Unstuffed: Independence Days Week #29

Monday, November 16, 2009

Independence Days Week #29

A thorough cleaning and organising fit on Friday. A full day at my herb course on Saturday and a birthday party for a friend later that night. Cake, dancing, singing. A sleep-in morning on Sunday followed by a bike ride to the farmer's market. Returning home laden with squash, cabbage, kale, chard, grapes and herbs. Heading right back out again on the bike, to the allotments. A light drizzle. Grey sky. So mild I don't need gloves. Digging in the dirt for dandelion leaves and roots. Nothing but the sound of the Alta Vista crows caw cawing overhead.
My garden gloves thick with wet, loamy dirt. Rhythmically banging clods and roots on the ground. Stuffing leaves in my sac. Rain falls harder. Time to go. Back home again at dusk. Boil and strain the grapes for juice. Scrub the roots. Wash the leaves. Make dinner for the ADGMD and I. Homemade mac 'n cheese with pumpkin and sage. Comfort food. So good. Curl up on the couch. Dozing to the sound of the ADGMD doing dishes. Work left to be done. It can wait. I am content. I am at peace. Savour this moment while it lasts. I am at peace.

Plant something:
- nope

Harvest something:
- dandelion leaves and roots

Preserve something:
- comfrey root liniment and oil
- dandelion root tincture
- dandelion leaf vinegar
- parsley leaf vinegar
- made grape juice

Waste not:
- mended a pair of stockings
- wrapped a birthday gift (second hand book) in a cloth scarf

Want not:
- salvaged window screen, to use for drying herbs
- herbal tea from a fellow herbal student who was cleaning out her cupboards and giving the teas away

Preparation and Storage:
- added more local squash to my squash basket (My plan is to store one squash per week for the winter months.)
- crocheting xmas gifts
Exercise: yoga 3 times, 2hr bike ride around the city, bike to farmer's market and garden

Build community food systems:
- local food from the farmer's market

Eat the food:
- currant jam
- J 'chokes and mung bean sprouts
- pumpkin and sage mac & cheese

Take the medicine:
- nettle, dandelion vinegars
- parsley infusion
- yarrow tincture
- plantain syrup
- rosemary tea

2 comments:

scout said...: Mmm ... pumpkin and sage mac 'n cheese ... recipe? I have some frozen pumpkin puree that I made a few weeks ago that's very close to being turned into cookies, but would love an idea for mac 'n cheese. Sounds delish!!; November 16, 2009 at 9:35 PM
Amber said...: Hi Scout!

The first thing I did was sautee crumbled sage leaves in butter until they were golden and crispy and set them aside in a little dish. Then I made a cheese sauce (Here's a good recipe) and added in the pumpkin puree and sage. I cooked it over low heat until I reached a consistency I was happy with. I greased a pyrex baking dish and filled it with my already cooked elbow macaroni poured in the cheese sauce, sprinkled some more shredded cheese over top and put it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes or so. I broiled it for the last few minutes until the top was lightly browned and crispy. After it came out of the oven I left it to sit and firm up before serving. Holy cow was it ever good!

Pumpkin cookies sound lovely too!; November 18, 2009 at 9:10 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali