Daily Photo Inspiration

Homestead.

vintage studio portrait of a cowboy by freeparking

Daily Photo Inspiration

Shout out to a friend having a hard day...

Tomatoes and Bananas! by bethboya

Salad Rolls

Okay, so we had some pretty nice, hot, sunny days last week and I had this whole plan to make salad rolls on one of these eves for dinner because they are pretty much the best thing on a hot summer night. Then it got all crappy and rainy again and hot delicious stir fry has sounded much better than cold salad rolls. I am only telling you this because I was gonna take some nice pictures of them and share them here, but then I remembered I drew some illustrations of the process for another project so I will just share those and put some pics of salad rolls up when the sun comes back out. So here we go!

What you will need:

Rice paper
VEGGIES! I usually use:

• lettuce and/or cabbage (roll the leaf up and chop so you have lettuce strips, this makes it much easier to roll in the end)
• carrots (julienned)
• cucumber (skinned, use spoon to scrape out seeds and cut into long thin strips)
• basil and/or cilantro and/or mint
• those tiny rice noodles
• tofu or cooked chicken/shrimp (totally not necessary, but if it will be your whole meal a little protein makes it more filling
• avocado, red bell pepper, pear and other such things cut up in the same manner are good too
• Or pretty much anything that sounds good or you have lying around

1. So to start cook your meat and noodles and cut everything up so it is in strips no wider than 1/4" thick and 4-5ish" long. Cool your meat and noodles.

2. This is how I set things up:

I know, this might seem a bit excessive, but there is method to my madness. This just makes things into more of an assembly line and makes it waaaaay easier to crank out a ton of these puppies in a jiffy.

3. Now you can start assembly. Soak a rice sheet in your water pan until it is soft and lay flat on the cutting board. Make a pile of veggies/protein starting with lettuce/cabbage.

Then roll 'em up like this:

Use the empty plate to stack finished rolls! You can cut them in 1/2 when you are done or just serve theme whole.

I think they are best served with peanut sauce (my favorite is San-J Thai Peanut, one of the few condiments I can bring myself to buy), but you could totally dip em in anything that sounds good. I have been meaning to make a dessert version made with fruit and dipped in chocolate or something...

I like to take veggie ones to pot-lucks 'cause they are a favorite of both veggies and meaties. But on those hot summer nights when you don't want to turn on the stove they make a great meal (and make leftovers for lunch the next day!)

Daily Photo Inspiration

The sun is being such a tease these days in Portland...

One step off the sun - A un passo dal sole by Robyn Hooz

Farmers Market

So I did make it to the farmers market on Saturday. It was the perfect day for it, sunny and beautiful. So, um, now I'm gonna do a bit of the soap box thing now so bear with me for a moment...

I believe it is very important to buy local-organic-sustainable, blah, blah, blah... But this does not mean buying a package of organic baby carrots (processed!) from Walmart. I know some of you are like "duh!", but same goes for that "organic" product you are buying from Whole Foods (plus processed foods are real crappy for you anyway and breakfast cereal is basically the devil).

On that note you don't have to hold organic as the holiest of holies either. WHEN YOU SHOP AT THE FARMERS MARKET YOU CAN SPEAK DIRECTLY (most times) TO THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR GROWING YOUR FOOD and find out what exactly goes in and on the food you are eating. This is good because:

1. Organic certification is expensive, some smaller farms that use sustainable practices simply can't afford certification. If something does not have organic signage just ask the farmer about his/her practices.
2. Local cuts down on transit pollution, good for local economy, and gives you fresher food, i.e. good for everyone, not just you the eater.
3. Fresh, local, sustainable food TASTES FRIGGIN AWESOME.

So all I'm saying is you don't have to get so hung up on the organic thing (I used to work for this organic produce company and we accidentally got a shipment of a non-organic item and accidentally sent it out and a woman noticed after she had fed some of this item to her child and actually called to ask if she should take the child to the ER!). Organic is GOOD! But so are local small farms that can use your support to get that certification! *stepping off soap box*, for now...

