How To Share Costs In A Stocked-Up Kitchen

One thing my new roommate and I are dealing with is something that more and more people might be facing in the coming times:  different challenges in our attempt to equitably share food costs.

Back in the days of college roommates, sharing grocery costs was easy — you just split the grocery receipts, at least for items that both people consumed.

But now we have two factors complicating things.  First, I’ve been stocking up on staples for years now.  And second, we have different budgets and quality standards for some items — for example, one of us buys expensive dogfood and one of us buys cheaper stuff.  And agreeing to each keep buying our separate items can make the household logistics a bit silly:  feed this dog a scoop from THIS bag, and that dog a scoop from THAT bag…  But if budget constraints preclude one person from going halfsies on the good quality stuff, that doesn’t mean the other person will wish to feed their dog the cheaper stuff.  So, we keep the separate bags for different dogs.  Good thing we have plenty of storage space!  And sometimes it even feels a bit snobbish — like my dog is eating prime rib while hers are eating ground round.  Sometimes I think I should just share the good stuff with her — but actually, I tried to do that — I suggested we mix bags together and the dogs get a mix — but K didn’t feel good about doing that, because she didn’t feel she could afford to pay for her share of the good stuff.

It got even more complicated when we considered ‘people food’.  She of course wants to pay her share of food, but it certainly makes no sense for us to fuss over how much she should reimburse me for each cup of rice or beans we use from my stock — especially since we’ve been cooking together a lot, which is a HUGE benefit to me, as I need the motivation and inspiration to move toward being more of a cook myself.

Again, the challenge is not just to be equitable, but also to accommodate our differing budgets.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has any recommendations about this kind of situation.  But in the meantime, here’s what we’ve agreed to:

I told her that she should consider that the rent she is paying me includes use of any of the stored staples in the house — this includes rice, beans, oatmeal, flour, spices, etc.  If she’s regularly making something just for herself then perhaps this might feel awkward, but most of our use of those kinds of foods is for shared consumption.  Also, she will share whatever staples she happens to have if it fits with our needs.  Then, for the items we buy to complete our recipes, such as veggies, cheese, etc, we will share the cost.  Some things, such as soymilk, we don’t want to have two containers open at the same time, so we will use up what I have (most of a case) and then we will share the cost of replacing it.  This means that I’ve effectively contributed half of what I initially had to her, but all costs after that would be shared.  That’s okay too — I just think of it as more “included in the rent” type stuff.

We’ve agreed to see how this approach works, and if anything doesn’t seem like it’s being addressed fairly, we’ll revisit it.  But considering that managing my stocks is a separate but important part of being stocked up, I definitely want to encourage us to use what I have — especially that brown rice that’s already been stored for 2 years or so!

So far we’ve made a couple of delicious meals.  First she made a cold bean and rice salad we’ve both been taking to work for lunch: black beans and brown rice, mixed with chopped cabbage, broccoli, carrots, garlic, cilantro, onions.  Then we add some balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and yum!

We also made a lentil soup with curry powder, onion, garlic, various herbs, and a hamhock.

[Note:  While I've never been a 100% vegetarian, I've only had meat a few times per year for several years now.  Because K is not vegetarian, she sometimes wants meat in her dishes.  But she doesn't make meat the center of the meal, nor eat it every day.  Because I so value the cooking lessons/experience I'm gaining by cooking together with her, I've decided to relax my vegetarianism for a while.  As I said, this does not mean meat in every meal, nor does it mean meat as the primary part of a meal.  But I didn't object to the hamhock she put in the lentil soup, and I won't object to the buffalo meat we plan to put in a red bean chili this coming week.  We might even make buffalo burgers once!  I will, however, continue my beef boycott -- fortunately the buffalo is available and I doubt she'd want to eat regular beef anyway!]

And I’ve made pancakes a few times so far — that was one of the items on my list of ten things I wanted to add to my “do without thinking” cooking options.  The pancakes haven’t worked too well, but we’re narrowing down the cause — honey that was too hard, a kamut mix that cooks differently than regular flour, and a pan that had burned spots on the surface and so didn’t cook well.  We’ll try again tomorrow and see how many of these things we can change/fix.

