I only have time to do this because I'm waiting on laundry.

Remember when Sunday used to be about sleeping in until your bladder or husband forced you out of bed and maybe, just maybe, you'd get out of your PJs at some point? It's all a vague memory now.

One week into the restaurant business and it's increasingly clear just how much work it is. You won't hear me complaining outright. I mean, that would be pretty ridiculous. A) It won't change anything. B) We're lucky to be busy. Two other local restaurants have shut down in the past couple of months and Idaho County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. C) This is what we signed up for. Buy the ticket, take the ride as Hunter liked to say.

Click here for Google Maps StreetView

dining room panorama

So what's the point? The point is we're busting our asses. We want to succeed at this. And so far, we are. We're only one week in, but we're still busting their old sales averages all over the place. My mom and I are quickly getting the hang of waiting tables, necessity is the mother of invention and all that, and a new prep person started today so Keith doesn't go insane with OCD.

Friday night we fed a visiting HS football team, about 45 people, on top of the other customers we had to seat in the back room. Last night I had a nightmare they came back and ordered 45 taco salads to go!! These are the kinds of nightmares I expect to have from now on.

(The Facebook page has been really helpful for posting specials and getting feedback -- and my dad about fell over the other night after someone came in for the special after they saw it on Facebook. Especially since those people were middle-aged. Gotta love the internets!)

I think Keith has about 150 hours in this last week and we all have to nag him into going home to get some sleep whenever possible. Everything else is getting neglected to some degree and the thing I feel worst about is the dogs. They really have no idea what's going on, despite my flow chart and P&L presentations to them it's just not. sinking. in.

So I took Lazlo on a playdate Friday to the Heart of the Monster.

The weather was fantastic---is this November?!--- and he even went swimming in the river.


It's Mia's turn next. I don't think taking them both is a good option because they fall into this strange power dynamic when they're together around a new dog, but now Lazlo has played with Maggie twice and Mia needs a turn. I mean, look at this face!!

We had planned on making weekly trips to Lewiston-Clarkston for supplies, especially to get meat from Costco since FSA and Sysco don't carry fresh, quality meat, but we're striking up a deal with the local grocery store to make twice-a-week orders from them for a VERY reasonable cost and so we'll not only be keeping our money in the local community, we'll hopefully get into an ordering routine. No more rushed trips down Highway 12, although it is beautiful this time of year. See:

"The Pink House" is for sale---AGAIN.
Only $310,000.00!

I'm off to chop some firewood (it's COLD at night!) and clean the tiny house to some degree before heading out to the restaurant for another crazy day at the office.

This is how it is now.

We had a great first day at the restaurant and beat their Sunday sales average for the past month by about 30%. Sure, a lot of that is people coming in out of curiosity--and the special (ham, scalloped potatoes, steamed broccoli, chocolate cake), but we're hoping once they get used to what we're doing the volume will stay high.

Oy. Keith and I each put in a 20-hour day yesterday. Though it feels like 4 days ago. (I feel lucky that I got about 7 hours of sleep last night; Keith's going on 3 or less.) After closing we changed out the old flat-top grill with the new range. Of course we ran into obstacles, what did we expect. This is how it is now.

The feedback has been mostly, like 99%, positive. Although there are some people with their panties in a wad over the demise of the salad bar. "That's one of the main reasons we always came out here." Though I wanted to to say (esprit d'escalier), "What we're going to be serving will make you forget what a salad bar is" (not to mention the sanitation concerns, tons of labor for the waitresses, and huge amounts of waste), I just smiled. Salad bar, schmalad bar. Come on, people, we're talking about fresh food made from scratch, not Sizzler.

Online support has been really surprising. I have been making Facebook updates about the new venture, but today I created a page just for Jilinda's where we I will post the weekly specials and any other info that comes up. People can also leave reviews there. I'm putting a widget on the sidebar, but the page is also here.

Field Report

The trip coming back from Missoula was like The Song That Never Ends. Or a rainy, slippery, shiny highway with a top-heavy load. We stopped at Lolo Hot Springs to check the straps on the range. Everything rode fine. BECAUSE WE WERE ONLY GOING 35mph.

But we made it home safe and unrolled.

We set everything all we've got for the restaurant on the back porch to take inventory and gets pics. My mom bought the mixer online (with the money from a quilt she sold that she won at a raffle!), but everything else came from Big Sky Restaurant Supply and we were in way under budget. We rock, my mom told us. We're hoping this will also show the employees how serious we are about doing this. Jim @ Big Sky gave us a great deal.

(The neighbors rode their 4-wheelers over to help try to figure out how to unload the range. We didn't hear any KA-BLAMs and no one rushed in to tell us to call 9-1-1 so they managed to do it, I think.)

We also went to Michael's and found a lot of great materials/ideas that we can incorporate into the ever-evolving decor --rocks, sticks, natural stuff.

Found this cactus planter at Home Depot. It's the inspiration for the basic colors when we change it over to the new restaurant. I want to go desert-y with the colors (tying into a southern Idaho look), but still use local plants/found things, too (sticks, reeds). Cheesy plastic holiday decorations and silk flowers are banished!!

Looking for cowboy pulp /dime-store novel kind of things for the bathrooms. Actual books. Is ebay the best place to look for that kind of thing? Suggestions?

Stopped @ Lochsa Lodge for a restroom break. I want to rent a cabin here sometime.

I met up with a new friend to go down to the island with the pups. I left Mia at home because I didn't think her hips could take it. But Lazlo had fun meeting Maggie and running loose with all the new things to smell and pee on. That fat bastard needs some exercise (so do I since my gym closed/moved).

The weather was perfect.
The leaves are really falling.
Time for a fall portrait!


We're one week from taking over at the restaurant! We have a font and weight chosen for the logo, business cards are next. Thursday we're headed to Clarkston to do grocery shopping. Friday we'll do the food prep for Sunday (aka Our First Day!). Saturday we're doing inventory. Sunday after closing we're trading out the flat top grill for the new range and deep cleaning/organizing. Then we're off to the races.

Movin' movin' movin'

T minus 2 weeks! We sat down to have a restaurant meeting and the hours flew by. There is a lot to do. Keith and I are boning up/psyching ourselves up by watching the Food Network. Especially Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. That guy, the host, looks like a tool, but the places he visits are top-notch in what they do. (Including Portland's Pok Pok!)

Viral marketing does work in rural Idaho! I posted our news on Facebook and it's spreading around town like wildfire. I can hardly talk to anyone in town without them chatting me up about the restaurant. I hope we can live up to the hype. (Nah, I know we can.)

This weekend Keith and I are headed to Missoula to get a stove/oven combo for the restaurant, which is uber-exciting. Our first really big purchase -- and under the budget we originally allotted for a convection oven. Turns out we need something with burners and ovens more than a convection oven. Good to know! (Right now they're cooking everything on a flat top grill.) Getting a good deal from Jim at Big Sky Restaurant Supply.

I haven't had the time or inclination to pick up a camera. I will try to work on that. I met someone new (female) through this very blog, which is about how I have to meet people because I'm an introverted homebody. Anyway, we may get together this weekend to take her dog and Lazlo down to the island and I plan to shoot some photos down there, with the fall colors and all. Would be a good exercise, mental and physical.

The News

My mom is one of the last ones working out at the mill and her last day is at the end of the month. She's been the HR person there for over 20 years. Her options in town for another job were slim to none (pop. of our town less than 1,300). And she didn't particularly want to drive to any of the neighboring towns, the closest of which is 25 miles, especially in the winter.

So, thinking about what she/we could do to stay here, she and my dad approached Keith (and me) with a completely different idea.

Long story short (more details as this fleshes out): we're going into the restaurant business. We're leasing an established local restaurant starting November 1 and we'll get in there and learn the ropes and make some small changes and then somewhere around the beginning of the year we'll re-open under a new name with a new menu focusing on local, fresh ingredients.

We're very excited. It's a big leap in the dark, so it seems apropos to add updates on this new venture to the blog. (Mixed in with tiny house updates, which might be lean for a bit due to time constraints.)

It's a family affair and we've put a lot of thought into how we can be successful with this. We had a meeting tonight with the employees and the response was overwhelmingly positive, which is encouraging. Here's to new things!

