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Not everyone is cut out for ‘radical homemaking,’ not even me

No idea what this lady's doing, but she looks like a radical homemaker to me! Image via the Google LIFE photo archive.

Folks, the backlash against “radical homemaking” (also known as ‘new agrarianism’ or ‘locavorism’ or ‘those damn hipsters going on about their Etsy and ramps and baking and whatnot’) has begun.  I remember reading a piece about “The Femivore’s Dilemma” on Jezebel back in March.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, KJ Dell’Antonia wrote “Radical Homemaking is More Fun when it’s Optional” at DoubleX.  And today, via Salon, I see this: “I am a Radical Homemaking Failure” by Madeline Holler (it turns out that the Holler piece was posted around the same time as the DoubleX piece, which responds to it, but I missed it back in my days before we got internet turned on at our house).

Dell’Antonia really hits the nail on the head in her piece.  Holler moves to the midwest so her husband can follow his academia dreams on $36k per year with a couple of kids in tow.  She becomes a “radical homemaker” just to make ends meet on that low salary, and she discovers she sorta hates the drudgery.  And Dell’Antonia points out what should be obvious to anyone who’s even heard of “The Feminine Mystique”: drudgery is not so fun when it’s mandatory, actually.  (Though, I’d point out that Holler’s husband *chose* to leave a more lucrative field, and he had the privilege to choose a more lucrative field by the end of the piece, as well.  Many people have no before and no after– “radical homemaking” as a way of making ends meet is just reality, period.)

Image: "American Housewife" Mrs. Gilbert Ambert, Kankakee, IL, 1941, via the Google LIFE Photo Archive.

Here’s the thing: if you’re reading my blog, you know I buy into a lot of the “radical homemaking” stuff.  I don’t make our clothes or even my own yogurt, but I’m really committed to local, natural, homemade food.  And in addition to my ethical choices about food, I straight up enjoy cooking, most of the time.  But here’s a secret: the minute I start feeling like I’m the only person in my house who cares about what’s going onto our plates? The minute I start to feel like cooking our food is more my job than my choice?  That’s when I start to resent my kitchen.

I think a major reason so many people roll their eyes when they read yet another essay by an upper middle class white lady who has found God in free range chicken farming and home meat curing and knitting is that so rarely do the writers recognize their own privilege.  For one thing, they’re doing all this stuff for funzies, and for another, so many people are doing these things because they have to, even though they’d rather not.  So here’s my revelation: yes, I think eating local, organic, homemade food is a good choice for our planet and our bodies. BUT: I realize that my choices are not for everyone. In fact, they’re not even always for me!

That said, I really have to take issue with this part of Holler’s piece:

Even baking all of my own bread sounded dreadful. For me, kneading dough was the physical manifestation of pushing and pressing all of life’s ambitions into one yeasty ball of carbs.

I’m not sure why all the anti-homemakers have to go after bread baking, but YOU NEED TO LAY OFF THE BREAD BAKING, Y’ALL. I bake my own bread. Even when I had a full-time day job, I baked my own bread. The combining of ingredients into the bowl of my stand mixer (privilege alert: I have a stand mixer, received as a wedding gift) takes all of 5 minutes, and the mixer does the work. 6-24 hours later, I preheat the oven, put the bread into a pot, and I bake it for 30 minutes. Then I take the lid off and bake it for 15 more minutes. Then I take it out of the pan. It’s hardly a soul-crushing commitment, and it’s cheaper, tastier, and healthier than most of the bread available at the store. Even I have my limits, but when there are entire cookbooks dedicated to Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes Per Day, maybe you should be picking a more onerous task to target with your ire, like, I don’t know, those crazies who use washrags instead of toilet paper. (I use the crappy recycled toilet paper, but I have toilet paper, dammit.)

The bottom line: they call it “radical” for a reason.  Just because you’re not willing to go whole-hog into the pioneer program doesn’t mean you can’t make a few changes that might be better for you and the planet. BUT, always, it’s worth remembering that just having the ability to choose these choices is an immense privilege, and even things others consider hobbies can be drudgery to people who have no choice. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a hunk of my soul-crushing homemade bread.

