Food Year's Resolution #1

My first accomplishment? Jarring my own tomato sauce! My friend, C, has done it before, so I invited her over for moral support (and wine, loads of wine!) Believe it or not, this is not as overwhelming as it might seem...

Here's what we purchased at the farmer's market, loads of organic tomatoes and sweet basil.



This tomato was just too cute to eat!




Smush, smush, smush.




Stirring loads of garlic! (Can't have enough garlic.)




The sauce simmers....




Then we sealed the jars in boiling water.




Look how pretty they are! Counting down the days until January when I can eat them!








But first, dinner for me and C!

Oh Britney

I had such high hopes for you, girl!

Why?

My so-called domestic life

Over the past few months, I have been transitioning from the free-spirited life of being a renter into the responsible (though still spirited) life of being a homeowner. Looking around my new space, I realized that it looked like a college student lived in my condo, not an official Capital-A-dult.

I decided to do something.

I bought a rug.

A real, grown-up rug.

Funny, though, but the decision was agony. It tooks week of thinking and discussions with friends, "Should a rug really cost $300????" (Um, yes, they all said. Three hundred is nothing for a good rug.) It was a more complicated process than buying the condo.

And it's only one rug.*

I suppose taking out a hugenormous loan that I'll pay back with my blood, sweat, and tears over the next 30 years is far more abstract and far less real than the concrete feeling of buying a rug. And for a gal who's accustomed to picking up furniture others have abandoned on the city streets, $300 for a rug is a huge deal.

Still it's funny, though.

*Let's not get into the agony over buying table lamps, end tables, chairs, dining room tables, bookshelves....

Food-Year's Resolutions

I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's inspiring, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is her family's year-long (really life long!) journey into eating local, organic, seasonal food. Virtually all of their food they harvest themselves (living on a small farm) or acquire from local farmers. They make all of their food themselves (no prepackaged, sugar-laden, trans fat-filled goodies for them!) and cooking and eating become a way for their family and friends to come together. The book chronicles their story and also raises questions about the immorality of the food industry in the United States.

Now, I don't live on a farm, but it's forced me to re-evaluate my own eating habits. Kingsolver doesn't demand that everyone do exactly what she and her family have done, but she does (with the writing help of her husband, Steven, and oldest daughter, Camille) give simple suggestions and compelling arguments for all of us to eat the way humans have eaten for much of our history as a species. For me, on the cusp of autumn, I won't be able to accomplish some of my food goals until summer returns, but I've decided to set some "Food-Year's Resolutions" for the upcoming seasons:

1. Cook a whole chicken. (This might sound odd to some of you, but as a person who was a vegetarian for 12 years, this is big for me!)
2. Can something (probably tomatoes or preserves)
3. Frequent my farmer's market more regularly (we have the fortune of having a year-round one here in Oakland, and it's only a mile from my house!)
4. Make pumpkin soup that doesn't start with a can
5. Stop buying meat/poultry/eggs that isn't grass fed or free range
6. Commit to buying organic dairy
7. Cut as much processed foods as possible out of my diet (something I'm already doing, but there's still room for improvement!)
8. Try a new recipe twice a month
9. Cook -- and eat -- fresh asparagus (FYI: I loathe asparagus, but I'm willing to give this Spring vegetable another try)

I pinky swear with all of you

I've arrived at this place with my writing where the next inevitable step (if I don't want to wind up like Emily Dickinson, dead and unknown, with my stories wrapped up in pretty, pink bows) is to start sending stuff out to get rejected publishers.

You heard it here first. Watch this space.