Free Rice and Flour

For a little thinking and giving, check out these sites:

http://www.freerice.com/

http://www.freeflour.com/

The Snopes pages gives a bit of interesting history on Free Rice.

Happy Easter

Sending love your way...

Easter Bunny Bread

As you can see, i found this recipe in Good Housekeeping in 1992. I'm happily still making this bread, and now sharing the fun of it with my children. Sorry about the bad handwriting.

Happy First Day of Spring

Not thinking about it being the first day of spring, we made our way to Squak Mountain Nursery. It is a sweet little nursery. We were on the hunt for more Jiffy 7s and some lemon verbena starts. Naturally, we found a few other fun things along the way. I'm already looking forward to going back when they have even more starts out. The cashier suggested pineapple sage -it attracts butterflies and turns a bright red in late summer.

I meant to hit Daffodil Day at Pike's Place Market for this holiday. I love the thought of 30,000 bright yellow daffodils!  Next year...

Happy Spring to you! I hope that your garden is starting to come alive for another year.

Local Farms, Healthy Kids

Washington State just passed the most comprehensive local foods program in the United States. This is pretty cool. Here is an overview of the bill SSB 6483.

Student Gardens

Today was a pretty inspiring day. I started it by taking the ferry over to Bainbridge Island's IslandWood. It is a magical spot. A stunning eco-focused learning center, and a place that i'd like to return to as a family.  The lunchtime meal was beautifully presented and absolutely delicious. The head chef spoke to us briefly about our meal and eating locally. This guy cooks with a lot of passion and it shows.

I was attending a day-long summit for the Puget Sound School Gardens Collective. The summit brought together people from all over the Sound, particularly from Seattle and on the island, who are working to build and maintain student garden programs. There were representatives from many other schools, Public Health, Seattle Tilth,  UrbanSprouts, Full Circle Farm, etc. The summit was inspiring, energizing and rewarding. It made me really appreciate the existing program that is at our neighbourhood elementary school. And that i found my way there, as it is opening new 'garden gates' for me.

After my day away, my family rode bikes and scooters up to the school to look at our school's student garden.  Last week, the children finished their spring plantings.  The radishes are already popping up. The clematis, which hangs over the student garden sign, is fragrantly in bloom. The garden program is a simple thing but the lessons are so wide and life-long.

It is a day where you just sit back and reflect on the 'places' that life takes you. Today, getting beautiful views of Seattle from the ferry, walking through the greenhouse at IslandWood and watering at our student garden, i feel so very fortunate.

New Death Cab

"I Will Possess Your Heart"

Death Cab for Cutie have a new album coming out in May. They just released a single, which you can find on their My Space page.

Thanks John!

Manning Park, BC

We just had a great weekend at Manning Park Ski Resort in BC. The kids had a blast playing in the snow with their cousins, etc. This was Mina's very first time XC skiing! Yes, Miles is asleep in this picture. :) We are rather excited to be getting more into winter sports as a family.

Grounds for Change

Check this out Grounds for Change. This is now an option in our weekly CSA box! They have a beautiful website and more importantly, mission. I just want to sip some of the java!

Black Gold

The other night, coffee-less but awake, we watched Black Gold. The movie focuses on the Ethiopian coffee market and the push for fair trade practices. It was quick glimpse into the lives of coffee farmers and their communities. Although not surprising, i was surprised at how very poorly the coffee farmers are treated by the open market.  Yesterday, I drove by a "McCafe Espresso" sign and wondered what pressure, if any, this will add to the general market. The Black Gold web site now highlights the progress that the fair trade co-op has made post-film.

The movie also made contrasts between North American and European coffee consumption. In Europe, everyone was sitting with friends or family, drinking espresso in ceramic-ware. In the American shots, there were several clips of the "to-go culture" of Starbucks, etc. 

Inspired by all the 'espresso shots'  in the film, i tried making myself an espresso today. Hmm. I can make a reasonable-good cafe latte but have definite room to improve in the espresso craft. I'm hoping to find my grandparent's espresso cup in my treasure trunk (inherited grandmother's hope chest). I'm not sure which grandparent used the cup, or if it was purely ornamental.  If i can work to make a reasonable-good espresso to sip in their blue cup, then i'd really have something to savour in the morning.

I buy my fair trade organic espresso beans at the nearby Tully's Coffee.  Based on management issues, I'm worried that Tullys won't be around forever.  I've gravitated to their beans because my taste buds are happy,  i don't have to go far, and I'm not getting them mailed to my house. Timely marketing or not, I dig their compostable cups and the fact that they are now using organic fair trade beans for all their espresso-based drinks.

