the birthday Boy's wild night & a quiet blue morning

When the night begins with this (above) & that (below)...

you know to hold on tight!

Act 1 of The Boy's birthday was beer, bowling, & burgers.

The birthday Boy & Colby.

Good thing we have a coach with us.

The birthday Boy & I.

bowling splits

The Boy's boys.

 Act 2 was hot tubing at the ski-in mansion way, way back in the mountains.

& perhaps some other things.

 

There was cake...

and rumors of sleep...

5 am the next morning I took the dogs on a frosty mountain stroll.

Then I wandered the mansion looking for early signs of life & a pot of coffee.

Pre-breakfast, breakfast of champions :) Hi Fire Dad, sorry about that.

Here was the real breakfast! by me.

The boys needed these :)

Good-bye wild wild west.

May this year bring you all your heart's truest desires.

Happy Birthday Josh.

We love you.

a cheep surprise

You might have caught we had a hen sitting, yep, had, cause then we had a skunk come by...but this morning Beach & I were getting ready for a rainy arbor day at Red Butte when suddenly we heard a cheep-cheep. 

We looked at each other then jumped up heading for the birds nest which is half in the roof & embarrassingly half in the house.  But that was not the source of the cheep. 

Looks like we had another sitting hen.

~Just the two of them~

holy hard & worth it!

The list of 'what-abouts' and 'yeah-buts' is slowly growing.  We have 'local' peanut butter, peanuts grown where (?) company located here & sold at the Food Co-op, where you can get oranges, lemons, bananas... I have to remember that our goal is to shop from specific location who mainly support local growers & vendors, such as food co-ops, farm stands & markets, locally produced &/or recycled goods etc no big grocery chains or restaurants.  What about ginger root?  What about a basic cooking oil?  I didn't clear out the house when we made this pledge (as it were), we simply began.  So there is a lot of, let's call them Big Brands around.  But a week or so later there are less of them. I keep a list in the kitchen & as I think of or use an item I don't know where it really comes from or how to get it or if we even need it I write it down for discussion & research.

Right now I am trying to decide the 'value' of cold cereal (Willy Wonka: Do you have any idea what breakfast cereal's made of? It's those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners.).  As a Diabetic, it has very little value to me personally & if you uncover the origins of it all you will see how cold cereal is an American-ish twist totally in the wrong direction of what was a rather good idea before we got to it: mixed grains, fruit, & a protein.  'Yeah-but', emotionally I love cereal, so do the kids, and my homemade ginger snap granola (which is very good) is not a substitute for Frosted Mini Wheat's.  Here is the thing, if you get rid of say delicious Frosted Mini Wheat's you open your mornings to creative alternatives like zucchini muffins, cornmeal pancakes, homemade sweet rolls...  It isn't about what you are giving up, it is about what you are making room for: a rather indulgent restriction if I may... 

Take potato chips for example, when I made elk burger sliders I usually would pair it with a good bbq chip and a salad but this time armed with co-op produce I sliced vegetables to go with it.  No one missed the chips. Next time I might make potato wedges or sweet potato fries anything but a bag of greasy potato chips.  Is this making sense?  Without getting too hung up on one item or another the bigger picture is already paying off.  We see our food very differently.  We are more careful & thoughtful.  We eat less because the quality of food is higher in just about every way you could count. 

       

This answers the cereal question, yes we can walk away from prepared cereal BUT not from ginger root.  In fact we could leave almost any finished products behind (glad we aren't) but we want/need some basic 'exotic' ingredients.  And that is my line, any basic I need to cook &/or bake with (which I can't find at supports local market) goes on the Costco/NPS List and I'm not going to worry about it.

This is actually the best home school project I never planned.  Each food choice is researched, examined, evaluated, and then sent to family trial. Next on the docket: snow cones...is a snow shack a local business?  and no, I am not buying a snoopy snow cone maker if it's not. 

the walk back

I’ve spent two long back-to-back nights up with a headache & nose bleeds, a 2 day headache & the kind of nose bleeds that don’t stop.  My work-outs are reasonably moderate, my diet impeccable, my hydration good, but I haven’t checked any of my levels in well over a month.  Power through it right?  I start my run and I can feel how underpowered I am.  Less than 20 minutes in I turn around to walk back home.

I mark the run in training log & add a note to today’s to do list: call Dr. re/test strips & a levels check.  You win some, you lose some, you run some, you walk some, but at least you are ‘some-ing’.

local love from the kitchen

So how is this whole plan to eat from 'closer to home' sources going?

Pretty well.  Beach and I had a long talk about some of the changes in our own pantry.  She was great.  I offered her the same thing we are giving ourselves a few items we feel we need but can't obtain from one of our designated shopping stops. She declined saying she wanted to try it first.  If she couldn't live without an item she would let me know later.  Here are a few dinners from the week, all of the ingredients are from the Food Co-op (or our greenhouse).

Mashed potatoes topped with mushrooms, leek, red peppers, & garlic

Green chili & chicken tamales with spout, cucumber, spinach, & grape tomatoes

BLT on sourdough with cucumbers
(this one was mine so it was open face to cut down on the bread comma later)

Oh, this one is great.  This was a lunch. 

Beach at the park dissecting a corn dog from Millie's,

a family owned & run burger joint.

So loving this!!!!

the dark side of going it alone

It is the whole idea of it: you carry yourself, under your own power across the ground one step at time.  Running.  Mini flights skimming the earth.  You got yourself here, you can get yourself back.  But what if you can’t?  What if you have the power to fly away but not to return?

As I run I am thinking about the possibility of running so far I can’t make it back.  How would I know when far is too far? I keep turning around to see Moses lumbering, panting, fall further and further behind.  I must have added a ½ mile of loops to the distance circling back for him until finally he plopped down in the shade of some over grown bushes.  He was not going to go on.  “Stay here then, I’ll be back.” I told him leaving him there to cool off, to sleep, to wait…

Now, little dog requires a leash.  I don’t know why, she seems to return okay and she follows me, and she’s not aggressive but unless we are in the mountains I tend to tether her to me.  She thinks leaving Moses behind is a horrible idea but she doesn’t have a real vote in the matter she has a leash. 

Three more miles and the trail grows hotter & empty.  I begin to wonder about the wind on Everest (if it was to blow in your mouth would you feel even more breathless?), wonder about souls on an airplane (did they really know they were about to die?), about what a child is doing while she waits for me to pop back into sight (is she still in the garden relocating pill bugs?), then I wonder about a dog napping in the shade (if I had to could I carry him home?).  And even though I want to keep going I turn us around on the next trail head because all the answers to my question seem to be running in the other direction. 

Backtracking we find Moses standing in the middle of the trail watching us approach.  He falls in at my side and we don’t talk about it.  However, little dog does.  She nips at him twice to let him know she didn’t approve of his loafing about.  All of our steps are less like flight and the panting louder.  I can feel my sugars dropping, the ph in my blood turn, like one drink too many it sets you free & trips you up at the same time. 

It is the whole idea of it: you carry yourself away.   You don’t have to worry about how you are going to get back.  It’s not your job, they will always bring you home.