All right! I’ll do it!

I’ve been lectured most of the day today about how I need to quit the negative self-talk and focus on the positive about myself.  Patience just left and she made me promise to list ten positive things every day, and for one of them to be about myself.  So I’m making a new tab and I’ll list them every day like she said to do…good little me.    But I want to change more than that.  Watch this space. 

Blog Action Day 2009 — Why I’m a Vegetarian

A lot of people are worried about fossil fuel consumption and energy-efficient thises and thats.  Not enough people, in my opinion, and not enough lifestyle changes.  Unfortunately for most people I know who buy free-trade, organically-grown limited-processing food, they are wasting their time trying to save the planet if they are not vegetarians.

Raising beef for food takes many times the amount of energy, water, and land that raising grain for food takes.  Here are some charts from MichaelBlueJay’s site that show at a glance the differences.

Calories of fossil fuel used to make 1 calorie of protein for various foods

Gallons of water required to produce one pound of various foods

Number of people whose caloric needs can be met on 2.5 acres of land for the following foods

Ok, so what?  Resources are limited, as we all are being told all the time.  Why suck up more than your fair share eating meat (which is unhealthy as well) when many people in the world are starving?  We have a responsibility to the current population of the planet, as well as to future generations.  If eating less or no meat will help hoard our precious resources, then why not cut back or go vegetarian?  It will definitely make a difference and may change your life!

Sources and Resources

Books

Diet for a Small Planet – Frances Moore Lappe

Diet for a New America – John Robbins

Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture – Jeremy Rifkin

Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat – Howard F. Lyman

Websites and Web Articles

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/environment.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/022402_beef_the_environment_emissions.html

http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1839995,00.html

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969f

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIVBkZpOUA9Hz3Xc2u-61mDlrw0Q

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/how-virtuous-is-ed-begley-jr/?apage=4#comment-11770

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/660S#T1

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,574754,00.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html

http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/fossilfuel060326.cfm

I have a complaint…

no, really!

Anything wrong with this picture?

How about this one?

No?

How about this??

Yes, that’s right.  It snowed all day yesterday — at least an inch, if not more — and the leaves are still GREEN!  What is going on??  I think I’ve missed fall!  Shouldn’t have taken that nap on Sunday afternoon!

Nectarine Galette

Well, peach, actually.  I still have some of those yummy peaches, all cut up and waiting to be loved.  So, since Smitten Kitchen’s Nectarine Galette has me hyperventilating, I thought I’d give it a try.

I mixed up the dough and let it chill in the fridge (yes, while the Artisan Bread dough was rising on the table.  I multitask all the time!).

I rolled out the dough on my new silicone mat (small plug for Pampered Chef) and transferred it to a baking sheet to cool again.

It was a little large for the sheet pan, but we managed nicely (the dough and I, that is).

After it cooled the second time, I put ground almonds, sugar, and peaches in the center, turned the edges over the fruit, and baked it nicely.

It didn’t make it more than a couple of hours, between Kent and me!

But the apple butter I had in my CrockPot at the same time is still in the freezer for Christmas presents

It looks a little scary, but it’s REALLY GOOD!

Author’s Note: This post was written September 10 and sat languishing, waiting for photos to be uploaded.  The galette is long gone.

In Memory

Copyright September 2001

David and Annette and Bread with Herbs

Our friends David and Annette are finally on their way to New Zealand.    We really miss them!

In their memory (ugh, sounds like they’re dead), I’m going to use David’s favorite bread recipe with my fresh rosemary and dill to make some Pain aux Herbes (or, for “regular” people, Bread with Herbs.  Sounds better in French, no?).

I changed the basic recipe for Artisan Bread by dividing the dough in half, and then one of the halves into quarters.

I took a page from Pioneer Woman’s bread and melted two half sticks of butter.  I cut a decent handful each of rosemary and dill from my herb garden

and then snipped the herbs each into the melted butter (rosemary into one melted half-stick and dill into the other…if that makes sense).  I mixed and kneaded the butter and herbs each into its own quarter of the dough.

Then I let it all sit and rise for 2 1/2 hours before putting it in the fridge.

Unfortunately, it didn’t rise as much as I was hoping.  I took it the next day and let it warm up for about a half hour to forty-five minutes, then popped it in the oven.

(Sorry for the blurry picture…the heat must have distorted it.)  The bread tasted really good, but the loaves were tiny!  I wonder if my yeast is too old…

Maunderings

I guess that’s what you call it when someone is randomly thinking about and wishing for things that will never happen, right?

I think a lot of my conscious life is spent maundering, actually.  I always want something to be different, or, if I like the way something is at the moment, I want it to stay that way forever, with no consequences.

I’m sure I’m no different from most of society, though.  People seem to be pretty caught up with making as much as they can of their lives fit their desires.  I don’t think I’d go overboard with it, but it would be nice to have some big things go my way.  I feel like the little things are mostly ok, but I worry about things with more impact on my life than whether my peach pie turns out or not.  Things like job, money, health (physical and mental), success in school or business, lots of big-ticket items that I really have no control over.  It’s a little scary, actually.

