Cuminy Greens and Tofu (Vegan Saag Paneer)

I made this one night when I was craving saag paneer. It recreates some of my favorite elements of the dish--mellow cuminy spinach goodness--without the dairy and long-term commitment of traditional recipes. I can't say it's an exact match, but when I found myself craving it today at work, I knew I'd done something good. We were too hungry to find the camera and take a picture--you'll have to picture the beautiful greens and little tofu cubes.

Cuminy Greens and Tofu (evocative of Saag Paneer)
1 package firm tofu
1/2 C kombucha (or 2 Tb apple cider vinegar with enough apple juice to make 1/2C)
1 tsp miso soup base (I used yellow)

1 tsp olive oil
1 Tb cumin seeds, whole
2 tsp coriander seeds, whole
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced

1 box of frozen spinach, thawed
2 1/2 C shredded cabbage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 carrot, shredded

Press tofu for 10-20 minutes. While pressing, stir together miso and kombucha (1/2 an inch of grated ginger would be a nice addition here). Cut tofu into cubes and toss with marinade. Allow to sit as long as you can.

Rub olive oil all over a non-stick pan; bring pan to medium-high heat. Add seeds and allow to toast about thirty seconds, or until they start smelling good. Reduce heat to medium. Add onion and cook until onions are translucent. Add the tofu and garlic.

When the tofu is beginning to get golden, add remaining ingredients and cook until cabbage is tender. Serve over rice.

Bird brained

I needed a little adventure today, and since I've been really interested in birds lately, I took Fiona to the Portland Audubon Society. They have a really beautiful visitors' center with a wildlife health care center, and there is beautiful hiking to enjoy in the surrounding sancturary.

Today was great. There were volunteers taking the education birds around to visit with people. We got to meet Julio, a great horned owl, and Finnegan, a peregrine falcon. They are both unable to live in the wild and make the wildlife care center their full-time home. It feels really special to get up close to these really quite dangerous predators and see them moving. Hear them talking. Even just watching them blink is pretty darn cool.

Another really cool thing about the care center is that the hospital window is mostly glass on one side, so you can watch the volunteers at work. They had a number of birds resting in cages and aquariums, including a robin snuggled up in a towel and a little brown bird pecking at some seeds. These guys were so close to the viewing window that I could see the glass fogging up as the robin breathed in and out!

After we saw all the creatures, we hiked down the Macleay trail, following Balch Creek down into the city. It was a truly lovely day, warm and sunny, the perfect day to be out enjoying the forest and the water. The kind of day that makes you glad to be alive!

Hot, hot vegetable love!

Around our house, Valentine's Day is practically forgotten. You see, my sweetie-pie's birthday happens to fall on February 14th, changing the day from a pink-and-red holiday to "Let's Celebrate John!" day. (And have I mentioned that he hates chocolate?) I don't really mind. It's still romantic and loving to celebrate my guy.

Anyway.

The Fatfree Vegan blog is holding a recipe contest for Valentine's Day called Vegetable Love. Since I was already planning to make John a super-healthy and romantic sort of dinner, I thought I'd go the extra mile and make an entry for Vegetable Love.

I thought long and hard about what I'd make. It needed to be comforting and rich. It needed to be earthy, but still vibrant and flavorful. And since it was for John, it needed to have a spicy component--he loves spicy food, and let's face it: he's a hot guy. I spent the last couple of days wracking my brain and tried a glamorous take on mashed potatoes and gravy, with herbs and sherry and shallots. It should have been good.

Ummn. No. I learned something in the process though--I don't like tarragon nearly as much as I thought I did. And I also learned that sometimes mysterious magic happens in the kitchen. I just happened to throw this carrot dish together as a side dish, and it turned out delicious, spicy, tangy, sweet, rich. John really liked it! So here's my tribute to love this February:

Hot Love Carrots

3 large carrots, cut in matchsticks (about 2 cups)

3/4 C orange juice

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tb pepper jelly*

Scrub carrots and remove tops. Cut into matchsticks and place in saucepan with orange juice and salt. Cover and simmer until tender. Remove cover and allow orange juice to reduce by half. Stir in pepper jelly.

*Obviously different brands of pepper are spicier than others. Use one you like, and if it's not spicy enough for your hot love, give it a sexy swirl of Rooster sauce!

Sorry the photo is grainy--I have no idea why, but Blogger keeps making all my pictures funky!

Uno & Jerusalem artichokes

Sorry the last couple of days have been so quiet, but my brother has been in town, and I've been busy playing Uno like a fiend. Uno is a great family game--we play it with evil rules when we play at night, and easy rules when we play with Fi. She's getting pretty good at it, too!

It's pretty hard to get worked up about gardening while it's pouring torrentially, but I found some Jerusalem artichokes at New Seasons the other day, and I am going to plant them tomorrow. I tried in the fall, but something kept digging them up, and then one day they were just gone. Darn squirrels! I hope these do a little better, because Jerusalem artichokes are pretty tasty in their own weird way.

Out of the mouths of babes!

Let me preface this story by explaining that in our house, when you pee, you use a toilet hankie instead of toilet paper. They're reusable fabric wipies that are really handy for a kid who's just learning to wipe. We just toss them in a bin under the sink and throw them in the washing machine when we are doing laundry.

Anyway.

Last night Fiona's cousin Amelia came over for a sleep-over. Fiona was instructing Amelia in the fine art of toilet hankie usage, and she said, "the great thing about toilet hankies is that you don't waste trees."

What a great kid!

Closing the loop

Today it was time to transplant my baby garbonzo bean plants out of their egg shells. (We save the halves of our egg shells and put them back in the egg carton to make a no-mess seed starting pot. It beats the heck out of those peat pellets, which are environmental nightmares!) It's too cold to put their fragile selves outside, so I just took a couple of Trader Joe's Graham Cracker boxes, filled them with potting soil and a special amendment, and then popped the little egg cups full of baby plants into the dirt. Okay, first I squeezed the egg shells so they would be full of cracks and holes at the bottom, giving the plants' roots plenty of places to creep out and find their new soil.

That special amendment? Worm castings! I finally got enough worms out of one end of the bin to harvest the castings today. I've been feeding only the front end for about three weeks now, just waiting until I needed some delicious compost. It looked like pipe tobacco, a rich warm brown, and smelled nice, very earthy. Not stinky at all! Then I threw down some more bedding and rotated the bin. I'll be ready to collect the next half in a couple of weeks, and then I'll let it hang out for a few months, building up matter.

I love my worms!

Ecotips!

So another goal for this blog is to post regular ecotips, with labels, so they are findable.

Right now I am happy to say we are the proud non-owners of plastic wrap. During the Christmas season, I used the last of the roll that we brought when we moved into this apartment, and now we have NO PLASTIC WRAP. It's a good, but challenging situation. I find myself saving the plastic bags that tortillas and tempeh come in and reusing them. That's a good feeling. But my main tip is: you can use a plate to cover bowls of leftovers, just like your mom (or grandmother) did in the 50s! It works fine, although for the bigger bowls in my house, I had to use an inverted aluminum pie plate.

Simple food, simply great!

So here we go. New look, new focus, new Opera Buffo. I'm pretty excited, although I have a feeling the picture of the squirrel won't last long. The biggest excitement is the labels. They matter because I plan to finally post recipes here, and the labels will let you find something good to eat! Let me know how it works for you.

A lot of the food projects that I will be posting will be easy, easy weekday recipes, and they should all be vegan. It's fun to share the mad brainstorming that can happen in the kitchen when you just throw together a meal, and I really want to help more people tap into that. I keep meeting people who only cook from recipes and it blows my mind. Recipes are fun, but it's like following a paint-by-numbers kit: confining and style-less.

So let's jump in! Here's the bare bones of a great soup that you can tinker with by adding or subtracting spicy elements and crunchy toppings.


Corn Chowder

This recipe is modified from a chowder recipe in Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, and it just doesn't get easier than this.
Basic soup recipe:
2-3 cups corn; if using frozen, run under warm water to thaw
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp salt
3-5 cups hot water (3 cups to start, add water if you prefer a thinner soup)
Bells & whistles (optional):
1/2 tsp - 1 tsp ground cumin
1 chipotle chile and 1 tsp adobo sauce (more to taste)
Handful of cilantro leaves
1 or 2 chopped green onions

Place all the basic soup ingredients in a blender. Add as many or few optional ingredients. Blend on medium until smooth.

Top with any of the following ingredients:
Salsa
Black beans
Avocados, sliced
Sprouts
Corn
Green onions
Corn chips

YUM!

The times, they are a-changin'!

Prepare to see a new look coming to this blog! I've gotten a little bored with the look and content of Opera Buffo and I hope to do a little bit of remodeling.

See ya soon!

Seed Catalog

It's officially seed catalog season, friends! I keep finding myself going through mine, over and over, visualizing this year's garden. Could I really put in enough stakes and strings to support all those beans? And how much space does a zucchini plant need, really? Visions of weird lettuces and obscure herbs are dancing in my head.

I can't wait to get planting! In fact, now that I know that Everybody's Garden Center has moved, and is now only ten blocks from my house, I just might pick up some grow lights and start spring early!

Sleep is good food

Okay, that is a nonsensical title if ever there was one. But it is amazing how much better the brain works when you've had a little extra sleep. Instead of struggling for words and logic, I'm actually putting ideas together with ease and facility. Or at least I sound like English is my native tongue.

Eat to live

So I started reading a book called Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Susan, over on fatfreevegan.com, has mentioned his stuff a number of times, and her recipes often draw on his work. I finally broke down and got the book from the library.