I’ve also made one pumpkin pie this season, just after Thanksgiving.  Need to do a few more before I can say it doesn’t require thinking, though.

As The World Turns

First I didn’t post because there wasn’t much happening — just going to work, walking the dog, and making slow progress on my reading and cooking projects.  THEN I didn’t post because there was too MUCH happening and I didn’t have time! 

The big change is, I now have a housemate.  I’ll call her K (but it’s not the same K who was going to lease the fields from me when I first moved here — that plan fell flat almost immediately when K acquired a herd of goats and no longer had time for any other projects — her time was filled by a series of one “goatastrophe” after the other).

No, this K is a friend of one of my employers, and we met at a potluck a few years ago.  She recently moved here to work for the employer/friend, at least through spring, and her original housing plan didn’t work out, so I offered her a room here.  She’s very nice, with two great dogs that are getting along fine not only with my dog but also with my cat, about whom I’d been a bit worried.  She cooks and gardens, and will help me learn in both arenas.  She doesn’t know much about computers and if she wants I will help her learn about that.

Today we had a nice relaxing Thanksgiving.  We went for our usual dog walk but extended it into a longer hike up the hill behind the house where there is some spectacular scenery.  I dug one row of potatoes from the garden and boiled them up for some really yummy mashed potatoes with sour cream-horseradish dressing.  K made gravy (and I watched and learned).  We made stuffing from a box, opened cans of cranberries and mandarin oranges, steamed some fresh broccoli and celery.  I cooked half a local pumpkin, intending to make pumpkin pie, but it took so long to cook (on the woodstove on a not-so-cold day when the stove was only puttering along) that I postponed the pie-making until tomorrow.

We talked all day while we were hiking and cooking and doing other chores.  Then we ate dinner and watched “Strangers In Good Company”, a delightful movie that had just enough display of “survival skills” to fit my movie genre criteria :)

So, things are a little different for me these days.  I have lots of reasons why I prefer to live alone if I’m not living with a life partner; but there are also lots of benefits to sharing a house, and this time I decided it was the right thing to do.  So far (it’s been nearly a week) it’s working out wonderfully.

More Soup ‘n’ Biscuits, Plus A Book Update

Last weekend I made a lentil and tomato soup that turned out pretty darn good.  Not without some mistakes and things I’ll do differently next time, but still — pretty good.  I just had some of it tonight for the third night in a row, and it was even better tonight than it was before.  I also made biscuits again, and it was rather a fiasco (let’s just say that I thought I was being so clever to only make half the recipe this time, until the process of converting butter quantities (in the recipe) to oil quantities (what I actually used) distracted me and I put the whole recipe’s amount of oil in.  So then I had to double all the dry ingredients and end up with a full batch again anyway).  Then that still turned out way too moist, for unknown reasons, and I added at least another cup of flour to get it to kneadable/rollable texture.  It was kind of a comedy of errors of biscuit baking, if you can imagine that.  But the good news is, they didn’t turn out any *worse* than the first batch.  I’m still eating them a few days later.

In other news, I *finally* finished Bill McKibben’s “End of Nature.”  Although I think it’s a really important work, it’s somewhat out of date by now (written in 1989) and his writing style near the end started to get downright annoying.  I know McKibben is spearheading the 350 project, which I think is great, so I’m sure his current writings are much more appropriate now anyway.  On Friday the book I’d been waiting for arrived, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Sixty Degrees and Counting“, which is the third in the trilogy.  I’m nearly halfway through and enjoying it greatly.  I do get nervous, though, when reading about bitter cold as I’m trying to warm this house with the woodstove.  Wondering how I’d fare if we had a couple weeks of fifty below zero, as happened in the second book of the trilogy.  While waiting for the latest book to arrive ILL (inter-library loan) from the library, I also read “Bucking the Sun” by Ivan Doig.  A fascinating story about a family working on the building of the Fort Peck Dam in Montana during the Great Depression.  Any book that combines the Great Depression, severe winters, and hydrology has to be interesting to me! :p  I still have several books on request at the library, but now I’m half hoping they don’t show up for a while, or else how am I ever going to have time to read seventeen more books off my own shelf this winter?