"Housewife Marjorie McWeeney w. broom amidst symbolic display of her week's housework at Bloomingdale's store incl. 35 beds to be made, 750 items of glass & china, 400 pieces of silverware to wash, 174 lbs. of food to prepare." 1947. Image via the Google LIFE Photo Archive.
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I’m picking on picky eaters

We all know picky eaters.  Carrie Bradshaw famously claimed to be allergic to parsley so as not to wind up with any on her plate at restaurants.  Sally Albright of “When Harry Met Sally” had the most anal way of ordering apple pie imaginable:

Sally Albright: But I’d like the pie heated and I don’t want the ice cream on top, I want it on the side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it, if not then no ice cream just whipped cream but only if it’s real; if it’s out of the can then nothing.
Waitress: Not even the pie?
Sally Albright: No, I want the pie, but then not heated.

When I read this paragraph at the opening of a Wall Street Journal piece about picky eaters, I immediately thought of a friend, an adult professional friend, with the palate of a four year old, subsisting on grilled cheese, chicken tenders, hot dogs, plain turkey sandwiches on white bread, and mac & cheese:

This is what Heather Hill eats: French fries, pasta with butter or marinara sauce, vegetarian pizza, cooked broccoli, corn on the cob and cakes and cookies without nuts.

And what she doesn’t eat? Pretty much anything else.

Ms. Hill is what you might call a picky eater. But she isn’t a child. She’s a 39-year-old mother of three who runs her own business in Raleigh, N.C. She says she is unable to eat other foods.

Unable? Is she allergic?

The piece seems to suggest that extreme pickiness that persists into adulthood may soon join anorexia and bulimia as an eating disorder. To my non-doctor mind, they have many similarities. I even have a theory that adults who are picky eaters, like my friend, have, at root, a control issue– they see food as a socially acceptable area in which to exert exacting control of a sort they are unwilling or unable to exert in other areas of their lives.  I also have other theories that they’re simply unwilling or too inhibited to experience true pleasure, but, like I said, I’m no medical or mental-health professional.

The thing is, I used to be a picky eater.  Hoo boy, I could gag on a green bean in a performance worthy of an Oscar.  I refused to eat bell peppers, because I thought they tasted like Windex.  I cried if faced with hominy.  I hated honey.  I hated asparagus and artichokes.  I could sniff out a mushroom a mile away in order to avoid it.  I despised poppy seeds.  I wouldn’t touch spinach or any other greens.  My husband, when he was still my boyfriend, used to keep a running Word document of all the things I didn’t like, marvelling in particular of my preference to only eat blueberries in pancakes, never muffins.

You could say I took after my Uncle Jimmy.  My Memaw loves to make broccoli-cheese rice casserole.  My entire family calls it “Goop,” even Memaw.  Why? Because, as a child, my Uncle Jimmy would always proclaim, “I’m not eating any of that goop!” about the casserole.  And then one day, left alone in a room with a dish full of Goop, he ate the whole thing.  Turns out, without pressure to like it and a desire to refuse, just to be a punk kid, it turns out he liked it after all.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that repeated attempts to try things I thought I hated eventually led to me liking them.  Bell peppers, it turns out, can be delicious.  I even eat them raw!  Green beans are one of my favorite veggies.  I love honey!  Wilted spinach with garlic is one of my favorite foods.  Blueberries, while still my least favorite of all berries, have become acceptable in cakes and muffins, though I’m still working on liking them in their more overwhelming form in cobblers and pies.  I will no longer avoid mushrooms if they’re part of an ensemble of other ingredients, though you’d not catch me ordering portobella fajitas just yet.  And I’ve been known to make a mean poppy seed lemon cake.

What changed? To some degree, it was learning to cook and discovering ways to prepare things in ways I could enjoy them.  Being a member of a CSA, in particular, challenged me to find at least one way I’ll eat any number of veggies, forcing me to find ways to make turnips, mustard greens, and rutabagas, among others, tolerable.  In addition, I just decided to be more adventurous, to see if I couldn’t embrace the adventure of trying new things and seeing if they were, in fact, pleasurable.  I stopped being so uptight and rigid about my food rules and found out most of them were stupid.

