Just a few words before work on a busy Monday…

I’ve got an auspicious week ahead of me. Today is the first day of classes for the fall semester, and I start my Design II class tonight. I broke down on Saturday night and ordered a refurbished iBook off eBay since the art department website says that undergrads are required to have Mac laptops. This means that I’m serious, I guess.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish packing for my trip to the Slow Food National Congress and trying not to have a panic attack! I’m not taking the laptop, and I’ll be back on Sunday.

On Wednesday, as I am winging my way across this big country to San Francisco, I’ll have a guest post up at Women Not Dabbling in Normal, subbing for Robbyn, whose Back Forty is in Florida, as she and her family save their energies for her mother-in-law in hospice. I’m not sure what I’ll write about yet - probably about my Back Forty square feet!

This fun foodie meme is via Omnivore Herbivore Carnivore via Very Good Taste. I am an adventurous eater for the most part - I’ll try anything once. I don’t know a lot of items on this list, or haven’t had access to them. I was 18 years old before I even tasted a bagel. It was pretty much all eastern North Carolina country food up until college. I add my personal comments in italics.

How It All Works:

1) Copy the list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional: Post a comment at Very Good Taste, linking to your results

The 100

1. Venison (YUM! With grits and gravy - double yum!)

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros (I don’t know why - I’ve eaten similar dishes)

4. Steak tartare

5. Crocodile (I’ll eat alligator if I have another opportunity to buy it.)

6. Black pudding

7. Cheese fondue

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari

12. Pho

13. PB&J sandwich

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses

17. Black truffle (I’d try it in a heartbeat if offered.)

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes

19. Steamed pork buns (Eh, depends on the situation. I generally avoid pork from inhumane or unknown sources.)

20. Pistachio ice cream

21. Heirloom tomatoes

22. Fresh wild berries

23. Foie gras

24. Rice and beans

25. Brawn or head cheese

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (just a fingernail clipping-sized taste - whew!)

27. Dulce de leche

28. Oysters

29. Baklava

30. Bagna cauda

31. Wasabi peas

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. Salted lassi

34. Sauerkraut (ick)

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar (separately, not in combination.)

37. Clotted Cream Tea

38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O (would try to be polite, but otherwise I hate Jell-O.)

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat

42. Whole insects (I’m sure that we all have by accident without knowing, but I can’t go there on purpose yet.)

43. Phaal

44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more

46. Fugu

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (it originated 30 miles from here)

50. Sea urchin

51. Prickly pear

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal

56. Spaetzle

57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8% ABV

59. Poutine

60. Carob chips

61. S’mores

62. Sweetbreads

63. Kaolin

64. Currywurst

65. Durian

66. Frogs’ legs

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain

70. Chitterlings or andouillette

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost or brunost

75. Roadkill (uh, hell no.)

76. Baijiu

77. Hostess Fruit Pie

78. Snail (I was very drunk and trying to appear as fearless as my dinner companion. I don’t remember the taste.)

79. Lapsang Souchong

80. Bellini

81. Tom Yum

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky

84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers

89. Horse

90. Criollo chocolate

91. Spam (oh God, how horrible.)

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa

94. Catfish

95. Mole poblano

96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake (My Great Aunt Mildred got mad at someone once who shot a rattlesnake in such a way that he “ruined the meat.”)

How many have you eaten?

I’m doing pretty well so far with going out to the gazebo for 15-20 minutes each morning to write. Those minutes sure do fly by! I found a good use for my cell phone at home finally - I can’t wear a watch (I kill batteries within hours) but I can use the phone as a clock. Other than that it is for TRAVEL ONLY and only my mother, sister, and petsitter have the number.

Every time I get a phone bill, I edge a little closer to cell phone hell though. It’s hard to argue against the savings.

Other goal: after spending most of Monday night with a migraine and a hurting elbow, I decided to move the pavers with a wheelbarrow. We’ll see how my elbow feels tonight. I always have some lag time on the pain so it makes it hard to know when to stop. I’m still keeping it to five pavers per night, though. We’re in no hurry, although once classes begin we’ll probably need the space where they sit now for parking.

I spent over two hours out there this afternoon. Partly garden work, but much of it kicked back with a beer and a book in front of a fan. And brushing up on my sketching.

By the way, I do not plan to get any chickens. My lot isn’t big enough, and I was traumatized by a rooster as a child. But I’m willing to trade some produce for eggs if I have enough to share. It may have to be after the damned drought is over. Even the tomatoes are starting to suffer.

Just got back from the City Council meeting, where a lot of people, including my bud Anne-Marie and Billy the Blogging Poet, spoke on behalf of a revised ordinance to lessen the restrictions on setbacks to keep chickens and beehives in the city limits. It also put into place some reasonable restrictions that weren’t in the original ordinance, such as fencing and a no rooster rule. I sort of expected that the foodie homesteady kind of urban citizens would step up, but what surprised me was the lack of serious opposition and the willingness of the City Council to go even further in amending the ordinance to grandfather in people who were already raising chickens and roosters and bees.