A Start

The other night I made some soup using mostly garden veggies — potatoes, beets, and chard, plus some other stuff.  As usual for my off-the-cuff soupmaking, it didn’t turn out very well.  But it was edible, and in the course of two dinners I ate it all, composting none of it.  That’s a big improvment for me — usually when I try something that doesn’t work well, it’s too unpleasant to eat, and usually I’ve made a huge pot of it as well.  This time I got smart and made a smaller pot of it.

I’m embarrassed to even list the various things I threw in there, but I will anyway.  In addition to the garden veggies, there was an onion (not sauteed first — does that really make a difference?).  I think I salted it a little.  Then I wanted something to make the broth more hearty, creamy.  So I decided to try some coconut milk.  As bizarre as it sounds, I think the coconut milk is what made the soup edible — even though I couldn’t taste the coconut at all, it gave it a bit of ’solid’ feeling.  I guess a soup needs a little fat in it to make it feel filling.  But then it was still really bland, so I shook in a couple dashes of cayenne sauce.  Euw, I’m sure you’re saying, what an awful combination!  Well, truly, it didn’t combine badly at all, as odd as it sounds.  But on the other hand, it didn’t work, either — the soup was a little too cayenne-hot for my taste, but it didn’t seem to season the soup — it was just a bland soup with some spicy cayenne taste.  I still need to learn the trick of having the broth of a soup taste good — favorful.  Somehow I managed to get both bland and spicy and once, but not flavorful.

In addition to the soup, I made biscuits.  I found a very simple recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Kitchen Wisdom: Harrowsmith’s Sourcebook for Cooks.  They turned out a little better than the soup — not bad, but still not great.  There are a variety of things that might not have worked well.  First, I used hard red whole wheat flour — maybe I should use soft flour and/or white flour for biscuits?  Second, I substituted soymilk for milk and coconut milk for yogurt — I don’t think that should have been a problem though.  Third, I’m not sure I “cut in” the butter in the right fashion.  The ony other problem is that I made too many.  I ate some with the soup, and ate a few more for breakfast the next day, but haven’t had any since and there are still a few left.  They will probably be composted.  I think biscuits are one of those things that should be made in one-meal batches.  Next time I try the biscuits I’ll make half or even a third of the recipe.  Biscuits is one of the things I’m most excited about adding to my “do it by heart” cooking list, so I’m pleased that my first batch came out as good as they did.

Now I’m Cookin’ With Ga — er, Wood!

My other “focus” project for myself this winter, in addition to the reading/decluttering project, has to do with cooking.  I’ve never been much of a cook, and now is the time to change that.  I’m not aiming toward fancy dishes, nor even toward a huge repertoire.  I just want to expand my list of what I can cook COMFORTABLY — meaning 1) in a hurry, 2) when I’m stressed, anxious or upset, and 3) without thinking too hard about it.  Without a cookbook would be nice, but some things are just going to need a written recipe — my goal is for it to be easy for me — meaning I know which cookbook it’s in, and what ingredients I need (without looking at the cookbook, so I can get the ingredients on a whim in town when I decide to make something) — or make sure I’ve stocked up so that I *know* I have what I need.  I think it’s also important that I develop a sense of what’s important and what’s flexible, for each meal, so that I know when I can substitute or do without some particular ingredient (as well as add extras!).

For example, a few years ago I decided that my “standard” potluck dish would be sauteed mushrooms.  It’s something that most people like, but it’s not a typical potluck dish so I never worry about someone else bringing the same thing.  I’ve made it often enough that I know what I put into it, I know whether I can make a batch with that partial stick of butter or whether I need more (and whether I can substitute olive oil for the butter if I want).  I know how little (or how much) garlic I want.  I know how much time it takes, how much of my energy it takes (ie how far in advance I need to start).  I’m comfortable with it, in other words.

I want to add ten dishes to my “comfortable” repertoire this winter.

Without getting too bogged down in rules, here’s what I’m thinking:

Stir fry, rice/beans, soup, stew, chili, bread, biscuits/gravy, pancakes, pie, cookies, lasagna.

