The Garden: its history and future plans

I love gardening.

Earthworms are awesome!

I'm not sure if I'm good at it, but there's something wonderful about digging in the dirt, being warmed by the sunshine and getting fresh air. And if my plants grow, wonderful. If my own food comes as a result: SWEET.

My problem is that I've never had much of a chance at gardening. We live in an apartment that doesn't have a balcony, or even a front step. Our front door opens to a hallway. Blech. But I love plants. And being outside. And there's something about growing things that has drawn me in.

It started with mint. I wanted a pot of mint to keep on my windowsill and I'd water it and trim it and drink fresh mint tea any time I wanted.

Ah, another problem. Mint does not like pots. My mother-in-law says "You can't kill a mint." Oh yeah? I say, well I have, TWICE. 

The first spring we spent in our apartment, the associating apartment buildings had volunteers plant flowers in the beds around our buildings. People came out and beautified the lots of land around us with flowers and fresh mulch around the trees. But one little plot didn't get any attention. One right on the side of our building. It looked as if it had once had a couple trees or shrubs there, but they had been hacked down. Nothing but weeds and stray grass grew in this little patch.

So after a few months of watching it not be attended to, I decided I would use it. I took my third attempt at mint, already dying, down to the apartment yard. I pulled up a bunch of weeds and patchy grass so I had a clear area of dirt. I dug a hole and stuck my mint there. I poured water over it and walked away. I forgot about it. It was late autumn and I did not expect it to grow. I thought maybe something might happen in the spring, but I'd just have to wait to find out.

Then one day, the next spring, while walking passed, I saw it. It was flourishing! It may be possible to kill a mint, but bringing them back to life didn't seem too hard. I mean, when I had planted it, it had like two green leaves left on the stem. I was thrilled. In a few weeks more, I'd be harvesting my own mint regularly.

Ahem. Until the apartment association employed some landscapers to mow the lawn and whack the weeds and my poor little mint got whacked into oblivion.

Enter stones. In order to prevent such a thing from happening again, I gathered a bunch of smallish rocks to surround my plant. If it looked cared for and attended to, surely they would not attack it viciously with lawnscaping tools, right?

It worked! I was so pleased I planted oregano too, making sure to give it a rock boarder to protect it. And then I obtained some lemon balm and I planted that too. I had a regular little herb garden going.

As yet unattended to earlier this spring

Cleaned up and ready for planting

 My friend gave me some of her proliferating violet plants too, so now I have three little violet patches blooming. I was a little nervous at first, planting that first mint, that someone would come along and ask me what I was doing. I wondered if I'd get in trouble. But successive months passed and no one has said a peep. I haven't even seen any general notices put up in our hallways about "unauthorized planting in apartment yards."

Sadly, my violets are white

So, since my third year living here and growing invasive herbs has proven quite safe, I've decided to expand. It's still early and most vegetables (that I have access to, at least) won't grow until warmer weather, but I have some big plans. Tomatoes, peppers, squash!

Saved tomato seeds, not guts. On the right are pepper seeds

Okay, that's all. It's a small plot, remember?

Planted in egg shells, how clever

So far, the tomatoes, sprouted from seeds are doing all right. The peppers haven't peeked yet, and it's been almost a month since I planted them. They may not make a show. This is what you get from store-bought vegetable seeds, I guess. Who knows if the tomatoes will actually bear fruit. They're from a Mexican hothouse and not organically grown, and quite possibly irradiated. And I ate that. gross.

Go little tomato plants, go!

Here's hoping for fresh tomatoes this summer. If anything I know I'll have plenty of mint and oregano.

I'm hoping that I can use these apartment years to try my hand at gardening on a small scale, when I haven't put a lot into it and I don't have much to lose. Then maybe, if (when) I have a house with a big yard, I can have have a huge garden. I can feel okay buying seeds or little plants to put in and grow my own produce.

I keep thinking "be faithful in the small things." So that's just what I'll do. And when I have a chance, I know I'll be faithful in big things too.

I may even convince John that we can buy a cow! Maybe.

Things I love Thursday: My cast iron cookware.

I'm going to try out this Things I love Thursday thing for a while and see if it makes posting on Thursdays an easy task. I'm on my own in this, as in I'm not joining some other blog co-op with it, since it was just a random idea I came up with. Though, I don't think I made it up, there's probably tons of other bloggers doing the same thing out there. I just love alliteration, really. You probably know that by now.