Having been a picky eater who’s now seen the light, I have little tolerance for truly picky adults.  While everyone will always have a few foods they just can’t groove on, people who have fewer foods they will eat than those they won’t will always drive me nuts.  My husband hates corned beef and he hates olives.  I still haven’t learned to like the taste of beer or avocado, though I keep trying, and I’ve got some progress to make yet on blueberries and mushrooms.  But I’m determined to keep trying things I think I don’t like, because I never know when I’ll be surprised.  The world is too full of deliciousness to spend my life hemming myself in with silly rules.

As for the extremely picky folks in the Wall Street Journal piece: in a way I pity them, because they’re really missing out.  And I hope they never come over to my house for dinner.

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eating, praying, and loving myself

One of the new and exciting developments in my new life in Little Rock is that I’ve joined a book club.  I’ve wanted to join a book club for years, and I’m so excited to have finally found one.  As I discovered taking my free grad classes in English while working at The College, I believe sitting around talking about books is one of my most favorite activities in all the world.

The first book I’m reading with this book club is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  To be honest, I did not expect to like this book.  I’m not even really sure why, because, as you can tell by the subject matter I most often write about, Eating and Prayer (or God) are two of my favorite things to think about, talk about, and write about.  I think I maybe expected Elizabeth Gilbert to be more insufferable? I mean, someone who gets paid an advance to travel around the world eating amazing food in Italy and studying Yoga in India has to be a little insufferable, right?

But, just like my discovery with Julie and Julia, namely, that I AM Julie, I’m finding I really identify with Elizabeth Gilbert.  I feel like her neuroses are my neuroses, like her passions are my passions, like her search is my search.  And then I got to Chapter 64, and I literally read the whole thing out loud to Jon, asking him if, perhaps, it sounded familiar to him.

Gilbert, like many writers, is a talker.  And at this point in the story, several weeks into her time studying Yoga at an Ashram in India, she’s decided that maybe she should try to be That Quiet Girl, because obviously, the truly spiritual and devout are the mystically silent types.

Oh boy, oh boy, have I been here.  In the beginning of my time in Charleston, I found myself part of a Christian Bible study group made up of women married to doctors and residents and medical students.  And, with a few exceptions, I did NOT fit in with these women.  For one thing, they were all a good 5 years older than I, and most were stay-at-home moms with multiple children whom they often got together for play-groups.  Even if I hadn’t had a day-job, what was I going to do, bring my dog and have her lick their children in the face?  How was I ever going to make it to their book club on weekday afternoons, either?

For another, they were Good Christian Wives of the Proverbs 31 Woman variety.  I, on the other hand, am clearly a crazed Feminist harpy who must, to their minds, make her man miserable.  I remember quite vividly one exchange, in which another member of the group confessed that her husband had taken to making strange statements like, “You know, WE should really clean these floors” or “You know, WE should really clean up the kitchen.”  This young wife was worried about these statements, and unsure of what to do.  The general consensus from the rest of the group was that, obviously, she should clean the floors and tidy up the kitchen, because these things were bothering her husband, and she should serve him by taking care of these things.  My response? “Have you asked him what he means when he says these things? Does he know where you keep the broom? Did you hide the cleaning supplies? This all sounds awfully passive aggressive of him and you should tell him so! If the floor really bugs him, maybe he should clean it!” They looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.  Apparently, my usual approach of asking my husband what he means when he says strange things and then sharing with him how those things make me feel is considered un-Proverbs-31 or something.

I’m not even sure what it was that caused me to leave Bible Study in tears another night and come home and sob to Jon about how maybe I was just the wrong kind of person for that group.  I’m pretty sure it had something to do with another member of the group riding me really hard about wanting to reschedule an event when I’d just lost my job that week.  But I did, I came home and sobbed and told Jon how I felt like none of these women liked me, and how I felt like I couldn’t be myself around them, and how I felt like I was constantly judged.  I asked him if he thought I needed to be some sort of Good Christian Wife.  He hugged me and held me and assured me that I am loved for who I am, and that he’d really be upset if I turned into some sort of subservient wifebot.

