Real Food

Earlier this month we went to the First Friday event sponsored by the Zonolite businesses.  The rain stopped, mostly, in time for the event, which ended up being lots of fun.  We talked to Sally Sears at the South Fork Conservancy's display and I bought a T-shirt with the Nickle Bottom Community Garden logo on it.  I got a tomato plant from Habersham Gardens for signing up for their mailing list and we visited some of the businesses that were open that evening.  Ray Bowen was there, at Invictus Forge, but was out of propane so we didn't get to see him at work.  There was music at the Motorcar Studio and Tom spent some time talking to the team from the Atlanta Soto Zen Center.  We got food from the food trucks and enjoyed listening to David Payton in one of the Floataway buildings.

Gather &  Garnish had a sampler for one of their cook-it-yourself-from-locally-sourced-ingredients meal kits.  Caroline and I made it for dinner the following evening.  It was a real treat, the cold zucchini soup and salad with goat cheese and bread.  Everything but a few pantry staples (salt and pepper, olive oil, and so forth) came with the kit, and the instructions were good enough that even a less experienced cook could probably be successful with the meal.  Here's the zucchini and potatoes and onions cooking, before it was puréed into smooth green soup and and chilled.

We will probably try Garnish & Gather again later this summer; the kids will all be out of the house for a couple of weeks next month, and this is perfect for us as empty nesters.  But it also inspired me to try a little harder on shopping and cooking and meal planning.  The next evening we made the banana pepper and cashew soup recipe I had gotten from the Truly Living Well display at Streets Alive last year and that was delicious too.

This morning Iain and I went to Alon's and then the Morningside Farmer's Market, where we got lettuce and arugula, and heritage zucchini and blueberries and tomatoes.  And there were peppers that D & A Farm had, that looked like oversized banana peppers.  So we may try that cold zucchini soup again, and the banana pepper-cashew soup again this week.  I told the woman at the D & A Farm stand that I'd let her know how it came out.

It's not so hard, eating better.  And it's really better.

Something to Read

Iain is working on breaking in his new hiking boots, so this morning we headed off to Herbert Taylor Park.  He spotted it before I did, as we were walking down Cumberland toward North Highland, the Little Free Library at the intersection of Cumberland and Reeder.

Although I knew that there were some of these in the Atlanta area, this is the first one I'd seen, and it was a real treat to find it just a couple blocks from home.  Pop-up libraries are one of the ways people have re-purposed tiny bits of public space to better support neighborhoods and communities.  I don't know the story for how this particular pop-up library came to be in my neighborhood, but I was delighted to find it here.  

There are the books we keep (we have too many of those, in our house) and the books we read and then pass on to someone else or donate to Better World Books; we should go to the public library, but we don't, because it's too far to walk and it's not open on Sunday and book-buying is something we do for fun.  This morning I did look at the books in the box with the glass door and I didn't see anything I wanted to add to my already-too-tall pile of books I want to read.  But last weekend Iain cleaned out the large bookcase in his bedroom and right now we have two large boxes of books in our foyer, waiting to be passed on to someone with younger children.  So when we got back from our walk, I picked out a few and walked them up the street to add them to the collection.  

And the next time I'm walking by, I'll check again.  

Peachtree Street Alive

Atlanta Streets Alive, the wonderful Open Streets event that is sponsored in Atlanta by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, came to Peachtree Street on May 19.  The first Atlanta Streets Alive event I attended was last spring, when North Highland was closed to cars between Virginia Avenue and Inman Park.  Iain and I spent a Sunday afternoon exploring the neighborhood in a way I'd never seen it - it was amazing.  Then there was another one in the fall that included the same route but added the Beltline trail.  It was good to get people on the Beltline, and we enjoyed it, but there wasn't the density of bicycle hockey, performance art, and street food, with the event spread out over a longer route.

This spring the event -- now with major support from the City of Atlanta, thanks to Mayor Kasim Reed -- moved to Peachtree Street.  The route went from West Peachtree to Ellis Street, starting north of Woodruff Arts Center and ending downtown.  The weather had seemed to not be cooperating, with heavy rain forecast, but the rain was supposed to end by early afternoon, and by the time 2 p.m. came around, the rain had stopped.  So Iain and I packed up our rain jackets (just in case) and headed off.

The street closure at the north end of the route was confusing motorists -- a police officer was waving them to turn around but they seemed incredulous.  There was no one else there, at that point, but Iain and I walked down the middle of the street just because we could do it.  There wasn't much activity until we got close to Woodruff Arts Center.  The Museum of Design Atlanta had a bicycle decorating activity set up.  Since we were bikeless, we didn't stop but we appreciated the idea.  Nothing seemed to be going on at the Arts Center other than music playing through loud speakers.  At Colony Square, there was a stage and more amplified music, but nothing that looked like we wanted to stop and check it out.

On down the street, we had lemonade at the Atlanta Women's Club and took a tour.  I didn't know the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta was on Peachtree, but we walked by that and also by a FDA building that I also had never noticed.  There were performers outside the Laughing Skull.

We found a water station at 5th and Peachtree that hadn't been set up.  We (I guess that would more accurately be "I") decided to remedy that, so we set the table up, assembled the corrogated cardboard recycling containers, and took one of the empty 5 gallon water jugs across the street to the taqueria/bar across the street and asked them to fill it up with water for us.  They did and we had a completed water station as our contribution to the success of Atlanta Streets Alive -- and thanks to the guys at Escorpion for helping us out.

Our favorite Atlanta Streets Alive activity, Free Poems on Demand, was set up in front of the Fox Theater.  Jon Ciliberto took Iain's order for a poem about MARTA ("how bad it is" was what Iain said; I suggested a more positive approach of how much better it could be) and we continued on down the street.  

There was the REI climbing wall, food trucks near the section of the street that crossed the Downtown Connector, and tables and chairs where people were enjoying their food.  

We saw friends and neighbors on bicycles and browsed through the Army surplus store.

Outside the Shakespeare Tavern there were costumed actors but disappointingly no Shakespeare being performed on the sidewalk.

We counted churches on Peachtree (seven, as I recall) and marveled that on Atlanta's Main Street there were boarded up buildings.

On the way back we picked up our poem, which Jon read to us.  

Late in the afternoon the rain started again, but only lightly.  Most of us took out our rain jackets and umbrellas, but some people took refuge on the patios of bars and restaurants; they were full with people, watching the people walking with their dogs, riding their bikes, walking with friends and family.

No one walks on Peachtree; it's a street that the cars own. Except for a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, when at the last minute the weather mostly cooperated and for just one afternoon we got to see the street how it might be, if only we had the will to do it.