Stir fry:  I’ve rarely if ever made a stir fry.  I want to make it often enough that I can ” throw a stir fry together” using whatever I have laying around.  I have a wok and want to get in the habit of using it (or get rid of it if it’s not the right tool, but from what I hear it’s an excellent tool).

Rice/beans:  Of course I’ve made rice and beans before.  But I want to experiment with some new kinds of beans, and a variety of seasonings.

Soup:  Ditto, I’ve made lots of different soups before.  But none that I can just “throw together”.  I’ve made some I really like (carrot-ginger, mmm!) that I just need to make a few more times so that it’s etched into my mind and I don’t need the recipe in front of me anymore.  With other soups I need to learn about spices, as the veggies turn out horribly bland, and the water isn’t brothy, so it’s just soggy veggies in water.  I think learning a few tricks about seasoning soups will do wonders for me.

Stew:  same as soup, just focusing on root vegetables (and perhaps a touch of meat if I can find local/organic sources — but perhaps not — I haven’t cooked meat at home for many years now, and haven’t decided to change that, but I’m not overly attached to it, as long as I’m happy with the source of the meat — oh, except for beef, I still boycott that).

Chili: I’ve only made chili once, and it was years ago and I’m pretty sure it had ground beef in it.  I’d like to learn to make a tasty vegetarian chili.

Bread:  I tried bread a handful of times in the past few years, and usually got something edible, but not overly.  I want to find a recipe that works for me and then make it regularly, matching however much bread I eat (which currently isn’t much, but the more soup I make, the more bread I will correspondingly want to have).

Pancakes:  I used to make them often when I was a kid, but I haven’t made them in years.

Biscuits/gravy:  I want to be able to make these on an early morning, knowing what I’m doing but not having to think too hard about it.

Pie:  I’ve made really good pumpkin pie a few times, but no other kind.  And definitely no homemade pie crusts — not sure if I’ll tackle that this winter or not.  But I’d like to add at least one other kind of pie to my repertoire.

Cookies:  I’ve rarely made cookies and I don’t plan to make them often — I just want to know how.  Sugar cookies seem to be what I want to know how to do.  The only successful cookies I can recall making were M&M cookies, which must have been about 35 years ago when I was a young teenager!

Lasagna — Never made it, want to know how.  Again, not that I plan to make it often, but it would be a good thing to make in order to have a week’s worth of “just heat” meals.  And, of course, I won’t be using meat, so I need to find a good vegetarian recipe.

Now, one twist to my cooking projects this winter is that I really want to emphasize non-traditional cooking methods.  Whenever the woodstove’s going, any stovetop cooking I’m doing will probably be done there.  And I’ll be interested in seeing how my solar oven works in the wintertime (it’s still sunny, after all!).  Further, I want to get more familiar with using my electric crockpot to slow-cook things — that way I can cook even on days I’m away working.

I’m not going to make a lot of strict rules about how many of these things I’ll get to, but they are all things I want to do/learn/add to my skills, so I’ll just do as many of them as I can get to.

Side benefits will be less money spent on eating out, more self-reliance, and a reduced chance of letting any of my stored food go to spoilage, once I actually follow the cardinal rule of food storage:  Store What You Eat and Eat What You Store.

Now I better go, because I’m getting hungry.  Let’s see if I can start on one of these projects tonight!

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

In one of my work situations, I’m in an awkward position — my immediate supervisor, with whom I usually work alone (meaning no other employees around) absolutely hates the “big boss”.  My supervisor, who I’ll call D, spends most of her time complaining harshly about the big boss, who I’ll call B.  D regularly and frequently doesn’t follow the rules and procedures that B has established, and therefore I generally don’t/can’t either, or I will appear to my supervisor to be 1) in defiance to her, and 2) allied with the hated B.  For similar reasons, I can’t directly tell B (with whom I don’t always agree, but generally have a healthy and pleasant relationship) about all the places where D isn’t following the rules — because D and I work in isolation from other employees, there would be no doubt of the source (me) if any tales of disobedience were to reach B.  This much I have explained to B and she understands.  Sometimes B or another employee joins us for a shift, but on those occasions, D’s behavior changes dramatically, so there is much less for B to notice (though the physical condition of the office, as well as the progress or lack thereof on assignments, would seem to be pretty blatant).

I’m sure this is really confusing to read — it’s confusing enough to experience, and although I’m quite sure neither of them would ever read this, I’m not going to be more explicit here anyway.  Too much at risk.

The bottom line is that, while I’m in a good spot in that they both think *I’m* doing well (and the big boss understands that she can’t ask me to elaborate on conditions in our office, she needs to interact with D separately), it’s mildly stressful to me for several reasons.  First of all, the potential hatred of D that would be aimed at me if she were to ever suspect that I don’t hate B with all the passion she does.  Actually, I’m exaggerating, she does know that I’m “cordial” with B, which makes me, in her mind, already suspect.  But D sees the world in terms of alliances, and if she ever thought that I actually was *more* on B’s side than on her own, I’m sure I’d never hear the end of it, and might even experience bad job juju as a result (bad review, misplaced blame for problems, etc.).  At the very minimim I’d experience the silent treatment and be on the receiving end of direct hostility at work.

The second (and primary, at this point) reason it’s unpleasant to me, is because D experiences her job as overwhelmingly stressful, almost to the breaking point, and that’s all she can talk about, and I’m the only one there to listen.

Ironically, D’s stress gets in the way of her doing a good job — the job is not so complicated, and D is fully smart enough, that she should be able to do it without much stress at all, even if she doesn’t like B’s rules or management style.  But D is one of those people for whom complaining is apparently her primary mode of being.  I’ve directly seen her choose complaining over fixing a problem — even a simple problem.  If she was the source of the problem, she’ll deny it and instead blame the boss or complain about the boss’ overbearing style (as if that negates her mistake?  hello?)  But if D wasn’t the source of the original problem, then watch out!  Especially if the problem came from B or anyone she thinks is allied with B.  D would NEVER dream of fixing a problem that someone else created, not when there’s the opportunity to complain about it instead!  Again, it puts me in a bind — each time that I move to solve a problem that she hasn’t solved, I’m at risk of “showing her up.”  As if my solving a problem in thirty seconds might make her huge blowup about it seem out of proportion?  Or as if my willingness to act instead of complain makes me appear to be on B’s side?  (these are MY thoughts, not hers — this is what I worry about that D might think when I step in to fix in thirty seconds what she has just spent an hour whining is an insurmountable hassle…)

The sad part is that this is in a work situation that involves dealing with the public, and wouldn’t you think that serving the public would be of primary importance here?  Certainly more important than pointing fingers or whining about the boss.  But no, not for D.

Ironically, as unpleasant a work environment as this creates, this job is my favorite of all my part-time jobs…  Go figure…  I think partly that’s because I truly enjoy the work, and partly because I’m in a favorable position in the sense that I personally am managing to get along with everyone, and I am productive and getting a lot done.  I think (biased though I might be, lol) that I do several *times* the amount of work that D does per shift.  She spends so much of her time complaining about the boss (and then complaining about how stressed she is) that it’s a wonder she gets any work done at all!

This situation has built to a head in the last few months, since a new computer system (and its attendant need for training) has caused the boss to join us frequently.  And during the boss’s visits, she has noticed some of the OTHER backlogs that had piled up in the office, and is now asking for those things to be taken care of.  While I think this is perfectly reasonable (the backlogs had bothered me too, see above for my view that D spends her time complaining instead of working), B’s interactional and management style have many people irked, D most of all.  B comes across as condescending, it’s true.  She talks to us all as if we were kindergartners.  For some reason I don’t understand, this doesn’t bother me, although I’ve certainly taken offense to being talked to like a child in other situations.  And for some other reasons that I also don’t understand, D is way beyond bothered by B’s style, all the way to hatred, hostility, and the edge of explosion.  She takes such great offense that she’s nearly reduced to tears each time B talks to her.  Each conversation revs the hatred up higher.  And yet D would never be able to consider actually expressing her feelings to B.  Because D doesn’t see the problem as herself being offended, so she’d never consider attempting to solve it from that angle.  Instead, D is so certain that B is “wrong” in every way shape and form, that all she can do is seethe and vent, before and after (and lately, even DURING) each interaction with B.

