Today I gave away a cucumber and two strawberry plants. The cucumber even has fruit on it.

But it’s ok, I’m getting lavender in return!

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It’s Sunday afternoon, the last day before I go back to work and I’m trying to convince myself that it’s not all that bad. The holidays were good: besides all the cooking for Christmas and Old Year’s eve, I built a puzzle, played with puppies and gardened a lot.

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Now, I know I’ll probably regret this in the summer, but I hate winter.

It’s not the season’s fault actually, just that it tends to come with cold weather and the cold weather leads to frost in the morning, bare trees and dead grass. Read more »

Now I like birds, even if they wake me up early in the morning, steal the dogs’ crunchies and poop all over my car. But stealing our tomatoes is where I draw the line.

How rude!

The tomatoes are ours, the moldy raspberries and blueberries we threw on the back lawn this morning is theirs.

B#$^%y birds…

I find myself in unfamiliar territory:

It’s the first weekend in a month that I’m not planting anything, not pulling anything out  nor (the firm favorite since we signed the offer to purchase on a new house) planning our vegetable garden . The kitchen counters aren’t covered with buckets of separating whey and curd, the cheese thermometer’s  quietly resting in it’s plastic holder, the food dehydrator isn’t buzzing and the vacuum sealing machine has been boxed away after the morning’s grocery shop. My hands don’t have the faint odor of sterilizer, aren’t sticky with castor sugar and the heavy-bottom pot isn’t sickly sweet with rapidly boiling jam or chutney or preserve. In fact, the house is earily peaceful. Read more »

Be warned: this is a post under the catagory of “On craziness”.

Ive been struggling with something for a little over 2 years now and it may seem strange to some. On the other hand, it may not to others and for those of you who have not been aware of it until now, I warn: stop reading!

The predicament is this (there’s one cliché to follow): “it is said that the eyes are the window to the soul”.

So why then do I find myself unable to talk or converse with someone comfortably while looking them in the eyes? I often don’t know where else to look. The conversation begins, I feel comfortable, but then after about 2 minutes begin to feel as though I’m boring a ten kilometer hole down the other person’s head! People begin shifting uncomfortably, find renewed interest in the paint on the walls or their cigarette. Am I alone in this?

An easy and quick recipe for mozarella cheese (adapted from Margret Kingsolver’s recipe in “Animal Vegetable Miracle” [1]):

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One could begin with the whole history of cheese, how humans discovered it, made it, aged it, named it, got rich from it, but I’m not – you can look that up yourself.

Cheese is, in essence, solid, curdled milk. Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, there are various tricks in getting the milk to curdle the right way, in the correct amount of time under precise conditions, but, leave milk out of the refrigerator long enough and it will turn to cheese (strictly speaking, to whey and curds, but lets not get technical).

So why cheese?

Why not?

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