Ok, it’s a lot scary.  My usual reaction to that is probably not as helpful as it might be: I go find a book where everything ends well, mostly because someone worked hard to get it to do that, and I escape from life.  Not a stellar reaction, I admit.  My other reaction is to try to control everything in my life, which usually ends up in my screaming at someone I didn’t mean to and going complete nutto.  Gotta find a middle ground there.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because of something the pastor said at church this weekend.  The sermon was about contentment and about how all of us were rich by Bible-time standards.  He talked about how being discontented with what you had could lead to trouble.  Mostly financial, but I got the idea of the “not-of-this-world” trouble too.  The thing is, I agree and disagree with him.  Ok, so we can’t live in mud huts and go fishing for our daily food like they did in Bible times.  To start off, we’d freeze in the winter, especially here in Minnesota!  And I admit to having kind of a distaste for the people I see who have five cars and a large fancy house (in Minnetonka, where even a tiny house is way overpriced).  I look at them and think, What do they need that for?  What do they even do with it?

But honestly, that’s probably what a lot of the people I saw in Bangkok thought when they saw us foreigners shopping.  Picky about the size, the color, the pattern.  There’s a T-shirt you can get over there; on the front it says “Same Same” (which is the usual Thai way of trying to get the foreign shopper not to be so picky) and on the back it says “But Different” (which is, probably, the foreign comeback they often hear).

We are very picky about what we buy.  I like leaves on things, but not all leaves.  I have some seagulls, but that doesn’t mean I want them all over everything.  I like green in my kitchen, but not every green matches.  I guess it’s the discontent, trying to control tiny aspects of our environment because we can’t control the big stuff.

So, I guess, my problem is whether I should be less picky, not always wishing for something different, better, more.  We are very rich by a lot of standards.  We really don’t have much money, but we’re not on food stamps…yet.  I like to have a nice house where everything looks like it fits together, like it belongs, and not some collection of miscellaneous castoffs.  But at the same time, I get annoyed having to constantly think about the floors in the house, whether it’s the wood-laminate kitchen, the white (!) rug, or the tile in the bathrooms;  worrying about what is dripping or spilling or smearing.  I don’t like that, but I like that our house looks nice.  I want nice things, but I don’t like worrying about them.  I want to be able to get what we want, but I don’t want to be spoiled or selfish either.

I guess I don’t really know what I want.  I think it all boils down to “moderation”.  As long as having what I want doesn’t mean forgetting others, maybe it isn’t so bad.  As long as my discontent is more for how others are treated than for myself, maybe the level is ok.  As long as my interest in things is lower than my interest in people, maybe I’m all right.  And maybe not.  How to tell?

I guess it’s a moot point right now anyway. 

I know I said I was back…

But I guess I really wasn’t.  I have about 23 jillion drafts waiting for me to write them, so there will be blog at some point.  It’s been a rough summer for several reasons.  But the reason that I’m posting tonight is very simple.  And very, very good.

Oops, you probably don’t care too much about my plate, do you?  Wanna see what was on it?

Can you tell what it is yet?

How about a closeup?  Yes, you guessed it!  Fresh peach pie using Aunt Millie Haskins’ recipe.

I only ate two pieces.  Promise!

Home again, home again…

We’ve been away on vacation to Maine, and before that, I didn’t post because I was so busy.  I’ll give a full update in installments, but I am back!

No comment…

Well, just a little.  In reading my textbook for my Masters in TESOL class, I came across this poem in the beginning of the chapter on teaching social studies to ELL children.  It’s not a popular viewpoint in America, but I find it interesting that the author was able to disassociate personal feelings on a very stressful day in order to see the bigger, global picture that many people still do not see.  With no further ado:

From the Other Side

Oh my God. I wrote notes and to-do lists yesterday

Before we were struck.

Now nothing looks the same…

I’ve got to be still

And silent as the trees

To find the presence

To witness

The humanity

Implied in the halftone photograph

Of the man falling head first

From tower top to asphalt

Preferring this terrible dying

To the horror

Of allowing himself to be

Consumed in flames.

Merciless.

Someone’s technology saved a visual record

Of one man’s last living moment

And so I see

A life turned upside down

Someone frozen in free fall

Breathing the last of a gloriously beautiful day

Ripped Dear God by rage

So furiously hot

I must ask

What

Is behind this

What drove people to condemn and execute so many

So ruthlessly

Let me look into the faces of the perpetrators and let me

Listen, Dear God, let me learn

What those World Trade Towers

Mean, What the Pentagon means

From the other side.

When we stopped paying our dues at the U.N.

What did it look like from the other side?

When we refused to abide by the judgments of the World Court

What did it look like from the other side?

When we refused to be bound by the laws of the International Criminal Court

What did it look like from the other side?

When we refused to sign the Land Mine Treaty

What did it look like from the other side?

When we refused to sign the Kyoto Agreement

What did it look like from the other side?

When we walked out of the International Conference on Racism

What did it look like from the other side?

When we embargo and bomb Iraq daily – without a thought –

Without a moment’s reflection on the flaming buildings,

The broken bodies, the human suffering that we’re causing,

For the first time I can say I have a clue

What it feels like

From the other side.

–    Lou Ann Merkle, Artist, Art Teacher, and SEED Seminar Leader in the Upper Dublin School District, 1994-1998 and the Crefeld School, 2001.  Poem read at SEED Seminar Meeting on September 12, 2001, Plymouth, Pennsylvania.