Seems to me that honest communication could eliminate this problem.  Or at least 90% of it – D might not ever like B’s style of interaction.  And B might not be able to change her style much (though I’m sure she would try if she realized how people perceive her).  But at least B could factor that in to her management style and actions, and D could learn to not take it personally.  I might have an opportunity to talk generically about this with B, and if I can, I will.

Another thing that’s so ironic about it is that, while D is offended by being spoken to like a child, she is, in fact, BEHAVING like a child, both in her pouty whining, and in her refusal to do her job in favor of finger-pointing and complaining.

Sheesh, you’d never know we are all adults here!

Anyway, as I said, things are coming to a head, and I personally think it’s possible that D might either tell B to “take this job and shove it”, or have a breakdown, or actually get fired, if B decides to pay more attention to the actual work that is or isn’t getting done.

Gonna be an interesting winter at “Dog’s Little Office”…

Restart: Reading!

I’ve always loved reading.  It’s my ideal vision of a vacation, or even just a day off, to curl up with a good book.  This feeling has only increased in the last few years now that I work at a library.

But somehow I’ve ended up with the idea that reading is “leisure” and thus you’re not supposed to do it until all your “non-leisure” chores are done.  Which, of course, they never are.  So I haven’t read nearly as much as I’d like in recent years (ok, that’s not the only reason, too many other things competing for even my “leisure” time, and me having “issues” with time management all had their role).

Last winter, I started a project that combined reading and decluttering — I planned to read twenty books over the course of the winter — twenty books I own, that are sitting on my shelf, but that I don’t think I’ll feel the need to keep after I’ve read them.  I know, some people simply cringe at the idea of ever getting rid of a book.  I certainly have my “library” of books I don’t ever plan to part with — reference books, and books that define me — that a new acquaintance could see upon my shelf and *know* me through them.  But, ahem, I have plenty of books that don’t fit that category.  And my brand of minimalism spurs me to scan my shelves regularly and try to keep shrinking the pile, or at least keep it from growing bigger.

I didn’t get far last winter — my life was overturned at the beginning of the year by the end of my relationship and my move into temporary housing and then into a rental.  I’m a very slow recoverer, mentally, and even though I might have used reading as a good distraction or escape during that time, I didn’t.  So I read a whopping TWO books from my declutter list last winter. (Of course, I read several other books lent from friends or from the library, but only two from my project.)

Now I’m ready to restart my project.  I’ve actually pulled twenty books from my shelves and set them into a pile.  One of the books I’m in the midst of now, will count (The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben).  I’ll add the titles and authors, as I progress, to the blog sidebar — first in the Currently Reading section and then in the Recently Read section.  According to the self-generated rules of this project, once I start a book I can of course decide to keep it.  If I decide to keep it, I might finish reading it anyway (in which case it counts as one of the twenty) or I might abandon reading it in order to focus on reading books I can give away (the reading part is important to me, but the real motivation is the declutter part).

And of course, I will keep reading other books as well.  One book I devoured so fast I didn’t get to put it on the blog sidebar until just recently, was called The Last Season, by Eric Blehm.  It’s the true story of a backcountry wilderness ranger in the High Sierra — what drove him to live his unusual life, how he became an expert in “search and rescue” when a backpacker would become lost or missing.  And then, when the ranger himself goes missing while on patrol, the search, conducted by his peers, for him.  I really liked the book, but then again, I know people very like the ranger and others depicted, so I felt like I was reading it from <almost> an insider’s perspective.

Currently, in addition to The End of Nature, I’m reading Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I learned of these books (it’s the first in a trilogy) when David on the LessIsMore yahoo list posted an excerpt from Fifty Degrees Below (the second book in the trilogy).  The excerpt was this:

“they thought they were temperature tough-guys, but really they were just indoors all the time. They used their buildings as clothing, in effect, and heated or cooled these spaces to imitate what clothing did, no matter how crazy this was in energy terms.- – But they did it without thinking of it like that, without making that calculation. In the summer they wore blue jeans in imitation of what people three generations before had seen in Marlboro ads. – - Blue jeans were the SUVs of pants, part of a fantasy outdoor life…. Now as it got colder people still wore blue jeans, which were as useless in the cold as they were in the heat. Frank meanwhile
[living outdoors] shifted piece by piece into his mountaineering gear.”

