There's a peacock on my front step! (This pic is from a while ago, but I thought y'all might like it)
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Cooking
Recently, I have been cooking a great deal. I think the main reason for this is that I just moved into an apartment that has a GIANT kitchen, and I’m a little bit in love with it. Also, I now live by myself, and still don’t have all that many friends. I’m kind of sick-and-tired of asking people to hike, bike, visit a neighboring town or whatever else over the weekend, and having them tell me that they are much too busy taking care of their potted plant to have any time to hang out with me. WHERE ARE ALL THE ADVENTURE-LOVING PEOPLE THAT LIVE IN COLORADO!? I know where one of them is, though, and she’s moving in with me in 2 weeks! I cannot wait.
So anyway, cooking is fun in a big (mostly) clean kitchen, it kills time that I have over the weekend, and also, its pretty healthy. At least I know what all the things I put into MY mac-n-cheese, unlike in Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese which has “non-animal enzymes” and “organic annatto extract”. And that’s probably nothing compared to what is in Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. But I digress. So, I recently read Drop Dead Healthy, by A.J. Jacobs, one of my favorite authors. It is about his quest to be the healthiest person alive. The most interesting part to me was when he tried a bunch of different diets. The Paleo diet, and raw food diet, and so on and so forth. I started thinking about how what I eat affects me, and thought that maybe I should be more careful about what I eat. My old roommate was on the Paleo diet for a while, only eating things that people could have hunted and gathered. She ate mostly green vegetables (she couldn’t eat any starchy veggies for a whole other reason), lots of meat, and some nuts and seeds. Being around all this extremely healthy eating definitely made me examine my own diet.
I’ve always thought that I ate pretty healthily. Especially since I get paid next to nothing, I hardly ever buy potato chips or ice cream or anything like that. When I’m hungry in between meals I eat trail mix or a piece of fruit, or a muffin. When I crave sugar, I usually bake myself a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and that’s it. When I started to pay attention to how what I ate made me feel, though, I noticed that when I ate mostly raw veggies in salads, that is when I felt the best. The less processed my foods were, the better I felt. So, I’ve started to change what I eat.
First: I eat a lot of salad. Spring is here and I work on ranch that grows lettuce I can eat for free, so I have no excuse.
Second: I avoid eating so much wheat and corn. That is such a large part of the American Diet today, and I’m pretty sure the key to health is “everything in moderation” and to have a diverse diet. So I don’t eat sandwiches so much, or bagels (sadness, I love bagels), and cheerios are no longer a staple in my diet.
Third: I cut back on dairy. It is true that we, as humans, weren’t really designed to eat lots of dairy. I still eat yogurt and a little bit of cheese, but I try to keep it way down now. I can’t wait for our goat to start being milked, so that I can diversify my diet with goat yogurt and cheese.
Fourth: I try not to eat so much sugar, and this even means fruit. I sure do love eating yogurt, fruit and granola in the morning, but I’m going to try to cut back. Ranch eggs are a really good morning food, especially paired with some spinach. I heard somewhere that bananas aren’t the best fruit to be eating, and having run cross-country for 7 years of my life, this makes me very sad. I don’t know if I’ll be able to cut bananas out right away.
Fifth: Legumes. I’ve started eating way more legumes and way less meat. The meat thing is partially for health, partially because I’ve participated in the “harvest” of a number of animals, and I have seen how they lived. Chickens, even when they live in a flock of 80 with all the space they could want, are still very gross. They are dirty animals, and can become carnivorous. Yup - carnivorous. So I can’t imagine what kind of a life a store-bought chicken had. The only kind of meat I don’t have too much problem eating is rabbit. We raise rabbit on the ranch – they’re clean, they eat exclusively grass and hay, drink water, and are even easy to gut and clean.
All this having been said, don’t expect to find me eating salad for every meal of the day, and refusing to eat out or with friends because of the above guidelines I gave myself. I think that the kind of community formed around a grill or kitchen table is way healthier that following any dietary rules could ever be. I’ll try to follow my own guide, but I’ve never been one to care too much about what I eat, so we’ll see how this goes. So, salad-filled summer, here I come!!
