We just got over an underwhelming “snowstorm” on Saturday, and are heading for another tomorrow: I’m at home, doing freelance work & am up to my eyeballs in homework, so I’m hoping I get out to play in the snow for a few minutes. All the hard work of spring still seems like a million miles away. (and yes, the apple trees still need pruning: the weather has not been cooperating at all AND we’ve been lazy. This month, it’s gotta happen this month, or we suck.)
We’ve finally got a coop worked out, and it will be delivered in March, and that means we can get chicks soon after. Yay! No idea of breed yet, but at least we’re making some headway.
I’ve been tinkering a lot in the kitchen: growing various bean sprouts (yummy), making vegan caramels (successful & sticky), and I’m thinking of trying my hand at fermentation, as in pickles, sauerkraut, natto, etc. I LOVE Asian pickles, and can rarely find them or afford them, so I thought I’d get fresh daikon radish & lotus root & make the pickles myself. And everyone knows I love natto, but no one else does, or even likes hearing about it, so I’ll shut up. I have a fine gallery of natto pictures on Flickr, if you’d like to be frightened by fermenting, stinky beans, be my guest: here’s the link Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.
Fermentation is supposed to be a much better source of probiotics than taking acidophillus pills, so I’m strongly considering it. We’ll see.
Otherwise, not much happening around here. Let it snow.
The penultimate week at work: I made no progress on my Noro jacket project, and spent about 3 hours a night with my homework assignments, so the week whizzed by, and now only 1 week remains. Wow.
It’s a massive leap of faith, but I guess…what isn’t?
Finally got out to the apple trees today, but the ground was a bit too soft for stomping around, so we just marked the branches we need to cut & headed back to the balcony to sit in the sun for a little while. As difficult as it is on our desires to ski, prune trees, and revel in snowfalls, the January thaw does have its benefits.
I’m gearing up for the planting season (I assume that the unseasonable warmth today is contributing to my garden-y thoughts), and thought I’d share what we’re planning to grow this year:
From Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: Organic Brandywine Tomatoes Organic Dinosaur Kale Organic Bloomsdale Spinach Mayo Amaranth (for the chickens and local wildlife, really, though we may eat the young greens) New Zealand Spinach
and from Nichols Garden Nursery Organic Calabrese Broccoli Chinese Kale (Gai Lohn) Cocozelle Bush Zucchini Takinogawa Burdock “Land Seaweed” Agretti (Salsola Komarovi) (I have no freaking idea, it looked very interesting, so we’re trying it out) Rat-tail Radishes (again, curiosity struck) another package of Organic Dinosaur Kale (also called “Tuscan” or “Lascinato”), since we’ll probably replant in the fall for a winter harvest. Celtuce (Stem Lettuce) (curiosity again)
So, it should be interesting! This isn’t an exhaustive list at all, we’ll still be buying seed potatoes, pepper plants, and herb plants, as well as other plants that we tend to buy as seedlings, rather than sprouting ourselves.
I’ve also got designs on some random stuff, like actively cultivating the purslane that’s planted itself throughout the raised beds (for us & for the chickens, since it’s very high in Omega-3), and stinging nettle, which we’ll have to procure locally, once Well Sweep (our local herb nursery) opens for the season. I’m also looking for some seed swaps, so if anyone has any recommendations, please pass them on!
I actually rejoined myfolia.com to track this stuff better, since they’ve got some awesome tools, so you may see some cross-posting or references to my information, which can be found here.
OK, so school started on Wednesday & it’s a little intimidating, but I think I’ll be ok. Thankfully, there aren’t any papers due for a couple of weeks. I’m taking Moral Philosophy right now, and my classmates (or their virtual selves, rather) seem a pretty interesting group.