I thought it sounded interesting, made a mental note, then thought no more about it.  Until a month or so ago, when Fifty Degrees Below showed up in a box of paperbacks donated to the library.  I snagged it and set it aside for me to read first.  Then I realized that when books are in series, I really like to read them in order.  So I submitted my request for Forty Signs of Rain, and it showed up on Friday.

Then, also, R has lent me his recently-finished copy of Ivan Doig’s Bucking the Sun.  Back when we were living together, he recommended Doig’s English Creek to me, and I really enjoyed it.  So when he said he was enjoying Bucking the Sun, I figured I’d like that too.  I haven’t started it yet though — just got it from him today, and I think I need to finish at least one of the others first — three books at once is a bit much for me right now.

Restart: Blogging

Well, I’ve had a nice break from the blog, and I think I’m feeling ready to start posting again.

I’m in a different place mentally than I was a month ago (or however long it’s been since I posted).  A better place.  Much better.

I moved forward over the past month in the post-relationship mental processing — a giant leap forward.  This was really necessary for me, even though it’s been over six months since I moved out – I’d gotten stuck in a place where I recognized that my thoughts and judgements and opinions had been forced into his mold, but I was in denial about how dramatic that was, and I couldn’t step out of the mold quite yet.  Especially since we were still spending lots of time together.  In fact we’d been spending more and more time together, and I’d begun to wonder if we might not have a chance at getting back together.  I initiated a conversation where I started clarifying some of the things that hadn’t worked for me during our time together, and it blossomed into a dialogue of crystal clear communication (VERY rare for us, that was one of my issues actually) which, while encouraging in and of itself, made it very clear we are NOT getting back together.  As soon as that conversation was over, like magic, I felt freed up.  Freed up from constraints I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.  I apparently have a HUGE tolerance for walking on eggshells to accommodate another person.  For taking their perspective and denying any other (even though I usually have a personal view that’s a conglomeration of several perspectives).  I’m not sure that’s a wholly bad trait, but I guess I’d gotten rather carried away with it.  Discarding it, now that it doesn’t serve me, felt really good!

Anyway, so here I am back.  When I first started the blog, I used it almost as a diary, just posting tidbits of what happened each day or every couple days.  I think I might like to go back to that, instead of feeling like every post has to be so SIGNIFICANT.

Unfortunately, my first diaric post is of a vegetative day in which I did nothing except water the garden, surf the web, and make a pseudo-omelet for lunch with eggs (local), avocado (not local) and bleu cheese (not local).  The garlic was not local either, although I do have some local garlic, but I’m using up the pound from the co-op first before I get to the local heads.  Oh, and I added in a half a jalapeno from my own garden too.  As I’ll describe another time, my garden this year was truly a bust – hardly anything grew.  But there are bits and pieces that grew, and three jalapenos is three more than none.   Then tonight I made a salad from store-bought greens and tomatoes, and feta, and another avocado, and some other non-local stuff, but some of my own chard went in, plus slices of a local leek.

Retract, Regroup, Restart

As recent weeks and months have passed, I’ve noticed that my energy for the various challenges I’m supposedly participating in has evaporated.  Lots of reasons all converging:  extra paid work that is taxing my time, much free time spent getting the winter’s wood in (still ongoing), feeling mentally down (variety of reasons but mostly relationship-oriented), and the fact that my garden is a bust this year, with only potatoes and chard doing well.  I might end up with four or five winter squash total, perhaps four beets, two tomatoes, three jalapenos, one bell pepper.  Time just got away from me and all of a sudden everyone else was harvesting, when I was still looking at seedlings.  As for the blog challenges, they were generally sucking more energy from me in the guilt of all that I’m not doing, than they were enlivening me with the accomplishments I was doing.

And, I realized recently that there are some things — personal paperwork, housekeeping, reading list — that I really would rather be spending my time on at the moment.