So anyway, cooking is fun in a big (mostly) clean kitchen, it kills time that I have over the weekend, and also, its pretty healthy. At least I know what all the things I put into MY mac-n-cheese, unlike in Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese which has “non-animal enzymes” and “organic annatto extract”. And that’s probably nothing compared to what is in Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. But I digress. So, I recently read Drop Dead Healthy, by A.J. Jacobs, one of my favorite authors. It is about his quest to be the healthiest person alive. The most interesting part to me was when he tried a bunch of different diets. The Paleo diet, and raw food diet, and so on and so forth. I started thinking about how what I eat affects me, and thought that maybe I should be more careful about what I eat. My old roommate was on the Paleo diet for a while, only eating things that people could have hunted and gathered. She ate mostly green vegetables (she couldn’t eat any starchy veggies for a whole other reason), lots of meat, and some nuts and seeds. Being around all this extremely healthy eating definitely made me examine my own diet.
I’ve always thought that I ate pretty healthily. Especially since I get paid next to nothing, I hardly ever buy potato chips or ice cream or anything like that. When I’m hungry in between meals I eat trail mix or a piece of fruit, or a muffin. When I crave sugar, I usually bake myself a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and that’s it. When I started to pay attention to how what I ate made me feel, though, I noticed that when I ate mostly raw veggies in salads, that is when I felt the best. The less processed my foods were, the better I felt. So, I’ve started to change what I eat.
First: I eat a lot of salad. Spring is here and I work on ranch that grows lettuce I can eat for free, so I have no excuse.
Second: I avoid eating so much wheat and corn. That is such a large part of the American Diet today, and I’m pretty sure the key to health is “everything in moderation” and to have a diverse diet. So I don’t eat sandwiches so much, or bagels (sadness, I love bagels), and cheerios are no longer a staple in my diet.
Third: I cut back on dairy. It is true that we, as humans, weren’t really designed to eat lots of dairy. I still eat yogurt and a little bit of cheese, but I try to keep it way down now. I can’t wait for our goat to start being milked, so that I can diversify my diet with goat yogurt and cheese.
Fourth: I try not to eat so much sugar, and this even means fruit. I sure do love eating yogurt, fruit and granola in the morning, but I’m going to try to cut back. Ranch eggs are a really good morning food, especially paired with some spinach. I heard somewhere that bananas aren’t the best fruit to be eating, and having run cross-country for 7 years of my life, this makes me very sad. I don’t know if I’ll be able to cut bananas out right away.
Fifth: Legumes. I’ve started eating way more legumes and way less meat. The meat thing is partially for health, partially because I’ve participated in the “harvest” of a number of animals, and I have seen how they lived. Chickens, even when they live in a flock of 80 with all the space they could want, are still very gross. They are dirty animals, and can become carnivorous. Yup - carnivorous. So I can’t imagine what kind of a life a store-bought chicken had. The only kind of meat I don’t have too much problem eating is rabbit. We raise rabbit on the ranch – they’re clean, they eat exclusively grass and hay, drink water, and are even easy to gut and clean.
All this having been said, don’t expect to find me eating salad for every meal of the day, and refusing to eat out or with friends because of the above guidelines I gave myself. I think that the kind of community formed around a grill or kitchen table is way healthier that following any dietary rules could ever be. I’ll try to follow my own guide, but I’ve never been one to care too much about what I eat, so we’ll see how this goes. So, salad-filled summer, here I come!!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Guys
I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations, which probably don't even apply to 50% of the male population. But pardon me - living at the end of a dirt road in the middle of winter in the mountains of Colorado has, unfortunately, given me a very small sample size. I would welcome a challenge to my hypothesis.
I'm starting to get the feeling that guys in this valley live in this bizarre world, where it is okay to be a ski bum for however long they want, and to just enjoy themselves. Is that a generational thing? A MY generation thing? Cuz I don't like it. I really really hope that everyone has some meaning in their life, and something that they love other than self-indulgence.
