So,

I’m not sure if i wrote about it the second time.  I made a different recipe of granola for my second go.  It worked well.  We didn’t have powered milk, and so it didn’t get as chunky as the recipe led me to believe.  It was called Chunky Granola after all.  :-D  So tonight, I made another batch.  We ate through the burned batch and the first go at chunky this morning, so I needed to fill our buckets.

Chunky Granola works.  Some how the time for cooking doesn’t work so hot though.  here’s what i found.  I was nervous and experimenting to make it get chunky.  So we actually remembered to purchase powdered milk.  I made 2 batches simultaneously.  Other’s like to call this doubling the recipe.  :-D  Either way, i added a little more honey, cooked them at the same time, and actually cooked them for 15 minutes, and then had to put dinner in the oven.  So i took them out, let them cool in my room (so people wouldn’t snack on it) and then threw it back into the oven like 2 hours later for 15 more minutes.  It’s still in the process of cooling, but it looks a lot more chunky and able to hold together.  *snaps to powdered milk*  it’s pretty darn sweet though, which isn’t bad.  I realized after i started pulling the ingredients together, that I should have measured out the liquids separately in two bowls.  because when you’re doubling a recipe, bare with me it’ll make sense.  When you’re doubling a recipe you’re mixing everything together.  but when you’re making two batches, and you’re working with oil and honey, it’s difficult to separate that evening into the two different batches.  So next time i learn.  I also tried roasting the cashews and walnuts more than last time, but i forgot cause i was cooking dinner, and burned the hell out of them.  they sizzled in the compost.  I’m also going to try using real oats instead of quick oat, if we ever get any.
On another note - the city repossessed some houses from the tax foreclosure auction.  And there’s one near by with a vacant (and unbuildable) lot next door.  After reading (i’m almost done) This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow, i want to make a farm in the vacant lot and live in the house.  There’s some book that Far (ant hill) mentioned and it’s about this urban house that is pretty much as far off the grid as you can get.  I’d like to try that.
I realized there’s a line between being conscious and frugal - and depriving yourself of  the basic necessities of comfortable living.  like heat.  :-D  our house is not well insulated and we keep the heat low - but it works.  I’m not too cold, i believe every single one of my family would die here.  :-D  it’s all relative when I say i’m cold. 

So much to talk about, so little memory.

So, as i mentioned previously - i got really cool books for christmas.
I’ve currently cooked 2 recipies from the more-with-less cook book. I started reading the related book -Living More with Less, and then picked up the This Organic Life book. I’m almost done with that.

What made me think of anything is that i just made granola for the first time! but i burned portions of it, I think it was too close to the bottom of the oven. And last monday i cooked the Tomato Quiche with the scattered help of Far with the crusts. It was good. (heather, you should try it. I’m really excited we both have the same cook book!!) It was really cool. The one thing i don’t understand, when making granola, is that the store bought stuff (even the organic stuff from the Abundance Co-op) is really really clumpy and stuff. Mine was really fine “grained” if you will. Adam said maybe it’s because i used honey instead of brown sugar (which we’ve seemed to loose) or the manor in which i was “stirring often” broke up the chunks. I dunno. I made the crunchy granola… didn’t bind together like i’d like, but i’m going to try the “chunky” granola and see if i’m anywhere near successful.

Reading Living more with less was really good. I started it - then i got distracted. But it’s really really compelling about how we’re living in the world and how we could learn from the world community. It’s quite a social-type book. It focuses on a very gentle interaction with the world around us, a conscious, slow and steady awareness and almost “critical” eye to the world around you to make the best and least impacting decisions…. i haven’t actually read it in a week, but it’s really good.

The book that Has been rocking my world is This Organic Life. amazing book, extremely well written. I recommend this to EVERYONE. if i had to pick people to hang out with, it would be Joan Dye Gussow and Barbara Kingsolver. They seem to be amazing grounded women that want to do something for the world around them. Reading about Joan’s garden, and the experiences and people she’s met with it is inspiring (horrible word - actually almost vague in a sense) but it’s compelling and makes me want to take up gardening. and by gardening i mean farming on a small scale. I’ve become much more conscious over the past week about what vegetables I’m eating, what people are requesting for meals, or bringing home and the fact that some of these fruits and vegetables are super out of season, and have been shipped half way across the country, if not the world. We used avocados tonight for dinner - I made guacamole for the first time, and since we were tripling the moosewood recipe, i just threw spices into it - Cayenne pepper, chili pepper, and cumin. tee hee - But avocados? I don’t know their availability. I actually just googled it - the seasonal availability of vegetables are very incomplete tables that leave out a bunch of vegetables. But i googled just avocado and came up with some florida growing chart that says they only don’t grow like april and may, and they only grow in the south eastern county right near the Keys. Frankly, i don’t like that i’m getting avocados from Florida anyways, and secondly 3 of them were rotted, so i’m wary on the seasonal availability they list. But either way… as I was saying - the other thing was the boys picked up some strawberries at the Public Market. But you’ve got to have a lot of discretion about what you’re seeing as “local and in season” at the P. Market. Because some people are just selling extra stock from the local grocery stores which sell out of season strawberries from Florida.

The thing that this book has really gotten me interested in and craving almost (oddly enough) is growing a lot of veggies in our own garden this summer (terrified and baulking at the amount of work) and then Storing a lot of this stuff for the winter. That’s the one thing that doesn’t really happen here is the storing. So we can freeze and can tomatoes and use them until we run out, and then ce la vie. Ya know? Like use vegetables when their seasons are, and if you don’t think far enough into the future you’ll be sol. We could have used some version of tomatoes tonight for our little taco/burrito/tostado dinner. And even if we don’t grow everything in our own garden, if we’re just conscious at the public market to buy only local stuff, and get the in season veggies, then we can can and store that stuff. And it’ll be helping out our local farmers instead of the other people. just seems like something really beneficial to all involved.

i’ll make that it for now.