foodstuffs sold in ...

Within the last month, Wallet Hub( whoever they are) came out with their annual rankings of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States. Jersey City, New Jersey ranked number one. But three out of the top twenty five were from western Washington State. Renton, home of the Freakazoid homestead, ranked twentieth, out of about five hundred cities ranked.  Kent, Renton's neighbor to the south, ranked tenth. And Federal Way, about fifteen miles southwest of Renton, ranked twenty fourth. Seattle, the nearby city of seven hundred thousand plus, ranked 138th. A city in Florida finished last, being 97% Hispanic/Latino. Renton has a smaller percentage of non Hispanic whites than Seattle does, but a larger percentage of African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, Hawaiians/Polynesians, people of two or more races,  and Asians. As someone who enjoys multiculturalism, and especially food from all over the world, how can this not be a good thing? But no matter the ethnic diversity o...