Later, I confessed to a fellow member of the group that I was thinking of leaving the group because I just didn’t fit in.  She invited me over to her house for lunch.  Little did I know that this lunch was a pretext for giving me a speech about how Jesus wanted to make me a quieter, gentler, meeker, more wifely sort of person.  Basically, she thought Jesus wanted to give me a lobotomy.  I’m pretty sure I was quiet and meek that day, but it’s because I was stunned into silence.  Here I was hoping this woman had invited me over to let me know I am liked for who I am, and she basically tells me I need to completely change my personality in order to really be a Christian.  I didn’t go back to the group after that.

So, back to Elizabeth Gilbert in India—she’s decided that she needs to try to become That Quiet Girl, but on the very day she makes this decision, she receives a new assignment at her Ashram to be a kind of hostess for visiting groups, a job that actually requires her to be a regular Chatty Cathy.  In fact, she realizes, her personality is basically required for this job.  Gilbert writes:

“If there is one holy truth of this Yoga [it is that] God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are.  God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person behaves.  We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality…To know God, you need only to renounce one thing—your sense of division from God.  Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” (192)

Yes! My personality is not some sort of flaw. Neither is yours!  God, if God’s creation is any indication, is a fan of variety.  I can only imagine that there are so many species of birds and plants and animals and even varieties of people because our creative God delighted in creating them.  God desires an intimate relationship with ME, as I was made to be, not as I imagine God might like me better, because the truth is, God couldn’t love me any deeper.  And rather than break my back (and my heart) trying to conform to some narrow idea of what a godly woman looks like, I should instead look for ways my unique traits can be used in the service and blessing of others and the world, just like Gilbert found a role as a hostess at the Ashram.

Still, Gilbert does point out that there are ways to grow into a better, more spiritual person while still being accepting of who she was created to be.  Part of it rang especially true to me:

“Or here’s a radical concept—maybe I can stop interrupting others when they are speaking.  Because no matter how creatively I try to look at my habit of interrupting, I can’t find another way to see it than this: ‘I believe that what I am saying is more important than what you are saying.’ And I can’t find another way to see that than: ‘I believe that I am more important than you.’ And that must end.” (193)

Not interrupting others is something I’ve been working on for a while.  It’s something I’ll likely be working on for a long while to come.  It’s a way I can hone the shape of me while still respecting the basic outlines of my design.  It’s like sanding my rougher edges without obliterating the sculpture altogether, because I’m a work of divine art.

I look forward to finishing Gilbert’s book, and I can’t wait to discuss it in book club next week.  Here’s hoping they like me the way I am.  I’ll do my best not to interrupt anyone during the discussion.

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I’m back! Sorta!

As you notice below: I’m posting to this blog again!

We’ve moved from South Carolina to Little Rock, Arkansas. We’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel of boxes.  Jon’s already working. The dogs are finding new napping spots and interesting things to bark at, including the elderly basset hound next door and the cat who seems to belong to the neighborhood– we hear her name is Princess– and the Highland Cow hide our neighbor has hanging over our fence, looking like the pelt of Chewbacca.

Posting may still not be regular, as the internet won’t be hooked up at our house until the 12th and for some reason, all of our neighbors have password-protected networks.  Right now I’m posting from a Starbucks. I came here for the free wi-fi to apply for a job with a very cool nonprofit (fingers crossed), and decided to post that rambling thing below about Independence Day, which I wrote sort of for myself this morning but decided to go ahead and publish.

I’ve missed you, Internets!

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celebrating independence day?

Image: And Justice for All -- Pledge of Allegiance 5-9-09, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from stevendepolo's photostream

Happy Independence Day!