Billy brilliantly brought up his chicken tractor, which no one had mentioned as an alternative to a stationary coop, and Mike Barber took particular interest in that.

Dianne Bellamy-Small raised herself in my esteem considerably tonight. She and Trudy Wade and seemingly everyone else were interested in saving the roosters already in place. But, as Trudy said, how do you tell whether the rooster was already there prior to tonight’s vote? A variation on an age-old philosophical question that no one still has an answer for.

The whole she-bang proved once again that food issues are and should be non-partisan.

And I gotta tell you, if roosters are banned, I can live with that, but the noise from little bored yappy dogs is just as annoying to some people as roosters crowing are to others. Where do you draw the line? If noise bothers you that much, you should probably either live WAY out in the country or do what I do: wear ear plugs.

God, little victories like this make me hopeful for democracy.

Another goal that I’ve started today - let’s see how long THIS lasts! - I’m getting up 15 minutes earlier to go back to the gazebo and drink my first cup of coffee and journal or sketch or just birdwatch. As long as the weather is nice. If it gets horribly humid and hot - say that three times fast - or it’s wet or cold, I’ll go to the studio.

The cement pavers for the gazebo area were delivered today. Man, those suckers are heavy! I’m setting a goal of carrying at least five per day back to the gazebo on weekdays and more on weekends. It will take a long time but I don’t want to re-injure my elbow, and I’m in no big hurry. I’m glad that I got the big ones though because there will be less cracks to catch furniture legs into. I’ll look at it as good exercise.

I sketched a little in my new booklet this afternoon. I figure if I’m going to be an art major again then I’d best get in some drawing practice. It must be a good decision because I feel quite energized and optimistic about it. But I wish that this professor would answer my email. My main trepidation about the whole thing over the years is the way I saw students treated by some of the art professors. Most of them are gone now, but there are still a few left from the olden days. The difference now is that I’ll be a much better student, but I’ll have to re-learn perspective. Ew.

I’ll probably like it better in a few days. I always need a little distance from my drawing or painting.

I decided that this and next week will be so busy that it give me the push I needed to go ahead and do my personal challenge yesterday. It’s a very simple one, for a reason. I was busy with canning, preserving, and gardening!

I chose a small, simple goal to push me out of my comfort zone. I’m going to make a book with a different bookbinding technique every month until the end of the year. For August, the one I chose is so simple and quick that I’ll probably make several more. It is perfect for a sampler of the handmade recycled paper I’ve been making this summer. This is a simple three-hole pamphlet. The binding yarn was a wonderful plus, wrapping the little book packet that Aimee sent to me a few weeks back. I told her that I’d reuse it, and here it is. The blue jay feather is from the Back Forty. It is embedded on the top of the paper with a little pulp on the quill and the edges.

Doing Not Thinking Challenge at Two Frog Home

I’m in between morning and afternoon activities at the moment. My first pot of butterbeans is on the stove seasoned with a hambone that I saved in the freezer a while back. There is a separate little pot of okra, which I’ll add to my beans. I bought bi-color corn from the Fawcetts and we’ll eat that all weekend. I pulled up all my beets and I’ll cook those and their greens separately for me to eat this week. And tomatoes, lawd, the tomatoes. We’ll eat what appears to be next to the last of the Cherokee Purples for lunch, and I have lots of Garden Peach and canning tomatoes. I’ll be canning and drying all weekend. It’s good timing on the slicing tomatoes, because the Green Zebras are just beginning to ripen.

For breakfast I ate figs and sweet cherry tomatoes right off the tree and vine. Doesn’t get much better than that.

The other things I bought from the curb market: peaches from Kalawi Farm, pork chops from Bradd’s pastured pig farm, hamburger from Rocking F, and half a loaf of garlic rosemary bread from Simple Kneads. I signed the Molners’ petition, with the highlighted note that I only supported the half of the petition that allowed exceptions for customer requested specialty items that were unique to the market. In other words, “Amish cheese and butter from Ohio.” I explained my feeling about it to Francine and she totally understood.

I went to a Sentry hardware out on Hwy 70 that I liked a lot, enough to order a pallet of cement pavers and I bought spray paint to paint the patio table and chairs. So if you come to see me, you won’t get a creamy white shadow on your clothes after sitting down. I don’t know what kind of paint the last owner used! I also bought some landscape fabric, so after I paint the patio set over the cardboard, I’ll cover it with the fabric, then I’ll be ready to put down the pavers.

So, I have a lot to do this weekend, and it’s time to raise my butt from chair and get going on it. Bye!

Just got back from A-M’s, where I set her up with two bogus blogs to play around with - one on Blogger and one on Wordpress. She’s computer savvy enough that she’ll be up and running in no time. Blogger and Wordpress have both gotten a LOT better in the last year and a half, that’s for sure. I also tried to set Charlie up on Monday, but we had less time and Gmail chose that time to go down. He said that his daughter was coming in this weekend so maybe she can work with him. In the meantime I told him that I’d update his website, but I think that he would be best off with a blog format since he would like to update it himself. He’ll be travelling to Italy and Greece soon and that will be easier for him to handle too.