The funny thing about this book is that all the nutritional information lines up with a book I read last year called The Sun Food Diet Success System, by David Wolfe. Now this was one of the most fascinating book I have ever read. A combination of in-depth nutritional research, surfer/hippy stories, bizarre spiritual poems and recipes, all combined in the ugliest design you'll see on a book shelf (although the new edition looks pretty, the old one was green with Greek-ish clip art). Fuhrman bills himself as a mainstream weight-loss and heart health guy; Wolfe presents himself as a far-out guru.

But their information is fascinating and I think accurate. They are both advising to people to make raw greens the majority of their diet, because that is the best way to get your protein, vitamins and minerals. Yes, that's right: protein. For every 100 calories of romaine lettuce, you get 11.6 grams of protein. For every 100 calories of top sirloin, 5.4. Of course, 100 calories of romaine is like an entire pound of romaine, but that's an entirely different story...

Well, I just realized that bedtime is calling and I didn't do an of the "real" work I planned to do tonight. You know, that real writing stuff I try to squeeze in around my glamorous regular life. Crap. But what the heck--at least I started my third novel today!

Happy freakin' New Year

After six days without service, I finally have a dial tone. And if you don't think I've missed the Internet, then you are craaaazy.

See, a month ago I paid my phone bill. And those charming people at Qwest applied my payment to the account of the person who used to have my phone number. I know, because they told me today. They couldn't figure it out when I first called, December 14th. Or the second time, December 28th. Even the nice lady I talked to on January 3rd--after my phone was disconnected--didn't understand it. But they could see that I had made a payment. They just couldn't tell my account that I had. And apparently knowing that you made a payment isn't reason enough to actually fix your f*cking phone.

Needless to say, I don't have a lot of good to say about the phone company right now. In fact, if you ask me, having spent one month, five phone calls, and almost two hours of hold time, I think we're switching providers. They didn't even offer me any discounts for not being able to use my service for a *week*.

Chickadee!

So the black-capped chickadee is my first entry in my new bird list. I got a bird book for Christmas, so I am going to try to write down the birds that I actually watch and identify.

Yesterday we were hiking at Tryon Creek State Park. Fiona was telling stories, so we didn't see very many critters, but we walked around a corner and came into an open spot just chipping and swarming with tiny little chickadees. They looked like little black-dipped, winged thumbs moving around. They were so cute!

We saw a bunch of robins, too, but I had to look up the chickadees, so I'm counting them as my "first bird."

Grr thoughts

The phone company is my grr thought of the day. Why is it that their records show that I made a payment but they can't apply it to my account until a special team investigates the transaction? And why did I have to call two times about this?

Tannenbaums

I'm having a moody day. I got a fundraising letter from Care yesterday, asking for funds to help end poverty and female genital mutilation in Africa, and it kind of put a damper on my outlook. It didn't help that today, bringing home our Christmas tree, we walked past crocus and daffodil sprouts. That's right. Nothing says "global warming" quite like daffodils in December.

I didn't give Care any money. That makes me feel down, but this year's charitable giving has already come and gone. We upgraded to green power, which will be (for us) a chunk of change, but we felt like it was the biggest and most important thing to do with our money. I have to remind myself what I was thinking when I did it--that world poverty will worsen, that people's suffering will worsen, that war and strife will spread if I don't do something to help with global warming. It's the most dangerous thing facing the human race. Ever. There won't even be an Africa for those poor mutilated women to live in if we don't do something about our god-awful carbon emissions.

And so, looking at our tree, brightly lit, beautiful with paper garlands and snowflakes, I just feel even more guilty. That's a lot of electricity and a lot of CO2 sitting in my living room. The only thing that comes close to making it worthwhile is the joy in Fiona's eyes. But is that worth it?

I don't know. I just don't know.

No words in the writing desert

Man, I haven't posted on here in 11 days. And you can pretty much count on the fact that I haven't added any words to my novel, either. I got lost in the word desert the last couple of days, working on my tan.

But I guess that's normal this time of year. I don't know about the rest of you, but December comes, and I am sucked into Christmas. Big time.

To some people, that's a little weird. I mean, my sister asked me if we were still going to celebrate Christmas even though I'm now out as an atheist. (As an aside, may I point out that my parents have never, ever, ever claimed to be Christians and raised us to *fear* the church, but they are as coo-coo for Christmas as anybody I have ever met?) Of course! I love Christmas. I love the fact that for one month of the year it is okay to be happy, sing out loud for no reason at all and give people stuff. It is okay to eat fat and sugar. It was socially acceptable to wear red and green together. I love the fact that Christmas legalizes dorkiness and loving behavior. The rest of the year, those guys get swept under the designer rug of cultural norms, but this time of year, it's acceptable.

Of course, I hate all the commercial junk and the non-stop marketing blitz. Kind of. They're part of the window dressing for me, and in some ways I wouldn't trade them for anything. That said, I don't watch tv, listen to the radio or go to the mall, so that pretty means my entire exposure to marketing consists of Internet ads and stuff they put on buses. It's really pretty tame.

Happy sigh. I gotta dash. I have Christmas cards to finish.

Macy's ate my childhood memories

If anybody out here in Portland grew up going to Meier and Frank at Christmas time, I have some advice: stay far away from Macy's. It will break your heart.



I can remember taking my niece and my baby brother to the Downtown Meier and Frank to ride the rickety old monorail and cruise through the bizarre Christmas scenes. Just getting to the Christmas floor--okay, half a floor--was an adventure. We would always take the escalators, which reached a point around the eighth floor where they narrowed and grew squeakier, as if a sudden twist in time had taken us back to the building's birth in 1932. Then you had to pass through the toys and Christmas decor sections, which was a test of will power. And then! There it was! A football-field of a room, filled with Christmas, crowned by a lengthy line to a sort of stage where you could watch children taking their turn on the jolly fat man's lap.

Now the entirety of "Santaland" is cramped in a basement room the size of my front room, where a secret turn of the faux-North Pole dwelling hides Santa from any chance sighting. And the price of a chance at Saint Nick? $16, although fancy packages are available. (Who gets wallets of their kid wheeling and dealing for presents with a stranger? Jeez!)

Santaland itself is bad enough, but upon leaving the store, which, by the way, has been so thoroughly refurbished and "renovated" that it is indistinguishable from Nordstroms, just 1 block away, I felt my heart crack with the memory of M&F's Christmas windows of yore. The sweet mechanical "12 Days of Christmas" is gone. In its stead are heartless and artless displays of this year's fashions.

We all knew that Macy's would not be the kind of business that aimed to be a part of our community. But this year, it became real to me. Community, tradition, fun--trivial details to a corporation that believes that homogenized shopping experiences are the secret to commercial success. And maybe they're right. After all, they're the ones in the position to buy out our local stores.

But they still lost my dollar.

It's official!

I am shaking and a little bit crying. It's 12:56 AM, November 30th, and I have won Nanowrimo.

So now I've a day off before NaNoFiMo! Kt, if you're out there, that's the challenge site for the two of us!

Christmas gifts

You know who's having a green Christmas this year? The library, that's who. They are making BANK off me this year. Woof. When did all those books get overdue?

Holiday musings

There is something about winter, the quality of its thin gray light, the depth of its long darkness, that turns the mind to the spirit. For me, every year around this time I look into my heart and my soul and ask questions and listen for some kind of answer.

This was a weighty year in the spiritual realm for me. I explored yogic teachings and read Christian thinkers like Thomas Moore. And some time in the summer--not a time I usually think about anything more serious than sunscreen--I came to a realization. I do not believe in God.

For years, I have said something different. Something along the lines of "Of course I believe in God! God is the perfect metaphor for the beauty and harmony of the universe!" (This is analogous to my feelings about Santa and fairies and forest spirits.) And then it hit me that believing in a metaphor isn't the same as believing in something. Metaphors are not things in themselves; they are the tools we use to describe these things.

So I believe in science. I believe in a beautiful harmony and order of the universe, bound by the activities and entities than we may not understand in their entirety, but do not undermine the truths we have fought to carve out. I think that makes me an atheist.

Some people feel like atheism is a selfish, shallow, hopeless state of being. I don't see it like that. When I look at the stars in their whirling patterns of light and heat, I am awed by the forces around me, and I can name them--gravity, inertia, entropy, electromagnetism. When I hear the whoosh of my own pulse inside my body, I am thrilled to know that the same forces are at work on all the tiny motes of own being. There is such beauty there, such power and majesty.

And I can have absolute faith in the universe and its rules. Gravity will never leave me, never stop affecting me even if I should choose not to believe in it. The laws of physics will not abandon me or reject me or send me to eternal suffering for not believing in them. And they are the same for every person, no matter what book is the rule of the land around them. Now that is beautiful. That is powerful. That is awesome.

I am proud to believe these things. I am proud to say that there is plenty to have faith in that is not God. I am proud to say that I believe morality and justice and order have a place in a world that is not religious. But in many places of this world, I would be killed for saying this. In my own country, I would never elected. Many communities would not allow me to teach their children; if I was found writing about atheism on my personal website, I would be encouraged to leave my job. Even among my own friends I feel nervous saying these things. Somehow it is easier to say "Hey, I'm a Muslim now!" than "Hey! I'm an atheist!" I could wear a cross on a necklace to work--even though the cross is a torture device that has also been used to harass and frighten people, primarily blacks, in this country--but if I wore a similar item that said "Atheist," I would be asked to remove it.

That's why I put the scarlet 'A' on my page. I wanted to show people that I am proud of what I believe, even if it's not normal in the United States. I wanted to show people that a nice smart woman like me can be an atheist. And then maybe they would feel okay with themselves.

Happy holidays, everybody. Peace be with you.

Happy T-day!

