Poison Ivy sucks!!!

Other than that things are awesome. But the rash all over my arm and left side of my chest is really irritating. I think I’d like this to be the LAST time I ever get this. First and last. Sounds great.

So we are a little behind schedule, mainly due to my lack of access to our car and Jeff’s little time, etc etc. But anyway, we decided that tomorrow we are going to get the rest of our vegetable plants. That way I can plant them throughout the week and be done by this weekend. I felt like we were running really behind, but there was a frost warning last night, so it’s not so bad. I am getting very excited for all of this to be on its way. I’m already thinking about the way a cherry tomato tastes fresh off the vine. There’s nothing like it.

That has got me in the mood to be more ambitious in the kitchen too. I’m brainstorming and getting inspired. Tomorrow I’m going to try making a slow-cooked Ethiopian-style beef stew, some greens, and maybe curried potato dish all with homemade Ethiopian Injera (kind of like a crepe) to eat everything with. I think it will be delicious. I’m really looking more into using bold flavors and lots of grains and vegetables, with meat being a fun couple of times a week thing. We don’t eat a whole heck of a lot of meat anyway, but I think we can really do better in this area. We are ordering bulk pasture-fed meat now that we’ll get in early fall, and I’ll be really interested to see how long we can use it. I’ll make stocks and freeze them. I’ll try to use everything. This way I can really get an idea of how much meat it takes to sustain our family with the kind of omnivorous diet we’d like, and I think we’ll likely reduce the amount we buy overall. My theory is that we’ll end up being more creative- rather than just continually ordering pounds of ground beef, we’ll eat many different beef items from the same cow. It’ll force us to be creative and frugal. We can also buy in bulk each year and pay way less. That’s basically what happened with our CSA the past couple of years. I’m sad about that though- our farmer just quit suddenly. So for this year it’s just farmer’s market for me and shopping around and saving for a new one next year. I can’t be too sad though. I love farmer’s market, and we always had so many vegetables from the CSA share that it didn’t make sense for us to go often.
Anyway, I just got this book:

It’s great stuff. Check out their website, they have more books and info.

May 17th:
These quilts were made by my great-grandma I think. She used all of these old dresses that my mom and her sister used to wear. I love how in quilts the individual fabrics might seem ugly to me at the time, but when used in a blanket it fills it up in a way you couldn’t have seen before. Quilts are really interesting things if you take the time to see them as a work of art.

May 18th:
This seems to happen every year here. The poppies come up, and hang their little heads for weeks. Then BAM! one opens. Just one, totally open. No peeking, no little splash of color throughout, just the explosion of one flower. The other ones won’t bloom for several days, but this one flower just remains. Wherever we move I am definitely planting lots of poppies.

May 19th:
Jeff. Replacing the tires on his bike.

My sister posted this the other day, and I watched it for a long time. It’s really beautiful.
http://www.6billionothers.org/index_en.php

Quote of the day:
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” JRR Tolkien

Gracie
Gracie

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