This could probably be more appropriately called "Things I really like Thursday" but it doesn't quite have the same ring.

This week I want to tell you about my cast iron pots and pans. Why? Because I love them.

In my sunny living room for a photo shoot

Why do I love them? Ah, let me count the ways...or tell you the reasons.


I get amazing results when it comes to food quality. Cast irons are fabulous for browning meats, sauteing vegetables or making sauces. I can make the most delicious home fries and hash browns with my pan. They hold heat like nobody's business and keep your food hot while you wait for your husband to wrap up his projects and come to dinner. And food cooked in cast iron pots and pans just tastes better. It has some magical taste properties that it adds to each dish, making it yummier than food cooked in a regular pan.

It's indestructible. You can use metal spatulas, knives, spoons, forks, you name it on these guys. All those tools that if you even hover one above a non-stick tefflon pan, wears and scratches the surface before your very eyes. I've scratched up the seasoning of my cast iron frying pan tons of times. All it needs is a little swipe of oil and some time in the oven and it's back to its good as new self.

The best set of pans a girl could wish for

It's non-stick. Who needs that tefflon crap? I don't even know if I'm spelling it right, but I started my married life with a full set of pots and pans in that tefflon-coated line and all of them are scratched to death. Some have been thrown away in their unusable-ness. (Turns out, they don't withstand oil fires very well, either.) My cast irons, have been with me for about 3 years now. I got them all used or free, (with the exception of our wok, which I bought for John as a Christmas present.)

I've brought them camping and I've set them on fire, put them in the oven; I've used them as hammers and pounders, you can even use them as a weapon like the girl from Tangled does. I loved that!

This is reverting to the indestructable thing again. Where was I?

Ah, non-stick. So long as you keep them in good shape (and trust me, it's not hard) these things will release your eggs, crepes, etc. perfectly every time.

Which leads me to the fact that they are very easy to take care of. I'm lazy. I frequently go days without washing my pans, even when they really should have. It's easier when you do it right away, but even if you slack off, it's not too bad. You can take comfort in the fact that while you might take off some of your seasoned coat while you scrub with all your might, you'll still have a pan when you're done. And you can always put a new coat on.

Part of the ease in caring for cast iron is that it doesn't need soap. Just hot water and a good scrub. Then I dry it on the stove and wipe it down with an oiled rag. Good as new for the next go. And if you make sure to wash it right after your done using it then it hardly even needs a scrub, more like a swish.

Even when you get your pot super old, dusty, rusty and worn it's still good!

See?

Good as new. Not bad for a free pot.

Cast iron also keeps you strong. When your frying pan weighs five pounds, you get a work out even when you cook! Carrying an eight pound wok FULL of food to the table builds your muscles big time. Add to that the fact that cast iron actually imparts some iron to your food every time you cook with it. Iron is a very necessary mineral to keep your blood working. Lack of it can lead to anemia and fatigue. Despite the fact that I rarely eat red meat I've been told multiple times that my blood's iron levels are absolutely fantastic. This is to the girl who was once diagnosed as "slightly anemic." Actually, that iron thing might be the reason behind why food cooked in cast iron tastes so good...

The wondrous weighty workable wok

When I was reading Nourishing Traditions, the author mentioned that "non-organic" iron was bad for the body. Which made me worried for a little bit that she didn't approve of cast iron cook ware. But then in the "recommended equipment" section she lists cast iron pots and pans as a great alternative to aluminum or non-stick cookware. So no need to worry! It's Sally Fallon Approved!

If you're interested in cast iron, ask around or check out some thrift stores. I've found that people frequently have them laying about and are willing to part with them because they fail to see the value, or like my mother in law, they simply collect them because they can't get over the value. Even if you end up buying one new, you can be sure that it's a great investment. I mean they'll last you forever, your great grandkids might end up using them.

I've grabbed up a few cool cast iron pans that I don't even know what to do with. Like this heart pan.

Too bad I hate Valentine's day

Cute, yeah? It was a dollar at our thrift store and even though I don't see my self using it often, it still makes a nice country kitchen kind of decoration. (You know, for when I have a country kitchen.)

Here's a link to a good guide on seasoning and general care. This is more or less how I do it, but if you look around you'll find everyone has their own little quirks; some people suggest a tiny bit of soap, others cringe at the thought. Some people won't even use water, preferring to burn off food matter. Some people are picky about what kind of oil they wipe in their pans. Do what works for you.