I am conflicted about this holiday.  I love the United States of America.  As a student of history and politics, I truly believe our democracy is the best political system in the world, even though I also know it can be deeply dysfunctional and destructive, and is always in need of reform.  I believe a major reason our nation is great is that we are a nation of immigrants, a melting pot, where variety adds to the beauty and strength of our people, though I question how we can celebrate that history even as our people fear monger about our neighbors to the south who desire a better life in our country.  And I also know that we are still not great at living side by side as a diverse nation.  I know that our past and our present bear the stain of hatred and cruelty and violence and oppression.  I know that institutionalized racism and sexism continue to this day, that our Founders were not perfect men, but rather falliable humans who created an imperfect document in our Constitution, great as it is, because they denied the full personhood of nonwhites and nonmales.  I know that the American Dream is all but impossible for many who are born here and even more who are not.  I know that much cruelty and violence and oppression have been carried out in the world in the name of American values, and I abhor all war and violence.

I think my discomfort with this very American holiday comes mostly from my love of Jesus.  I’m reminded of a Derek Webb song called “A King and a Kingdom.” (Well, actually, I’m reminded of more than a few Derek Webb songs today, including “My Enemies are Men Like Me”.)  “A King and a Kingdom” includes the line “My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man. My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood. It’s to a King and a Kingdom.”  On a day when so many churches will be singing patriotic songs and waving American flags, we need prophetic voices like Derek’s reminding us that we are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom of God.  That we are first and foremost servants of the God who is Love, and, as I read in a piece by Shane Claibourne on the Huffington Post today: “Love is infinitely boundless and all about holy trespassing and offensive friendships.”

The God we love and serve is no respecter of boundaries or borders or citizenship or anything that separates His beloved children from Him and from each other.  He doesn’t bless one nation to the detriment of another, but, as the Bible says, sends rain (a very good thing) to both the righteous and the unrighteous—God longs to bless and love each and every one of us.  I’m reminded of one of my favorite bumper stickers from one of my favorite singer-songwriters, David LaMotte: “God bless the people of EVERY nation.”  It’s what I say to myself when I hear others say “God bless America.”

I’m sure most people who say “God bless America,” don’t mean “God bless us and not others.” Or, “God bless us, and curse our enemies.”  But to me, it’s a statement that is fundamentally exclusive of most of the people whom God loves very deeply, and it’s a statement I’m just not comfortable making.  We are already so amazingly, lavishly, almost disgustingly blessed.  I know some have amended “God bless America” to “America bless God.”  I think I would amend it further: “America, be a blessing to the world.”  That is my prayer today.  I pray it would be on my heart always.  Much like God’s covenant with Israel, to bless them that they might be a blessing to the world; much like Spiderman’s theology of “with great power comes great responsibility,” I think Americans have been given so much that they might give it away.  I strive to live that out, but I need to try harder.  I need to declare independence from consumerism and materialism, so that I might turn from my own selfishness and be more of a blessing to others.

And I’m sure if my more conservative friends could read this, they’d think I’m a “typical liberal” who “wants America to fail” or who is “ashamed of her country” or part of the “blame America first crowd.”  Maybe that’s all true.  I will say that I know that in no other country in the world would I be who I am.  In no other country in the world would I have the opportunities I have had.  And for this I am grateful.  But I do not believe these things come from my country, or my government.  I believe these things come from God.  And I believe God wants good things for all God’s people, whatever nation they may call their earthly home.

So today, I will go down by a river, sit on a blanket, hear a symphony play Sousa marches, and sing along with patriotic songs.  I will watch fireworks exploding in the night sky.  And I will be thankful to have grown up in a country where I am free to love Jesus and think critically and conscientiously object.  I will think of the beauty of our land and our people, and will pray that we may be better stewards of both.  I will dream of a day when we live up to our potential, because we have so very much.  And I will pray, “God bless us, everyone, all whom you love, stand beside us, and guide us, through the night with a light from above.”

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comics sans charleston

I decided to do a little retrospective on our three years in Charleston as we leave tomorrow to move to Little Rock.  What better way to do it than in comic book form?

We will miss Charleston very much, but we look forward to turning the page to another action packed adventure!

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this is just to say

This is just a quick post to say there might not be any posts for a while.  Saturday is move day, and it might be a while after we get settled in before I can resume posting.  Please think happy thoughts and send up prayers for a smooth move, if you’re so inclined.

