Tag: local eating

Many Kinds of Thorns in My Skin

I’ve been noticing a lot of bloggers making comments about how their “real” lives are not perfect and they proceed to assure you that behind the gorgeous bucolic scenes on their blogs there is mad chaos and dirty dishes.  They offer this up like a gift – so that readers will not be annoyed by all the pretty they came to see in the first place.  I just have to laugh at myself.  I seem to have made a practice of constantly showing everyone the seamy side of my life, the dirty laundry.  I showed you a fucking mushroom I had growing in one of my bathrooms for God’s sake!

So I was thinking that sometime soon, (not now), I should try going for pretty and tranquil and gentle for a change.  It might not be easy to find a corner of pretty and tranquil in this house.  Most of it is liberally covered in pet fur which is only pretty when still on the pets.

I hate the expression “on the cheap”.  I can’t even say why.  There’s nothing intrinsically bad about it.

Lots and lots of nightmares lately.  Saw a head get blown off, had some usual classroom related anxiety dreams, almost becoming adulterous (these are as stressful as smoking dreams except that whereas I used to smoke, I have never been adulterous), dystopian landscapes in which people are trying to maintain some sense of culture.

I’ve only been up for an hour and a half and so far I’ve had to mop up: cat pee, coffee spills, and ice water.  Can I go back to bed now?  I can’t imagine anything good will come of the next sixteen hours.

I should mention that I have some barely hidden wishes for the human race to be obliterated completely.  These feelings rarely go completely away but are made more acute when something triggers them into renewed fury.  Such as the Penn State scandal.  I had to fight my blackberry bushes for two hours to tame my hatred for human beings.  We have done nothing worthy while living on this earth.  I am trying harder than you can imagine not to go off about this whole thing.  If it makes anyone feel better, my blackberry bushes fought back just as hard and my skin is full of tiny thorns my tweezers can’t remove.

Many animal species, when resources are scarce, stop breeding.  What do we do?  We just have more and more babies.  We hit 7 Billion people on earth last week.  That’s a fuck load of vermin.  I myself contributed one to this number so I don’t hold myself apart from anyone else.  I don’t even try because I’ve known my whole life I’m not better than other people.  I guess I can say that maybe I’ve contributed less to overpopulation than the Duggars who really, desperately, need to stop having children just because they can.  It is appalling and very much like gluttony which is a sin in their religion.  Gluttony is not just about food or drink.  Gluttony can be applied to anything you have a greed for.  Some people make a stupid amount of cakes but the Duggars make a stupid amount of people.

I wish I could see a clear way to changing things in this world.

In case not enough people realize this: it’s time to stuff your meat with more meat and whenever possible-wrap it all in bacon.  The backlash against the unpopular concept that a lot of meat isn’t healthy has reached ridiculous proportions.  I get the feeling that many meat lovers love meat so much they’d roll in it so they could smell it all day if it wouldn’t attract unwanted attention from other hungry carnivores.  I don’t mind people eating meat, but Jesus! people, take it easy.

I tried watching that show “The New Girl” and it was so bad there’s no amount of desperation that could make me watch it again.  I’d rather read a Barbara Cartland romance.  It’s supposedly a “hit” show, how is that possible with such bad acting and such a stupid plot and all that precious “cuteness” that Zooey attempts to convince us is unselfconscious?  In my experience, the girls who act like that in real life do not also look sleekly adorable in that semi-ironic ultra fashionable school-marm chic.

On the plus side of things I went on a great field trip on Saturday with my friend Nicole (which I will write more about on Stitch and Boots) to a “Fill Your Pantry” event in Shedd, Oregon.  This is the second year this event has been held.  A bunch of local grain and legume producers (with a few produce growers as well) get together and offer up locally grown and milled grains.  Best buy: I got a bag of organic locally grown hard red wheat flour – 20 lbs for $15!  As a bonus it came in an actual flour sack.  When you can get locally grown hard wheat at that price – there’s no excuse to use conventionally grown hard wheat from out of state.  There is nothing more fun than hanging out for hours with a friend who gets just as excited as I do about pantry stocking, local food, food, eating, preserving, gardening, and food.  Just thinking about it is making me less grumpy.