Sally Fallon is making me paranoid: a milk rant.

About two weeks ago, I used our inter-library loan system to check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I had heard the book mentioned a few times by bloggers I liked so I thought I'd take a look. I figured it probably had a great selection of fermented food recipes and maybe some other interesting stuff.

Scary but fascinating

What I did not expect was to be scared out of my whits concerning nearly everything I eat on a regular basis. And we eat fairly healthy compared to the standard American diet. I make my own bread and every baked item we eat. I use whole wheat flour the majority of the time. I'm always reducing sugar in recipes if I can get away with it.

When shopping, I read labels and ingredients carefully. If a food item has more than ONE ingredient, I scrutinize it closely. The only product with high-fructose corn syrup that I allow into my house is ketchup (although, not anymore. I'll do a post on my homemade ketchup soon). If I can't pronounce an ingredient I put the item back on the shelf.

As I've mentioned before, I don't buy organic in general because of the cost. But we eat primarily vegetables and whole grains and if I'm going to buy meat I usually will splurge on that to make sure it's actually good (i.e hormone free). I do buy free-range eggs for when we eat eggs, but I still use the cheap store-brand ones for baking purposes. I even drink whole milk, because separating all the fat from milk just sounds nasty and wrong.

But even though I felt good about the fact that I love olive oil, real butter and whole milk, I soon became panicked. I used regular non-extra virgin olive oil for cooking (saving my good stuff for when I'm not going to be heating it up) but the way they process olives after they get the first press causes the resulting second pressed olive oil to be rancid and unhealthy. I learned that my butter was missing valuable nutrients because it came from cows who possibly never saw the light of day and have been fed soy-products (among other nasties). And not only was I putting undo stress on my digestive system because my milk is pasteurized, but I was also endangering my heart by the tiny fact that my milk is homogenized.

What the-!? I didn't even know what homogenizing was!

Turns out, it's when they blast the fat particles of milk into tiny pores so they stay suspended through out the milk instead of condensing at the top. Sounds clever, right? You don't have to shake your milk...or whatever it is they do when people drink real milk.

But because it changes the chemical make up of the milk - making the fat particles tiny, as opposed to the large fat molecules they used to be - the fat is no longer healthy. Now, rather than hanging in the gut and intestines and drawing in toxins to help your body clean out, the teeny, teeming fat molecules go into your blood stream and contribute to hardening of arteries.

See why I'm so scared?

Added to the fact that since my milk is from cows who are fed GMO soy, corn and other crap (like other cows and their waste, no kidding), crammed into tiny space, given hormones to produce far more milk than any cow should be able to - even if I were to get this milk raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized, it still wouldn't be a beneficial food product.

And I've been drinking this stuff for a good five years now!

So what do I do? One thing is certain, I cannot not have milk in my house. John - a milk addict - would go on strike, riot, rampage, foam at the mouth....

Okay, I'm joking. He actually understood fairly well when I explained my terrors to him. The alternative, however, is finding a local farm and buying fresh raw milk. Um delicious, and I wish wish wish, I could. But it's so expensive. And one day I'd like to own my own milk cows and live off that, but that dream waits until we have some land.

At least turning my milk into yogurt arms it with beneficial bacteria and enzymes to promote healthy digestion. But it doesn't solve the homogenized problem. Even Stonyfield Farms, who I used to love and trust, started homogenizing their whole milk yogurt. It didn't occur to me to be mad about this until recently. In fact, I didn't even realize that the reason that their amazing, most-delicious-yogurt-on-the-face-of-the-planet cream top yogurt was non-homogenized until after it wasn't anymore. I just noticed that they stopped doing the cream top thing and started crying. (Well, not really.)

Then when I started making my own yogurt (and I've got a batch going right now) I thought, "I want to try to make that cream top kind. How did they do that??" so I looked it up. That's when I found out they started homogenizing it, much to the dismay of many people. But apparently it cuts their costs so they won't change (though I'm still going to write them to let them know my displeasure. You should too, if you care.) That said, I'll never buy anything from Stonyfield again. And that makes me sad because they're based in my state, a forty minute drive from my apartment, and I used to love them.

