I made two pitchers of gazpacho this afternoon. Gazpacho seems to be the summer recipe for cleaning out the produce section of the refrigerator; minestrone the winter one.

I threw out two heads of romaine and my pound of green beans. That depressed me tremendously, but for my gazpacho I did manage to salvage two half heads of romaine, a few leaves of raditchio (sic), a carrot, green onions, several radishes, and a whole lot of tomatoes, 1 bunch of parsely, 1 bunch of cilantro, grind everything up along with 1 can of chicken stock, 2 cans of tomato sauce (paste tastes metallic--blegh), salt, pepper, lemon juice, hot sauce, 5 garlic cloves, olive oil.

It'll be the all-liquid fiber diet this week.

Seattle this summer has a 'literary latte' deal. Read three books and you get a 4$ Starbucks card, and your name is entered into a drawing. I made it to the library tonight in time to submit my sheet and get the gift card.

Starbucks is not my favorite but it'll be useful for the end-of-the-month drill. I've noticed that the Starbucks card seems to be Seattle alternative currency. You can get one for a prize, as a reward, for recommmending someone for some such. If you look in any Seattleite's wallet, you'll find at least a couple. Too bad there's no easy way to manage the cards. I wish there was an easy way to figure out how much you have on a particular card.