So that’s two more foodie friends that I’m luring into blogland. Both of them are experts in Slow Food - both are professors - one is a whole foods nutritionist and one teaches about ecology and ethics and permaculture.

Cool.

I dried more tomatoes this week and this weekend it looks like I’ll have enough Romas, Amish Pastes, and San Marzanos to make a canning session worthwhile. I need to keep up with these since I’ll be in San Francisco at the end of the month and school is starting soon.

I did sign up for the Design II class and contacted the professor in charge of advising transfer students. Looking at the Mac with A-M made me realize that it is much different and much easier than it was for me ten years ago, so I’m not nervous about it anymore.

So my first new bookbinding technique for the Doing Not Thinking Challenge will probably have to be one of the quicker, easier ones.

I left the yellow paper in the gazebo to dry and a lot of it was dripped on. I could have gotten upset because it was a nice batch, but I’ve chosen to see it as an interesting surprise. Some of the paper will be normal and other pieces will have holes in them.

Even as I make wry little comments about senior citizen rates, I feel good about entering the next stage of my life. After all, I think that the ultimate goal for nearly every human being is to get old, right? It’s a worthy one, if I can stay reasonable healthy and sane.

I’ve been out of school just long enough to start feeling antsy about not being in a regular class. I love to learn, but I don’t like to write papers. I’m actually considering taking up, for the third time, a second BA in Art. I started a BFA in Design with a concentration in fibers in the 80s. The person in charge of the fibers program was unstable and kind of mean to some of the other students. She left me alone but it was hard to watch. I finally decided to stop for a while with the plan to start up again when she crashed and burned, but what they did was get rid of the fibers program. Then when I worked at Greensboro College, I decided to take advantage of free classes and took a year of ceramics. When I left there, I had just enrolled in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at UNCG, mainly so that the higher degree would give me more choices in job hunting. So I spent five years doing that.

Now I’m eyeballing the printmaking classes available. I get three classes a year free, but most of the art classes would be impossible for me to take with my work schedule. HOWEVER, there is a Design II class (which I withdrew from long ago) at night this semester and a woodcut engraving class in the spring late enough in the afternoon that I could manage it if I could get into it. The Design II class is much different than Design II when I first took it, computer-based, which I think would be useful to me. The BAD news is that they use ::shudder:: Macs. Ay yi yi. What a dilemma. I hate Macs with a passion and don’t look forward to relearning how to use them. Of course, that WAS about 10 years ago when I tried to use a Mac.

If I decide to do this, it will have to be soon. The good part is that if I don’t like it and withdraw from the class it will cost me nada. And my main interest is that wood engraving class in the spring anyway. IF they will let me in it without being an official student again. Do I reapply as a second degree student after I’ve gotten an MA? It looks nuts but I’d never be able to go for an MFA and make enough to live on.

One thing that I have decided to do is to take the Doing Not Thinking Challenge at Two Frog Home. Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I get these kind of comments all the time: “How do you do so much!” But I don’t. Really. I live a lot in my head. I don’t have children, and I don’t care about decorating my house or housework or keeping up my looks. And that’s okay - the steps in my life’s journey have deliberately brought me here. But I spend an enormous amount of time daydreaming and fantasizing and playing games on the computer. I’m pretty good about bringing some of my daydreams into reality, but I could do more, pretty easily.

Because I do not want to reach the end of my life, and have regrets that I did not live it as fully and as happily as I might have.

Anyway, the goal that I picked is pretty simple, since I am still mulling over the larger goals that may come into play for 2009. Every month until the end of the year, I will make a book with a new bookbinding technique.

If you would like to participate in this challenge, it remains open. Just go see Kathie, which is always a worthwhile thing to do anyway.

Also, Kathie started a collaborative blog this month called Women Not Dabbling in Normal. It’s really, really wonderful. I had a chance to do it, but I was on a blog low and declined. Take a look at it, especially if you are interested in homesteading and gardening and real food and interesting, intelligent, hard-working women!

The walls went up yesterday.	Reading the directions turns out to be important.
Lots o’ velcro.	All that’s left to do is the flooring.

I’ve been daydreaming about a screened back porch for a long time, but as long as I spend my money on travel and art classes and art supplies, it ain’t gonna happen. So when Sandy and I saw this 9×12 gazebo with mosquito netting on clearance at Home Depot for $199, we decided to do it. It’s a nice big space and I’ll be able to enjoy my back yard again from May to October.

The instructions said that it would take two people two hours to assemble. Maybe two other people - we’re so hapless that it took us two days. But with lots of breaks.

The next step is for me to buy a pallet of cement pavers. I’ll leave the cardboard, and put the pavers over it. Maybe bricks or pebbles around the inside edges. It will be a place where I can work with wet materials such as basketry and paper.

This project made me very happy. I do hope that it stands up to normal weather. We’ll remove the roof and netting if a hurricane or winter storm is predicted in enough time.