M . I . A ???

I talked to my Dad the other day and he and my Mom wondered if we we all doing well here or if there had been more health issues or what was going on... I hadn't talked to them in what seems like ages and even missed his birthday!? Yeah, I felt like crap! So it got me to thinking... if my own parents have been wondering what's been going on with me, I guess I have been out of the loop. Sorry...

We haven't driven off any cliffs or anything, and my back's been actually feeling fairly good. We've just been busy as bees keeping up with things around here.

Our youngest son B~ broke his arm, his right arm, did I mention that he broke the left one this spring?? He's boy alright... through and through. The worst part was it was one week before school started. They're going to a new school here where they have to commute on the local light rail system. They think they're such cool urban-chic teens! And the best part is that it's saving us a bunch of gas by having them commute that way!

I know I mentioned that I'd been studying for an important test that I needed to take. Well, at the risk of airing my failures... I failed it. It was close mind you, and I had studied incredibly hard, but I failed it nonetheless. So I cussed and pouted and ranted about how ill-formed the questions were but at the end of the day I failed and now I'm studying for it again.

Our summer has been one of our coolest and strangest that has been seen here in some time and I take no small solace in the fact that while A~ and I spent time volunteering at the county fairs Master Gardener information booth we heard gardener after gardener complaining about how their gardens were soooo far behind and how many still hadn't gotten any red tomatoes! That was last weekend!

But you know what? Our kids love there new school, we're both employed, our health is generally better than it has been and if we're going to have a bad weather garden year, this is the year to have it. All in all, things are alright.

I have tons of pics, and there have been some interesting things going on that would be fun to share but, alas, I'll have to get back to you on that. This test must take priority for now. In the mean time, why not check out some of the older posts. Maybe you'll have some questions that I can work on getting answers to you for?

Either way, hope all of you are well and I look forward to hearing from you and being back to blogging regularly soon!
P~

This and That

Ever been so busy that you don't know if you'll have time to finish anything, and yet when you try to talk (read blog) about it, you really don't have much to say. Well that's me lately.

I spent most of this weekend in the garage working on finishing up the gifts for my boys and also managed to get one built for A~. We decided this year that we wouldn't buy anything for each other but instead would go all home made as far as the two of us. I have to say, I did really good and I think she'll be really happy Christmas morning when she opens it and finds the....well, she does read this blog everyday, I'll have to wait until the 26th to tell you about it.

While I was out checking the chickens yesterday I saw this beautifully delicate little frost-lace on a piece of glass and ran in to take a picture of it.
Life is about stopping to enjoy the miracles after all... what better way that a fleeting piece of natural beauty right?

This little guy (sorry for the blurry photo) was perched on our porch on Friday evening when I got home from work. No too sure he was getting the beauty of it all, but he's more than welcome to keep hiding out on our covered porch as long as he'd like.
A~'s been busy too, check this stuff out! The boys have been asking for that kind of hat for a while so she popped into the store, studied the way the hats were put together and came back and replicated them. I'm telling you they are sooo well made! The kids will love em. (I'm hoping for one too...Hint hint:-)I do have one really awesome piece of news though, and it has to do with the letter below.
That's a letter from out local University extension office announcing the starting date for this years Master Gardener Course. We, A~ and I that is, put our name on the list to be notified when the class was being put together and now we've sent our registration. Starting on the 21st of January we'll be taking the course together twice a week.

This is one of those things that we've both talked about wanting to do for the last five or six years but never had things line up just right. We decided that like most things that are important, if you don't MAKE it a priority, it just never happens. This is a step that we're taking in order to help us get to the next level, both in out own garden, but also in our community. It will help me to offer better information when I teach classes locally, and may lend a little more credibility to other projects that I have in mind as well. More on those to come in the future.

That's about all I've got today. With any luck I can catch up with some of my other writing obligations soon as well.
Till later then...
P~

It's a wonderful life...now live it!

I've seen this entry on a couple of the blogs I read, and thought it was pretty interesting. There are a few things that i think I'd add to it, but it's a pretty good list if you ask me.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (Not really at sea, but out in the Pacific sitting on a surfboard...pretty close I'd say!)
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language I taught myself a little arabic before my second deployment there.)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book - One Day!!!
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible - Working on it...
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake - ugh...I put my foot in...That's close enough for me...it stinks!!
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Now, if I'm counting right, I've done 60 of these 99 things. Not too darn shabby I'd say. A lot of them I have to give credit to my parents for. They made it a point to make sure that my sister and I were able to get out and see the world.

