I can’t believe I didn’t write (not even) one post about The Dude Sweater that I made for Justin a while back. I mean, this was an epic project that I had planned as a freaking Halloween costume gag, but ended up taking me two years, and now I just ripped it all back to…
Category: life
This has been maybe the most fun, most exciting, severely delicious experiment we’ve done so far. I. Am. Hooked. So a few weeks ago, we made Ginger Ale. While that was delicious and 100% worth doing again, we wanted to try for a root beer. We worked with what we had on hand at the…
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Ginger “Ale”
Through the pandemic, one of my nephews has caught fermenting fever and has inadvertently rekindled my counter-culture adventures. It has been great fun comparing notes! He calls this drink ginger beer, but I have always called it ginger ale; he might be right, though. According to “the googs,” ginger ale is just ginger syrup with…
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More Pickles
As is custom to this time of year, we are beginning to pickle just about everything. This time it’s the pepperoncini and mouse melons we grew at home. Most of the peppers we grow were started from seed right here at home, but not the pepperoncini. I suppose that’s why I’m already able to harvest…
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Kitchen Garden
The little cottage garden is starting to really come together. Justin & I have been collecting our pistachio & peanut shells since September. Originally, I had planned to use them as mulch for the garden beds, but then when I realized that the mulch for the ground around the sideyard area was worn and thin,…
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Potholes & Whole30 Sushi
Ugh, so today was such a weird (but overall good) day. On my way to tap class last night, I hit an enormous, unavoidable pothole on 95N (right in front of the mall); it ate my hubcap and bent my rim. I didn’t notice the rim was bent until this morning; in fact, I hadn’t…
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My favorite.
I woke up this morning in my own bed, half slanted to the right and thinking about how we need to fix that bed leg that we broke before we left for California. I lifted myself out of bed to find myself in front of the bathroom mirror; my hair reflects relative humidity and pillow-drying,…
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May project: The Veganing
Introduction As our closest friends and family know already, Justin & I made the transition to full-on veganism at the first of the year. Over the past four months, we’ve tried all kinds of different products, recipes, and vegetables; some were excellent, but many either fell flat, or just weren’t very good. I think we both…
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Sewing Day Part One
It’s March First and it’s still snowing. I’d like to be as every other New Englander and complain about it, but I’m just done. Maybe we’re all done. It’s time to adjust to the “new normal” of cold, bitter snow and probably-forever winter weather. So I can’t go outside, and half of our things are…
There’s, like, eight feet of snow outside. We can’t even open the back door. I’ve been digging out the back door by harvesting snow to feed my carnivorous plants (they are fickle and don’t like city water). Meanwhile, INSIDE the apartment, it’s like some kind of freakshow blooming parade! An orchid that bloomed a couple weeks…
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The Storm Has Passed
Well, it is January, and we had a storm. It is New England, after all, and we’ve been pretty lucky with a reasonably warm winter thus far. I heard the total accumulation was only 18″ or something, but some of our drifts are waist-high, as you can see here: Really, it’s so pretty, that I’m…
I don’t like suburbia. It makes me sad with its sticky pavement under beige-and-smog backdrop. There is no joy in the suburbs, only heartache. Only traffic. Only box stores and styrofoam columns covered in a thin layer of peeling stucco. Only open- and closed-malls that carry the same things every other suburb carries: broken dreams…
It’s been an incredibly busy week so far, but we still made time for homemade grape juice. We had a bumper crop of Concord grapes at the community garden this year, so Justin & I were able to get just enough to make about a pint of grape juice without feeling too greedy. We brought the grapes…
Oh, what a week! We’ve got so many little projects going on, some food-related, many not. The sauerkraut is gurgling away; it has already expanded to the top of the jars. This is all pretty exciting. I’ve been brewing kefir like mad – even made some kefir cheese! I’m taking between a cup and a…
My bag of bags is finally finished! I used probably about 100 one-use plastic bags to make this multi use bag. It took about a month to make, but I wasn’t consistent in knitting time, just little by little. Also, I found that the little produce bags were the nicest to knit. Very silky. I…