As a random bonus, I totally got this post’s title off a poem by William Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
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CSA: Charleston – ratatouille two ways and other fun

We are moving this Saturday, and will be picking up our last CSA box this afternoon.  We’ve arranged for friends to take over our boxes for the three weeks left in the season after we’re gone.  All of this means: this might be my last CSA post for a while, because who knows how long it will take us to get our internet hooked up in our new house.  Here’s what we did with last week’s goodies.  We gave away a good portion of it because we wanted to be able to eat at some of our favorite Charleston restaurants one last time, but I made some goodies with what we used!

  • 8 ears corn (gave away half)
  • 6 cucumbers
  • 4 slicing tomatoes
  • 1 bag cherry tomatoes
  • 4 bell peppers (gave away 2)
  • 3 yellow squash
  • 1 watermelon (ate at the beach)
  • 2 eggplants (gave away 1)
  • 1 bag green beans (gave away half)
  • 3 pattypan squash
  • 7 banana peppers (Jon ate 2 raw)
  • 1 bag potatoes (gave away half)

I confess I forgot to write down which days we ate what, so I’ll just write up each meal.

Meal 1: Ratatouille Pizzas

Inspired by the Smitten Kitchen’s ratatouille tart, I decided to make a ratatouille pizza.  I made a double recipe of crust before work using this recipe:

  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat bread flour
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • salt
  • 2 packets yeast
  • 1 1/3 cup warm water
  1. Mix flours in bowl with 2 T salt and the oil.
  2. Stir yeast into warm water.
  3. Using dough hooks on mixer, pour yeasty water into flour while dough hooks are moving.
  4. Let rise at least 1 hour, preferably all day.
  5. Separate into two balls and stretch each ball across a baking sheet.

Then I topped each pizza crust with some leftover tomato sauce I’d made and frozen using this super easy recipe from the Smitten Kitchen (I’m a bit of a fangirl).

Next up: time to slice these babies up!

Then I arranged the slices on top of the sauce, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, sprinkled with herbes de provence, and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.  I baked the pizzas for 20 minutes each at 450.  They came out delicious!

Meal 2: Ratatouille with poached eggs over couscous

After the pizza, I still had a gallon bag full of sliced squash, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers.  I also had half of my tomato sauce leftover.  So I decided to try a baked version of ratatouille following this Smitten Kitchen recipe for Ratatouille’s ratatouille, inspired by the Pixar film.  Mine wasn’t as pretty as Smitten’s, but I don’t have a mandoline for fancy slicing, so I think I did pretty well with just my knife!

I decided to serve my ratatouille over couscous with a poached egg on top.  Considering I’d never poached an egg before, and considering I’m still getting over an aversion to runny yolks, I think my poached eggs came out pretty darn well!  It was an absolutely delicious meal. and we still can’t decide if we liked the ratatouille pizza or the ratatouille with poached egg and couscous better!

If I were a real food blogger, I'd have a photo of the yolk oozing out of the poached egg. Lesson learned.

Meal 3: Smoky corn chowder and Greek cucumber salad

I made a smoky corn chowder with the corn using this Real Simple recipe, which I’m a big fan of.  I’m an even bigger fan of it now that I have an immersion blender– the first time I tried the recipe, I had to use a blender, which resulted in a molten corn chowder volcano.  An immersion blender is really a must-have for creamy soups, and it’s also crucial to the tomato sauce I mentioned above.

To go with the chowder, I decided to go Greek with the cucumbers and slicing tomatoes.  I chopped them into bite-size chunks and tossed them with a dressing made with the following recipe:

Whirl the following in a food processor:

  • 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 1 cup Greek yogurt
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped finely
  • 2 sprigs oregano (any herb fresh from the garden would work!)
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. ground coriander
  • 2 dashes hot sauce

The resulting salad was delicious, and the smoky cumin in the sauce went well with the smoked paprika in the soup.

Meal 4: Nicoise salad with pesto

To use up the last of the veggies, I adapted two recipes to make a nicoise salad with a pesto dressing.  I always have good pesto on hand, because my mom makes her own with home-grown pesto, and, even if I have to pack it on ice in a cooler, I always bring home a jar or two after a visit.

