Friday, June 29, 2007

meals at a glance

Lunch yesterday:
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Whole-wheat pasta with a roasted eggplant-tomato sauce, sauteed kale with garlic and a few chili flakes, and white beans cooked with garlic and herbs.

Part of breakfast this morning:
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I also had tea, orange juice, and scrambled eggs. (And drizzled a little pure maple syrup on my waffles, of course. The two waffles that didn't end up in the freezer, that is!)

Part of lunch today:
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A smoothie of nothing more than frozen blueberries and orange juice.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

a first.

I have been a subscriber to Netflix for a number of years now. I find it an affordable, fuss-free way to rent movies. Having a couple of new movies on hand most of the time is great! I haven't watched commercial TV in a couple of years, and don't miss it one bit, thanks in part to Netflix.

Will you believe the email I got today?

They are LOWERING the cost of the plan I am signed up for.

Does ANYONE, EVER, lower the cost of anything?

This is truly remarkable.

I'm so puzzled, I almost want to ask why -- but, heck, I'm not complaining!

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

baking, bikes, and books

Food first, as always:

When I got home from work tonight, I was feeling especially hungry, although I managed to put down quite a bit of sushi (avocado rolls -- YUM) for dinner earlier, and some steamed edamame as well. I decided to bake some muffins, since I had been wanting quick breakfast/snack type bread goods for a few days now. I didn't feel like making blueberry muffins, so I decided to make cinnamon-peach muffins. I also didn't feel like chopping the frozen peaches, so I just shoved a couple slices into each muffin, Vicki-style. (Not too long ago, Vicki made a peach-cobbler style muffin, using this "shoving in" technique.)
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The muffins are rather tasty, (I've eaten two already,) and look kind of cool. The only drawback was that the tips of some of the peach sections burned a little bit in the oven. I snipped the burned ends off with a scissors. High-tech operation in my kitchen, let me tell you!

On to the bike:

Recently, I acquired a new bike. (My old one disappeared -- stolen or supposed abandoned, I don't know -- it had no seat and two flat tires, so I can't imagine the thief got all that far with it!) A church choir colleague of mine has been generous enough to lend me one of her two bikes. I now have a fabulous Bridgestone XO-5 on long-term loan. Wowza:
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This bike is a hybrid, which means it's more stable than a traditional road bike, and I could put larger tires on it if I wanted to do mountain biking, but it is lighter and faster than a traditional mountain bike. (It weighs roughly 30 pounds, and I can easily carry it up and down two flights of stairs in my apartment building.) I'm one lucky girl, here! Biking to work (and home) is faster than taking the bus, which is awesome. Plus, I just really missed biking!

And last, two books:

I am in the middle of two books right now, both of which are nonfiction, which is unusual for me, both about history and politics, which is also unusual for me, but both (at least in part) about food, food production, and food distribution.

First, Guns Germs and Steel:
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This book is essentially a short (440 page) history of the development of human society, from the big bang forward, with the focus on why certain societies/cultures have thrived/dominated the world, and others have struggled, some almost to elimination. The author argues that the most successful societies have been the ones that have had access to farming, guns, germs, and steel, while societies who remained hunter-gatherers and were less technologically-advanced have been the ones that have struggled. I am finding the chapters on the development of food production especially fascinating. I'll let you know if the later stuff holds my interest, but for now, this is a great book, and not nearly as thick and boring as it looks. It is rather well-written and engaging -- the author explains lots of theory, but also uses very clear, interesting examples to explain his point.

Last, Hope's Edge:
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Now, I have not read Diet for a Small Planet, (I should,) but this book is essentially an updated, "part 2" type book. Frances Moore Lappe and her daughter, Anna, travelled the world in search of organizations that are fighting hunger by returning to local, organic, sustainable methods of farming. I have read so far about a school district in California that has implemented an on-school-grounds garden programs for all the schools in its district, a prisoner-rehabilitation garden that offers jobs to people just out of prison, in order to help them reconnect with the land and their communities, the MST in Brazil, which is organizing landless people in reclaiming and farming much of the land that is laying in waste by rich landowners, a community in Brazil that considers access to healthy food a basic human right, thus providing healthy, low-cost meals for anyone who wants them, the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which provides "microcredit" (very small loans,) to women who pledge to uphold 16 principles, thus freeing them from dependence on moneylenders, allowing them to start small businesses which allow them to adequately feed their families, and slowly creating social change (i.e., equalizing men and women as citizens,) and I have just started the chapter on organizations in the US and India that are trying to fight corporate patenting of seeds and genetic information. I have to tell you, this book is absolutely fascinating -- I can't put it down. I am learning so much, and for the first time in a long time, I'm incredibly interested in politics. I knew I'd get there eventually, (Dan is an avid news junkie, and I think wishes sometimes I was too, so he could talk politics more in-depth with me,) and I'm starting to get hooked -- and fittingly, the avenue was through learning about food!

In the end, all of this baking and biking and books have made me feel lucky -- lucky that I have the resources for and access to healthy, mostly local, mostly organic food.

Read Hope's Edge, if you haven't already. (I promise to read Diet for a Small Planet, too!)

Monday, June 25, 2007

cooking, picnic-ing, and (more) hiking

It's hot here . . .
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. . . but I discovered the trick to cooking though the heat while still not owning an air conditioner -- I only cook after 10 pm! This way, even if I have to turn on the oven and heat up the apartment, it's cooled off again by morning. Wahoo! Cooking during the summer is fun again! I made a couple of things last week:

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Jerk Tofu (from the Post Punk Kitchen) with a side of baked sweet potato and garlic-roasted asparagus . . .

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. . . and red lentil stew with saffron rice and cilantro yogurt cream. (The stew and cream were from an old issue of Cooking Light magazine, and I made up the rice.)

Also, I picked up a bunch of very delicious picnic-type foods, (hummus, wholegrain pita, orange cherry tomatoes, cucumber, olives, feta, stuffed grape leaves, and tabouli,) made some homemade lemonade (1 cup sugar, 1 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice, and 6 cups of water,) and packed up a meal to go for Dan and I last Friday. (No pics of the food, sorry!) We drove down to Minnehaha Creek, set up picnic camp at the bottom of the falls, ate a bunch, and then walked off our lunch along the creek.

The falls:
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Alternate view of the falls (looking down from the top):
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Minnehaha Creek:
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Views along the creek:
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I'm planning sushi for dinner tomorrow night, (which you've seen a million times before, so I won't bore you with additional photos,) and have no idea what I'll come up with these next couple of days, so stay tuned! (And stay cool!)

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

pants on fire.

I'm back. I'm a big, fat liar.

One of my coworkers, Stephen, (who has been kind enough to put up with me pulling shot, after shot, after shot, after shot of espresso from every machine we sell until I get them all just right,) has been hassling (no, harassing is probably more accurate a term) me about my blog-break ever since . . . well, when did I post last? Damn you, Stephen, you wore down my defenses! I am back. I guess a one-month break from posting is better than no break at all.

I've cooked some, had popcorn and/or cereal for dinner some, and eaten out a little. Dan took me to an all-vegetarian Indian restaurant for my birthday, which was delicious, and otherwise, I've been sticking with a lot of old standbys -- sloppy lentils, sushi, brownies, Thai coconut soup with lemongrass, falafel, tabouli, fried rice, and rhubarb apple crisp. I have tried two new recipes since I blogged last: African Pineapple-Peanut Stew (tasty, but to quote my store manager, Mike, "that looks like vomit,") and Double-Corn Pancakes with Tex-Mex Tomato and Black Bean Salsa (much more appetizing looking, but not all that show-stopping, in the end.)

Not planning on blogging, I haven't taken any food photos! I will share some pictures of Dan's and my mini-vacay to Duluth this past weekend, however. Here you have it:

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Duluth is so freakin' cool, because it's this cute, little harbor town full of awesome coffee shops, an Electric Fetus (the BEST CD stores in MN,) a co-op, and all sorts of other awesome things we hippie/hipsters enjoy. Plus, there's water, beach, and lighthouses, which are kind of neat to see.

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More of the beach.

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Lake Superior is chilly-cold, but we went wading anyway.

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Oh yeah -- we really went because Dan's band had a show (they were some of the post-run entertainment for Grandma's Marathon!) See Dan play drums. (Those really tall cymbals are NOT Dan's, but he was sure fascinated by them.) Most of Saturday was actually eaten up with band stuff, but I had fun selling CDs and t-shirts with the other "significant others," and Dan and I also scored free dinner and a free hotel room out of the deal.

Sunday morning, we awoke to ginormous, whomping thunderstorms . . . and we had planned on going hiking. We waited out the rain CD shopping and reading the newspaper, and once the rain let up, we drove up the North Shore, with every intention of hiking at Gooseberry Falls. The further north we went, the worse the weather got, (but I have to tell you, riding in the car along the North Shore during a rainstorm while listening to Sigour Ros is pretty awesome,) so we decided to stop in Two Harbors for lunch. After lunch, we took the scenic route back south, and stopped at some random historical marker along the way. Little did we know . . . we could sneak out on to the rocks along the lakeshore!

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Minnesota is so pretty.

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Self-portraits are tricky. (P.S. It was really, really windy.)

We then headed back south, and stopped at Jay Cooke State Park on our way back to the city. AMAZING HIKING! You enter the park at the top of giant cliffs along the Saint Louis river, walk across the river along a big suspension bridge, and then slowly make your way down to the river bed along the opposite side. Not to restate the obvious, but Minnesota is so pretty!

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Skippin' stones. I learned valuable technique from a master stone-skipper, having never successfully skipped a stone in my life. I'm not yet a pro, but I did manage a couple of short, two-skippers.

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After we finished hiking, we drove back to town, picked up a pizza for dinner, (Luce's pizza bianca with garlic, spinach, mushroom, and tomato,) and watched a rockumentary about the Flaming Lips. Fabulous end to a fabulous weekend.