So local farmers it is. I asked John if we could start buying local raw milk and he said... Well actually we had a really long conversation about it and it involved many other things, but what it summed up to was "maybe."  The thought process went something like this: continue to buy gross cheap milk now and save enough money to buy a house quickly, buy our own cows (or goats), never spend a cent on milk again (other than upkeep costs) and drink the best milk we can imagine in the future. Or, buy expensive good milk now,  buy a house one day, and then buy cows (or goats) and cut costs on milk then by drinking our own (and possibly make money on it by selling some too.)

Course, let's be realistic here. I know nothing. Zilch, nada, zip, about cows. Or goats, for that matter. And increasing our food budget to pay five or six dollars per gallon of milk rather than $2.50, isn't going to set us back that much. Seriously.

I'm trying to think of it in this way (and convince John to as well): Local raw milk (hormone and antibotic free, but I'm not worried if they aren't certified organic because that certification is just dang ridiculous.) Is not actually expensive. It that mass produced, hormone filled, pasteurized, homogenized, cattle farm milk that's cheap. Way cheaper than milk should be. I should look at the price of that milk on the shelf and think "Okay, why's it so cheap? What's the catch here?" And well, now I know what the catch is.

Taking care of cows, even on a small scale, can be expensive (probably). But I want to support local farmers, small scale farms and real people making a living on growing real food.

It's the culmination of several things, this new attitude and revelation. I've always approved of small farms and eating as local as possible, but, except for when I grow and forage my own food, I've never really done it myself. Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and I realized just how bad the food industry really was. But I still didn't do anything about it. And now I'm reading Nourishing Traditions, and then one of my favourite bloggers wrote this article, and I felt very convicted.

I've known it all along.

It's time to make some changes. I've been slowly getting around to it with my fermented foods kick, which has given me a new appreciation for what I can do with what I normally buy. But I need to change what I buy, too. So maybe we'll be drinking (homemade) almond milk for awhile until I find some local milk. And then we'll start small. We'll just have to cut back on our milk intake for awhile. A gallon every two weeks instead of one a week, whatever, no big deal. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Because even though I'm just one person, I think I can make a difference. Even if it's just a tiny one

This is what happens when you put me in charge of the s'mores...

John and I and a group of friends planned a cook out for this last weekend; a bonfire on the beach with hot dogs and tin-foil wrapped potatoes smothered in the coals. And of course, s'mores. As far as I'm concerned, s'mores are essential to any fire-centered party being successful. Well, since I'm so adamant about marshmallows and chocolate melted between two slabs of sweet cinnamon-and-honey-crackery goodness, I found myself being placed in charge of the s'more round up.

I took my role very seriously. These would be the best danged s'mores of all time.

It started when I made marshmallows...

Last year I had learned to make the whipped sugary gelatin confections. They were scrum-diddly-umptious, bouncy and fluffy. More yummy than any store bought marshmallow could even imagine tasting. You don't even need corn syrup to make them.

 And the best part? You can flavour them. Any flavour you can imagine!!! ... Well, almost. I have a really vivid imagination when it comes to flavours and some pretty clever means of bringing them into existence...(though, I do say so myself. *cough*)

Of last year's production

Last year they were Earl Grey flavoured marshmallows. This year, inspired by pine edibilities, I made them...of course, Pine flavoured. But in case my very normal friends thought this to be too outrageous for their taste buds I made an alternate Vanilla Orange flavoured batch.

The result?
Oh heavenly goodness. How could such lovely perfection be wasted with nasty, grody, waxy, fake "chocolate" as those hershey "smore sized" bars? No no! I would have GOOD chocolate with my marshmallows and that was that.

But the prices. Oooohhhhhhhh the prices. A bar of silky, cocoa-y, marvelous Ghiradelli chocolate was ever so expensive. They were being priced at more than NINE DOLLARS A POUND. Even the yucky Hershey chocolate was more expensive than I imagined it could be.

So you know what I did?

I went to the BAKING section! Ah ha! Two 12oz bags of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips for $5! That's under four dollars a pound! (I think...) Who needs Ghiradelli to put their chocolate in bar shaped slabs for an extra five bucks a pound? I could do that myself!

And while I was at it I would sprinkle sea salt on them babies.

Noms.

Now that's chocolate. Better than any sub-par Hershey chocolate could ever imagine tasting.

Well, that settled it. If I was going to go "cheap" and gourmet at the same time (funny how those two coincide more often than many people might imagine) I'd simply have to make my own graham crackers too.