A few days ago I had the random desire to see the movie "Tremors 3" again. Okay, so it wasn't random--I have the bad habit of quoting from the movie after certain ordinary bodily functions (all right! I admit it! If they stink, I shout 'Blast your own damn ass, ass blaster!'), and it had been a doozy of a day. Anyway, I was overwhelmed by the need to see Bert and company in action.

My family doesn't have a whole lot of traditions, but I feel safe saying that in the Wagner family, nothing says "holiday" quite like the Tremors movies (or tv show). I can remember the long ago Thanksgiving my oldest sister introduced us to the first movie. It was a beautiful day.

Then when I was living with my mom and brother, he was a hardcore Tremors fan, hooking me on the sequels and the show. Wow. That's some good television. Catch it if you still can--I don't think it's on the SciFi channel anymore. But you can still get all four movies on DVD (and if you've only seen the original on VHS, ruuuuun to the video store and get your hands on the DVD; the picture quality is just so much better). In fact, we were able to rent the Tremors pack, which has all four movies on it.

Yes, I did allow my four-year-old to watch Tremors (the swearing was the worst part!). I did try to cover her eyes in the scary parts. However, all that happened is that she said she'd like a pet graboid to keep in the back yard. She thought they were kind of cute.

Is she my kid or what?

Whoah ... Turkey!

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is just two days away! I am super-duper excited. This year, I am making a kale/swiss chard gratin, mashed tatoes & gravy, sweet potatoes and cranberry bliss bars. The piece de resistance: Organic Valley Eggnog. We tried this kind of eggnog at the farmer's market Saturday, and it's incredible. Not too sickly sweet, not too fakey rumish. Not yellow, either. Just mild and nutmeggy.

I love Thanksgiving! I love all those warm happy feelings of Thankfulness. And a full tummy. And our annual trip to the zoo (it's almost all volunteers running the show, so I feel slightly less bad about going out on Thanksgiving). And having breakfast with Heidi! It's just a lovely, lovely day.

The only trouble this year is how to fit in a couple hours of writing in between all that family stuff?

She failed me!

So for years--about 16, now--I've been in love with a book called Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. It's the most amazing book I've ever read, and I re-read it almost every Halloween. (It's also landmarked in my head as one of the books lost in our housefire, when I was twelve.)

But I've never read any of Dean's other books. I never even tried to find any at the library, and I'm not sure why. I usually pick one author and gulp down every known work in an orgy of author-love. So this year, I decided, what the heck? Why not read more P. D.? And I checked out Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary.

It was fine, I guess. I mean, I love Gentian, the main character, and I liked her friends. But OMG! She used the same tricks! Even some of the same quotes! And once again, she spent pages summarizing plays that the protaganist is reading. Uggh! Uggh! Uggggggh! And to make it worse, the ending was totally unsatisfying, and the girl pisses off her cat. You just don't go around separating a girl from her cat unless it's for a really effective and satisfying climax, and this ending did not merit it. Jeez.

So I put another book on hold by Dean just in case this one was a fluke. I've got my fingers crossed. I don't want my heart to break!

Brain twisters

Why is it so much more tempting to make a blog entry than work on my latest novel-in-progress? Hmmn. I suppose part of it is knowing Fibee will wake up any moment, ruining any attempt of mine to even think coherently. Actually, now that you mention it, that's probably the biggest reason. If a bird makes a clicking sound remotely similar to the sound Fi makes when she turns off her nightlight, I spasmodically save every document and prepare to slam the laptop closed. Whew. It's exhausting.

Another difficult-to-answer question: why do my parents torture me? Why do they keep saying "Why don't you visit more often?" Or "Well if you were up here, I could get you a llama for about $5." Or worse: "Well, if you'd come up and help me build the coop, you could play with the chickens all you wanted." Yeah. Torture, especially when you consider the fact they live in WILBUR, Washington! In case you aren't familiar, it's in the the northwest corner of BFE. You know, the part with no trees. Or jobs.

Sigh. These are the mysteries that torture a woman.

Doo-doo-doo-doo-Dooooora!

I have had the Dora theme song stuck in my head all day. It's painful.

It is so creepy. I have become the face of the Portland Children's Museum. Birthday parties were featured in Portland Monthly, which is kind of my thing (actually, my face is on the birthday party brochures), and now my Bendy Wendy program is featured. And I'm on the newsletter. It's just kind of ... weird. Like almost being famous.

Me! Almost famous!

Holy freakin fong!

I'm online in my very own house!!! Wow! Wow! Wow!

This Tuesday in Garden Club we're going to talk about worms. I am so excited. I actually couldn't fall asleep last night because I couldn't stop thinking about how great the lesson will be! Then I had dreams that the worms in my bin crawled out and I was searching all over the house for the escapees.

Back ... a little bit

So I'm making an effort to get back on blogger. Dial-up is coming soon to our household ...

Do you ever have one of those days when you want to abuse the ellipsis? I think it's because I got up at a quarter to 6 this morning. I could have slept until 6, but I was starting to get nervous about this green thing the museum sent me to for breakfast, so I gave up. And I was right to be nervous. The meeting was at the Multnomah Athletic Center, and it is a frightening wealth-center. I just kept chanting to myself, "You have an invitation. At least it's not the City Club." I was nervous as hell until I saw some a couple of people wearing jeans. There's nothing like a room full of business suits to make you uncomfortable, and nothing like the comforting presence of people who are dressed worse than you.

I am cruising along, slowly, slowly, but honestly with my NaNoWriMo project. I won't make it to 50K, but 40 is not unreasonable, and I'm in LOVE with the book. It is worth waking up early for!

Sorry gang!

For now the only blogging I am doing is on my myspace blog:
http://www.myspace.com/wagnerianbuffo

I miss my blog!

Man, I miss blogging every day. Since I stopped, it feels like my writing brain has just ... shut off.

Last week was an overwhelming kind of week. I had my second meeting with Growing Gardens, and I am super psyched for the class to begin. I am also extremely gung-ho about starting a worm bin. John and I sewed bags for the preschool, which sucked up some time. John set up a stand at the Alberta Art Walk and sold a painting. I had lunch with my sister, and then my neice spent the night. We took the girls to the Polish festival on Saturday. And then yesterday was crazy day at work!

So, all in all, busy. But not too busy to learn how to play Boggle!

Back from outer space

So still no Internet at home, but I am back from vacation. We took a great trip to Eastern Washington--and no, that's not an oxymoron. Stay tuned for pictures!

Back to the 50's!

There it is folks, the image you've been waiting for. The one that's going to change the world, free up the landfills and rock your fridge.

In case you're rubbing your head, wondering what in tarnations I'm talking about, this is a picture of a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese that's about to go in the fridge. But what the heck is on top of it?

That's right. A saucer. An ordinary, garden variety saucer. Not plastic wrap. The saucer is--get this--like a LID for the bowl. No plastic involved. No matching lids. Nothing along those lines. A reusable saucer and a reusable bowl. Wow.

In case you wondered, that's what people used to do when they had leftovers, before the plastic era came along. If there was no handy crock or jar, they just topped a bowl with a plate or saucer and considered that food covered.

Rock on, housewives of yore!

I was sniffed by a ostospermophilus beechiyi!

And he sniffed John's camera, too! I'm not really into taming wild animals, but this little Californian ground squirrel was so darn cute! He had no fear of people whatsoever and happily scrounged for food in the parking lot. Unsurprisingly, he was at least three times bigger than the other ground squirrels. I had never seen an animal with fat rolls on its arms before--he doesn't look that fat in this picture, but he had double chins AND little pudge-rolls on each limb. Poor guy. I see a short life for him. I thought about bringing him home, but once again, the no-pets rule trumps all.

I am a bad reader

I will be the first to admit that I am a terrible, uncritical reader. Unless I run across a major typographical or grammatical error, my first reading of a text is basically thoughtless. I just read a friend's critique of HPatDH, and I noticed none of the problems she noticed. Plot holes? What? My total experience was this: adrenaline, tears, adrenaline , tears. Giggle. Tears, tears, tears. And that was it.

These things continue even in the world of nonfiction (philosophy and music excepted). Right now I'm reading an amazing and terribly amusing book called The God Delusion, by Dawkins. It's a hard-core denouncement of religion and an appeal to atheism, and I'm eating it up. Six months ago, I was reading The Soul's Religion, by Thomas Moore (the contemporary Christian writer, not the 19th century one) and eating it up.

That's not to say that I never read critically. I practically lived and breathed critical analysis in college, and when I pick up anything on philosophy of mind, the derisive comments are scathing. When I read my own writing or those of people I'm editing, I can be downright brutal (in a warm and considerate way, of course). Some might even use the word 'nit-picky.'

But I guess when it comes to escapist literature, I box up my brain and let it snooze. It's pretty pathetic, and it's a bad habit. A habit I think I should break now, before it causes me permanent damage.

Kt, you've inspired me! From now on, I shall try to be a better reader!

There's no place like home

Sometimes I become overwhelmed by a vast sense of loneliness. It invades me at times I least expect it or at times when I'm feeling a little weak to begin with. It's not a loneliness for any person I know--it's a loneliness for small living things and for tall trees and the sound of rain hitting the ferns. I suppose it's homesickness.

I love living in Portland. It's a charming city, full of all the things that are good about a larger community. There's a great library system, fantastic restaurants, art, music and, most important of all, a good coffee shop on every corner. But it's not home.

Home gets a little mixed up in my head. Mostly, it's Ash Valley, with its narrow canyons and second-growth trees. I spent most of my childhood exploring a space the size of three city blocks: a wonderful expanse of swamp, stream and forest. I can remember a few hikes with Jan Tetrault, who took us kids out of our backyards and up into the hills (they'd be mountains in Pennsylvania). She told us the names of plants. What a gift.

