fireworks

check out this short, and the others on their page. perfect post-graduation, post 22-hour trip home lazy day fun.

yes bri, i am in the middle of maus right now! it is awesome.

independence day

i have been talking over email with my mom lately about levels of dependence (financial, logistical, emotional) as a parenting strategy. where is the healthy level of support without fostering too much dependence?

in the spirit of my independence today, i was an ambitious dragon... i patched some holes in jeans on my own. i know my way around a sewing machine, but i usually still give jeans to my mom to patch. the thick seams are tricky, and she is so good at it.

it went okay. the thread broke many times though. maybe i'll go back a stepping stone of dependence and ask her to show me her technique next time.

other independent things i did:

transportation: biked to a meeting in uptown, then to franklin library to get my reserved books. i am turning to graphic novels and comics since they are easier on my relentless weird vision. i got books by art spiegelman and ariel shrag. they have the same initials. WHOA!

food: made chicken stock from frozen bits i'd been saving. this is the year of chicken progress!

like unambitious dragons

thesis finishing and spooky vision problems have kept me away from blogging.

but i won't let it stop me from sharing this video, "David Sedaris delivers a pizza"

chicken and may day

food experiment of the week... roasting chicken! i've been into the idea of roasting whole birds (and otherwise being involved in more steps of getting the food to my plate) to have more of a connection to the food, and save money. i also threw in some sweet potato, carrot and onion, in a bath of orange juice, honey, oil, cumin and garlic. mmmmm. and, now i'll have lots of bones and junk to make more stock! i froze the chicken scraps and will make stock after i save some more veggie scraps... should have been doing this all along!

other lesson learned: next time, roast veggies longer while carving chicken. or cut them smaller.













in other food news, i made more bread last weekend. this time i did the full recipe so it made 2 loaves. i froze one, and reheated it today. turns out reheating in the toaster oven was not a good idea - the top got a little burned. maybe next time i will make 3 or 4 smaller loaves. it is best in the first couple days anyway.



in other, non-food news.... drum roll please.... i'm going to be in the May Day parade!

A parent/board member and teacher at my school were interested in organizing some kind of action as a response to the recent killings of three young people, all transgender and of color.


Ideas of a march or other demonstration eventually turned into joining a part of the MayDay parade called Change of Heart, which urges us to take responsibility for making change in society.

Today I went to rehearsal for my section, along with 4 students and their families. Come see us next Sunday! (details)

We also did an anti-hate teach-in at school on Thursday. All the classes address the issue in an accessible way for the students - so the middle school students learned about these recent crimes and discussed the intersection of race, gender, and sexual identity issues, while in kindergarten and first grade we teamed up to read this beautiful book, talk about valuing all people, and decorate posters of a kid-friendly version I did of the Declaration of Human Responsibilities (which inspired our MayDay section) ... good guidelines for everyone! Here's the text of the posters:

We value everyone. Every person is important.

So, we should...
1) Treat everyone well (No matter how they look, dress or talk, where they come from, or what their family is like. Families are groups of people who love each other.)
2) Take care of each other
3) Not do things to other people that we would not like done to us
4) Respect life
5) Solve conflicts in a peaceful, non-violent way
6) Protect animals and the environment
7) Be fair and tell the truth
8) Do our best

UPDATE: Dinner of champions! (FYI... i take all these photos with my laptop, which is why they are on the weird side of lighting and framing... i am not trying to be artsy or anything.)

bread! bread! bread!

Today, I entered a new culinary terrain: yeast bread making! I rarely bake anything, held back by many obstacles: inability to keep a well stocked baking pantry, avoidance of dealing with the many unlabeled baggies of a few tablespoons of mystery bulk flours, and fear of baking in general - you can't just taste as you go, and there are many points of no return - rising too much, killing yeast, over-baking, etc.

My motivation to get into baking stems from 1) reading about Barbara Kingsolver's Friday night pizza tradition - simple! tasty! throw on whatever's in the fridge! have some wine! and 2) wanting to make bread for Youth Farm this summer.

A friend from school (who cooked for one of the other YF neighborhoods a few years ago) said she used the recipe from Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest as a base and made some improvised bread every day.


I stole the book from my mom, inventoried the flours, and was ready to rock this morning fueled by coffee and this season's best grapefruit. I made a few mistakes due to not carefully reading both the recipe and the illustrated breadmaking guide in the book, but nothing big.

Here's me and the loaf (I already cut off a slice but put in back in the pan for photo purposes,) and me and a slice (I still need to work on even slicing. Straight lines have always been tough for me.)




























It was tasty! Fresh baked bread is so great, even my novice efforts won't to too much of a hardship to eat as I get better with practice.

fish! fish! fish!

I've followed Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl (former City Pages critic) to Minnesota Monthly, and was pleased to see how many of her selections for No-Guilt Fish (that aren't "nearly extinct and terrifyingly toxic" like the ones all over the news) are available just a block from my house at Coastal Seafoods.

Some of you may remember that I am not a big fish eater ... but, I'm a willow, and I just may bend in the direction of some local fishies.

farm! farm! farm!

I am very excited to report that I'll be working as the summer chef at West Side Youth Farm and Market Project.

To celebrate, please enjoy this article about some other hipsters connecting sustainable farming to urbanites in another way. Check out the multimedia feature.