Yeah, I've done that before too. And they were fantastic. More delicious than any stale store graham cracker could even imagine tasting. So I did it again and they were the perfect top and bottom to my marvelous marshmallow masterpieces and my clever chocolaty concoction.

The cookout was amazing. Fire + food + frisbees = forever fun.. (I'm fond of alliterating, you know.) How could it go wrong? Okay, well it was on a New Hampshire beach in April, so yeah, it was cold too. But that just added to the adventure.

 And the s'mores?

 Yeah, you know it.

Absolutely amazing. Better than any combination of jet-puffed marshmallow, waxy Hershey chocolate and Nabisco graham crackers could have ever even imagined tasting. As far as I'm concerned, this is the only way to have s'mores.

Wish I had a photo of the final product, but my camera is not beach friendly.

Even my normal taste-budded friends were impressed. Please excuse me while I go and be smug.

In which I eat my friend's Christmas tree

I should have posted about this a couple months ago... Actually, I should have done this a couple months ago. But it happened that a couple months ago I was in Florida and don't forget that I'm a bit of a procrastinator. It's worth the wait, however, as its awesome. Like foraging from your living room!

My own Christmas tree

Next Christmas, if you find yourself feeling rather sad about paying money to cut down a tree to be a temporary decoration in your house and then feel sad about throwing it away a month later, then here is something you might want to consider:

Pine is edible.

And it's actually pretty yummy. It tastes a lot like it smells, on the astringent side, and with a dash of bitter. It may be an acquired taste, but I find myself liking a lot of strange-ish things.

If the taste doesn't suit you, here's something else to consider:

Pine is antiseptic, antibacterial, high in vitamin C and other nutritious minerals. You can use your Christmas tree to make health elixirs, cough and cold remedies or even as an excellent cleaner if nothing else interests you. I've read from Susun Weed that pine vinegar can even clear up a lung infection. This is some good stuff, folks. Seriously!

And if one doesn't suit your fancy, try another variety. The taste can really vary, so don't give up if you try one that isn't so yummy.

This year my friend* had a beautiful Christmas tree of a variety I had never seen before. It's needles were long and wide. They reminded me of rosemary. I asked her if I could taste it. Heh heh. Thankfully, my friend is used to me and my weird ways and told me to have a go if I really wanted.

Well I did, and it was actually quite pleasing to the palette. Up until now, the best tasting pine I've been able to find is White Pine. Her pine tree (and I might have this wrong but I think she said it was called a Scotch Balsam) was lemony, slightly minty, spicy and (of course) piney. It delighted me. I asked her if I could have it when she was done using it as her temporary decoration.

She happily obliged me, saying "I'm glad my super expensive Christmas tree is getting more uses than one!" And then I had a large bag of pine branches hanging about my  house for about a month before I finally got around to turning them into things.

Pine vinegar, pine simple syrup and a jar of pine needles

So far, what I've made is: Pine simple syrup, for flavoring beverages and maybe even making candy.. (I think it might be fun to make pine lemonade, though John thinks it'll taste like cleaner....) Pine vinegar, which I intend to use in cooking as one would use balsamic vinegar. And pine soda.

Yup! Pine flavoured soda. It's kinda wild tasting. I carbonated it using a fermented wild yeast starter that I learned to make here at Learning Herbs. Instead of flavoring my soda with blueberries, as in the linked recipe, I made a sugary pine decoction and turned that into soda. Good stuff!

I also stripped most of the left over branches of their needles and intend to use them as an herb in cooking, the way one uses rosemary. But I could also put it in tea and blend it with other flavors. I'm thinking of chopping up the remaining needle-less branches and slow steeping them in olive oil for some piney oil. Which has many uses in and of itself! Salves, salads, wood polish...

I love that I can eat my cleaners and skin care. No toxins here!

For the simple syrup, I combined 2 cups sugar and 1 cup water in a pot. I added a bunch up pine needles and some of the smaller branches and stirred and let simmer under a lid for about 15 minutes. I probably could have let it go longer. The more pine you use, the more piney it will taste, (obviously). I thought mine was a little too sweet and not as piney as I hoped. I was following the Simple Syrup recipe in Joy of Cooking, but next time I think I'll use less sugar and more pine.

