the future’s so bright

Yep. Spent the weekend off the computer, mostly. Didn’t go away. Just rested, ate, slept, had a date with Mr. Husband, and puttered. Now I’m looking at the garden (bountiful!), my week (stuff to do!), and my future (exciting!) and thinking about what to do first.
First thing — thank you for the many comments and to people who wrote to me about the June Food Stamp Challenge. I’m working on a couple of plans to further this project. I’ve been asked to write a long article about it this week, which is on my to-do, and am fiddling with a query on a longer project. I’ll let you know what happens with that. And I’ll continue to watch what happens locally and on a larger scale with hunger issues. So you’ve got that to look forward to, my pretties.

Next challenge? I’m not sure it will be a huge challenge, which is OK right now (I’m still recovering from the JFSC and its many reverberations) — but I’m on the lookout for a sustainable white shirt for my husband. I’ll blog more about this soon, but I want to get him a couple of new shirts that are made with fabric that doesn’t poison the planet, made by consenting adults who choose to work there and sew happily with lunch breaks and no chains attached, and in a manner that doesn’t pillage the Earth whilst en route to my closet. That shirt may be hanging in a Goodwill somewhere right now or may be still in a cotton field. I may have to sew it myself. Dunno yet. But we’ll find out, won’t we?

What else?

  • I’m following a friend’s directive to push some other literary projects. Research, editing, proofing, blurbing, freelancing. Stuff. You know, stuff.
  • My garden is blowing up — I made 6 half-pints of blueberry jam today, plus froze zucchini/squash and green beans. Couldn’t hold on to the raspberries long enough to make jam, so I’ll maybe buy some tomorrow at teh farmers’ market. I. Love. Raspberries.
  • We cleaned out the chicken coop (which, coincidentally, rhymes with chicken poop, which makes a lot of flies feel welcome to our yard, and my house, if they can get in. Big black nasty flies. Ugh.)
  • We let the chickies run free on the lawn during the coop-cleanout.
  • Mr. Husband grilled whole ears of local corn and strips of (home-grown) zucchini, along with Saag’s chicken-apple sausages (originally from Oakland, CA), for dinner. Had California-grown watermelon with this festive meal and a nice California pinot grigio, and enjoyed it with the aforementioned fellow and daughter Simone. Happy 4th, on the 5th.
  • Tomorrow is my foraging (shopping/errand) day and I look forward to fresh bread, fruit and veggies, and also ironing. Yes. Because that’s part of making a sustainable household — semi-drudgeful housework and such, instead of convenience foods (like bagged salad — who wants salmonella?)and dry cleaning (cancer, anyone?).
  • And, speaking of JFSC, I did not go and purchase a coffee milkshake, but I did buy a pint of coffee ice cream and ate the whole thing myself (hey — it took two sittings). That’s the kind of glutton I am. I did compost the carton, though.

Yeah. That’s all I have, my peeps. I was thinking about knitting and planting radishes instead of buying them, and going to the beach and flossing more often and collecting empty bottles and buying recycled paper in bulk/on sale for my printer (which was Freecycled) and if I’ll babysit this week and how cool it is that the Western oriole has decided my yard is the place to hang out and how in the world to use my ginormous pressure cooker-canner thing that kind of scares me (I shall call her Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

Other than that, same as it ever was.

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3 Replies to “the future’s so bright”

  1. As always, great posting, Julia. The only comment I have is that I love my pressure cookers. I have two of them! I bought the smaller one to try it out and see if I liked using it. And I found out that I needed the bigger one because things turn out so well when pressure-cooked and I had a huge group to cook for at that time. So I use both now.

    Don’t be afraid of your Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, just be mindful and show her some respect by paying attention when you close the lid. Break out a little OCD and double and triple-check to put your mind at ease.

    What sold me on the pressure cooker is that I can put on a pot of beans and have them ready to serve in 30 minutes. Now, THAT is a serious selling point!

  2. I love my pressure cooker too! LisaPie is right about the beans, while they cook I can prepare the rest of the meal. It also doesn’t heat up my kitchen which is a plus. I also have two but they share the lid, so I couldn’t use them at the same time.
    regards,
    Theresa

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