I boiled four eggs and let them cool.  I chopped the potatoes and the green beans into bite-size pieces, then boiled the potatoes for 10 minutes, then added the green beans to the pot and boiled both together for 5 more minutes.  Then I drained the potatoes and green beans and rinsed with cold water to cool.  I cut the cherry tomatoes in half and tossed all the ingredients in a bowl with a can of tuna and a can of garbanzo beans (both drained) (not traditional, but I wanted to use them up before the move).  Then I dressed the salad using a mixture of pesto, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper.  Yum!

Meal 5: Pattypan scramble

One morning when I was home alone, I fried up some bacon, sauteed the pattypan squash in the drippings, and then scrambled them with eggs, mozzarella cheese (it’s what I had), oregano (it’s what I grow in my front yard), and the bacon.  A yummy brunch!

After all those meals, you need dessert: Key Lime Coconut Cake

I’m not kidding about my Smitten Kitchen fangirldom.  I went looking for a recipe to use up some coconut before the move, and I found this Key Lime Coconut Cake recipe.  Whaddaya know? I had limes too! I was so excited about this cake, only to be devastated when It got half stuck in the pan and crumbled into a big mess.  I tried again, this time buttering and flouring the pan instead of following the instructions to butter it and place parchment paper in the bottom, and this time it came out great.  A great summer cake.  I have a feeling I’ll be experimenting with the recipe, maybe trying to turn it into cupcakes or a layer cake.

And there you have another week of fresh local eats!

Bonus: restaurant reviews

When not eating delicious food at home, we ate out a lot! One night we ate at FIG, one of our favorite Charleston restaurants (seriously, a must-visit if you come here).  Another night, we rounded up a whole gang of friends in search of a seafood feast.  We had planned to hit up our favorite, Bowen’s Island, a true experience and a must-visit if you’re in Charleston for oyster season (any month that has an “R” in it), but Bowen’s was closed for a private party.  So we ended up trying the Sand Castle, a seafood joint on Folly that we’d never visited before.  I was sold when I saw that they had fried softshell crab and $3.25 pinot grigio, and Jon got a seafood feast which featured fried flounder, shrimp, oysters, and deviled crab.  Saturday we hit up Red’s Ice House with a bunch of friends.  Red’s has miles of deck space overlooking Shem Creek, and my one goal was a giant pina colada, a goal I achieved.  We also spotted a guy paddle boarding with his DOG on board, and were amazed at the dog’s steady, calm pose aboard the surfboard.  Just another great night in Charleston! I’m going to miss this place!

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enjoying the world cup? check out the homeless world cup!

I’m really enjoying the World Cup.  As I type, I’m watching Argentina play Korea.  I’m not an athlete, but soccer is one of my most favorite sports to watch, because the action is constant and the rules, once you understand the whole “offsides thing” are pretty easy to understand.  I just read a Don Miller post about whether or not soccer is the unifying “beautiful game” its fans say it is.  Don says no.  But I suspect he hasn’t seen a film I’ve seen.  That film is “Kicking It” and it’s about the Homeless World Cup.  You can check it out now on Netflix instant streaming.  I reviewed it this time last year, and thought I’d repost that review in honor of the World Cup:

The other night, Jon and I Netflixed a really great documentary called “Kicking It,” which is about the Homeless World Cup. It was a great film, focused on six individual players from different countries as they make their way onto teams and to South Africa to play soccer.

At first, it may seem like a strange form of outreach, forming soccer teams of homeless people. I mean, aren’t there other, more concrete things they need beyond a recreational activity? But soccer is more powerful than it may seem. Just being on a team, having goals, getting to celebrate small successes is a new experience for many of the players, who are often lonely outcasts, estranged from family, battling addictions. One player from Ireland was attempting to end a heroin addiction, and being on the soccer team in essence gave him a reason to keep living, a reason for his mother to finally be proud of him, a reason to get clean. Another player from America had been abused and rejected by his family, and was dealing with lots of anger and abandonment issues, but being on a team was sort of his first experience in a functioning “family,” one that expected him to deal with his anger in more appropriate ways. Continue reading “enjoying the world cup? check out the homeless world cup!”

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boycotting BP?

