I get around. To other blogs, that is. See what I had to say about my (very fic­tional) home at the (very awe­some) Sketch 42 today. Or don’t. Whatev.

I want to like Del­ray Beach. I really, really do. There’s a main drag that’s pedestrian-friendly, there are a lot of non-chain restau­rants and peo­ple who live there con­stantly talk about how much they love it. But I don’t love it so much. The shop­ping area is ripe for inde­pen­dently owned, beachy sorts of stores, but I can never find any­thing I want to buy. It’s rare that a shop­keeper is friendly. The non-chain restau­rants tend towards over­hyped and over­priced. I’m not a cheapskate—I don’t have a prob­lem with spend­ing money on good food and good expe­ri­ences. I do have a prob­lem with spend­ing money on second-rate food and mid­dling experiences.

Charged with find­ing a meet­ing spot in Del­ray a few week­ends ago, I ran through our options: we always go to Thai; Cof­fee Dis­trict doesn’t have a big food menu; and, while I’ve never eaten a bad meal at Tryst, a Fri­day night there is about as appeal­ing as under­cooked chicken.

My mom sent me a link to a post at Mark Bittman’s blog titled “An Open Let­ter to an Unnamed Chef,” with a note—“Let’s not go here!” Chowhounders deter­mined that the unnamed restau­rant was Delray’s Taste Gas­tropub, and that the place Bittman had orig­i­nally wanted to try was Bam­boo Fire, a Caribbean place off of Delray’s thoroughfare.

I know I said we were done with new restau­rants, but I fig­ured one more wouldn’t kill me. The ver­dict on Bam­boo Fire: worth it. Fla­vor­ful food cooked with love—it was so good that I told Mr. TRF we would go back next time we needed a place to eat in Delray.

One week later, we were back. We talked to one of the own­ers, Don, for a while after our meal. I told him how much my friend and I had enjoyed eat­ing there the week before. He told us the past week had got­ten them a lot of press: the New Times deemed them Best Caribbean Food and some writer from the New York Times.…

Mario Batali was, sadly, not in atten­dance, but I do like this photo.

“Mark Bittman! When did he come in?” I asked.

Don’s response: “He was here the same night you were, but sit­ting inside.” He ges­tured to the table Bittman sat at. Less than ten feet and a pane of glass sep­a­rated us.

I’m not sure what, if any­thing, I would’ve said, but I am kick­ing myself for not going inside once dur­ing our two hour meal.

Until I see this for myself.

I have, let’s say, an unhealthy inter­est in Celine Dion (and her creepy hus­band, and her ginormo house). Mostly the house. OK, hon­estly? And the husband.

I had sort of for­got­ten about the Mai­son That Ter­ri­ble Songs Built until Ele­ments of Style posted more pics.

I’m spar­ing you the water park.

The only thing keep­ing me from dri­ving up to Jupiter Island (it’s only an hour away!) to see this for myself is fear. Can I actu­ally get on the island, and if so, if I drive slowly and peer through hedges and gates, will I be arrested?

While we’re on the topic, René, I still worry that you might eat les bébés.

As per Sharon’s request, I present a photo of Harry.

We are all home sick today with sore throats, and Harry is respond­ing in kind with a par­tic­u­larly lethar­gic vibe.

Aster­isk to pro­vide Harry with pri­vacy, and to spare your eyes the sight of dog ween.

Not to dwell on it, but spring wasn’t so hot Chez RF. A flurry of (over)indulging, a lot of should-we-or-shouldn’t-we’s and an assorted pack­age of other bum­mers make this June feel like we’re recov­er­ing from a hang­over. A hang­over that we’re expe­ri­enc­ing in a sauna. A sauna with hurricanes.

As much as it pains my cold and snarky heart to type it, the catch­phrase here is now Be Pos­i­tive. It’s hokey, I know, but it’s not a ter­ri­ble reminder to those of us (yes, I am talk­ing to myself) who can get wrapped up in what we don’t have instead of what we do.

In the spirit of the Sum­mer Bucket List (and because I like to make lists), here’s the plan to enjoy where we are now:

1. The beach: it’s close. It’s cheap. We always leave happy. We’re not going every week­end because…? (This is from Kay Crain, it’s a pretty accu­rate depic­tion of our beach days.)
2. More Pom­plam­oose Chan­nel on YouTube, less woe-is-media.
3. I had writ­ten this whole post about miss­ing limeades from Kansas City insti­tu­tions Topsy’s and Winstead’s and how I’d hap­pily set­tle for Sonic but there is no Sonic here, but there is—in Boyn­ton Beach! So I’m going to get one and it is going to be awesome.
4. Lighten the load. We just sold off all our CDs and it feels goooood. Books got the same treat­ment a few days ago and will go to the library for dona­tion. The clos­ets are pretty lean and mean already but could stand another edit­ing. Things that aren’t use­ful or beau­ti­ful get the boot.
5. We’ve been enjoy­ing Salad Week for a few weeks but I think this might just be the Sum­mer of Sal­ads. (Plus, I don’t have to turn on the stove.)
6. All iced tea, all the time. I just made a pitcher of Har­ney and Sons’ rasp­berry herbal iced tea yes­ter­day and it’s time to make another. No caf­feine, no sugar, just rasp­berry yumminess.
7. Turn down the noise. I’m so close to pulling the plug on my Dai­ly­Candy sub­scrip­tions but I feel a weird sort of loy­alty since I remem­ber the day they launched (wow, that makes me feel old). I’ve been caught in a cycle of want­ing to try the Next New Thing, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to restau­rants, and, quite frankly, it’s exhaust­ing. There are a few places down here I truly love, and a lot of over­hyped mediocre ones. I’d rather keep sup­port­ing the good than try­ing (and being dis­ap­pointed by) the bad.
8. Take Harry to the dog beach. This is per­haps more for our enjoy­ment than Harry’s, espe­cially when he has this look on his face. (He doesn’t do that at the beach, I promise.)
9. Stay cool. I know this seems obvi­ous. I used to shun linen, shorts and any­thing gauzy, but guess what? A lit­tle ven­ti­la­tion makes me a lit­tle less cranky.
10. Needle­point projects + Net­flix stream­ing = easy evening enter­tain­ment. My mom just sent a pack­age of needle­point orna­ments that I can’t wait to whip up. We might need to get another tree…

How do you keep positive—or keep cool?

Like the rest of the décor-obsessed, Domino-missing world, I love me some Sara Ruf­fin Costello. So much so that I can say proudly—or per­haps, stalkerly—I have some of her pre-Domino styling work in my inspi­ra­tion files.

(Sara, if you’re read­ing this, I promise I am not writ­ing this while watch­ing your home with binoculars.)

Since Domino’s end, though, I haven’t seen much of Sara in mag­a­zines. Until today when I sat down with the June issue of Coastal Liv­ing, a mag­a­zine I never had much use for when land­locked, but now that I’m coastal, well, I kind of like it. Oddly, CL’s tagline is “For peo­ple who love the coast.” Does any­one hate the coast? Isn’t lov­ing the coast sort of a no-brainer? I say that as a per­son who feels fairly con­flicted about most every­thing where I reside—except the coast.

Any­way, Coastal Living’s site doesn’t seem to have the piece, about Marysia Reeves’ South Car­olina home, up but a spread is on their Face­book page here, and below:

Lovely pho­tog­ra­phy by (of course) her hus­band, Paul Costello. More biki­nis and less house than I’d like, but I’m prud­ish that way.

(Sara, please start a blog or some­thing so I don’t have to scav­enge for your work. In return, I’ll stop read­ing GOOP.)

Our house has a cov­ered patio that runs close to the entire width of the house. Since our Kansas house had a busted deck, the whole notion of patio fur­ni­ture is…weird.

What I even­tu­ally found, after some intense Craigslist­ing, were these:

Spun fiber­glass chairs! I would really like to know a few things about these, because Google is giv­ing me nada. How are they made? Why are they so abun­dant in South Florida? Why don’t they have a catch­ier name?

OK, the chairs actu­ally looked really scary when we bought them, plus they came with a com­pletely ran­dom (and ugly) wicker table that we later freecy­cled but had to cart home any­way. We sat in them once and they were full of fiber­glass ickiness—you know, that itchy feel­ing that insu­la­tion gives you? I shud­der just think­ing about it. The table base we found at a junk shop shortly after the chairs. Six cans of spray paint later, they are a lot like these beauts from Pieces:

(Except, you know, a lit­tle cheaper).

Here’s a bunch around a table in Pieces owner Lee Kleinhelter’s for­mer home:

Sally Bartz of Halsea has some too (check out her Design*Sponge house tour here):

Late last year it was big trash day and I was out of town. Ryan texted me while walk­ing the dog, “OMG there are more of our chairs on the street. Take them?” (He may or may not have used the “OMG” but I def­i­nitely did when I responded.) Those chairs have yet to be sub­jected to a spray paint makeover and are cur­rently look­ing like the shabby stepsisters.

Get­ting cush­ions made has finally moved up on my pri­or­i­ties list (now that the weather has turned to rain for­est and I’ve dis­cov­ered a giant snake in our back­yard), which leads me to a conun­drum. I thought I’d have cush­ions made in a solid Sun­brella, either in yel­low or lime green, and have white pip­ing added.

That is, until I ran by Cal­ico Cor­ners last week and found a ton of Trina Turk out­door fab­ric. This trel­lis print, in par­tic­u­lar, is talk­ing to me:

So…print or solid? Help!

