Dan's Temptations

These are pumpkin-squash-coconut-molasses-blueberry pies, and an apple crisp, all gluten free Emily creations (I helped!)


This is the cool gizmo we use to peel, slice and core the apples all with a few cranks of the handle. Plus you get spiral slices :)

Blue Line March

Here are a few pictures from Olympia's Blue Line March downtown for the International Day of Climate Action. We joined with thousands of towns around the world to get festive and creative while taking our passion to the streets (see 350.org for great photos from far-flung places).

The idea was to trace the "new shoreline" that will come about if we don't bring CO2 in the atmosphere back down to 350 ppm (currently around 385, I believe). Actually, downtown Olympia already floods - we get unusually high tides down here at the base of Puget Sound, and town is built on fill, just one foot over high tide. So during an unusually high tide with a big rain storm there are flash floods in town. With sea-level rise, the stormwater drains will back up and we'll have certain areas that just can't drain and become new downtown lakes (not so fun when it's your business in the middle!).



You can see the cool fish hat Em made me in this photo - that's me blocking the "0" on the 350 sign.

Wholesome Household

Em came up from Portland and we've been doing wholesome domestic things. We went and picked the big pumpkin Dan and I have been growing - Dan had been disappointed the pumpkin vine seemed to put out very few fruit but then again, 3 pumpkins that are ... just went outside to weigh it... 28 pounds WITHOUT the guts, well that's not disappointing at all.



Emily saw a mastiff dog with grizzled jowls on the earth-side of the pumpkin, so we drew this face to use the natural features. But we couldn't cut OUT the jowls or we'd lose the texture so we just scraped out the insides to get the effect. Worked pretty well!



While carving we toasted the pumpkin seeds, of which there were many, tossed with grapeseed oil and sea salt and baked until golden and crunchy. Then Em made a gluten-free pumpkin bread just with the chunks of pumpkin taken off for the ears etc., using coconut and rice flour, pecans and carob chips - wow, spectacularly yummy. I went to bed but Em stayed up to put together a costume for me for the Blue Line March, which I'll tell you about in another post (see 350.org, there may even be photos soon of our march downtown today if you look up Olympia - I'm the one who's taught a fish to ride a bicycle).

When I got home we took Maddie for a walk across the street through the beautiful woods with all the big yellow Big Leaf Maple leaves glowing along the path (darn, didn't bring her camera), and I took her for the first time to the enormous granddaddy Douglas Fir deep in the woods - truly a HUGE and special tree. Just a magnitude of order more magnificent than your ordinary trees.

Got home, put the chickens away, made ourselves a fine pizza using all kindsa garden veggies. Michael came in having had a long day planting a forest garden, and later Naomi came home with sleeping Noah having been at a cider pressing party. So you see I'm serious when I say we've had a wholesome day, in a wholesome household, in wholesome ol' Olympia.

Farmer's Market; Harvest Day

Today will be a lot better for the volunteers down at the Market. I helped set up the booth. It was a beautiful morning, sun shining off the wet pavement and booths, vendors setting up their stalls; we're at the end with Sullivans, the apples in huge crates, the pepper wagon with all shapes and sizes, red, yellow, green (is that why the Italian flag is red and green?). The strong girl moving the cart spilled a few peppers - if you ever want a free, hot pepper just go there at 9:55 before the market opens and pick some off the asphalt.

Fantastic pickings at the Calliope farmstand - Jason you would have drooled at the Romanesco - and I got a box of tomatoes to make salsa and sauce from Kirsop, told the guy you got his CSA box in exchange for shirts and he said, why, I'm wearing one right now. At another stand I asked how they keep their arugula from bolting and got the tip to plant it every few weeks, mix potting soil with seed and scatter. We chatted about the tastiness of the spicey flowers of arugula versus the milder broccolirab. I guess for standing and chatting I was rewarded with some free sweet onions for carmelizing and too-small winter squash for soup.

Then went to the Coop to get bulk olive oil and vinegar, which I'll need for the salsa, and saw Evan who wants to get involved in what's going on locally on climate action.

All in all a beautiful Olympia morning - the house smells delicious from the applesauce Naomi's canning; I'm gonna go help start on the sauerkraut from the HUGE cabbages everyone got in their farm boxes (or grew).

(See, if I had a camera I could adorn this post with a colorful picture of the Market!)

Beginners Blog

The best way to start is just to jump in, right? It seems like the best way - wouldn't want to get trapped by overthinking. So I am just starting - without even a burning message to convey.

Other than that now the sun's out - and we should have stuck it out at the Farmer's Market, kept holding down our little blow-away booth, with one hand on the umbrella and the other handing out soggy flyers on climate action events (be part of the Blue Line March next Saturday! Come to the Cool Thurston Cafe on the 27th!). Things, small events, attempts to change the earth. Really the effort felt pathetic and made me angry at the futility - a band of volunteers - moms who's kids are grown is what we were today - when what is needed (as with all causes, of course), is a huge banner across the stage saying Act Now to Divert Catastrophe - 350.com - why does that sound like the New Yorker cartoons of the guys with sandwich boards reading, "The King is Dying, Long Live the King?" or "The End of the Earth is Coming" - don't remember a punchline for that one.

Sometimes it feels so futile, other times... well, it always feels futile, just sometimes a little more rewardingly futile.