{"id":386,"date":"2009-03-19T21:15:25","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T04:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=386"},"modified":"2009-03-19T21:15:25","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T04:15:25","slug":"whats-for-dinner-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=386","title":{"rendered":"What’s for Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring is really here in San Francisco: I can tell not only from the beautiful balmy day we had today, but from the fact that this week’s veggie box contained no<\/em> chard and no<\/em> kale! Instead we got a big bunch of spearmint, pea shoots, a little radicchio head, a small bulb of fennel, a bag of spinach, two bundles of leeks, and two huge bunches of carrots. I cooked one whole bunch of carrots last night in a mushroom-barley soup; I used the cooking broth left over from boiling our corned beef on St. Paddy’s Day, and it turned out really nicely. I was proud of myself since I’m generally such a rigid cook, hewing tightly to recipes; that soup was entirely improvised and it came out tasty.<\/p>\n

Tonight we’re eating spinach salad with bacon and hard-boiled eggs; tomorrow night I think we’ll have the pea shoots and radicchio in another salad, with roasted fennel and carrots alongside. For Saturday and Sunday I just don’t know; we might be going to see more houses on those days, or we might not. We’ve made a formal offer on the bungalow I mentioned in my last post. There’s another offer already in for the property, so we don’t know if we’ll actually get it, and our realtor thinks it’s wise to have a second-choice property picked out. But, you know, we really like that one. We’ve gone back a couple of times just to wander around the neighborhood and we keep finding more to like: a park! a library! a coffee shop that makes beignets! It’s on High Street so in my head it’s “High House,” or sometimes “High Garden House” because the backyard slopes up steeply and I have dreams of a terraced garden. I also think “The House on High Street” sounds like a good title for a novel, although the goings-on in said novel would probably be sordid!<\/p>\n

I truly believe that house is an excellent value. When it was last sold, two years ago, a bunch of inspections were done, which we’ve been able to see. The property is basically in solid shape. It has some issues that would be true of any house that age; the most serious is that earthquake retrofitting was never done, and some work would be needed to bring it up to modern standards. We’ve structured our offer so that some money would be set aside to complete that work. I’m a little worried that the bank might balk at that, and we might have to reconfigure the offer in order to get the loan finalized. Anyway, there’s some stress and uncertainty involved, but I guess there always is in these kinds of situations.<\/p>\n

I’m still sort of amazed that a house valued at $500,000 two years ago is now selling for $150,000. It’s a short sale, which I don’t fully understand, but I think<\/em> that’s better karma than a foreclosure: nobody is getting kicked out of the house. The bank has instead agreed to let the current owners sell for less (probably much less) than they currently owe on the mortgage; as far as I understand, it’s a way for them to walk away from an overpriced loan without damage to their credit, and a way for the bank to recoup some money on a mortgage that would otherwise likely default. Short sales are pretty complicated, but because there is this more-or-less amicable agreement between the sellers and the buyers, these houses generally don’t get trashed the way foreclosures often do.<\/p>\n

I’m rambling. I’m nervous. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my spearmint. Mom, can you tell me exactly how you used to make mint sun tea? What kind of tea, and how much of it, and how long do you let it steep in the sun? And how much of the spearmint should I put in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring is really here in San Francisco: I can tell not only from the beautiful balmy day we had today, but from the fact that this week’s veggie box contained no chard and no kale! Instead we got a big bunch of spearmint, pea shoots, a little radicchio head, a small bulb of fennel, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}