Sometimes, home is the even smaller stretch of Gardiner that I walked with Fiona in her baby pouch. Throughout the cemetery were old garden classics like grape hyacinth and hydrangea and plum trees that were the children of the pioneers' orchards. Then there were the tenacious weed-fields that were slowly taking back the old mills.

Further afield but equally loved was the beach and the spruce forests abutting the shore. I can think of no place more enchanted than the woods behind Haceta Head. The forest spans no fewer than 4 microclimates with varying guilds of plants and lichens, and the duff is so thick that your feet spring up on every step.

And of course home has never been home without the animals. My first real memories include the lambs, butting up against smell and all milky-smelling. After that, there were the cats, so many I can hardly count. Squirrels and deer and rescued baby bats and ducks and snakes and horses. And chickens. And donkeys. The city can feel a little lonely with all the pets just hidden away.

That loneliness is always there. Most of the time, it slumbers, held under the surface by the distractions of city life. But sometimes, when things get quiet, it wakes up. And I am homesick again.

Guerrilla gardens update!

Sorry for all the delays on guerrilla gardening at its finest! But I've gotten things up and running and should have more regular fantastic posts on everybody's favorite topic: the shady side of plants!

So check out what's new on http://guerrillagardenspdx.blogspot.com/!

Survivalist

It's hard to believe, but I think deep down I want to be a survivalist. You know Bert from Tremors? I want to be him.

A lot of that has to do with my childhood out in the Oregon woods (when you put it like that, it sounds sooo rustic). My parents weren't really the back-to-the-land types--mostly because they'd never left it. I mean, right now they live in a house my dad built himself, and he only added a bathroom last summer. His designs for an outdoor shower with a homemade flash water heater were pretty cool, too. And my mom? Well, she grew up without electricity.

Needless to say, childhood memories of helping in the garden and licking jam out of pots aren't all idyllic, but as I get older, I find myself drawn more and more strongly to that life. It's not just nostalgia. Exposure to "The Morning After" and "Max Max & The Thunderdome" at an early age seems to have triggered a profound paranoia about the end of civilization as we know it. Deep down, I'm just waiting for the petroleum to run out and my knowledge of hand-sewing to come into play.

Anyway, if you get a chance, I recommend the book that I'm reading: The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, by Albert Bates. It's like a summary of all the stuff I'm obssessed with, give or take a few pointers on loom construction and operation of your own printing press.

Oh yeah. I'm getting more Bert every day.

White trash vegan

Tonight I had to dip down into the bottom of my recipe cheats and make something tasty and easy to go with macaroni salad. I was feeling mighty lazy, so here's what I came up with:

Po' White Beets
1 bunch baby beets and greens
1/2 Tb olive oil
1/2 C lemonade
1 tsp white wine vinegar
salt & pepper to taste.

Scrub beets and remove all but 2-3 inches of stems. Heat oil in pan on med. high heat; when warm, toss beets around for about 2 minutes. Add lemonade. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer until beets are fork-tender (about 4 minutes if very small). Add beet greens, vinegar, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer an additional minute until everything is soft.

Lazy Kidneys
1 can kidney beans
1 Tb ketchup
1 tsp onion powder
2 dashes hot sauce

Stir to combine and heat in the microwave.

The creepy thing about these foods is that they turned out the same color. Still, they tasted mighty tasty and took less than 10 minutes to prepare; they were low-fat and healthy. It almost made up for the Safeway macaroni salad. Yummmmmmm.

Best of Opera Buffo

Man, I was doing some maintenance on the site and started reading old posts from my first year as a blogger. What great memories! Some of the stuff Fiona used to do just cracked me up. I might have to repost some of the better entries, because they are worth reading again.

Oh, and if anybody misses the scintillating conversation about water conservation, I'm sorry, but said site maintenance may have eaten it. Oops. Just remember to take shorter showers, and if it's yellow, let it mellow!

Wasting away

John and Fiona spent yesterday in the basement, staying cool. John also tackled an experiment. He decided to see how much water a load of laundry uses.

He recently picked up some fifteen-gallon drums from work, so he brought some down to the basement and placed the outlet hose inside one. When it got full, he moved it to a second drum, which fortunately, was just big enough. A full load of laundry takes about thirty gallons of water to wash and rinse.

Thirty gallons.

A camel will go four months without water and then drink thirty gallons without stopping. It may go another four months without needing to drink again.

According to Missippi State, a productive, full-grown apple tree needs about 30 gallons a day to live and make apples.

According to the Afghanistan Human Develpment Report, 20 liters of water a day is a basic human right. One load of laundry = water for about 5 people for one day.

Thirty gallons, so I can smell good.

Recycling for chimps!

Today's big excitement: I made arrangements to collect the museum's toner & ink cartridges and donate them to Chimps Inc! Chimps Inc is a chimp sanctuary in Bend. I just read about them in the Oregonian today (they are embroiled in a lawsuit to keep two of their ape charges, who may or may not 'belong' to another chimp sanctuary in Texas), and I was so excited to learn that there was a sanctuary HERE, in Oregon! For about twenty minutes, I was all set to move to Bend so I could become a volunteer.

It's funny. Growing up, I was always afraid of chimpanzees. (This might be because of a horror movie with a murderous chimp.) My mother always disliked them, too. But lately, I have become very drawn to chimpanzees. For some reason, of all the creatures who have suffered at the hands of humans, chimpanzees now touch me the most deeply. In some ways, I feel so strongly about them that I really would pack up and move to Bend if I thought that was the best way I could help them. And I don't know. Maybe it would.

Why can't they live in Corvallis? Or someplace that's not the desert?

I'm gonna have the greenest lawn in town!

No, aliens have not confiscated mybrain cells and replaced them with a suburbanite's. See, our landlord included a "you must water your lawn" clause in our rental agreement. He spent about 15 minutes going over it. (You should have been there for the section about signage--political signs are okay, business signs, no. That took at least half an hour.)

Anyway, John has turned into a super water-recycler. He decided he would empty out our baths and put the water on the lawn. That was only a couple of days ago, and already, the lawn in front of our half of the duplex is three shades darker than the anemic stuff by the neighbor's.

I don't know Steve would feel about our littl graywater processing system, but I hope he appreciates that this summer his water bill ought to be a little lower--and his lawn a little greener.

Putting a face on my veggies

At first the subject was "Food With A Face," but since I don't eat foods that actually have faces (i.e. critters), it didn't make sense. What I meant is that I finally got my first box of CSA produce and I got to meet our farmer.

Now, Lyle is not the lovable hippy who first turned me into a CSA nut, back when I was living in Minnesota with my sister. I think he is a recovering New Yorker, and he treats his subscribers with the brusque attitude you imagine when you think "New Yorker." The attitude is essentially "you'll get your vegetables when and where I tell you to get your vegetables, and you'd better like it." I want to take umbrage, but it's pretty hard to complain when you're holding the most beautiful bok choy you've ever touched and the man's giving you instructions on the preparation of Indian Mustard. Which, by the way, is at least as spicy raw as horseradish.

And he stuffed a giant bunch of hot pink wild roses into our produce box just because I said they were pretty.

Yesterday, leaving the farmers' market, my head was spinning. I really wasn't sure what to think about our new grocery set-up. But this afternoon, with the roses on the table and a single purple bloom nodding above the a bunch of chives on the kitchen counter, I feel so smitten I have no room for complaints. And the perfect kale I stirred into our curried vegetables was so tender and tasty, I knew there was no turning back.

My kind of W

I have a confession. I read Vogue. And W. And Teen Vogue. Okay, those are just the fashion magazines that I have subscriptions to. You can put Lucky in my hands, and I’m salivating. Even Town and Country makes me grin.

What is it about me and these magazines? After all, they stand for everything I’m against: consumerism, selfishness, fur. They trade on the frailty of young women’s body images. They substitute journalism for advertising, and worst of all, they are loaded with perfume samples!

But I can’t get enough of them. I can’t get enough of Stella McCartney. Dolce and Gabbana. Alexander McQueen. I can not tear my eyes away from a photograph of Coco Rocha, and if it includes Agyness Deyn, so much the better. (So, so much better.)

On a good day, I like to chalk it up to a love of beauty, art, design. On a bad day—the kind of day I catch myself waxing nostalgic for "America’s Next Top Model," Season 3—I wonder if I’m really the person I think I am.

Then I reach for The Vegetarian Times with a shrug. Everybody’s got their weaknesses. Mine are just a little glossier than I’d like them to be.

Curse of the blogging 'meme'

So Kt got hit with a blogging "meme," which I personally think is a bastardization of the word. The idea was coined by Richard Dawkins and used a lot by one of my favorite philosophers of mind, Daniel Dennett, and really has been used mostly to discuss the parasitical function of religion (i.e., how many religions contain ideas that are actually harmful to the individual organism, but spur along the religion itself--hey, I'm just quoting D.D. from his last visit to Portland, folks). Anyway, I digress. It sounds like I'm supposed to answer the following question:

Why do you blog? Give five answers.

1. Because I am narcissistic and love to subject others to my own rambling thoughts.
2. Because I can vent philosophal thoughts with facing other philosophers--or go back to school.
3. Because it keeps my writing muscles sharp.
4. To share my real thoughts with friends that, because of distance, would probably only get a shallow Christmas-card-level of communication any other way.
5. Because my own handwriting is fairly terrible and I have gotten too lazy to use a paper journal (and hey, it saves paper!).

That's what it's all about

At the museum, there is an area for children to use a computer to take their picture and type a little caption, then print out their document. Today my coworker found one a girl had printed and lost. It said: I am 6 years old. I love my mommy very much. I wish she would come down from heaven so I could see her again.

My little girl is sick and miserable today. I hugged her extra, extra tightly.

Mother's Day!

So today is my *4th* Mother's Day. Whoah.