Also, just as a side note - if you're a guy in this valley, and you want to date a girl, JUST TAKE HER ON A DATE. And if you never are going to, then STOP ASKING HER ON DATES. Geez.
I'm starting to get the feeling that guys in this valley live in this bizarre world, where it is okay to be a ski bum for however long they want, and to just enjoy themselves. Is that a generational thing? A MY generation thing? Cuz I don't like it. I really really hope that everyone has some meaning in their life, and something that they love other than self-indulgence.
Also, just as a side note - if you're a guy in this valley, and you want to date a girl, JUST TAKE HER ON A DATE. And if you never are going to, then STOP ASKING HER ON DATES. Geez.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Zucchini Lemon Muffins!
The fall days seemed to stretch on forever, but they have finally come to an end. The snow has begun to fall, and the stairs from the apartment have become an icy slide of death, spicing up every morning with a near-death experience. Tomorrow’s low is supposed to 4! We’re not sure if the few meat birds that we have left will survive!
This morning I woke up confused why it was so light at 7:00 – until I realized that I had forgotten to set my clock back, and I was late to do morning chores! I pulled on my carharts and a winter jacket over my pajamas. Outside I was greeted by a fresh blanket of snow on the ground, and animals not-so-eager to be let out, for once. After removing all the ice from the watering troughs and putting water and food in all the stalls, I discovered that Peter, Catlin and their weekend guests had started a camp fire underneath the pole barn, and I joined them. We sat around and chatted for a while, then got busy making breakfast over the fire – fresh eggs, potatoes and sausage. We wrapped some of the left-over organic apples from the Harvest Party in tin foil, and baked them for dessert. The amazing food that we get left or that we harvest from the garden is certainly one of the biggest perks of RBR. I only wish that I was a better cook and knew how to use spices and sauces, so that I could enjoy it even more. The snow was still falling and it was very cold. We had to keep rotating and passing around the few pairs of gloves that made it outside.
After we cleaned up, some folks began to press the remaining of the apples, and make some hard cider. I went inside and sat on the couch with Cecil and Big Titty, the two cats, and read for a few hours, until I began to feel restless. I got my cross-over bike from the shed, and biked through 3 inches of snow and some ice down to Carbondale, and worked in the clay studio until shortly before sunset, when I biked back, and put all the animals in and fed them.
Things at the ranch are beginning to feel more comfortable and relaxed. I only wish that we here felt that ACES appreciated us, and that we appreciated them. Without a boss now we tend to feel like we owe nothing to ACES, and therefore we don’t work as hard as we could, and we take advantage of having no supervision. Nothing serious, but I just wish that that down here we felt appreciated enough to not WANT to take advantage of the situation we are now in. Well, in a few months things might be changing… We’ll see. I think that our actions are a symptom of a larger problem (not to discount the part that we are playing, however).
Well, another big week on the horizon. I’m counting down the days until I get to go home for Christmas. I really miss old friends. Sometimes I feel like I was crazy to move so far away. Why did I think that mountains could replace so many amazing relationships? Well, I guess, like in my Moving-Across-the-Country Theme song, I needed wide open spaces and new faces. Room to make my big mistakes. Somehow, I’ve never been good at taking chances, and therefore, I’ve never been good at making big mistakes. I’m working on it. My mistakes tend to be things that I don’t do, rather than things I botch up. Does that still count?
P.S. Sorry, this post had nothing to do with Zucchini Lemon Muffins - I just finished baking them and they are smelling delicious!!
This morning I woke up confused why it was so light at 7:00 – until I realized that I had forgotten to set my clock back, and I was late to do morning chores! I pulled on my carharts and a winter jacket over my pajamas. Outside I was greeted by a fresh blanket of snow on the ground, and animals not-so-eager to be let out, for once. After removing all the ice from the watering troughs and putting water and food in all the stalls, I discovered that Peter, Catlin and their weekend guests had started a camp fire underneath the pole barn, and I joined them. We sat around and chatted for a while, then got busy making breakfast over the fire – fresh eggs, potatoes and sausage. We wrapped some of the left-over organic apples from the Harvest Party in tin foil, and baked them for dessert. The amazing food that we get left or that we harvest from the garden is certainly one of the biggest perks of RBR. I only wish that I was a better cook and knew how to use spices and sauces, so that I could enjoy it even more. The snow was still falling and it was very cold. We had to keep rotating and passing around the few pairs of gloves that made it outside.
