Filed under: food, friends, Garden, go green, lifestyle, personal, travel | Tags: 1015 onions, creeping jenny, gardening in central texas, herb gardening, onions, roman chamomile, square foot gardening, texas vegetable garden, winter vegetable garden
Twenty-ten didn’t waste any time throwing a few speed bumps my direction.
The troubles began the day before I left for Colorado when I woke with a sore, swollen eye – another eye infection. And so I flew to Denver last Thursday wearing my glasses. On Friday a second medical complication required me to spend most of the morning talking with my Doctors in Austin and the pharmacy in Colorado Springs. Cover your ears boys: my Nuvaring had mysteriously gone missing. I finally got everything sorted out and a new prescription filled (only to discover two days later that the original hadn’t actually gone missing – oh, the glories of being a woman), and the trip turned out to be a fantastic one in spite of a challenging start.
ummm... not such a great idea afterall.
Promptly upon my return to Austin, my refrigerator broke down. This resulted in a frantic mid-week evening of picking up a mini-fridge found on Craigslist, ruining the interior of my S2000 with said refrigerator, and relocating all items from broken fridge & freezer to one of two locations: new evil car-destroying mini-fridge or friend Melissa’s freezer. It was an unexpectedly exhausting evening. The following morning I broke a glass in the bathroom as I was getting ready for work. Fifteen minutes later my worst nightmare came true: I set off the recently installed house alarm. In my week away from home I’d forgotten how to enter the disarm code. That afternoon I came home from work sick, sick, sick. Since then I have spent the majority of my weekend in bed, trying to dislodge the styrofoam residing between my ears with sleep, sleep and more sleep.
The worst of all of these events is that I am completely out of sync with my world right now. I can’t decide if it’s because of the aforementioned events, or if those events were a result of me being out of sync. The feeling spans back to my house break-in before Christmas, and then spending the holiday alone in Austin. While my friends were home with their families, I was here. As soon as they got back, I left town. Shortly thereafter I busted my eye, had a fridge bust, and got sick (resulting in more hermit at home time void of contact with the outside world). I’d like to think that I will be back in sync quickly, but I’m staring into another weekend of traveling that is going to keep me from getting settled anytime soon.
My brief glimpse at normalcy came this afternoon when I planted onions. Onions & lettuce & spinach, oh my! I made a quick trip to the Natural Gardener to celebrate my getting out of bed and pajamas today. While I was there I came across Roman Chamomile, which smells wonderful (like apples!). I have no idea what I’ll use it for, but it’s so lovely that I added it to the herb garden. The work was gentle and easy since the beds were already prepared. Being outdoors was absolutely refreshing after being bed-ridden for the last 48 hours. And raking through the herb garden with my hands to free dead leaves was really wonderful – the release of those scents into the air helped clear my head for a brief and wonderful moment. I planted two pockets of creeping Jenny where my herb garden meets the original raised bed in the hopes that the creeping Jenny will fill those areas and keep grass & weeds down throughout the new year.
The herb garden - new chamomile is bottom right.
1015 onions - much bigger than last year's sprigs, can't wait to see how they do!
Speaking of onions... while I was outside planting them, Mallary was inside cooking them. The ski goggles make it the perfect photo for this post. 
It feels great to have started the garden, and I’m looking forward to planting carrots & broccoli in the coming weeks. It still seems bizarre to be planting at this time of year, especially after having spent a week in a snow-covered place. Since my trip to Colorado I expect to see pockets of melting snow here in Austin as I drive around town, and am still feeling shocked that there isn’t any here at all. My Yankee blood must be calling to me – I’m even anxious to get to Chicago and experience the cold again. Plans for a second skiing trip this season are sloshing around in my head as well. Which leads to the final piece of my “feeling-out-of-sync” puzzle: since when have I missed cold weather and snow?!
Filed under: food, friends, Garden, go green, travel | Tags: colorado vacation, hummingbird cabin, linkedin, new years resolutions, square foot gardening, vegetable garden, vrbo.com
Garden Update #12 will conclude my series of first-year garden stories. At this point it seems fitting to ceremoniously say goodbye to my freshman experience with the garden and graduate into a new series of second-year adventures.
As I recollect over a year of growth, harvest, dormancy, death and reemergence, I realize that the garden has very suspiciously reflected my own life patterns this year. The spring was full of innocent hope. The days and weeks were balanced with equal parts work and play, and then spiced with dashes of charitable volunteering and lots of reading and learning. Health was abundant, life was full. The summer brought drought and challenge. The garden fell fallow under the grips of 100+ temps, and my life grew a bit unbalanced as well. Fall brought sweet, refreshing rains and the garden flourished once again. As the rains nourished, I turned 30 and renewed my goal of finding inner balance. At long last, winter’s first frost killed the last of the seeds I’d sprouted in January and also encouraged the growth of new plants – a fresh start for a new year.
one swift kick.