It's so mind-boggling, I'm still kind of reeling from it. Being a mom is so great! Yes, there are all those tantrums and whiney moments, but 9 times out of 10, it's good stuff. It is just a treat to watch the formation of this special little creature.

If you're not a Mom today, why don't you take the chance to reach out to the kids in this world? It might be a pain in the butt to add a volunteering gig to your schedule, but even a one-time stint at your local children's museum or hospital can put a little spark in your life.

Kanzi

I am reading an amazing book: "Apes, Language, & the Human Mind," by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, et al. It is the story of Sues' work with a bonobo named Kanzi. Kanzi's mother was in a language study at a Language Research Center in Atlanta, and because of Kanzi's early exposure to humans and the English language, Kanzi has picked up an amazing ability to communicate. He has a grasp of complex grammatical structures that is superior to many 2-year-olds, and his abilities keep growing. He does not have the brain power of a human adult--for one, he doesn't have a strong short-term memory (at least linguistically). But he can communicate and interact with humans as well as a young child.

Kanzi is more able than most bonobos because of his early-childhood experiences. He was raised in a very rich environment where he was given a lot of language stimuli & great impetus to use it. Reading about his life, I can not help thinking of the chimpanzees at our zoo, who live in a concrete bunker and whose "enrichment activities" are mostly about finding food that's been strung from the ceilings or placed in a box. Of course, it's better than the old way of just locking the poor creatures in a spartan cage. But it's a far cry from the kind of place that could really stimulate them.

What if all the zoo monkeys got to live in a space like Kanzi's? What if, instead of being on display for our entertainment, the apes were allowed--in some safe, appropriate way--to interract with humans? What if they were given a chance to learn English? What could possibly be so wrong about allowing animals to be ambassadors and not statuary?

Blogging to blog

Most of the times I only put an entry on this blog when I have some deep thought or opinion that I want to express clearly and somewhere others can comment upon. That's why there aren't nearly as many blog entries as I wish there were! Of course, the kinds of opinions I have are usually sappy leftish mish-mash, so that might actually be a blessing to anybody who ever reads this.

But today I was reading Snarpinions, the reviewing arm of Snarke.net, and just felt so ... lame. I mean, I always think I'm going to do some writing. I have lots of swell ideas. But then I don't. I have turned into a writing blob. Okay, I do have some notes for the mind-body-yoga project, so I don't suck that badly. I've just been slacking a little the last three weeks. Or four.

Maybe I do suck!

People suck

So Kate, my niece, went into a pet store that focuses on reptiles and fish. And they were selling rats--for reptile chow. Now that's something Kate can live with, even though she's a rat maniac, but when she needed to wash her hands after a close encounter with rat pee, she saw in the back room something sad: clear plastic under-the-bed storage tubs crammed full of rats. That's right: plastic tubs full of miserable, sickly rodents. Is that any life for any creature--no matter what its fate will be?

The pet industry is cruel to animals. Do your research before you give your money to people who sell animals and who sell animal products. Don't allow businesses who perpetuate cruelty to make money!

On that note: Don't shop at the Tropical Hut!

The Scent of Luxury

Luxury smells like an herb from Madagascar. It is a light fruity scent, not cloying at all, and according to the Dior company, that aroma plus a Nobel prize will combat 11 of the 20 signs of aging. The other 9 are battled by a combination of other extracts and acids, also available from the brilliant minds back in France.

Luxury feels like a trip to fairy land. It is the gentle brush of kitten fur against your cheek. It is the soft tap of butterfly toes on your eye lids. It is the soft exhalation of a pretty girl looking over her work, and the little burst of giggle bubbles in your mouth as you take the gold-rimmed mirror and see yourself as you have never seen yourself before, as beautiful as an elf-queen.

Luxury is pretty damn great.

But be prepared for luxury's fall-out when you come back from fairy land. Be prepared for the one-eyed beggar girl and her sweet smile. Be prepared for the wave of overwhelming guilt. Luxury is not for the weak. The faint of heart will succumb to luxury's power or cower away from its persuasive touch.

The better option is to hold it quietly in your heart, a secret treasure. A source of knowing you never guessed at before. Luxury transcendant.

And as you give the girl your last fifty cents, she looks beyond the shopping bags and says: "You have a beautiful smile."

Yesterday's blog-a-roo!

So, in response to yesterday's big blog post about health and energy and the mind, I am really excited about this! I saw on the library catalog a book by a lady who uses YOGA to treat mental health issues in children, and then I found a web page for yoga therapists! I am super geeked out.

Minds, bodies & children

So today I read an article about parents whose 4-year-old daughter died because of a lethal overdose of prescription drugs. Her psychiatrist had diagnosed the girl (and her two older sibligs) with ADHD & bipolar disorder, and testimony for the prosecution claims the parents kept the girl overdosed on meds to keep her asleep and docile for long periods of time.

This case is obviously the extreme tip of the iceberg, but it is indicative of the way the mental health system functions in our society today and I hope it is drawing attention to a critical problem: the massive consumption of prescription drugs for mental symptoms.

The human brain is arguably the most complex biochemical-energy system on the planet, and neuroscientists have barely begun to figure it out. Drug therapies for the brain have come a long way, but they are still crude tools for a delicate situation. Every drug has a complex array of side effects (and intended effects) that change the brain's chemistry is ways we aren't prepared to even analyze.

I believe that when it come to tinkering with the brain, everyone involved should take the most conservative path. Somebody's going into seizures? Fine, give them drugs. Somebody's blacking out and losing memories and completely afunctional? Drugs might be helpful. Somebody can't concentrate in school? Try something else. Feeling down all the time? Don't just reach for a prescription--try something else first. If you're under the age of 25 (neuroscientists have suggested that in our information-heavy society, the brain does not show the signs of final maturity until about that age nowadays), and your brain is still growing-- try something else first.

It is hard to accept that the mind is part of the body, and that bodies have their own healing wisdom. If you take away the things that block the body's healing mechanisms, it will take care of itself. If you fuck with it, you're going to cause more trouble than it's worth.

There are many successful alternatives to drug therapies for many of the mild afflictions of the mind. There are a lot of great psychologists doing work out there, and that's awesome. But let's not forget that the mind is primarily an energy system. As a supplement to work with a pschologist, retraining the pathways of brain and giving patients better coping strategies, most people could greatly benefit from treatment with an energy worker. Systems like reiki, qi gong and yoga can give people the tools they need to change the way energy works inside their body and inside their mind.

I don't feel the need to go into details, but I know for a fact that energy work can change the health balance of your mind. I know that it changed mine greatly for the better.

As for the parents with the dead four-year-old, well, it's a sad story. And whether they are guilty or not, it doesn't really matter. They have lost their little girl in a horrible tragedy for which they are certainly responsible in some way. They'll live with that forever, and that's a long, long punishment.

Busy is good!

Yesterday was awesome. I got a little bit of everything on my list done: did some newbie-yoga; wrapped up the 2nd draft of Part I of the novel; took notes for the potential philosophy project; painted; killed zombies; and ate Doritos. It was such a good day.

Today, I'm not working quite so hard. Instead I'm socializing, which is a good thing. A few nights ago I went out with my co-workers for drinks, and it kind of sucked. Today I went out for lunch with my sister and now I'm hanging with her, which is much, much better. It definitely reflects the difference between socializing with people you know and are very comfortable around, and socializing with people you don't. I have been out with one of the girls before and we've always had a great time, but when you throw a whole group of people together, it just isn't the same.

Jeez, this is a lame post. Time to surf the library webpage and drink coffee!

The Dogs of Babel

Yesterday I threatened John with a long post about how phenomenal this book (The Dogs of Babel) is and how much it resonated with me and how perfect it was. Well, he lucked out. I used up all my fuel yesterday in a forty-minute in-depth summary/plot analysis/symbolism discourse/harangue that made his eyes roll up in his head. Poor guy! Anyway, today all I will say is READ THIS BOOK!

Actually, "The Dogs of Babel" was recommended to me by a co-worker, who also recommended "Ella Minnow Pea." They turned out to be wonderful books. They broke the 2+ year novel drought that I've been in. I can't remember the last time I read a novel in the literary genre that I liked. There was a period of about four months right after Fiona was born when I was reading books from Ed & Claudia & Rekah's libraries (those are some of my brother-in-law's family members) and reading some wonderful stuff. And then ... nothing. Every book I touched turned into crap. Stuffy, pretentious, tedious crap. So I pretty much switched over to only reading fantasy, mysteries and children's books, because they might not be pretty, but at least they don't think they're LITERATURE.

But "Ella Minnow Pea" and "The Dogs of Babel" are pretty. They are witty. And they are wise. Read them!

PS: I know book titles should be italicized, but the italics are being screwy on blogger today. Also, the possessive of "brother-in-law" should probably be "brother's-in-law". I apologize.

At long last!

So after screaming at my computer and threatening to throw it out the window, this blog entry is a little shorter than I planned it to be. I mean, it's my first post in close to a month!

Anyway, here's a silly quote:
"One is never enough for those who shop in the supermarket of crime."
--Moo, The Case of the Missing Jelly Donut, by Denys Cazet

David Wolfe is alright

So I hate to admit that the guy who wrote "The Sunfood Diet Success System" is right about anything, but he really is right about a lot of stuff. (Just don't read the poems. Ouch.) Oh sure, the raw food stuff, he's got science to back him up, but it's his career advice that's really proven itself.

See, he suggested that to figure out what you should be doing with your life, you should look at the things you enjoyed most between the ages of 7 and 14.