After we cleaned up, some folks began to press the remaining of the apples, and make some hard cider. I went inside and sat on the couch with Cecil and Big Titty, the two cats, and read for a few hours, until I began to feel restless. I got my cross-over bike from the shed, and biked through 3 inches of snow and some ice down to Carbondale, and worked in the clay studio until shortly before sunset, when I biked back, and put all the animals in and fed them.
Things at the ranch are beginning to feel more comfortable and relaxed. I only wish that we here felt that ACES appreciated us, and that we appreciated them. Without a boss now we tend to feel like we owe nothing to ACES, and therefore we don’t work as hard as we could, and we take advantage of having no supervision. Nothing serious, but I just wish that that down here we felt appreciated enough to not WANT to take advantage of the situation we are now in. Well, in a few months things might be changing… We’ll see. I think that our actions are a symptom of a larger problem (not to discount the part that we are playing, however).
Well, another big week on the horizon. I’m counting down the days until I get to go home for Christmas. I really miss old friends. Sometimes I feel like I was crazy to move so far away. Why did I think that mountains could replace so many amazing relationships? Well, I guess, like in my Moving-Across-the-Country Theme song, I needed wide open spaces and new faces. Room to make my big mistakes. Somehow, I’ve never been good at taking chances, and therefore, I’ve never been good at making big mistakes. I’m working on it. My mistakes tend to be things that I don’t do, rather than things I botch up. Does that still count?
P.S. Sorry, this post had nothing to do with Zucchini Lemon Muffins - I just finished baking them and they are smelling delicious!!
Monday, October 17, 2011
The return of Big Titty! And other news
Big Titty is BACK!! We thought that he had been eaten. Well, truthfully, everyone else was holding out hope that he was lost, and I was being the pessimist/realist, saying that he had probably been eaten. But he's back! A nice couple and neighbors of ours saw him on the road, and somehow knew that he was ours! Yay.
Well, anyway. Life has been a bit stressful. My boss got fired, kind of out of the blue. Just when things were starting to get on track, and we were finally making long term plans. Well, back to taking it day-by-day! one of my co-workers is so upset about it that she probably won't be here for too much longer... At least then I won't feel like I like in a sardines can. The kitchen barely fits one person, never mind 4!
I'm really liking teaching in school, but it is really hard! one of the teachers told me that "good kids" aren't the product of discipline, but of clear expectations and routine, and ACES class, the class I teach, is decidedly not in their routine. We only see them once a month. So its hard. And having clear expectations is hard, especially when we only have 45 minutes, the kids don't listen as well because their teachers are gone, and we spend 10 minutes taking roll and reminding them what we did last time. But it is also funny, because they all love ACES so much. All I have to do is walk down the hall, and I feel like a celebrity - I get smiles, high fives, and called to. Not that any of them remember my name (basically I just get called Rock Bottom or ACES), but hey, I don't remember their name, either.
I've been getting really cabin-feaver-y already! Not because I stay inside, but because I spend all my time at the Ranch, or in Basalt or Carbondale. I'm itching for an adventure! I need to go somewhere!! Its killing me a little. My mom and sister came and visited me last week, and it was awesome. I really want to DRIVE somewhere, though - like Denver or Boulder or Moab. And I need some more friends. Right now I'm really wishing that I had a few friends scattered throughout Colorado. :/
I also really miss my college friends, my Woods Hole friends, and my friends from home, and I miss being within driving distance of like 50 people that love me. Colorado is ever so far away.
