miscelany

this month i have made:

• enough jam to last ~9 months (we love our jam around here so i'm counting on needing about a litre a month. but this is the world's best jam so we might finish it by halloween) (pics pending)

• this hat: the intended recipent, my brother in law, has a truly tremendous cranium. gigantic. so i meant to make the hat bigger than the pattern suggested. but i'm not the world's greatest knitter, it turns out. so it fits the boy. i guess my little dude gets to wear an extra-cool toque this winter.

• these socks. rather, i finished one and knit the other. it was a sock swap. kara (the best person in florida, possibly the southern states) knit me a beautiful pink sock, then sent me the pattern, the yarn and the one sock. i was to knit the other. but i was short a little yarn so i took the yarn from the first sock's toe to finish the second sock, then gave them matching white toes. it looks like i meant to do it.

• my garden has flourished. the tomatoes are almost ready and i think i have a hot pepper (i'm giving it a few more days but i could pick it now if i wanted) so today i got my first fruits: i thinned the beets. there's a scarce handful here, so i took a close-up so they look bigger. then i added a couple of carrots and some garlic and sauted them in soy & sesame oil. then i added in a shiitake mushroom and some water, then some miso. and a bit of cayenne. and it's delish. mmmm.

and the boy told his first mom joke the other day. he was touching me with a frozen water bottle and i was shrieking dramatically and jumping around.
me: aaaah! it's cold!
my 2 year old: your mom's cold!
i almost died of pride, right there. also my baby started walking, but that milestone seems small compared to the awesomeness of starting telling mom jokes.

now i'm going away for a few days. tata!

book review: the omnivore's dilemma

the omnivore's dilemma by michael pollan is my kind of book. i don't think my mom would like it at all (she doesn't like being questioned on the ethics of her choices) and not my dad's kind of book (no gun fights or intrigue) but i suspect that barbara kingsolver, david suzuki and i all deeply enjoyed the omnivore's dilemma.

the book traces four meals to their sources. a meal from mcdonald's, a meal from whole foods (an american organic/ natural grocery chain) a meal from polyface farm (only sells locally, all organic) and a meal that the author hunted, foraged and grew himself.

a book this informative can't help but have some dry parts. pollan writes clearly and eloquently, but on occasion he goes on for too long. i found 90% of the book fascinating, exciting and inspirational. some of the information he had on factory farms, corporate policies, environmental impacts, agricultural techniques and so on blew my socks off. this isn't stuff you'll find advertised on the walls of your local burger king. it's alarming, troublesome and incites both thought and change.

if you want to eat more ethically and tread more lightly, this is the book for you. one warning, though: you can't read it while eating at mcdonald's. (i had to leave it at home and take my knitting instead. but seriously, why doesn't a more ethical eatery have a playplace? i only go there so my kid can run around without too much supervision and i can enjoy the air conditioning. someone please start a local, organic restaurant with a playplace and a/c. near my house. thankyou.)