Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Just a bit further...

Knitting: Well, I'm still on the Knitpicks scarf. I think it's getting longer, but it's hard to tell. I need to figure out the minimum length for a scarf. Anyone know? I suppose at some point I'll run out of yarn and I can stop. I actually got rid of some yarn on eBay! But not all my auctions sold, so I've relisted with some new and exciting features like international shipping and accepting money orders. My auctions are here if you would like some lovely yarn that needs a good home with someone who has time to knit it instead of keeping it in a storage bin.

Reading: An Assembly Such As This. It's still okay. I think Ms. Aiden is trying to make Mr. Darcy more sympathetic by having him talk to his dog, and I'm not sure that's working for me.

Writing: Chapter 7. Ugh.

Cooking: I missed World Bread Day! Everyone in the world made bread yesterday except me. So, I threw the ingredients for Cinnamon Raisin Bread into the bread machine this morning to try to make up for it. I think I will make some kind of pumpkin muffin as well, since it's the season when I buy at least one can of pumpkin every time I go to the store, and it's starting to pile up. Pumpkin cranberry? Pumpkin chocolate chip? Yum!

Oh, I decided not to do the Eat Local Challenge over the summer, as I had morning sickness and needed to eat whatever I could actually keep down. I'm also not sure about how stringent I'm willing to be. Coffee, tea, cocoa--what hot drink would I switch to, exactly? Sugar--sure, local honey and maple syrup are already staples in our apartment, but they don't work for everything. Flour, legumes, tofu--there's some local flour available, but it's very expensive and limited. In addition, while I appreciate the reasons for eating local, we do live in a global economy where lots of foods are available, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that. Lots of food bloggers participated, and it was interesting to read the exceptions they made and the challenges they experienced. A few made no exceptions to the Eat Local rule (the definition of local varied among participants, but a common rule was food grown within 100 miles of your house), but that seemed a little silly to me--not a long term solution, surely. You're really NEVER going to have another banana? And I'm from California and unwilling to give up foods I grew up eating and adore, like avocados, artichokes, citrus, almonds, pistachios (loads of nuts, really). But I decided to start buying as much of my produce as possible from my farmer's market, in a sort of free-form mini-challenge. We went to the grocery store yesterday and bought hardly anything from the produce section! I'm getting much better at this. I've discovered the wonders of local apples in season (I'm not sure I'd be able to go back to grocery store apples again), and I get really excited when something's available at the market for the first time this season. It'll be harder during the winter, I think, but we still have a weekly market all winter (during summer, it's twice a week), so I'll see how I do. If we had a bigger kitchen, I think I'd be all about the freezing (and I REALLY want to get into canning/preserving, but I just don't have room here to store stuff). At any rate, I'll post occasional updates on this whole eating local thing, even though I'm really not participating.

4 comments:

YarnThrower said...

Your comments about eating locally are interesting. My dh and I have talked some about that, but aside from joining a CSA last summer and being more intentional about buying from the farmers' markets this summer, we haven't done a whole lot with it. There's the clasen's bread which I love, and some veggies...but that's about it. Anyway, I learn so much about foods when I read your blog. Thanks for sharing that content!

Stefaneener said...

This would be an interesting conversation to have about food. I think eating shipped food that doesn't need refrigeration (nuts, for example) is probably more defensible than, sorry to say, something like lettuce. Or maybe even bananas.

Anyhow, go scarf. Isn't it nice to get over morning sickness?

Hee - my code word to leave this is "fmpreg." Like there's an AM version?

Marie said...

I am so tempted by the Zephyr but I must not buy any more yarn (festivals exempted, of course). Sigh. Have you read the series of Jane Austen mystery novel by Stephanie Barron? The writing is not bad. I am currently reading the second one and am quite enjoying it.

Rain said...

We try to eat local produce from a farm shop when we can, but I agree with you on the limitaions of it.

Hang in there with the scarf. I don't think there's a minimum length as such, just keep going until you feel happy with how it hangs.

Hope the morning sickness goes away.