So, whilst at the farmers market I was taking a picture of this:

Because they were the most beautiful color of pink ever! And the guy gave me one! And now it looks like a huge pink pom-pom (like 8" across!!!):

And thanks for reading my rant! Comments and discussion ALWAYS appreciated.

Daily Photo Inspiration

Perfect running weather in Portland this morning. Dry and nice cool air. Although, I would not mind running on a nice beach with a nice dog...

The Runner by acampm1

Daily Photo Inspiration

Oh my goodness! I ate the best strawberry today! And I plan to go to the farmers market tomorrow!



Strawberries Too - DSM Farmers Market by Don3rdSE

Mango Tree

So most people know how to grow an avocado tree from an avocado pit. Big whup, avocado trees are soooo 4th grade. I don't know if many people do this (I guess I could just check the internets, but whatever!), but at one point I wanted to see if I could grow a mango tree from a mango pit, AND IT WORKED! So I thought it would be a cool and easy tutorial and mangos are like the most friggin delicious fruit ever! So here ya go.

Here are the tools you will need:

mango

knife

cutting board

scissors

small glass

window that gets some sun

pot

potting soil

I have tried and succeeded with both the big greenish mangos and the little yellow mangos. I think the little yellow ones are tastier, but both are pretty delish.

Start by cutting up the mango. The easiest way to do this is by finding the little nob where the mango was attached to the tree and cutting along each side of the big flat pit in the middle of the fruit. This will give you two meaty pieces and one piece that is mostly pit.

Feel free to just dig in and gobble up that juicy goodness, but if you want to share or have nice uniform pieces hold each half steady on the cutting board and cut diagonal in one direction and then the other to make a grid. This will allow you to pop it inside out and cut off little cubes of mango (plus it just looks cool).

For the pit part you can peel off the skin and either try to cut off all the meat or just gnaw on it a bit until it is clean of mango. Now scrape off the remaining bits under running water, this will leave you with a hairy, slimy, little stone.

This part gets a little tricky because the bit you actually want is inside this. The casing around the seed is kinda like that annoying plastic packaging around electronics, a bitch to get into and even a little dangerous. So be VERY CAREFUL when doing this next part, children should have ADULT SUPERVISION or just adult help for this part. Feel free to let the pit sit overnight and dry out so it is not so slimy and hard to hang onto. Pinch the smaller end of the pit and it should feel hollow up to a point, snip this part off.

Being careful not to damage the bean inside make a slice with the knife or snip with scissors and you should be able to tear the casing up the edge and carefully take out the little bean.

Now the hard part is over! Put this little guy in some room temp water (just a little, don't submerge completely) in a little glass and set on a window sill.

Mine took FOREVER to start growing so don't get discouraged. It can take a month or two before you see some roots forming. If the water starts to get a little slimy rinse it out and add some more water (NOT COLD! see basil post). Some pink roots will shoot out and then finally a little pink hand (literally! It totally looks like a little alien hand reaching out the top with leaves for fingers!) will reach up and then you can plant it in potting soil with leaves up, roots down (duh). Keep the soil pretty wet, mangos like lot's of water.

Good luck! Mangos are waaaay cooler than avocados.

-Anna

Daily Photo Inspiration

I am really looking forward to summer and this:



"Tomatoes From the Garden Ripen in the Window After the First Frost" by pictoscribe

Sink or swim

After some rough times with my pseudo-employers I am finally going to see if I can do it on my own. *eek!* A few years ago I managed to pull myself out of the service industry and have been working for art based entrepreneurs since. This has had its ups and downs, but I am finally ready (with a little push) to jump off and try to do it for myself. I have a little crafty business (shameless self promotion) and mostly sell at craft and street fairs, but want to put more focus on my etsy shop (I think I have had all of 5 sales, woot!) and getting my stuff out there. Because entrepreneurship is very much a self-sufficiency/DIY based venture I will do my best to document my struggles here. But if things don't work out I might have to live on eggs for the next 6 months:



So that being said, welcome to daily updates! I hope!