Some­times I think Old Florida is a bit more appeal­ing than Cur­rent Florida. Case in point: Stiltsville. This com­mu­nity of houses on stilts in Bis­cayne Bay—and they are, quite lit­er­ally, in the bay—has shrunk (thanks, hur­ri­canes) down to seven struc­tures acces­si­ble only by boat. Here’s my favorite:

(Some­times I for­get how pretty Florida can be.) Here’s another one:

The Cape Florida lighthouse—the old­est struc­ture in Dade County—is in the back­ground of this shot:

We took this trip back in Florida time with the His­tor­i­cal Museum of South­ern Florida, which offers a bunch of other cool-sounding tours, some on land, some by sea.

More on Stiltsville here and here; awe­some arti­cle (shown below) from 1941 issue of Life here:

I saw some­thing great while elliptical-ing the other day at the gym. A woman wear­ing an out­fit made up of the fol­low­ing elements:

A white robe, much like this one—

With a black tur­ban on her head, much like this—

So far, so awe­some, right? On her feet, a pair of clas­sic Jack Rogers (or maybe they were Bonan­nos, not sure)—

I know, why didn’t I get off the damn ellip­ti­cal and get her phone num­ber? This was topped off with a pair of major sun­glasses along these lines—

The pièce de résis­tance was her gold Mer­cedes. Awe­some lady, Boca needs more of you. I think to become her BFF I need to start going to water aerobics.

A recent newslet­ter from our CSA men­tioned that peo­ple some­times drop out due to the fact that they are over­whelmed and don’t know what to do with all the veg­eta­bles. I can relate; if you’d asked me five years ago if I would ever cook turnips, I doubt I would have said yes. Farm-fresh pro­duce, while romantic-sounding, isn’t the eas­i­est thing to embrace when you’re used to let­tuce that comes with the dress­ing in the bag or pre-sliced fruit. (Noth­ing against either of these items, con­ve­nience veg­eta­bles are bet­ter than no vegetables.)

The first thing I rec­om­mend is a salad spin­ner. I have an old ver­sion of this one (above) and it’s still going strong. Our let­tuce usu­ally comes to us pre-washed but our farmer rec­om­mends another wash­ing before eat­ing. We have no prob­lem eat­ing sal­ads if the let­tuce is ready to go, so I always try to wash it once it arrives (this way I don’t for­get about it either!) An easy way to wash lettuce—or any green that may be sandy or dirty—is to fill up the sink with water, swish the greens around, and drain in a colan­der (I just use the salad spin­ner insert) before spin­ning. I might do another round of the swish­ing in clean water depend­ing on the green (spinach is often super sandy).

Next, I must rec­om­mend meal plan­ning. I can­not empha­size enough how this will sim­plify your life. Cer­tainly some­thing dif­fer­ent works for every­one, but I rec­om­mend Mighty Girl’s post and this one from Sim­ple Mom for a lit­tle guid­ance. I have made a slew of dif­fer­ent tem­plates for plan­ning meals but some­times will just write down what we’re eat­ing on the back of an enve­lope. Cur­rently I’m using LobotoME’s “Feed ME” notepad, which has the added ben­e­fit of being cute. (I like cute.)

So, this week we have:

• mixed greens
• zuc­chini (2)
• broc­coli (2)
• green pep­pers (2)
• small toma­toes
• big toma­toes (4)
• car­rots (aren’t they adorable?)

Once we’ve received our veg­eta­bles, I make a list of what we have so I can check veg­gies off as we use them. (This is to sat­isfy my inner list­maker, but it’s also a nice way to refresh your mem­ory so that you don’t have to dig through your fridge.)

This is a pretty easy week, because these are all fairly famil­iar items. My plan looks like this:

• Tues­day: pasta with chick­peas and pancetta (from here), using up some ran­dom pasta that’s been in the pantry for a lit­tle bit too long; a salad.
• Wednes­day: stir fry, using CSA zuc­chini, broc­coli and pep­pers; also using some ran­dom pantry items (are you sens­ing a theme to this week’s meals?) like water chest­nuts and dried shi­take mush­rooms. No recipe since I’ll likely freestyle, or hope that Ryan will cook because he is the supe­rior wok chef.
• Thurs­day: risotto with CSA toma­toes (from The Splen­did Table book).
• Fri­day: slow cooker chili with CSA tomatoes.
• Sat­ur­day: some­thing easy—usually while we’re out run­ning errands we pick up some fresh meat or fish from one of the local mar­kets we like and we’ll throw together a salad or roast what­ever veg­eta­bles we have left over. Some­times we order a pizza.
• Sun­day: quiche…unless I give into my Catholic side and decide to do a proper Easter dinner.

I didn’t find a place for the car­rots, but that’s because I’ll prob­a­bly just snack on them through­out the week!