So, I’m officially cancelling my participation in just about everything:  Riot for Austerity, Independence Days Challenge, Growing Challenge, etc.  I will of course still have a goal of moving forward with preparations and skills learned for the future, growing and cooking new things, etc.  I just won’t be taking much time to report on it on a regular basis.  Every now and then, yes — every week, no.  And I’m sorry to say that I will probably stop reading many blogs too — my blogroll had gone from ten or fifteen blogs to several dozen on a reader that told me when a new post was made.  I could easily pass the evening online just reading blogs.  While I may still do that now and then, I’m going to try to wean myself from that in favor of time spent on my own projects — sorry, y’all, no offense I hope!

Hopefully this new direction will mean that I occasionally have something to say here other than an IDC report or whining about how tired I am!

A Twist on the Week’s IDC Activities…

The twist is that I’m not at home — I’m in the Bay Area for a week visiting my mom and dad.

Planted: Nothing, but I did buy a potted chocolate mint plant at Mom’s farmer’s market.  I think it will be a container plant at home, but we’ll see.

Harvested: Nothing

Preserved:  Nope.

Stored:  Five pounds quinoa pasta (actually I bought it for a friend who can’t have wheat, but it turns out this contains rice flour in addition to quinoa flour, and she can’t have that either, so I’m keeping it.  I’ve never had quinoa pasta, so stay tuned for me to try this and count it as ‘cooking something new’ one of these weeks).  Dog treats.  Soymilk.

Managed: Nothing.

Prepped:  Four more buckets and gamma seal lids from the co-op.  Plus, I went into the local Goodwill store near Mom’s and found a nice wooden kitchen table for only $25 (marked $49.99 but it was half-off that day!).  I didn’t have a kitchen table and definitely wanted one, so I guess this is a prep, though it doesn’t have much directly to do with being ready for a different future.  I’ll consider it like a ‘tool’ for doing more in the kitchen – you need enough room to spread out and have a work space, right?  OK, now I do…  :)

Advocated for local food economy: Nope.  I wore my Locavore Farms T-shirt to the Mountain View farmer’s market, but no one noticed or asked about it, so it doesn’t count.

Reduced waste: Got showed a better way to string the line in the weedwhacker that was brand new but not working right, so that hopefully it can have a full life reducing the fire risk in my yard, instead of being junk.

Cooked something new:  Yes!  I made cole slaw from the cabbage I bought at last week’s farmer’s market.  I perused recipes online until I got the basic gist of the mix of ingredients.  I wanted something simple, but that also approximated the cole slaws I’ve had before (which is what my taste buds were craving).  I shredded one head of cabbage and one carrot, added salt and pepper and caraway seeds, and mixed it all together.  I mixed together four tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and two tablespoons of white sugar, and then poured that mixture over the cabbage.  I then added two dollops of mayonnaise (about 3 tablespoons total, I guess) and mixed it in — just enough to barely coat the cabbage.  When I tasted it, it seemed to need something sharp-flavored — just a bit more tangy.  So I added the juice of half a lemon.  It made a pretty big bowl, but my mom and I made short work of it — after two meals including it, there’s only one serving left.  I’d still like to add something a big spicier into it — maybe a dash of cayenne?  Or some chopped pickle/relish?  Some of the recipes included some onion, and I didn’t add any, but that’s also an idea.  Anyway, it worked and was yummy!  This worked out well, as I don’t usually eat mayonnaise and don’t have any at home, but since I was at mom’s I was able to use hers.  When I make cole slaw next at home, I’ll probably try one of the no-mayo recipes for a more long-term personal recipe for me.

I want to expand this “cook something new” category to also include eating something new, even if it doesn’t need cooking or if someone else does the cooking (to expand the kinds of food I know about and can eat).  To that end, I tried a smoothie — I suppose I can’t claim I’d NEVER had one, but it had been years, sufficiently long that I wasn’t even entirely sure what was in one.  When a co-worker raved about the one she got from the wifi cafe, I went ahead and tried one.  Bleah, just not for me.  It was ok while it was all still frozen, but something about the thick texture of it as it melts is unpleasant to me. Perhaps it’s the pineapple juice I don’t like — I might try getting a custom-made one using different juice.  On the other hand, since I don’t (yet, I’m thinking about it) have a freezer, I suppose getting hooked on blended ice drinks isn’t such a smart idea anyway…