I try to stay looking at the bright side, though - this is (minus just one detail) exactly what I wanted to be doing, and Colorado is perpetually gorgeous. I'll look back on this one day and miss it, I just know it. I'm getting great experience, and I've decided to apply to Teach For America. or maybe I'll go off on some other grand adventure. or maybe I'll just stay here. Who knows. Being here for the whole school year is going to be interesting, seeing as I'm already itching to move.
Welp, that's the news from Rock Bottom Ranch, where all the pigs are clean, all the chickens are stupid, and all the staff are from the East Coast. :)
Well, anyway. Life has been a bit stressful. My boss got fired, kind of out of the blue. Just when things were starting to get on track, and we were finally making long term plans. Well, back to taking it day-by-day! one of my co-workers is so upset about it that she probably won't be here for too much longer... At least then I won't feel like I like in a sardines can. The kitchen barely fits one person, never mind 4!
I'm really liking teaching in school, but it is really hard! one of the teachers told me that "good kids" aren't the product of discipline, but of clear expectations and routine, and ACES class, the class I teach, is decidedly not in their routine. We only see them once a month. So its hard. And having clear expectations is hard, especially when we only have 45 minutes, the kids don't listen as well because their teachers are gone, and we spend 10 minutes taking roll and reminding them what we did last time. But it is also funny, because they all love ACES so much. All I have to do is walk down the hall, and I feel like a celebrity - I get smiles, high fives, and called to. Not that any of them remember my name (basically I just get called Rock Bottom or ACES), but hey, I don't remember their name, either.
I've been getting really cabin-feaver-y already! Not because I stay inside, but because I spend all my time at the Ranch, or in Basalt or Carbondale. I'm itching for an adventure! I need to go somewhere!! Its killing me a little. My mom and sister came and visited me last week, and it was awesome. I really want to DRIVE somewhere, though - like Denver or Boulder or Moab. And I need some more friends. Right now I'm really wishing that I had a few friends scattered throughout Colorado. :/
I also really miss my college friends, my Woods Hole friends, and my friends from home, and I miss being within driving distance of like 50 people that love me. Colorado is ever so far away.
I try to stay looking at the bright side, though - this is (minus just one detail) exactly what I wanted to be doing, and Colorado is perpetually gorgeous. I'll look back on this one day and miss it, I just know it. I'm getting great experience, and I've decided to apply to Teach For America. or maybe I'll go off on some other grand adventure. or maybe I'll just stay here. Who knows. Being here for the whole school year is going to be interesting, seeing as I'm already itching to move.
Welp, that's the news from Rock Bottom Ranch, where all the pigs are clean, all the chickens are stupid, and all the staff are from the East Coast. :)
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Ranch
So, I haven't written in a while because it has actually been very very stressful. I don't really feel like getting into it, but basically lots and lots of non-profit drama. Basically it seems to me that the ranch doesn't get along very well with the executive director of ACES. oh, well, its mostly passed.
The ranch is so beautiful at this time of year! I wish that all f you could see it!! I'll try to post some pictures soon! I love doing the chores (most of the time), and another one of my house-mates came back from vacation, and I REALLY like her. We're gonna be pals.
We went into the schools for the first time this week, and I really liked it! For some reason, I had in my head, that they were going to be like the New London public schools - very poor and filled with kid's whose dad's were in prison, and things like that. The schools are actually very nice, though, and the kids, although they are Latino like in NewLo, are very good, and seem to have good family lives. Its great!
All I need to do is get some local friends from the near-by and very cool town of Carbondale, and I will seriously be living my dream. :) The end.
The ranch is so beautiful at this time of year! I wish that all f you could see it!! I'll try to post some pictures soon! I love doing the chores (most of the time), and another one of my house-mates came back from vacation, and I REALLY like her. We're gonna be pals.
We went into the schools for the first time this week, and I really liked it! For some reason, I had in my head, that they were going to be like the New London public schools - very poor and filled with kid's whose dad's were in prison, and things like that. The schools are actually very nice, though, and the kids, although they are Latino like in NewLo, are very good, and seem to have good family lives. Its great!
All I need to do is get some local friends from the near-by and very cool town of Carbondale, and I will seriously be living my dream. :) The end.
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