I should preserve this feeling by going to fetch another cup of coffee and looking at the small handsome bag of rye flour I bought as a treat.  Cheers to a cat-pee-free morning for all of you!

How My Kitchen Captured Me

First of all, in case anyone doesn’t know this, objects can’t capture you.  Objects can captivate your interest, but they can’t capture you outside of nightmares and horror films.

Second of all, don’t you dare try to caress my taste buds with your food!

Third of all, women saying “That baby is so cute it makes my uterus hurt” and the whole “I’ll be found alone in my apartment eaten by wild dogs (or cats)” that was originally thought up by Helen Fielding is tired and cliched now.  Give it up ladies and come up with new ways of saying babies are cute and that you, as a single woman, will end up alone and dead.  Cudgel your brains and I’m sure you can come up with something original.

My back went out on Saturday afternoon.  I spent all of Sunday and much of Monday in bed, icing, and hopping up on Ibuprofin.  The most boring pill in the world, though effective enough, I suppose.  I should be working in bed right now but I can’t stand it.

Wow!  That was a freaky time capsule- it’s actually been a whole week since I started writing this post.  I don’t know what happened except for all the house guests from California, more kids that I can possibly handle in any given year all in one day, distracting gifts of lemons from my California friend’s tree (SO EXCITING- thank you Sharon!), not being on vacation while all this was going on (worked right through it all), and nursing that bad back…

Wait- how did that happen?!  It’s tomorrow again.  I gave my presentation at the library and it went very well.  I really enjoyed myself.  There was one man there who had a couple of good questions and I am dissatisfied with how I answered them because they were questions about the global economy versus the local economy and that is too huge a discussion to dive into during a local eating challenge meeting- but it did show me that I want to talk more about these issues on Stitch, or even here, in the future.  Worthy complex questions with multi-layered answers.  Math will be involved.  I can’t begin to tackle it all now.  That man rushed off before I could come and tell him I appreciated his questions and comments.

Bottom line for me is very simple.  I love it when things are simple for me.  The bottom line is:

Our entire global economy is made possible by fossil fuel and, to a lesser degree, nuclear power.  Fossil fuel is not a renewable resource and nuclear power is dangerous and an unacceptably polluting source of energy.  We can’t sustain a global economy forever.  For things to change, lots of businesses will have to change or collapse.  Probably a lot of both.  There’s no way to back down from the economy we’ve created without people being hurt.  I have no feelings for big business.  I don’t see a place in the future for giant corporations or corporate agriculture that depends on Russia buying from us or China.

Bottom line: we better be able to produce everything we need for survival right where we are and in our own community.  We should be preparing now for a changing future.

On the other hand, if large masses of us die off because we can’t make changes, that’s good too.  There’s way too many people on this planet.

Love that topic.  Guess that’s why I wrote a speculative fiction novel on the subject.

Speaking of… a New York literary agent requested my full manuscript and has it.  I can now expect to wait 1-4 months to hear back about it.  So when I return from my vacation I will compile a small list of other agents to query and send those out.  If any of you know of an agent who handles sci-fi OBVIOUSLY LET ME KNOW.  Unless you’re my nemesis and don’t want to share sources that could mean my future success.

So now I’m going to sew.  I think I’m going to post this now before it gets any older and maybe post again later today- something fresh.  Or tomorrow.

One last thing- I felt very appreciated for my presentation and the people I met (some of them people I just haven’t seen in a long time) were so warm and it made me realize that people like me, even though I’m quite fat.  I can’t get it out of my head that I’m somehow a bit of a horror because of my girth but it was good for me to feel appreciated and liked and know that my size has nothing to do with my likability.  That was positive reinforcement in action.  Just have to pound it into my head.