In less metaphorical terms, the last few months have brought a lot of change around here. A week before Christmas Eve, someone kicked in our front door and made off with a lot of small electronics. No doubt they will be back in a few months to collect those things that they weren’t able to hoist on the first visit. Next time we hope to greet them with a siren so loud that their eardrums will explode (but hopefully not all over my beige carpet).
Cory & I check out the ice fishing scene in the greater Estes Park area.
The other change is that I’ve been traveling, a lot. And I will probably continue to travel, a lot. My new beau is a captain in the Air Force and lives in Colorado Springs. As you can imagine, this makes scheduling regular date nights a bit complicated. In fact, our “first date” was a weekend trip to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Forest. We stayed in an adorable cabin we found on www.vrbo.com, somewhere between Lyons and Estes Park. It was a splendid weekend. Cory was down in December to accompany me to our work Christmas party, and I will head to Colorado Springs in less than a week for a skiing adventure. Two weeks later, we’ll meet in Chicago for a wedding. Twenty-ten promises to bring many frequent flier miles.
Though I don’t necessarily believe in New Years Resolutions, I do believe that the end of a year is a great time review the year past with an objective lens and learn from all the experiences contained therein. The lessons are allowed to come into the new year with me, but nothing else can carry over. With those lessons in mind, it’s a good time to formulate a plan and some goals for the year ahead. So with that, I leave you with my garden plan for 2010, and hope you’ll join me in saying, “Sayonara, 2009!!!!”
garden plan, 2010
Filed under: 30th Birthday Party Benefit for SFC, Austin, events, food, friends, go green, lifestyle, outdoors | Tags: 30th birthday party, boggy creek farm, break it down austin, farmhouse delivery, greenling.com, independence brewery, linkedin, miscellaneous rentals, non-profit benefit party, paula's texas spirits, sustainable food center, sustainable food center benefit party, the cake lab, tito's vodka, u-clique studio, waterstone aesthetics, wheatsville co-op
Let me tell you all – it has been one crazy month. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve turned thirty and the world is suddenly flying by me at a rapid pace. I’m saying that because just one month ago I made the decision to put together a benefit for Sustainable Food Center and I only gave myself three weeks to do it. While it was admittedly a stressful & challenging three weeks, I don’t regret the decision for one minute. I had the help of some fantastic friends (Sara P., Andy, Melissa, Hollie, Sarah Cash – you are awesome). And I had the support of an entire community of people who are genuinely interested in our food future. I want to use this post to look back and appreciate all that came together in such a short time and provide some insight into some of the phenomenal things that came from it.
First of all, we raised $374 for Sustainable Food Center - a fantastic little chunk of change for a non-profit! Susan Leibrock, Community Relations Director from SFC, shared with me that just 5% of SFC’s annual budget comes from private donations. Events like this soiree are critical to helping SFC generate funds through private donations.
The second amazing and unexpected thing I experienced while organizing this event was the involvement of people & the community. I have never seen such a tremendous outpouring of support - it was downright overwhelming. I sent cold-call emails to folks I’d never met before and they were happy, if not eager to support the cause. Paula from Paula’s Texas Spirits was the perfect example. I emailed her to see if they would be willing to donate a small item to give away as a raffle prize. Paula responded with this:
”Absolutely. We have a gift pack with half-bottles of both productsthat we can give you. What about drinks during the party? As you
know, we can mix a mean drink.”
How do you respond to that? Words could not express my delight over receiving this email. Of COURSE I wanted Paula to come mix some drinks! And that’s exactly what she did – showed up on Sunday with a cooler in hand & mixes of some of the best cocktails our guests had ever tasted.
Through similar cold-call emails I received gift certifcates from Greenling.com, Wheatsville Co-op, Farmhouse Delivery, Boggy Creek Farm & Waterstone Aesthetics. Tito’s vodka & Paula’s Texas Spirits chipped in gift baskets to raffle off. Trey from U-Clique Studio agreed to come out and set up his hilariously fun photo-booth for the day (and was kind enough to put the “NSFW” photos in a secret, seperate account for us) and Jeff from Break it Down Austin brought out a compost bin. Throughout the day we loaded it up with corn-starch plates, compostable tableware & kitchen scraps. Amy from Independence Brewery chipped in a keg of delicious Austin Amber, and even Miscellaneous Rentals got in the action by giving us a sweet discount on rental tables & chairs for the day. One of the crowd favorites was by Diana of The Cake Lab, who brought by her famous carrot cake cupcakes that gave us visions of sweets all through the next week.
That all of these folks contributed at all was such a gift – but that they agreed to contribute on such short notice was a blessing.