It sounds simple, but the other day, it really helped me think through a crazy idea I've had lately. You see, when I was 11, 12-ish, I started taking karate classes. And I loved them. LOVED them. For the first time in my life, I felt excited about doing stuff with my body. I always wanted to be a dancer or a gymnast or an ice skater, but we lived too far away from a place to learn, and plus, I was always sick and I was always fat. But I started to be really good at karate. And then somebody gave me their second-hand gi, and I started feeling self-conscious (because the pants so noisy and attention grabbing) and then I stopped wanting to go.

The same thing happened when I took karate when I was 23. I loved karate, but I got sick a lot and missed a lot of classes and just felt really self-conscious and awkward and got too ashamed to go. It didn't help that I was still the fattest person in my class. I always felt awful about being fat in karate class.

Lately, I have really missed karate, but I have also been busy exploring other things in my life. But about a month ago the weirdest thought crossed my mind: I'd really like to be a yoga teacher. What? I've never even taken yoga. But the thought started rolling some balls in my head, and they connected with some other balls that were set in motion a while ago by chance interactions at the museum. And now I am really thinking that I want to study Qi Gong and eventually become a Qi Gong practitioner.

Qi Gong is a lot like tai chi (in fact, tai chi is a subset of qi gong) and is connected to Kung Fu. It can be a martial art, but it is also a form of energy work and can be done silently without moving. Qi Gong experts can use the movements of qi to heal people.

I have really been interested in Reiki, which is an energy healing practice from Japan, related to qi gong. I am planning to save some money and take a few Reiki classes. I would like to build my own Reiki practice. But I think qi gong would really help me in many, many respects, and would only build my Reiki abilities.

All of these thoughts draw on experiences I had when I was between the ages of 7 and 14. Not only did I fall in love with karate, but I had a number of strange interractions with sick animals that made me want to learn more about alternative healing modalities. After years of not knowing what to do with my life, I feel really excited to reach back to these dreams that have haunted my memories. I am finally in a place where I can start to work toward making those dreams happen.

Joy from the mailbox

The Seed Savers Exchange catalog came today! Yippee! Hooray!

Do you think my landlord would notice if the back lawn disappeared?

Carbon continues!

Kt, your comments are so great! They just make me want to think!

About third world countries: I think there's a lot of evidence out there that suggests the US has heavily "encouraged" third world countries to be so dependent on their exports. Think about all the nasty stuff England did to the Colonies to keep us an export-based economy--we are doing all that and more. Our fellow American nations (okay, I mostly mean Latin American nations) are in a situation that goes far beyond my ability to make a prescription for their betterment. But I do know that they are not going to be able to help themselves until we stop trying to control their governments and their economies. We need to treat our neighbors like equals and not like ... well, the way we do.

I think that refocusing our efforts towards local production of EVERYTHING (as much as feasible) is the most important step to creating transparency in the production system and breaking down the crippling grip of corporations. To make a fresh stab at my analogy to the American Revolution, England's control of the Colonies was eroded by the efforts of the citizenry (and by that, I pretty much mean women!) who mobilized to create and source colonial produced goods. Groups like the Daughters of Liberty worked together to make the Colonies self-sufficient.

Right now, we give up the production of everything we consume to manufacturers and mega-corporations who manipulate us though advertising and who work against us to make a profit. Things like protecting our resources are not a priority for these companies. The only way to be sure that your money is not conspiring against you, your values and your best interests is to source your goods from people you can really trust, that can show you where your stuff came from. Make it easy for yourself: do it yourself!

Also, if all this posting about food production seems a little theme-y, it's because I'm reading a book called "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," by Joan Dye Gussow. She is a seventy-year old lady who grows all the vegetables (and a lot of fruit) that she and her husband eat all year long in her own New York State backyard. That's right, when she goes to the grocery store, she's stocking up on grain products and milk, and that's about it. It is incredibly inspiring, and I hope that everybody out there can take a page (or even just a paragraph) from her book and start growing even a little bit of their own food. It will connect you the earth; it will please your tastebuds, and it really will help the environment. And it's fun. And it's good exercise!

Addendum

And yes, before any wiseacres get on here and scold me for driving to Freddie's, let me just say that my family is working to use alternative travel resources. I use mass transit to get to work, John rides his bike 3 times a week, and Fiona and I have started carpooling home from school on Mondays. And all last minute trips to the grocery store are done on foot, at the food co-op. Some weeks I do our real shopping there, too.

See? We're working on it!

Internal combustion power

So my friend Kt pointed out that the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the biggest contributor to the carbon load, is the internal combustion engine. I think she was trying to draw my attention to things like driving habits and the need for mass transportation, but I of course saw it as the perfect way to simplify all my talk about food. (Yes, I really do think about food 98% of the time. Okay, that might be an exaggeration--but not much of one!)

You see, pretty much anything you buy was produced, processed and shipped to you using an internal combustion engine. The wheat in my sprouted wheat bread today was harvested using a (probably diesel-fueled) combine, which shot the wheat berries into the back of an idling truck (also probably diesel-fueled--if anybody needs biodiesel, it's a wheat farmer). The truck takes the wheat to the farmer's grain co-op or grain buyer, which probably sells the bulk of its grain to an international food conglomerate, like Archer Daniels. They're the middleman. My wheat somehow went from the grain co-op to Bob's Red Mill, who probably doesn't shop from Archer Daniels. In fact, my wheat was very likely magically loaded by a mysterious middleman, trucked from the middleman to a barge on the Columbia River (because my wheat is probably from Eastern Washington), and then barged down to Portland. The barge was also probably diesel-powered. From Port of Portland, it was trucked to Milwaukie (this is the best possible scenario; there is a good chance this stuff wasn't sent directly to Bob), where it was put into barrels for the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. Then Bob's loaded the barrels onto a truck, which probably went to the central Fred Meyer werehouse, was sorted into orders for the various stores and finally trucked to my Fred Meyer, 1 mile from my house. John drove me to Freddie's, and I bought it, drove it 1 mile home, and began sprouting it 2 days ago.

[Sidenote: This whole process, with a little planning could have gone like this:
ME, on the phone: Dad, could you buy 10 lbs of wheat berries from your neighbor when you help him with his harvest? I'll give him $.89/lb, plus $6 for Priority mail.
DAD: (choking on his coffee): $.89/lb? Are you crazy? I'm going to start growing wheat and selling it to you crazy cityslickers! I'll be a millionaire!]

Now these are raw wheatberries. The flour in the bread went from Eastern Washington on a diesel-powered train to the Midwest, where it was processed into flour, then shipped back to Oregon ... etc, etc.

We're talking about food with mileage, and that's not even food that was grown in another country. I shudder to think about the trip a banana takes, or how much gasoline was used up in its journey. BTW, non-food items really get nailed. My laptop, for example, when you take into account the trips the original raw materials took to the US to be made into components, then the trip the components took to China or the Phillipines to be assembled, then the trip from China to the US port, from the port to the regional werehouse, from the werehouse to the store, to my house, has more mileage on it than your average second-hand Honda Civic.

So what I'm saying is, you don't even have to own a car to use gallons and gallons of gas just about every day. Everything you buy is guzzling the stuff like crazy. You have to remember that it matters where things come from. It matters who sells it. It matters how much it's been processed.

So this summer, when I turn my back porch into a vegetable garden, you'll know why. I like knowing my tomato only had to travel 5 feet before I ate it.

Carbon

So my New Year's resolution this year is to reduce my carbon load. Amazing, isn't it? I mean, I remember hearing that term at OMSI eight (ten?) years ago and thinking "Carbon load? Who comes up with these names?," but now everybody uses that term, and everybody's got it on their mind. [Okay, maybe I should clarify: everybody worth knowing, that is.]

Anyway, it's amazing how many different things you can think of that jack up your C.L. This morning, I was thinking about our pancake syrup, which is organic goodness brewed up from maple and corn syrups. Tasty. But it takes a lot of energy to turn tree sap into syrup. They cook down something like 16 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon syrup. And I shudder to think how much energy it takes to make sugar cane juice into sugar crystals for my coffee.

Speaking of coffee, how much fuel was wasted shipping that stuff here from South America? And then on roasting and grinding and brewing? Yikes, I've got to stop drinking the stuff!

Showers. Travelling. Watching TV. Farting. Breathing! It all adds up. And every single choice you make, every single day--it adds up. What am I going to do about it? And what are you?

Snowy

So my family is out playing in the snow right now, and I'm snugly at home, drinking tea and looking up recipes for digestive biscuits. I can't say there's anything more wonderful in the world!

I was just reading The Fat Free Vegan, who was discussing how much has changed in both her world and the online vegan world in the last year, and I definitely agree. I feel like in the last year or so, more and more people have become accepting of vegan eating. Here in Portland, we have vegan restaurants and grocery stores and even raw-food options--all over the place. They have exploded this year. And that is great. That means that the world is becoming more accepting of a beautiful, loving, healthy lifestyle. If people can do that on the visceral level food, what can they do if they open up at other levels?

We saw people take these thoughts to the polls this year. I hope we see them take these thoughts and values into their families and their shopping habits and their hearts, because if they do, the world is going to get a lot more beautiful.

Terminal Airhead

I tend to do a little "New Year's thinking" around this time of the year, and I usually find my best insights have come from the January thoughts that I stir up out of the winter mud. And this year, I think I've come up with a doozy.

I am going to give up being smart.

Let me explain that one. You see, being "smart" has been a big part of my identity for as long as I can remember, and the last few years, it's been a serious weight around my neck. Yes, I have a fine mind. It can do a lot. But I am also an airhead. A serious head-in-the-clouds, floating around in outer space, at-one-with-the-birdsong-and-rainbow, airhead. And when the airhead and the "I know everything, damn it" parts of my life come together, the result is not pretty.

I feel dumb a lot.

You see, while I do know a lot about a lot of stuff, I also don't know a lot about a lot of stuff, and I often don't like to admit it. And then when I've half spaced out what's going on and then try to pull a "I know everything" off, I just wind up looking like an asshole.

There are a lot of other good reasons to let the know-it-all go. You see, knowing everything gets in the way of learning new things. It gets in the way of being open. It gets in the way of letting the universe sweep you along its glorious plan, and that creates a lot of suffering. Being a know-it-all has really kept me down.

Being an airhead, however, has done nothing but bring me joy, a fresh and happy mind, lots of friends and the gift of magical insights that take me to new and glorious situations. That's pretty good in my book!

The mold, the mayhem

Another delightful day spent combating the onslaught of mold around our windows. Ahh, the scent of rotting wood trim in the air. I just love aluminum frame windows that no one has taken care of in 40 years!

I did think of one cool idea: the condensation that collects on the windowsill is essentially distilled water. If I could just run it straight from the window frame to a clean jug, I could be generating my own drinking water WHILE I SLEEP.

Jeez, I think even Martha would be impressed.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

double-plus ungood day

Today was not a good day. Today was a bad day. Today was my worst idea EVER.

Do not take Trimet to the most distant, most enormous fabric store in town and then expect to get any shopping done. Expect to waste 4.5 hours of time, spend $4 in bus fare, $6 on lunch, get totally pissed off at everyone who lives east of 52nd Ave, nearly get hit by an SUV (causing you to scream expletives so loudly your nearly lose your voice), make your kid cry AND NOT BUY A SINGLE PIECE OF FABRIC OR ANY KIND OF CRAFT SUPPLY.

Then you will have to eat two pieces of fudge to recover from the entire experience.

Blind as a bat

In the weakest move of the weakest of administration that has ever set foot in Washington, DC, the Bush administration today did its darndest to keep money out of the hands of blind people. They are appealing the court mandated redesign of US dollars so paper bills would be usable by the visually impaired--and they actually argued that the blind didn't need to use paper currency, because they could just use credit cards!!!

Wow. That's just . . . amazing.

On a separate note, I watched two great movies on Saturday! Now, I don't usually watch 2 movies in one day, but I was sick, so I made an exception. And both of these films are worth making exceptions for! 1) Because of Winn-Dixie--this is just cute and precious enough without being so cute and precious you want to throw up. Plus Dave Matthews works in the coolest pet store in the whole world. 2) Bad(der) Santa--okay, this movie is brilliant. It was so awful and cringe-inducing that it turned out wonderful. And the kid who plays Therman Merman is AMAZING.

Pop ups

So I'm trying to get used this new computer, and I'm telling you, sometimes it's nuts. I mean, pop-up blocker is built-in to this edition of Explorer, which sounds great, but really it turns out that 9 times out of 10, I want pop-ups! I mean, I wouldn't click the Barney's button if I didn't really want it to pop up!

Hot dog, I love style.com.

Brain fluff

I feel like such a feather head. I honestly have not read a novel in close to 3 weeks. First October W came. Then September and October Vogue came. Then November W came. Then November Vogue came. Somewhere in there November Martha arrived.

I am a bubble brain.

Okay, I guess I did read Vibrational Healing by Joy Gardner. That has to count for something.

And now I'm back ...

... from outer space, or at least the OHSU Richmond Clinic. I can breathe sort of clearly now, the snot is mostly gone. Gonna be a bright, bright, breathing day!

And now I'm back ...

... from outer space, or at least the OHSU Richmond Clinic. I can breathe sort of clearly now, the snot is mostly gone. Gonna be a bright, bright, breathing day!

End is near

So in the rush to finish ten zillion things, of course we all have colds. So now my costume will be Princess Leah/Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Grrr.


The biscotti I made for the party taste super tasty when dipped in coffee.

On animals and why I don't partake

So my friends have been chatting a bit about the ills of non-organic eggs and dairy, and then I had to butt in my head about how badly the animals live, and I realized I had to clarify something. It is easy to overstate the suffering of farm animals, and it is easy to overstate the health benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet. It is easy to twist and rationalize both of these claims and make them trivial. So I want to point out that the reasons I decided to stop eating animal foods have to do only with myself.

Since I had Fiona, I have been trying to accept myself fully and live the fullest life I can create for myself. For years I have struggled with parts of my personality that weren't acceptable: I have always been told that I am too sensitive and too emotional. I have always felt that I was too weak and too silly to really get along in the world. But I decided that attitude wasn't helping me, and was only crippling my abilities. I found that being a little extra sensitive was actually useful when I became a mother, and that gave me the extra confidence to start exploring my weenier side.

One thing that has always been difficult was my tenderness toward any kind of pain and suffering. Just thinking about an injured child makes me want to cry (and horror stories about child abuse have been known to keep me from sleeping for days). When it came to thinking about killing and injuring animals, I have always been upset, but I felt like if it was for food production, I was expressing illogical thoughts, weak, stupid thoughts. My father (and Fiona's father, too, now that I think about it) made it a particular point of harassment. He taught me to feel stupid and inferior for questioning the massive consumption of meat, and we ate it every night.

Finally, after years of being interested in a vegetarian diet without any serious action, and during a period of serious spiritual activity (meditating, reading, stuff like that), this May I decided that I couldn't keep pushing those feelings under the rug when it was so much easier to just stop eating meat. John was very supportive. I couldn't have broken out of that horrible mold without him.

Also during this extra spiritual period, I realized that I wanted my lifestyle to better match my values and my goals. I want to live a life based upon kindness, and I want to be a kind person. Is killing an animal just for human usage kind? Is it kind to reduce a life, human or animal, to only its economic value? No matter how I look at it, it doesn't look kind to me. It is particularly unkind to do so when there are so many easy vegetable protein sources for me to choose from.

Since I made this decision, I have not experienced the crippling bouts of emotional pain I used to deal with weekly (or more often). I haven't felt the deadening of depression that used to grip me so firmly. I don't feel worthless. I feel like me. I feel ... okay.

I also feel ten pounds skinnier. That's okay, too.

Really good book!

So I just started "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community," and boy howdy is it a nice book. I feel very hopeful.

Got nothing

Okay, so today's post doesn't really have any kind of topic. Yesterday I was full of brilliant blog posts, but today, nothing. It's like an echoing cavern up there in my head.

I am feeling tremendously vain, however. I am wearing my cool $1 vintage dress and have gotten lots of compliments from folks here at work. I've probably checked myself out ten times today.

Tiny slacking moment

So I'm taking a moment to slack and post on this blog. I should be scrubbing screens to get them ready for some serious screenprinting--after all, I have 75-120 horses to print before Halloween. But dude, the Internet is so much more fun!

Anyway, this Friday, I had a wonderful pie moment. Pie is my favorite food. Scratch that. Pie is the single greatest food stuff ever created by man. It is a magical gateway to a world of gustatory oneness. When it touches my tongue, I can hear the OMM of the universe gently humming in my ears, translated from the gentle pulses of my happy cheeks and gums and tastebuds into sound by some miracle. Yes, a miracle. Pie is truly, blissfully miraculous.

Good pie, that is. Bad pie is like cardboard left out in the rain, topped with malingering fruit or an evil lunchlady's idea of pudding.

But this Friday, I had wonderful pie. Crisp, crumbling crust, gently salted, with the mellow flavor of fresh fat--perhaps part butter, but mainly shortening. The crust of my childhood. Not fancy, but right. The custard, soft and lusciously brown with dark corn syrup, cradled the perfectly salted and crunchy pecan topping. I closed my eyes and ate slowly.

Screw yoga. This is my gateway to the spirit.

Apologia

I love Blogger; Blogger is not evil; I retract all cruel statements regarding Blogger and its eating habits.

Things and Stuff

First off--an apology for last week's absolute blather. It was unusually lame. But here's a good quote on a similar subject, from a book I am reading:
"The current trajectory of globalization contains at least one very grave threat to the future of local community stability--namely, reduced legal capacity of localities to shape their own economic destinies." (27, _Making A Place For Community_, Williamson, Imbroscio & Alperovitz--emphasis mine.)

I don't know why, but I just love that expression: shaping their own economic destinies. It's succinct, it's beautiful, and it captures that sense of empowerment so many communities are starting to lose. Look at my hometown, Reedsport, Oregon. The entire town is fading away into despair, because the economic glue of the community--a lumber mill and a paper mill--bit it in the 90s. The town lost many of its most active townspeople (and towns need those busybodies and do-gooders!) and it still hasn't found another major employer. It's heartbreaking.

The junk dress is coming along. I hoped I'd have all the back issues worked out today, but I don't. I think I have a good idea to shape it so it's more flattering (i.e., less like a hospital gown) without using yawn-ish old darts, but I will need John's help. Speaking of John, he had a brilliant notion about our merry-go-round lamp, and I am super excited. It's going to rock.

Speaking of rocking, chicken-fried seitan rocks. It is sensational. I will recommend it to every single person I know--unless they have a gluten sensitivity. Other than that--yummm.

The Anti-Federalist

Okay, so I was reading the paper today and heard about a bill up in the senate (S 3128) which would "prohibit states or local governments from enacting any food-safety law that differs in any way from federal law, including setting more stringent limits on toxic substances.... the FDA would be the sole arbiter of permissible levels of toxics in foods, overriding hundreds of existing state and local food-safety laws," (Wolke, LA Times-Washington Post Service).

It's tempting to like the idea because then all the food safety issues in this motley nation of ours will be codified and made uniform. But I hate it. I hate the idea that my health and safety is even more dominated by the power of the FDA, an organization so heavily controlled by the chemical industry and the corporate food giants that we already can't trust them. I hate the idea that my state government, which shows a stronger connection to its constituents, will no longer be able to protect me from the FDA's blind and greedy grasp.