I should go look for the cup, or go to sleep. Good night.

Photos that make me smile

The Big Vote

Several times, our preschooler Mina has revealed that she knew much more about a topic than we realized. This has been the case for Hanukah, reading, addition and now voting.

On our drive home from swim class, I was explaining to her that there was a semi-important vote happening in the US tonight. Wide-eyed and with confidence, she quickly reminded me that they also had a big vote at preschool the other day. As she described, it wasn't just the simple hand-raising kind of affair. Each student in the class was given a sticker and then they lined up in a row. She was quick to mention that you had to stay in line and that "cutting" (e.g. cutting in line) was simply not acceptable. Then you waited for your turn to go up to the bulletin board and to place  your sticker in one of two groups. After this, the stickers, in their two  separate groups, were counted. The decision was important, and thankfully involved, unlike here, a relatively short voting process.

So, on Monday, although two of the kids (not Mina) voted for staying inside, the majority of Mina's preschool class voted for going outside for "outside time". This was Mina's first official "voting" experience. Mina was also quick to point out that no one in the class had voted before except for her friend Ryan, who already knew about voting. He shared his experience of voting when three people in his family wanted to go out for dinner and just one wanted to stay in.

Given the presence of the Sun as of late, my sticker would also be 100% for going outside.

My Crazy List of Tomatoes for 2008

Okay, i've been perhaps a little too inspired by You Grow Girl... This craze is evident in my planned tomato list for the upcoming season. Wish me luck!

 

Beautiful , colourful slicers

Black Tomato 

Purple Calabash

Green Zebra

Black Prince

Orange King

 

Traditional slicers

Manitoba

Legend

Stupice

 

Cherries

Yellow Pear Cherry

Fox Cherry

 

Canning and Freezing

Oroma

Principe Borghese

 

I ordered some seeds from Territorial Seeds Company. I've had great luck with them in the past.

Inspired to try a smaller seed house, i also ordered some harder-to-find seeds from Nichols, a family-owned seed house in Oregon. An article on heirloom seeds in the Seattle Times guided me to Nichols. I love this picture, which comes from their website.

 

Another source of tomato inspiration...

Voting Results from the Seattle Tilth's 2007 Tomato Tasting  Contest

Cherry Tomatoes

1. Sweet Million

2. Black Cherry

3. Tonadose des Conores

Red Tomatoes

1. Sasha’s Altai

2. Glacier, High Carotene, Moskvich and Stupice (4-way tie)

3. Cosmonaut Volkov and Urbikany (tie)

Odd Colored Tomatoes

1. Egg Yolk

2. Pruden’s Purple

3. Purple Calabash and Green Zebra (tie)

Sauce Tomatoes

1. Principe Borghese

2. Debarao

3. Speckled Roman

Frida Kahlo at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Here's a link to both a Frida Kahlo slideshow as well as an article about the US 'celebration' of 100 years since her birth.

A few years back, we saw an exhibit that included a number of well-known Frida pieces at the SAM. Her self-portrait with monkeys was included in that exhibit. I love her work. I share that love with Mina and read about Frida in the following introductory book for kids: The Artist who Painted Herself.

Here is the overview from the SAM exhibit.

January 29, 2002 - The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection on view again in Seattle
One of the largest and finest private collections of 20th-century Mexican art, amassed by two passionate art lovers, Jacques and Natasha Gelman, will be on view in Seattle Oct. 17, 2002, through Jan. 5, 2003. The exhibition, titled "Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Twentieth-Century Mexican Art: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection" was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, where it was on view May 14 1 Sept. 4, 2000. This collection of Mexican art includes many well-known icons such as Rivera's Calla Lily Vendor (1943), which was derived from one of his 1920s mural projects; Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Monkeys (1943), a still life blending traditional Mexican motifs and Surrealism (one of 10 Kahlos on view); and Siqueiros's Head of a Woman (1939), a bold, simplified portrait that reflects the innovative blending of abstraction and indigenous imagery. The Gelmans collected works by others such as María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozco, Carlos Mérida and Rufino Tamayo. The exhibition also includes self-portraits of the artists, whom they knew as friends, and many portraits of themselves. It will be curated in Seattle by Tara Reddy, assistant curator of modern art. Prior to its presentation in Seattle, the exhibition travelled to the Dallas Museum of Art (Oct. 8, 2000- Jan. 28, 2001) and the Phoenix Art Museum (April 7-July 1, 2001).
Seattle Art Museum Special Exhibition Galleries
Oct. 17, 2002, through Jan. 5, 2003