I think that bigger point of looking at a list like this is that we really have a lot of opportunities in this life. Take every chance you can to embrace them fully.
Have a great weekend.
P~

Answer II - Where we're going

OK...I know I was way long winded on my last answer post. I'll try to keep myself in check here.

Q1: As I've been following you for some time, I know how you got here. I'm more curious about where your going? Where do you and A see yourselves, say, 10 years from now....ideally.
~farm mom

A1: A~ and I are dreamers. It is one of those things that we've loved about each other since we first came together. I can't think of a time that we weren't planning what we wanted to do or accomplish or where we wanted to be. Through time some of the plans stay the same and some of them change, but still we always seem to have a goal that we've talked about at great length. I like to say that "it's hard to get anywhere if you don't know where you want to end up."

At some point in the future, A~ and I want to move to a place with more land. Either by moving further into the country to a place with 10 or 20 acres, or perhaps just finding a piece of land locally that is in the 2-5 acre range, we're open to the possibilities right now. We want to be able to continue to expand and improve on our homegrown foods and sustainable, self sufficient lifestyle progression. Ideally we will find a good piece of land with no home on it and be able to build an earth sheltered, alternative structure, semi off-grid home where we can maintain a productive garden and keep a few basic animals. In a few years, A~ wants to be returning to the workforce and I would like to seriously look into some type of career change. Whether that means taking the root duties that I have now, I'm a web based applications programmer, and applying them toward some business that I am truly passionate about, or changing completely and perhaps indulging my passion for growing and working the earth, I don't know yet but have no doubt that it will happen.

On a more personal level, I have a lot of goals that I hope to realize in the future as well. We'd both like to complete the Master Gardener course at our local extension office, and I'd like to start a community garden of some sort and generally become more active in my community. I also want to expand on my writing. What form that will take I don't yet know, but I enjoy sharing my thoughts with others and think I would get a great deal of enjoyment out of it.

Whatever path our life takes us down for the next ten years, I'm sure there's bound to be changes to our plans. The point is, we have plans. We have dreams and goals and we thrive together as we work toward them. And hopefully, entertain you as as well as you get to read my sharing of it all.

Q2: I'm also wondering about the boys. As my kids are still little, this life seems completely normal to them. How is it for your older children? Do they love the changes you've made over the last few years? Do the goals you have and the changes you've made make sense to them? Or are you the "weird parents" they have to explain away to friends?

I actually went to the source on this one, the boys. They don't seem too scarred, and at times I'd say they actually enjoy it. They said "It's cool." but they don't like only getting candy on Saturdays (that's a thing we do.), and regularly complain that the clothes line ruins football games in the back yard. They do seem to realize that they're being raised a little different from their friends too. They love to have their buddies go out with them to check the chickens for eggs when they come over to visit, and regularly tell us how their friends at school say their spoiled because they get homemade cookies and bread all the time. I think they probably do have to do a bit of explaining from time to time, but I honestly can't see that it's ever bothered them. We like to talk to them about why we do the things we do, that way they are invested in the process as well; they are participants, not victims. The times that are the hardest are the times when they get caught up in the "stuff" that some of their friends have. We basically explain to them that we made a decision to be able to spend more time with them, rather than to be working all the time and be able to afford whatever we wanted. They get it, but their still kids after all and it can be hard.

I think it would have been great to have raised them this way from the start, and as far as the frugality things we really have. The rest, food production, sustainability, etc. we have implemented slowly over time and haven't been a shock to them at all.

Well, I hope that answers that for you. And I hope I didn't blather on too long like I did before.
Till tomorrow.
P~

Answer I - How I got here...

Q: Hiya Paul, have been reading your blog for a while and yes I am curious as to how you came to the life that you now have. A little info would satisfy my curiosity :-)
Best wishes
~Babs
Well Babs, here you go. (I'll get to the other questions in order if that's alright?) It's probably more information than you could ever have wanted, but it is a good intro to me and It's something that I'd like to have down in print for the future anyway. I hope you enjoy.

A: I have to admit first off, that while we do do a lot of things around our house that might/do raise some eyebrows when seen or mentioned; feeding my chickens first thing in the morning in my go to work casual dress clothes before I head out, making homemade cheese or yogurt, grinding wheat for flour etc. I don't really see ourselves our lives as all that different. We take our kids to a pretty normal school (Charter school though...LOVE IT!), I work at a normal 40/hr week job and we live in a very suburban area just north of Salt Lake City UT. But on the other hand, unlike our neighbors, we don't have dogs barking in our backyard, we have chickens clucking and announcing the arrival of fresh eggs, I come home from a full time job and work many days until the sun is down to accomplish the things at home that I feel are just as important to our family as my going to work outside the home. We are a little different, and evolving all the time. But that's the root of the question isn't it? How did we get where we are today?

I have to take most of the credit for initially steering our ship toward this harbor. I've always been a little bit different like that. Growing up in Southern California I had two great parents that really let me explore a lot. My dad taught me to use hand tools at a young age and my mom taught me to sew....err, fabric weld. We had a family bookshelf and I remember my favorite books being the Do-It-Yourself books by Time-Life or something like that. I've always had a passion for creating, doing, learning and experimenting. I wasn't a great student, but absorbed what I wanted. Around high-school, I started dreaming of building my own "RV". You know, the old hippy renovated school bus kind with the sweet barn wood walls and recycled everything. What can I say, there were a lot of them at the beach and I lived at the beach!

I've also had the opportunity to see much of the world and it's helped a great deal in shaping who I am. I was born in Sweden you see, and although I moved here as a baby, half of my family was still there. I took my first oversees flight by myself at 9 yrs to go visit family in Sweden, had the chance to travel Europe with my family as a 12 yr old (11 or 12...Mom, help me out here?) and went through checkpoint charlie in Berlin before the wall came down. After high school I studied art locally in San Diego but then had the opportunity to spend a semester studying (and I use that term loosely.) at the University of London, it was one of the greatest times of my life. A couple of years later I enlisted in the US ARMY. I needed some direction, and more than a little discipline. I got both in spades. I also got to spend two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia where I got to learn about the culture of the mid east in person. My last big adventure was almost ten years ago when my oldest son and I went to Singapore and Bali to visit my parents who were then living there. I bring up travel for one reason. Seeing other cultures, talking with people from different circumstances cannot help but shape a persons outlook on the world. I know it did mine.

Recently, if nearly ten years is recently, I met and fell in love with a woman that can only be described as my soul mate and while today we are living a pretty comfortable life, that wasn't always the case. When we met, we were both going through very messy divorces. It wasn't the best timing, but like I mentioned in my last post, it's hard to go wrong following your heart. The first few years we were together we were basically broke. We got help from others, did what we could, and just kept plugging along. We have known what it is to want, to be burdened with debt and to feel helpless. That is not a feeling either of us wants again.

A couple of years ago, we began a process of "cleaning house". Two of our sons had been diagnosed with asthma, and one had missed nearly three weeks of school from it. We didn't know where it had come from. No one on either side of their family tree had it and we didn't know what to do. We learned about how pathogens and chemicals in our homes and food were so common, and how many experts believed that they were a great deal of the reason for many children's illnesses. We made a decision to start small and added on over time as we learned things. We made changes to our home like removing carpet and sealing our walls will zero VOC paints. One thing lead to another and food was the next logical step in our evolution. I began to see what I believed, still believe, was a threat to our future food security in the industrialization of it and it's reliance on fossil fuels that are reaching their peak. I got to a point where I was getting depressed because I wanted so badly to move to a place with some land. To have a small but productive acreage where we could do more for ourselves but couldn't make it happen. It was then that I found the Path to Freedom site, and my eyes were open to a whole new world of possibilities. A~ and I began to change our focus toward producing as much sustainable, healthy and secure food sources as we could right here on our 1/4 acre property. We expanded the garden, worked towards making keeping hens legal in our town and have been actively encouraging others to do the same.

It's been a long strange trip, to quote "The Dead", but I couldn't be happier with how it's going so far. A~ and I often work side by side. We have a common goal and faith in our future. We feel secure in our ability to provide food for our family and live in a healthy home. Our oldest son, the one who missed so much school, has hardly missed a day in the last two years. He still has triggers, but it's controlled 90% without medication. The future looks like it'll be a interesting one...but that, is a topic for another post.
Till then.
P~

Quote of the day...& maybe a little hope.

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Charles F. Kettering (1876 - 1958)

It's been so long since I last posted a quote of the day, when I found this I had to put it up. It's a pretty simple thing isn't it? If you can imagine it, you can make it so. The only limit is what we can imagine. So what's the big deal about it?

I've found myself thinking a lot lately about the state of things around me and in our world. I mean of course I have right, the economy is tanking, politics has become little more than a dog and pony show and we face things like peak oil, GMO foods etc. etc. Of course I've been thinking about it; I know you have too. So think about what you imagine for the future. Think about the first thoughts that come to your mind. What is it? Do you picture a world of peace and prosperity? Healthy cities with a renewed connection to community and the land? New economies spurred to growth through the joining of necessity, creativity and common sense oversight? Maybe you do, I try to. However, more often than not lately, I find myself imagining a world with more wars over energy or to prop up a staggering economy, unhealthy cities where everyone looks out for themselves and worries about the neighbor cheating them, and a slowly fizzling economy struggling to hold onto it's once top place on the world stage like a too-old prom queen who refuses to grow up.

My point is if we can only imagine the worst, then that is in effect the limit of our hope for the future. How do you get somewhere you can't even imagine exists? But what if we imagine the former? Peace, community, prosperity; couldn't we make them real things? I'm tired of imagining the worst. I want more for my family, I want more for my city and I want more for myself. I want to see these things come to fruition. I will imagine the best for the world and I'll do my part when I can to nudge it on it's way. I hope you'll look at your imaginations of the future and see how you've allowed yourself to dream of the days to come. Picture the change you want to see. Believe that the change will come and expect it any day.

We owe it to ourselves.
Namaste
P~

Marathons and sprints

Ever notice that sometimes in life you're jogging along at a good steady marathon pace, focusing on the long term goals and just kind of plodding along? While other times it seems like your in a sprint to a finish line that is coming up quicker than you expected. That pretty much sums up the last week or so around our house. Problem with that was that while I was trying to do well on the sprint I was trying to run a marathon at the same time.

What the heck am I talking about? It's like that commercial, "Life comes at you fast". In one week, I had to dig and set posts for our fence, then install the fencing a couple of days later. In the time when the fence posts were setting, I was trying to do some basic prep work in the garden beds to prepare for the big planting push, clean up the yard for an outdoor party over the weekend to celebrate with family and friends our children's baptism. Which was a whole other process, taking a bit of time in the afternoon meeting with church missionaries a couple of days during the week. All this time I was getting up and into work early and staying late to meet a deadline that came today. (I made it by the way, despite a 2-day issue that popped up.) Anyway, I felt like I was sprinting to get all the immediate stuff completed, while still running the marathon that is vegetable gardening.

Whaa Whaa Whaaa... all pissing and moaning aside, it was a good weekend. With A~'s birthday on the same day as the baptism, and our Anniversary on the same day as their confirmation; May's a big month in our house. I'm happy to say I think I can get back to a bit of a schedule again, and perhaps get my blog to be a little more regular once more.

Thanks for the patience.

P~

Web Ringers.

I just wanted to take a second and say hello and welcome to all the new readers that have been popping in from the Urban Homesteading web-Ring. I am so happy to have you here. I hope you're able to learn something from what I do, and more than that even, I hope you'll share with me so that I can learn from you.

For one reason or another, we've all started walking down an uncommon path. Let us be company to each other as we walk it and talk and share and see where we end up.

Take a look around, leave a comment if you like and please, hurry back.

Namaste.

P~

My story of food - IV

Tonight was the lecture with Michael Pollan, Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and most recently In Defense of Food; the lecture was great, but more on that to come later. In the spirit of this I decided Monday to take a look at my own "Story of Food" throughout the week; to illustrate how I was influenced and how I have changed and grown.

Renaissance

So I had decided to get myself healthier, but what did that mean? I didn't want to get caught up in the diet cycle that so many people have, but if the food was what had made me gain weight then what choice did I have? Well what if it wasn't necessarily the food? What if it was me? What if my outlook on food was the problem? I had to come to terms with what my way of looking at food meant and how I could change it to affect the change that I was looking for.
For so long a period while I was on my own my diet was one of fast food or at best processed and refined foods, with few quality, healthy, home cooked meals, that when I started getting these delicious meals daily, I just stuffed myself. It was the first time since I was an adult that I had regular, complete and tasty meals and I made the best of it. That was my outlook on food, if it's good, eat as much as I can. I had not yet read Michael Pollans books, but I had accomplished the first of his three instructions to a healthy diet; "Eat Food". It was indeed food, but the next instruction is "Not too Much", that one needed a little work.

Armed with this insight to my diet, I decided to train myself to eat until I was full. But what do I mean? I thought I was going to try to eat less right? I did. I ate until I was full and not until I was satisfied, there's a big difference. I enjoyed the delicious meal, but just because there was some left, didn't mean I needed to eat it. Instruction two, learned.

Over the last few years, one of the other things that I have been working on, was learning to garden. I love to grow things, and growing a small garden for some extra veggies just seemed like a no-brainer. Well now I decided to ramp it up to true food production levels. It gave me the opportunity to begin eating more plant foods like salads, greens, zucchinis and tomatoes. Then A~ surprised me yet again. It seems that the heavy stuff like gravies and fried food wasn't all there was to her food traditions at all. As our garden matured and the harvests came in, she taught me how to put up food for the winter. Pickling and preserving, we put up beans and cucumbers and she showed me a relish-like mix called chow chow. We've also made plum and blackberry jam and baked and frozen zucchini bread to name a few others.
As the year progressed and my awareness of my diet and my connection to food grew, it seemed like for every step I made, A~ was right on pace with me as well. Somewhere along the road she began making even more of our foods right at home. She began a traditional sourdough start, made all of our breads, and has utterly spoiled us for desserts.

Today my story of food is a love story. I love to explore it and enjoy it with my kids and my wife, I love to share my passion for it with my friends and neighbors and most of all I love the connection and traditions that it brings to our home.

I have no misconceptions that my story of food is nowhere near completed, I hope you'll keep joining me as I discover it.

Happy eating

P~

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"

~Michael Pollan

My story of food - III

Tomorrow Michael Pollan, Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and most recently In Defense of Food, will be in Salt Lake City to speak on… surprise… food. Or more to the point, what we eat and how we eat it. In that spirit I decided Monday to take a look at my own "Story of Food"; how I was influenced and how I have changed and grown.

Feast after Famine

Yesterday I told you about a couple of later influences in my food history and about how drastically that changed when I was on my own. I spent a lot of years essentially in a food purgatory. In 1999 I met my soul mate (and just for the record, I don't throw that phrase around lightly.) But the food drought wasn't over yet. There were a couple of very lean years after we first got together. My good job of the last 3 years had been jettisoned because I had had to relocate and the work that I could get, was barely above minimum wage. We lived on little, received food assistance from our church, and at one point needed to store food in the snowbank for a while because we had no refrigerator. In March 2001, just as we were getting settled into a routine, providence shined on us and I fell into the position that I am in today. My income more than doubled overnight, and before long we were eating like kings (or at least it seemed that way from where we had come).
I mentioned A~ being from West Virginia and having a strong food tradition of her own, well that tradition combined with her skills in the kitchen and desire to feed people had many upsides. Delicious brown beans and cornbread, Biscuits and gravy with fried eggs, sweet potato pie; all of which I had had at least limited exposure to at some point, but had never had made like these. One down side, I also quickly learned, was that the secret of such mouth watering delights was bacon grease, sugar, shortening and huge portions . I don't have a problem with using bacon grease for some things, and there's really no other way to make proper biscuits and gravy if you ask me, but my fathers entire side of the family has a long history of heart disease and now that I was finally happy with my life I wanted to be around to enjoy it for a while. Long story short, after nearly six years of the dietary equivalent of reckless abandon, I had grown to approx 220+ lbs from my previous all time high of 153. Mind you I worked physically a lot through the latter years, and a lot of that gain was in new muscle, but much was what one of my coworkers likes to call "table muscle". This brings me to last year.

One of my new years resolution for last year was to begin to get myself healthier. It was the first time in my life that the prospect of a diet was looming before me, and I didn't really know what to do about it.

Tomorrow is Michael Pollans lecture and I'll take that cue to wrap up this Story of Food with how a shift of perspective and some good advice lead to unforeseen changes.

P~

~~For those of you that read this through a reader of some sort, I appologize for the duplicate post.~~

My story of food - II

This week Michael Pollan, Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and most recently In Defense of Food, will be in Salt Lake City to speak on… surprise… food. Or more to the point, what we eat and how we eat it. In that spirit I decided yesterday to take a look at my own "Story of Food"; how I was influenced and how I have changed and grown.

On my own

I'd had the benefit at twenty years old to have had some pretty interesting exposures to food through not only my family influences, but through the jobs I had held thus far. I worked at a Jack in the Box restaurant and at more pizza joints that I care to admit and I can't say they left a positive legacy to me, but there were a few others that did.

One of the last pizza places that I worked at was Milano's Pizza, a small, family run pizza place with a pie that was sooo good. I learned that pizza, though a simple food and often rightly lumped together with fast food, can be instead a very healthy, fresh and delicious meal. I learned to form dough by hand by rolling the dough balls, (a very handy skill when baking NY Times no knead bread by the way.) and then to toss a crust and use only fresh ingredients.

After my first year in college I was invited to study abroad at the University of London for a semester, a food journey to itself, but that's another story. I was fortunate enough to have parents that were able to help me take advantage of this opportunity, and that were also grounded enough to attach the condition to it that I had to save a $1000.00 toward the trip before they would. To earn this I worked in another small family run business near my home, "The French Gourmet". The Barabas family, a Hungarian single mother and her two grown children, ran what was essentially an up scale coffee shop that was an offshoot of an established restaurant. I worked as a combination barista, cook, dishwasher, host, waiter and assistant manager and I loved every day there. I learned how to make a traditional vinaigrette from scratch, mastered the art of cooking the french omelet and baked and assembled fresh fruit tarts. This is also where I learned to cook the Ratatouille, that I shared with you last summer. I think I can pinpoint many of the roots of my love affair with food to this job.
So there I was in my early twenties with a passion and rich tradition for good food. I was married with a young child and serving in the military, how much of that food knowledge do you think mattered one iota? You guessed it, not a bunch. We pay our service members far too little, in effect to the degree that they are little more than the working poor in many cases. Food became not tradition or pleasure, it was instead a utility. We ate the basics; milk, beef, chicken and some veggies. But far too often it was taco bell, or microwave burritos with a heaping helping of processed snacks and soda. This was the norm for most of the next 10 years.

In 1999 after a long coming separation. I met my soul mate and current wife. The food drought was over, almost. She's a city girl raised in Utah, but was born in West (by God) Virginia and has deep food traditions of her own.

More tomorrow. Hope your enjoying it so far.

P~

My story of food - I

This week Michael Pollan, Author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and most recently In Defense of Food, will be in Salt Lake City to speak on… surprise… food. Or more to the point, what we eat and how we eat it. I bought a ticket to see him, (I have to admit that $10.00 is very reasonable I think.) and am looking forward to it very much. For any of you in Salt Lake area, he was also interviewed live on KUER this morning on the RadioWest show. I’m didn't get this post up in time for anyone to get to the interview in time to hear it, but you should be able to access the recorded show HERE, I have no doubt it will be on some interest to many of you.
I thought since I’ll no doubt be thinking quite a bit about food this week, not to mention trying to finish In Defense of Food (which I’ve been whittling away at since the beginning of the year) before the lecture, that I would spend the next couple of days focusing on the story of food in my life. It’s not a fantastic voyage mind you, and I’m no Michael Pollan, but I think it’s good to look back to gain perspective and if nothing else to define the road we’re on and where we think it’s going.

Earliest Memories

My earliest memories of food are both vague and distinct at the same time. My Mother grew up in Sweden and I was born there. Though I came to the U.S. when I was only two months old many of the foods we ate came from that tradition. My Fathers family was Spanish, French and American Indian and their foods reflected the southwest diet roots where they had come from; beans, tortillas, chiles etc. Quite a range huh? It made for some pretty interesting eating.

I remember "pit i pana"; I don't know if I'm spelling it correctly, but it's pronounced Pitt-E-Punna, and I would guess it probably means something like "whatever the heck happens to be in the refrigerator". My mom would make it once and a while and I always remember loving it. Fried, sliced potatoes with some fried ham or hotdogs, sliced beets and I'm sure some other things I'm forgetting, then add a couple of fried eggs on top for good measure. Almost like a skillet breakfast, but with beets. Of course there were the obligatory swedish meatballs and pancakes, but one of the things I remember most was her "Mexican Food". I quote that name, because that was and is what the food was known as. It was basically an enchilada in that it was a flour tortilla with the red sauce, but it had ground beef, scrambled eggs, cheese and black olives inside. I have no idea where she got the recipe, but it's still a must eat whenever moms around.

My Grandparents also left some major impressions while I grew up. I remember my Morfar (Swedish for Mothers Father.) sitting at the kitchen table eating potatoes that he grew. Every meal, breakfast lunch or dinner, seemed to include small new potatoes that he would hold on his fork and deftly peel with a knife and his thumb. He had two gardens as I remember, one at home and one at the summer house both with nothing but potatoes, or at least it seemed that way. Fish was important too. He spoke little to no english and I spoke as much Swedish, but we both spoke fish. My Grandma, on my fathers side, set the standard when I was a kid for homemade torillas, beans and chile. She also introduced me to homemade bread, and a dish called SOS or S**t on the Shingle. I was about 6 so I just called it poop on the shingle and wouldn't eat it, just to be safe. Grandpa left his mark around the same age, when he let me watch as he slaughtered a goat. It was something I've never forgotten it, and have forever had an appreciation of where our food comes from.

I guess you could say I really never had a choice when it came to having an appreciation for food, although my sister did a pretty good job of it when she was young. In addition to my family, I had friends who were Iranian, Jewish, German; all of whom shared their traditions with me as well. All of this went into making my pallete what it is. It gave me a love for food, and a cursory appreciation for what it took to produce it. From there I was on my own, I left home at 18, was married and supporting a family by 20, and food changed to a much different role. More on that path tomorrow.

P~

Turn Off, Tune Out, Be Happy (Today)

Well here we are, Today. What did I learn? How has is benefited me?



Today:

Well, today I think I’m the happiest I’ve been in my life. I was never truly miserable mind you; after all I have a beautiful wife and children, a new home in a good neighborhood, and a challenging job with people I like to be around. Today however, I am focusing on those things and on the positive, possible things in my life. I feel challenged by myself to think and learn and grow. My health is better and I’ve lost nearly thirty pounds with no dieting, just a more healthy diet and active living. I have built a small but loyal group of readers and friends that I enjoy chatting and learning with. I’ve also learned that what I consume can truly have an impact on my happiness. More does not mean happier and easier does not mean better. Spending time and work to grow a garden really does make for a better salad, and the time it takes to bake really does make better bread. Of course we need things, I am realistic after all. It’s the pursuit of things as a goal in themselves that I’m talking about. There are so many people out there that are not able to have some of the basic things like shelter, clothing or regular meals; perhaps instead of throwing out that “old” coat we could donate it to someone who needs it. Few things increase our appreciation of our blessings and of the things we have, thereby increasing our happiness, like sharing with others. Slowing down and simplifying our lives can bring us so much fulfillment it’s hard to quantify it. I hope I’ve been able to shed a little light on my own journey and that perhaps it will help some of you to reflect on yours. I leave you with this…



Happiness is being where you are,

Take stock what you have and appreciate it,

Focus on the good and the possible in your world, and how you can increase it,

Slow down, participate in life and stay challenged.


Namaste
P~

TurnOff, Tune Out, Be Happy (Recovery)

Yesterday I told you about how I found my self becoming unhappy. It wasn't something that I was conscious of, it just came on me. I was lucky enough that the same fates that brought me to this point, presented me the opportunity to change my course.



The Recovery:
When earlier this year I started to blog, one of my primary reasons, honestly, was to have a place where I could rant about all of the things that I was so angry about. I had things to say about politics, world issues and the downfall of society… you know real happy stuff. I found that it was much harder for me to make the time to actually sit down and write out my opinions when they came from anger than I had expected. I’ve always enjoyed writing and it’s also always been something that’s been able to help me organize my thoughts. When I write I have the opportunity to look back and read what I’ve said. It gives me perspective on what I’m trying to convey rather than just spitting it out. I guess reading my own words helped put in perspective how I was thinking. After realizing that there were so many wonderful blogs out there dealing with things that I was passionate and interested in like gardening, homesteading and alternative energy for example, I began to focus more on these things. I began to find my voice again and it was a positive one. I moved to Blogspot as my host in roughly April, and adopted the title “A Posse Ad Esse” or “From Possibility to Reality”, in order to remind me to focus on the possible in life. Not long after I moved the blog, my wife and I also made the decision to cancel our cable subscription for the summer since we would be gone for 3 weeks on vacation and saw no reason to pay for it. These two things, vacation and cancelling cable, combined to thrust me into a cold turkey withdrawal from the news and a strange thing happened; I was happier. I wasn’t walking around with a perma-grin on my face or anything like that, but I was certainly happier. I decided to explore this further and began to earnestly avoid the things that I found causing me unhappiness. I found that even the local news became a mental drain as nothing makes the news like death, misery and misfortune, of course they’ll always throw you that little fluff piece at the end to leave you feeling good so you’ll come back again tomorrow. I made the decision to tune-out of the talk radio and listen to music again and found that I arrived home with a smile more often, and was in a better mood overall. I decided that I may never be able to get the small hobby farm I dreamt of (the dream persists, but not at the expense of today.); but I do have a beautiful home on a ¼ of an acre that I wasn’t making the most of as it was. I began to spend my time in the yard as though I were on my farm. I planned and worked it, composting and tending. My obsession with what I didn’t have became one of gratitude for what I did. I took part in a “Low Impact Week” challenge put on by another blogger that encouraged me to try a new way of daily life. I began to ride my bike to work, consume less, and eat a more local and primarily vegetarian diet. My wife and I began to wean ourselves off of chemical cleaners and started using home made natural ones. All these things, each one small in on its own, began to move me towards a more simple way of living. I began to feel more in tune with my community, and more connected to what I was doing. I was thinking again.


As you can see, making decisions and taking action, combined with focusing on the positive things in life and a little lucky opportunity helped me to dig myself out of the mire. We can all do it, life is a choice. Tomorrow, the last installment, Today.



P~

Turn Off, Tune Out, Be Happy (The Descent)

“My name is P~ and I’m a recovering pessimist”, that’s how I ought to introduce myself. I know this sounds silly on the surface, but really it’s not, it’s the truth. I was fortunate enough this year to have a number of events come together and enough clarity to make some decisions that have opened a door for me to more happiness than I even realized I was missing. I’ll start at the beginning, as I see it, of a slow and creeping descent into gloom and unhappiness. I didn’t realize it was this at first, but as I reflected on it, it became obvious to me.

The Descent:
After September 11th I, like so many others, began to check in on the news regularly to see what was going on, if there were any developments in the investigation or any survivors found. This was the gateway event so to speak. Soon after, I found talk radio. I knew it existed of course, but had never really listened to it regularly. I started tuning in during the mornings to see if anything new was happening and to get the latest from the day and evening prior. Those morning tune-ins turned to all day listening and before I knew it I had it on during the drive to and from work, on the garage radio, while I worked outside, pretty much constantly. On top of this I would watch the different cable news outlets at night, and would actually TIVO some of the opinion shows that I didn’t have time for. I found that even though each host, whether on radio or television, had a slightly different way they would put the info across it was still really just the same information. I also found myself parroting the positions of many of the hosts, even when I didn’t fully agree, because I did agree with part of it. I substituted thinking for listening, a dangerous proposition; can you say mind control? Now that I was fully addicted to the hard stuff and binging all day long, the inevitable symptoms that follow any addiction followed. Need, paranoia, anxiety, anger, you name it. Really, I’m not exaggerating. I needed it and felt like I was going to miss some crucial event if I wasn’t tuned in. I started getting angry at the opposing side, many of whose positions I still disagree with mind you, but I took it too far I think; badmouthing different positions and not even spending the time to familiarize myself with them. Finally I found myself feeling afraid, almost paranoid, of “The things that were going to happen”. I do think that there are a lot of things to be concerned with, peak oil, food/water shortages and wars for example, but I was obsessing on them. There were other things causing me unhappiness as well. I’ve wanted to be in a place where I could have more land to work. I’ve often dreamt of “returning to the land” so to speak but reality and circumstances seem conspired against this. I would actually find myself feeling incredibly depressed at times and not wanting to do anything because I was focusing on this thing that I never felt I would ever be able to have. Things in general for that matter were a cause of despair. Why can’t I have this or that when I want it so badly? Life isn’t fair is it? I’ve written before about happiness; about “being where you are” and not focusing on where you wish you were and I believe that to be one of the best pieces of advice I could give on the subject. What I didn’t realize however, was exactly how much my consumption could be tied to it. I had become stuck in a rut of consuming dire news, disdainful views, and lofty wants that were continually letting me down. The more I focused on what would make me happy if I had it, or how things should be, the more discontent I was with what I had and how things were.

At this point I was pretty low. I felt full of fear, and discontent. I know my sweet wife worried about me and ask if everything was OK. I didn't to be like this, it just crept up on me. Tomorrow I'll tell you about The Recovery.

Till tomorrow.

P~

Snow and Fire

I've been in the mountains since Friday with the family; mom, dad, and the wife and kids. My dad, my son and I hunted hard through the weekend, but unfortunatly came up empty handed. We expected cold weather going into the hunt, I mean it wouldn't be deer camp without brisk fall mornings and perhaps a little snow....

Um, I said a LITTLE snow! We got there Friday and scouted a bit, decided on where we wanted to sit the next morning and then ate a great dinner and got to bed. The next morning we got an early start and hiked the mile and a half out to the ridgeline we wanted to hunt and watched for the sunrise. Then the wind picked up... and up... and then the snow started to come. It was just the little flurries and the wind, then the big flakes came. By the end of the day the ground was white, and by morning we had nearly a foot. The snow came on and off through Monday. Yesterday morning we decided to get a late start expecting it to be too cold for anything to be up and moving, it was 15 deg when we got out, it had been only 5 deg that morning according to the camp caretakers. I do have to say though that the cabin we stayed in was very comfortable, and if I was going to spend a cold hunt coming home empty handed then this was the way I would want to do it; spending the evenings playing cards, telling old stories and singing tangy old country songs (Much to my wifes displeasure!).

When we got home today we learned about the fires raging in San Diego county. I grew up there, not many miles from one of the fronts. My parents learned about the fires and spoke to my sister in Temecula who can watch the fires from her bedroom window. We've had friends of the family displaced from mandatory evacuations and others including my sister prepared in case they are called. I guess this is just how life works. Snow and Fire.

Carmel Mountain Road fire photo credit: ALBERT JOHNSON / For SignOnSanDiego