This law represents everything I hate about the United States and its current state of government. Lately, I've been thinking that we should de-federate our nation a little. Put more power in the hands of the states--localize it. Pull the teeth of big corporations by establishing tougher trade barriers between states and regions (not to mention nations).

Only by refocusing money and power to a regional level will we see greater citizen involvement and government that reflects HUMAN values, not corporate. Only by making the federal government accountable to local governments will we see the kind of development that we, individuals, desire.

Amen.

Reviewing the fridge

So it's fall now. We had our first big September rainstorm, and yep, it's fall. So what do I want--desperately, earnestly, painfully want? Pork, of course. Nothing says fall like bacon, pork chops, pork loin, pork ribs, pork fat in all its glorious, sticky-greasy-irridescent chip wonder. It hit me today, and I wasn't prepared for it. I mean, I nearly my footing in the kitchen.

I should have seen it coming. The last few days have been rough. I was reading a great book by Ruth Reichl (former NYTimes restaurant critic) called "Garlic and Sapphires: the secret life of a critic in disguise," and it was like 400 pages of the most beautiful food writing you could expose yourself too. At least ten meals included foie gras. And reading it was great, but also really horrible, because I had to remind myself that I have given all that up. I am no longer a gourmet eater. I am a conscientious eater, a healthy eater. I am an eater who weighs *70* pounds less I did when I was a serious gourmet eater-- and 15 less than when I was an amateur gourmet eater.

I have to bring an image of a long-lashed sweet-faced piglet into my mind to shake off the painful need for bacon.

Sometimes being a near-vegan is really hard. There is a certain lack of variety in my food world, because I'm still developing my recipe repertoire. And there is a difference in tastes. I made krautranzas the other day, and they were not the same delicious as the sausage-kraut wonders I created in my previous food life. Tempeh can do wonderful things, but when you are reaching out for the flavors of your childhood, there is so only so far you can go. I try to appreciate these foods as new foods, not replacements, but sometimes, it's hard. Lately, I've cheated a lot. Fiona and I had a milkshake yesterday. It tasted wonderful, with that salty, creamy, sweetness that only cow milk can provide. The most gifted blend of soymilk lacks that quality. Usually, I don't want the high sodium funk of cowmilk. Usually, I prefer rice or soy. But right now, I miss dairy. I miss the splendor of egg whites (although I don't miss the weird dry skin they give me). I miss the easy flexibility of baked goods with eggs. I miss the salty intensity that urea and hormones and enzymes give animal foods. Vegetables are just too damn nice tasting. I want to eat raunchy, damn it!

Is being a vegetarian with vegan intentions worth it? Of course. I feel so much better these days. I don't feel a secret well of guilt boarded up within me any longer. I have more energy. I am more in touch with my spirituality. I can taste and smell things with a newfound clarity. I can pet a cat, and not be completely creeped out by the similarity between a cat's thigh muscles and a chicken's.

I love animals and I love myself. If being a real foodie means giving up those things, then I'm glad I've put that behind me. Best of all, I know I'll never have to look a plate of foie gras and try to forget how it was made.

And now I'm back

... from September closure, if not outer space. It feels weird to be normal work after all the fun of cleaning and painting. But all the staff is more friendly and fun now. I am actually feeling like I love my job and my coworkers. Sniff. Sniff

John, however, does not feel the same about his workplace:
http://slvk.blogspot.com/

Computer talk

WoW! It's been forever since I posted an update on this baby. See, I dowloaded an update for McAfee, and since then, our computer crashes when we start up the internet. Oops. Also, I got a new boss at work, so I've been slacking much, much less.

Not that I slack at work. I am an excellent employee and constantly search for new projects and ways to maximize our visitors' museum experience.

August already?

Whoah. It's August. Where did June go?

So I finally met Elias, my sister's 2-month old baby. (See what I mean about 'where'd June go'?) He's cute. But just as importantly--drumroll, please--John met my dad!

See, my dad was spending the night at Kristina's, and she had us over for dinner. It was much fun. John and Kristina entertained my dad while Bert & I cooked and drank pina coladas. Yum, yum, yummmm. Then, after dinner, we all joined in a rousing game of chickenfoot! What a hoot.

Anyway, John said Dad was cool; Fiona and Amelia played dress-up; and Isaac pestered "Uncle John" non-stop. Good times.

Crazy cake

So yesterday I made my very first fat-free, sugar-free cake (and recipe-free, may I add). Okay, so it was more like a pumpkin bread. Anyway, it turned out pretty good, although I regret not adding any honey or apple-juice concentrate, because prune juice just doesn't make things sweet enough for my liking. Of course, that means it might be sweet enough for any normal person--you're talking about a woman who has been known to add 2 and 1/2 sugar packets to a diner-sized cup of coffee. But the cake is fluffy and tender and yummy, just as a good cake or quick bread ought to be, and boy is it yummy with the (sooo not sugar-free) frosting I plopped on top. It's the best of both worlds this way.

And of course, since it's sugar-free and fat-free, I didn't feel guilty about eating a big chunk for breakfast.

Bye-bye, SCSC ...

So, I'm re-reading one of my all-time favorite books (The God Particle, Lederman), and realized I hadn't heard anything about the super-colliding superconductor in a long time. So I looked it up.

Did you know they're just letting it rot away in the desert? ? ? ?

I mean, they never finished it. They never got the money, they threw their hands up in the air and they just left everything to turn into dust down there.

I am so worked up about this that I used a comma splice in that last sentence.

I know that some day, people will get their heads out of their asses about big science--big important science, like astrophysics and particle physics, not craptastic money-making environmental-trashing schemes like fricking genetic engineering. I know that someday, someone will say: let's get a bunch of money and smash atoms until we finally have some experimental proof that support GUTS. Or at least find the Higgs boson.

See, this is the kind of science that is important. It's not important because it leads to technological breakthroughs (which it does), but because it is the research that feeds the human soul. It represents humanity's great journey through the eons, a journey with but one end: to understand the universe, its beginnings and our place within it. Particle accelerators are not a tribute to the hubris of humankind, but a testiment to our desperate need to touch the miracles of God. The miracles get smaller and smaller the more we keep looking. Bosons and photons and gluons and quarks are truly miraculous.

Big science is like big operas, big orchestras and haute couture. People see all them as a waste of money, economic idiocies, and the toys of the privileged class. But anyone who witnesses them in action is awed.

We need awe. We need it desperately. And I wish with all my heart that we could move out of this period of puritanical, money-grubbing, soul-sucking thought--and get back to more human (and more godly) endeavors.

New Alchemy & Frustration

I started addressing this on my myspace blog, but that's my dumbied down blog. This is my more insightful page. Not that many of my insights have really been that great, for the most part, but what the heck, a girl's got to have standards.

ANYWAY, I've been reading a lot of great stuff about sustainable development, and the changes we need to make in our economy and the way we design communities and the way we think about resources. And our needs. It's great. Since Jarusha gave me this cookbook (The More-With-Less Cookbook--check it out), I've really been thinking about the expenses behind the littlest things we do.

It started with food, obviously. Basic expenditure was just the first step; then I read more, and I started thinking about the moral expenses behind my meals. That was when I decided I was definitely going veg, and I was going to seriously work to get rid of my use of dairy and egg products. I feel really great about that move. All the energies of my body are happier, and I feel less clogged up and depressed. Also, I know that what I'm eating is using a much smaller footprint than my old one.

Lately, still on the level of food, I've started thinking about the energy and waste behind the processed foods in my life. Not just convenience foods like frozen pizza, but other, more subtly processed things: soy milk; bread; sugar; maple syrup. Just about everything we eat, unless it's a fresh vegetable or fruit, is pretty highly processed. And there's a lot of waste involved. You definitely notice how much energy food takes when you start making more of your own stuff from scratch.

Hmmn, hold that thought. The kid is waking.

slackah!

See? I'm so busy slacking, I can't even be bothered to capitalize the title of this blog entry.

I haven't updating this blog very often lately because I have been so busy getting crazy with myspace. It can be a little ... time consuming ... but it has proved worthwhile, because I am reconnecting with my brother Jak. He is not having a good time in Lemoore, CA, and I really feel for him. Still, it's only for a few months, and then they will probably send him to sea.

I am working on the *3rd* reconceptualization of my little novel. I've been sitting on the second draft, not quite willing to commit to finish the fix (I needed to re-enter all the changes from the last half of the book after my ancient computer ATE them), and I was finally able to put my finger on the vague feeling of wrong which has troubled me for a very long time. So I'm completely revisiting the story and I'm really excited about it. Hooray!

Also cool and noteworthy: I am cutting out the pieces for a skirt I patterned myself and I finished a painting (which actually looks like a person). Oh yes: I've also been making my own breads, seitan from scratch, and my own rice milk. Whew! Good times this summer!

Word drought

I've got nothing lately, but this put a smile on my face!

Oh--we went to Blue Lake Park and had a great time today. They don't let midgets swim in the lake, but they had this awesome sandbox/water sprinkler play area that we spent about two hours in. It was so fun! We dug rivers, built castles and totally immitated the Army Corps of Engineers. Erosion really does suck.

ugggggh

I have a cold. Arggh. Sniffle.

Fiona has a cold. Arggh.

On the plus side, I got to watch Ghostbusters 2 twice in two days. Colds do have their perks!

Hero of the WEEK

Marisa, my totally cool co-worker was on the jump-rope team in elementary school, and here was her trick:

Jumping into the Double Dutch ropes, on a pogo stick, juggling scarves.

Oh yeah, people. This woman is my hero of the week.

I can't really be mad at Fiona just because she told me she loves John more than me. But I still want to go lay in bed and cry for the rest of the day.