Image: "Boycott BP", a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from rustyboxcars's photostream

Pretty much everyone is REALLY ANGRY about the ongoing BP oil volcano deep in the Gulf of Mexico.  I’m angry too.  But when lots of people start calling for a boycott of BP, I get off the boat. Or oil rig. Or whatever.  Boycotting BP just won’t work.

For one thing, oil is a commodity.  It’s bought and sold on a worldwide market, with production and prices determined for all of it by cartels like OPEC.  So long as we’re buying gas from *someone*, prices will stay the same, and BP will still be making profits, because you’re never going to get enough people to boycott one gas provider to really hurt their bottom line.

Not to mention, if you refuse to shop at a BP station, you’re probably not hurting BP at all, but rather a small business owner who owns the franchise, since BP doesn’t own most BP stations.  And if you get your gas at a Kroger or a Costco, you just might be buying BP gas anyway.  And you’re going to have to avoid products from BP subsidiaries like Castrol and Wild Bean Cafe.

For another thing, as this excellent Newsweek piece points out, ALL of the oil companies are pretty deplorable.  If you don’t give your money to BP, who are you going to give it to? Exxon, who dumped a bunch of oil on Alaska during the Valdez oil spill and still hasn’t finished paying for all the damages?   Texaco/Chevron, who are accused of dumping toxic waste into the Ecuadorian rainforests? Citgo, whose profits prop up a Venezuelan dictator?  Shell, who are accused of supporting human rights abuses and of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta (40% of the US’s oil imports come from Nigeria, where more oil is spilled by the likes of Shell and ExxonMobil every year than has been spilled at BP’s Deepwater Horizon)?  The piece makes pretty clear, there is no “better” oil company to support.

However, the Newsweek piece also says:

The only way to make this the last oil spill in the gulf is to make oil obsolete. Shall we all hop on our bicycles, charge our plug-in hybrids with wind-generated electricity, swap out the heating oil or natural gas warming our homes for geothermal wells and passive solar?

Didn’t think so.

Why not?

Why can’t we all hop on our bicycles more often? Via the League of American Bicyclists:

According to the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, 25 percent of all trips are made within a mile of the home, 40 percent of all trips are within two miles of the home, and 50 percent of the working population commutes five miles or less to work. Yet more than 82 percent of trips five miles or less are made by personal motor vehicle.

I’ll tell you what– I’m mad about the BP oil spill, and I’m not just going to talk the talk, I’m going to walk the walk. I have a bicycle, but I haven’t been riding it to the store like I know I should, as someone concerned about climate change. Rather than boycotting BP, I’m going to ride my bike if I go to the grocery store this week. Even though it’s hot. Even though it’s hard. Even though I’d really rather not.  And I’m willing to bet there’s a few trips you could make on foot or by bicycle this week, too.

I really just don’t get where Newsweek gets off pooh-pooh-ing what could be a real solution to the problem of our country being held hostage to deplorable companies like BP just because we’re junkies who need our fix of what they’re selling.  If, as this amazing infographic suggests, 71% of our oil goes to transportation, and, as mentioned above, most of our trips are within five miles of our homes, we could seriously cut our oil consumption AND seriously cut companies like BP’s profits if we just hopped on our bikes, walked, or rode public transit for short trips.  It may not be as easy as boycotting BP, but it would go a much longer way toward actually hurting BP’s bottom line.

Sure, we need to lobby the government to more seriously regulate oil companies.  We need to recognize that offshore drilling, with the catastrophic risks that go along with it, is just not worth it, as the same infographic points out that the US generates about 1.5 million barrels of oil each YEAR through offshore drilling but consumes 19.5 million barrels of oil per DAY. (I’d do the math and tell you what percentage of our total oil consumption comes from domestic offshore drilling, but I majored in English, so I don’t know how to do that.)  We need to shift our economy away from petroleum as our primary fuel source.  But the only way for any of that to work is if we each and every one of us seriously cut our fuel consumption.  And to do that, yes, Newsweek, we shall all have to hop on our bicycles and start walking more.  Maybe then we can use the money we’re saving on gas to get solar panels on our roofs and buy plug-in hybrids and invest in geothermal heating.