And then, of course, there were my friends & co-workers who came out to show their support. Whether you were there to party, to support SFC, or just to say happy birthday & support my cause: thank you for coming out and contributing to this event with your time, $ and cooking skills. This event could not and would not have happened without you – I am so grateful!
For more pictures from the event, check out Melissa Robledo’s photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cooperella/sets/72157622437122066/
And our photobooth pictures:
http://ucliquestudio.blogspot.com/2009/09/mindys-birthday-bash-and-benefit-mixer.html
Filed under: 30th Birthday Party Benefit for SFC, Austin, events, food, friends, go green, recipes | Tags: 30th birthday party, award winning recipes, deviled eggs recipe, locavore recipes
For her ability to please bellies & bring yelps & whistles during the judging round, Mallary received a $15 gift certificate to Boggy Creek Farm.
Below is the recipe for these yummy eggs, which hails from her hometown in Louisiana. Thanks for sharing your recipe & cooking skills with us, Mallary!
Mallary with her hard-earned gift certificate to Boggy Creek.
Deviled Eggs
6 eggs 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 tsp. vinegar 1 tsp. prepared mustard 1/8 tsp. onion salt dash black pepper 1 tsp. horseradish 1 tsp. parsley 1 tsp. rainbow sweet relish 1 tsp. bacon bits (optional – was not included in Sunday’s dish) 6 green olives1- Boil eggs for 8 minutes. Cover for 8 minutes. Run under cold water – add ice – peel immediately. Cut eggs in 1/2.
2- Place yolks in a bowl. Crumble yolks with a fork. Add all ingredients. Salt & Pepper to taste.
3- Stuff egg whites. Can cut into quarter slices, if desired.
4- Half or quarter green olives & add as garnish to top of finished eggs.
Filed under: 30th Birthday Party Benefit for SFC, Austin, entertainment, events, friends, go green, outdoors | Tags: 30th birthday party, Austin Farmer's Market, boggy creek, fresh the movie, linkedin, organizing a benefit dinner, sustainable food center benefit
For several months now I’ve been pondering how to appropriately celebrate the anniversary of my 30th year on this lovely earth. I’d considered renting a lake house for the weekend, or possibly renting a party barge. While a lake house and a party boat would be a lot of fun, spending my money and asking my friends to spend their money on such a thing felt selfish & indulgent. After several weeks with no progress or inspiration I started to loose focus. When friends asked what my birthday plans were I shrugged my shoulders and lamely said, “dunno. I’ll start working on it next week…”. I started to hear rumors of interventions being planned in case I didn’t get my act together soon. Then finally last week a miracle happened. At the “Fresh“ screening at Boggy Creek I stumbled upon an idea that really resonated with me: organizing a own birthday event whose proceeds would benefit the Sustainable Food Center.
Why Sustainable Food Center, you ask? For one, their mission statement is close to my heart:
“We cultivate a healthy community by strengthening the local food system
and improving access to nutritious, affordable food.
SFC envisions a food secure community where all children and adults grow,
share and prepare healthy, local food.”
Now there’s a cause I can get on board with. For those who are unfamiliar with the Sustainable Food Center, you may know them through through their Austin Farmer’s Market program. Austin’s Farmer’s Market comes to downtown Austin on Saturday mornings and the Triangle on Wednesday afternoons. In addition to their farmer’s markets, SFC provides support to local farmers, gardeners & the public at large through educational classes, outreach programs & informational assistance. The extent of their influence is great and they are a well respected force in the sustainable food movement in Austin.
With the seeds of a great idea in hand but no plan with which to get them growing, an informal birthday planning committee met today at my house and we began to map out a birthday benefit strategy. This is the plan at present:
- Event will take place at a backyard venue in the afternoon on Sunday, September 20th.
- A $10 donation will be accepted at the door. 100% of proceeds will benefit the Sustainable Food Center.
- Food (tapas-style) will be pot-luck and all guests are asked to bring one dish made with as many locally sourced ingredients as possible.
- Guests will also be asked to bring the recipe for the dish they prepared, to be compiled & distributed to all guests afterwards.
- Locally made beer & wine will be provided.
- A contest for best local dish will be rewarded with an esteemed prize.
- A speaker from SFC will be on hand to talk to us a bit about their organization and mission.
- Young professionals from all walks of life will be in attendance to network over food, drink & fun.
Oh, and if you’re not sold yet – there will be birthday cake!!!!
I’m terribly excited and can’t wait to start sending the invitations out this week. If you are reading this, you are cordially invited! I’m looking forward to spending my 30th birthday mingling amongst friends, food & philanthropy. If you have any ideas or any suggestions on how to make this event great, please share! I’ll be putting the word out to local businesses this week to drum up fun items for raffle or consumption, so if you have any suggestions or contacts that I may be able to look into – let me know & let’s chat soon! :)