-Anna

Basil

I freaking love basil. It is delicious and versatile and is nice to have on hand at all times. I use it fresh in salad, on pizza out of the oven, with sliced heirloom tomatoes and cheese, and cooked in pretty much EVERYTHING. Buying fresh basil from the store is super expensive and it tends to get wiltie pretty fast. AND is super delicate so you aren't supposed to wash it and who can stand not washing something from the store! Also it grows great in containers indoors so you can have fresh basil all year!

Right now Trader Joe's has pots of planted basil for $2.99 (!) and several friends have commented that they are not able to keep their basil alive for very long so I just wanted to give a few pointers on basil propagation (if you don't have a Trader Joe's try a garden store, I don't recommend growing it yourself because it takes forever to get to a point you can start harvesting it, but if you are crazy patient go right ahead).

First you will need a few things: Basil plant, extra potting soil, container, water, sunny window.

Your pot should be at least a little bigger than the container that the basil came in and put a little extra potting soil in the bottom (I mixed some compost from my compost bin with the potting soil to make it richer). Basil likes rich, light, well draining soil. If you don't know what that means just get a little bag of potting soil from the store and that should work fine.

Remove the plant from the plastic container by squeezing it a little on all sides and gently dumping it out into your hand.

Gently roll between your hands or squeeze the root ball to loosen the soil a little, but be careful not to damage or break the roots.

Plop it into your pot, fill in the sides with soil, and give it a little water. Pretty self explanatory.

One general note about watering plants: don't just fill up a watering can with tap water and douse your plants. ESPECIALLY tropical house plants! These little fellas have been living in a nice, warm, controlled environment and to suddenly have a bunch of cold water dumped on them is a shock to their systems. The best way to water is to plan a day ahead and fill a container with water, then let it set overnight. The water will be at a nice room temperature and the chlorine in it will have evaporated out. If yer in a pinch and need to water right away make the tap room temp-ish by turning on the hot water a bit.

Now that you have a nice potted basil plant place it in a sunny window and harvest leaves when needed. When you pick the leaves it is important to pinch off stems just above a set of leaves and not pick off individual leaves.

This will make the plant fuller and bushier and prevent flowers from developing. If you do see flowers developing pick them off right away so your plant will continue to grow and produce more leaves.

Basil is a natural mosquito repellant and is a delicious addition to nearly everything. Leaves can be dried or frozen and are good fresh or cooked with other things. Keep your plant in an accessible place and don't pick leaves until you need them. Steep some leaves in a container of olive oil for a simple salad dressing.

Thanks for reading! I'll going to try to post on a weekly basis from now on so please let me know if you have any topics you are interested in! And maybe someday on a daily basis!

-Anna

Photos by K.C.

Let's get get this party started!

So I have been meaning to start this silly blog thing for a while now and think about it pretty much on a daily basis. It is just one of those things that gets sent to the back of the line as I am easily distracted and have a million projects in the works already. Anyway, I guess I am a product of these modern times and think the things I do and think are extremely important and I must share them with the world. So what better way to do that than blog about it! And I just make a lot of fun stuff and want to document and share dammit!

I am also very interested in self-sufficiency and wish more people were. My goal is to show people how easy it is to not rely on the supermarket/mall for food/products and how rewarding it actually is to make and do things for yourself (or find it second hand, yippee for thrift stores!). Sure, it might take a little longer, but the end result is often better for you and the world, cheaper (for you and the world, but more about that later) and is definitely more fun to do. So, I was just about to get super preachy about the whole self sufficiency thing and decided that I will just let it unfold as it does otherwise this is going to get boring very fast so...

Some things that I think I will blog about in the near future:

1. Knitting

2. Gardening

3. Canning

4. Cooking

5. Other rad stuff

I hope to figure out some sort of a format and maybe have certain featured things on certain days of the week (Monday = recipe day, Tudesday = ... you get the idea) so if there are actually any people out there in the interwebs who have somehow stumbled across this and have any input or questions or ideas to discuss, by all means lemme know and I will be happy to address them.

That is it for today, I'll leave you with a picture of the lovely presents found in my chickens' nesting box today (yep, one is blue!):

Edit: Do you know why chicken coops have 2 doors? Because if they had 4 they would be chicken sedans!