Pulitzers/Potatotes

Lolo Hot Springs, on the way home

An uneventful trip over the pass to Missoula and an emotionally draining visit to the Pulitzer photo exhibition on campus. I knew it would be visceral, but I didn't expect it to be that difficult to see. Many made me teary-eyed and some made me feel punched in the guts.

Many of the early photos (from the 40s and 50s) were on-the-spot news shots, from people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The later ones were more heavily weighted toward feature news and world news.

I also realized how much I miss going to school. Or maybe I was just romanticizing my college days in Missoula. I felt like I was back somewhere I belonged. Maybe that's just what places like Missoula and Portland bring up for me. I still feel like I'm trying to find a way to be myself here...

Toward the end of the exhibit there was a display of a few of the photographs from the Dallas Morning News photographers covering Hurricane Katrina. I could just imagine Mia in that, trying to survive. I saw photos of people in a natural disaster and I thought of our dog. Crazy. I know people who were affected by the hurricane, so I'm not trivializing the human toll. But not many days go by that I don't think about where Mia has been and what she's seen. If only we had a doggie-brain cam!

The pass was just a bit icy going over and it was colder than a well-digger's butt (the G-rated version of one of my dad's sayings re: cold weather) in Missoula. Kind of a freak cold snap. But the roads were entirely clear on the way back and once we got down over the pass on this side it started to warm up. This is what I like about fall. We do live in a beautiful part of the country.

stretching our legs, enjoying the weather on the way home

Saturday evening Keith started ripping out the remainder of the tomato plants and we continued to say Vaya con Dios to the garden.

We had an embarrassing amount of waste in the tomato portion of the garden, but we (the royal "we") canned/processed all we wanted/needed and couldn't muster the energy to deal with the rest. I suppose 16 plants was overkill. (Quite an understatement.)

I don't think we'll be growing a garden next year (related to the Big News tomorrow night), so once the thing is tilled up we'll probably just bed it for winter and let the wildflowers take over next year. Which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Anyway, they didn't exactly go to waste since we fed them to the neighbor goats. They were thrilled. Well, they gobbled them down, so I just assumed they were thrilled. Maybe they were just hungry. Goats are rather hard to read, with their devil eyes.

I was pretty happy with our potato harvest, for our first attempt. My boss gave me some fingerling potatoes to plant this spring and then I took a store-bought sweet potato that sprouted eyes, quartered it and planted it. We didn't get that many, but potatoes are pretty low maintenance, so who's complaining?

We got some of both kinds. Although all of the ones I could dig up were fairly small due to the high clay content in the soil. Some of the fingerlings were crazy shapes, too. I mean round, but knobby.

Keith thinks these little ones would be good for a potato soup or stew and I can't say I disagree. I was thinking of throwing some of the sweet potatoes in a black bean soup. With some ginger-lime sour cream? Drooooooool.

In addition to the Big News we're sharing tomorrow, this week also marks the 1 year anniversary of our tiny house. Last October we took a leap and broke ground.
Happy anniversary, Tiny House!

Strawberries in October

I ate that little red one and it was sweet. Waiting for that big one on the left to fully ripen. If the frost doesn't kill them off first. (They're up against my parents' house for warmth.)

This afternoon I tried laying down with (sick) Keith to read The Sun, but the dogs were going crazy in there because they knew it was nice outside and why are we inside, dammit!! So we compromised. I parked a lounge chair on the deck and they played outside. Tilt of the pic is due to the camera being perched in the crotch of the apple tree as a set the timer and scrambled back to the chair...all nonchalant-like, eh?

We harvested our popcorn last night and got quite a haul. (There were about a gazillion lady bugs all over the corn. I think they might have been laying their eggs there? Do lady bugs lay eggs?) I schucked husked it and then Keith helped me tie it into bunches and it's hanging in the pantry drying. Can't wait to stick one in the microwave and see if it works. If not, at least it's cool fall decoration.

We're heading over the pass to Missoula in the morning and hoping we don't end up stranded in a snowstorm. The main reason to go is to see an exhibition of Pulitzer-winning photographs, the largest collection ever shown in the United States.
I am so stoked.
We're also doing some shopping for things related to the big announcement next week, so that will be fun, too.
If we don't get stranded in a snowstorm.