Three Beautiful Things 02/03/15: Tables, Steps and Pictures, Lemon Garlic Orzo Soup

1.  Having a printer at home now, I got to work and made two tables and printed them.  One lists the many items we donated to Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul's as we were emptying our house in Eugene and the other is a table to enter, each day, my blood pressure and the number of steps I walk.

2.  I took a 4:00 walk today.  Today was a cloudless day and I thought the light might be interesting around 4:00 as the sun was getting ready to set.  Mostly, I wanted to concentrate on stretches of walking without stopping, but I stopped a couple of times to take pictures.  The first two come from an empty lot, not quite a park, on the west side of  Ivy Lane, a street I walk on my way to Greenbelt Lake.  The second two come from a stopping point, where two or three trails intersect,  on the Greenbelt Lake trail, that I like a lot.

3.  One of the reasons the Deke and I went to Whole Foods on Saturday was to buy some orzo.  I haven't seen it at the Co-op and I had found a recipe called "Lemon Garlic Orzo Soup" that I wanted to give a whirl.  Today I whirled.  I sauteed an onion, some garlic, and later added some chopped carrots.  I poured the vegetable broth I made last night into the post, brought it to a boil, and threw in the orzo and about ten minutes or so later I poured in the juice of a single lemon and sprinkled some basil in the soup.  I thought this would have made a pretty good soup as it was, but I decided I wanted just a little bit more, so I put more lemon juice in the soup and I steamed some broccoli, lemon juiced it, and put the broccoli in each bowl I served.  I wanted this soup to be plenty lemony and I succeeded, happily, and the broccoli was a welcome addition.  Both the Deke and I enjoyed this soup. It helped warm us and we both thought my first shot at cooking with orzo worked well.