For the vinegar, take a glass jar and pack it with pine needles and branches then fill the jar with apple cider vinegar. Put the lid on (if it's a metal lid, place something like wax paper or several layers of plastic between the jar and lid because vinegar really corrodes metal) label it with the date and wait 4-6 weeks. Then you can strain it (or not) and use as you please, on food, or your toilet! You might want to make two jars, one for each, you know, so nothing cross-contaminates, eh...

So next time you have a Christmas tree, or someone you know does, try it out. Not all of them taste as good as others, but they're all edible and useful in so many ways. I was particularly delighted to find a tree that tasted so dern yummy, but there's loads to do with even the not-so-yummy varieties. You can even just go out to your closest woods and bring home some pine today if you can't wait till Christmas. Go ahead and try it!

I wonder if pine ice cream would be any good...

* I didn't actually get to use my own Christmas tree this year for a couple reasons - it was not nearly as tasty as my friend's and I didn't want a pine overload in my house, and we actually forgot to water it most of the time we had it, so by the time we got to taking it down there wasn't much left to it.  Don't let this happen to you!

I made yogurt

You'd better believe it, bucko.

In my recycled storage container. Resourceful, eh?

 Isn't it beautiful?

And it's yummy too. And cheap! Now I can eat yogurt on a more regular basis and not feel guilty at how much money I'm currently eating.
You see, I buy (or used, to, hehehe) Stonyfield's delicious whole organic yogurt. I love that they are organic (and honestly, I don't buy a lot of organic because it's very pricey, but this was one of my few exceptions) They have live cultures and are delicious. But at $3.69 a quart, they were one of the most expensive things on my receipts every shopping trip (unless I happened to buy meat, that time 'round). A gallon of (non-organic) milk is $2.49. So.... a gallon of milk can make me 4 quarts of yogurt for 2.49. That's a lot cheaper! I might even be able to justify buying organic milk for my yogurt making processes at a price like that! But we'll see about that.

You know, we're kinda trying to save money to buy a house right now.

I'm not going to go into super detail about how I made it, because there's quite a few picture by picture directions on the internet. The one I followed is here, with a few back up researches just to make sure I had everything in a row. But it was so easy and successful I could explain it to you in, like, three sentences.

Ready? Here goes.

Take yer milk (and you wanna go whole, because it's the best, you know? I heart fat) put it in your crock pot, heat on low for 2.5 hours. Turn your crock pot off and let sit 2-3 hours. (The directions say 3, I did 2, because I was impatient, I think you mainly want it warm but not TOO warm) Add a little yogurt (I read the ratio was generally 2 tablespoons of yogurt per cup of milk) stir it up, replace the lid on your crockpot and cover with a towel to keep things warm. Let it sit for 8-12 hours. I went to sleep and in the morning: amazing! Yogurt!

Well, maybe that was a few more than 3 sentences, I wanted to put my own spin on it, you see?

I also chilled mine before stirring it or disturbing it at all, because I read that it can help make it thicker. Not sure if this is true or not, though, because I never tried not doing it. But it's only my first batch, so maybe we'll try some right away and see if this is so...

Some good things to remember:
*save a half a cup or so of your yogurt so that you can use your homemade kind to start your next batch. *I've read that it lasts 7-10 days in your refrigerator, so only make as much as you can eat at a time. I have a feeling it will probably last longer, and if I find out, I'll let you know. But just in case, I only made 3 pints. One of which is already gone....and I just finished it yesterday!

Even though I now have a method that works, I'm kind of curious to know the how behind it all. Why heat it up and let it sit? Why not just heat to the temp you need first and then add your yogurt? What happens in the milk that makes this step necessary? I'm kind of food-scientist in this area. I love just doing things that work, but I really love knowing why it works. Then I can change things all I want, so long as I know the rules.'

So if I find out, I'll post about it!

I also bottled my first batch of komboucha a few days ago.  Sometime around lunch I'm going to break one open and taste it. I'm SO excited about it. I'll update you on that too, sometime soon.

tehe, love the empty vodka bottle.

Meantime, I want to give a little shout-out to one of my favourite blogger's new blogs. Even though she has no idea who I am (I'm not much of a commenter, see?), I've been a pretty regular reader of Kathleen's previous blog for about a year now. She just launched a new one that sounds sooooo interesting. So check it out at Becoming Peculiar. If you're interested in Christianity, being kind of radical, or just like reading new ideas or new spins on old ideas, you'll probably find something that catches your fancy. I'm eating it up right now.