I’m knitting something pretty ambitious right now: a Central Asian coat: it closely resembles a Turkoman or Mongol style of coat, with the doubled fronts, and I’m developing it off of the way that the woven coats were traditionally made. So, this works out to: the central back and front are made from a continuous piece of fabric, the arms are made by splitting another piece of fabric, and the rest of the garment is constructed by using the leftover bits as gores (flared or triangular pieces that add ease or volume).
So far, it’s working out exactly to spec. I credit this to:
1. Actually measuring my gauge exactly. 2. Using inches AND rows in determining when to do decreases. 3. Dumb luck.
The stitch I’m using is linen stitch: it makes a flat, non-curling fabric, and it showcases Noro Kureyon’s color shifts really nicely (I think). I’m documenting it all, and will block & measure & photograph each piece, so that anyone who wants to try it out themselves will be able (hopefully) to follow the pattern. Check out the picture below on click on it to see the others @ Flickr:
Raw beet & red cabbage salad
It’s a year of big changes for me: I’m going back to consulting, instead of working full-time, so I can finish my degree in an accelerated program from Boston University (and be totally done in around 18 months). School hasn’t started yet, but will in 5 days, and I’m trying to crank through my reading (The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, which is very absorbing, luckily).
It’s an online-only course (which is the only way I could pull this off without actually moving to Boston), so orientation’s been accompanied with some delightful interludes of setting up one of the home computers to be my designated workstation. I’ve never seen so many add-ons & plugins in my life. It’s definitely going to give me a whole new perspective on the technology end of e-learning, and I’m going to use what I’ve learned for future IA/UX work, to be sure.
Of course, green plantains that are purchased at the same time, ripen at the same time. I knew that. So, why am I surprised that I suddenly have a plantain problem, now that they’ve all ripened at the same time?
Argh. Anyway, they’re delicious. So far, I’ve deep-fried them in oil (the sugars in the plantain caramelize beautifully), and wrapped them in egg roll wrappers & deep-fried them*.
And of course, all the bananas in the house are now way too ripe, too. So, they’re getting the Thai fried banana treatment…yuuuuuummmmmmy!
Healthy diet starts tomorrow. Probably.
(* I am of the waste-not, want-not philosophy when it comes to deep-frying, since it uses such an enormous amount of oil. We do it very rarely, like 2 times a year, so we just fry stuff all day long and collapse at the end, completely sick of fried food. It’s fantastic.)
So, when everyone gets the same person chicken books for Christmas, it quickly becomes ridiculous. Luckily, my dad’s not the type to expect grand extravagance, so he took the four chicken books in stride.
Replete from dinner, actually more like: too full to be at the computer so I’m going to hibernate for a bit & come back later.
People have some weird traditions…I’m not kidding myself into thinking that ours is reality-TV weird or compelling: it’s just a little unusual. Here it is:
Every Dec.24th, we head out to Metropolitan Seafood & join the throngs of people patiently waiting in line to…get into the store.This can take an hour or so.
There’s nothing on sale (and discount seafood is best avoided, anyway), and they’re not giving away free lobsters with every order. It’s always like this. An intersection of holiday tradition with a really superior fish market = a mob. A very pleasant, well-behaved, friendly mob, all intent on bringing home the piscine goods, so Christmas can start happening.
I have extra-thick socks on, a turtleneck & warm sweater, and my long winter coat & ski gloves. I know I’ll still be cold, and a little bored & impatient. And I’m actually looking forward to it. We could place our order ahead of time & not have to wait in line to get into the store; we never do it. That would be cheating. For us, standing in the parking lot is as necessary as putting up the tree on Christmas Eve: weird & foreign to others, essential to us.
Time to go…they open at 10am.
Happy Holidays all!
…or egg yolks, or something. I’ve always liked the color yellow in small doses. I think one of the most appealing things about farm eggs (as opposed to storebought eggs) is the insane color of the yolk in summertime. It verges on an orangey hue that weirdly reminds me of salmon roe, for its vibrancy. I set out to make sock yarn that reminds me of summer & marigolds & sunflowers & eggs. And I think I pulled it off.
