I’m sure I’m not the first person to consider this method of simplifying travel with a baby.
It would be well worth the checked bag fee, though it would need to include a warning: Caution — Live cargo; beware of teeth!
Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition
Snapped
One morning last week, I knocked my glasses off the night table as I fumbled for them in the early morning hours. They’ve hit the floor a couple of times with no obvious damage, but the noise I heard this time just sounded bad.
I assumed a cracked lens or some such, but when I turned on the light to assess the damage, I found that my instead of glasses, I now had two monocles. The plastic bridge snapped almost right in the middle.
Seven years ago, when I switched from full-time contacts to mostly full-time glasses (something that seemed unthinkable when I was finally allowed to get contacts at age twelve), I picked out a nice pair of frames and high quality lenses. I remember questioning the durability of a plastic frame (versus metal, which was all I’d had previously) at the time, but I really wasn’t seeing anything I liked in the metal frames, and the molded plastic seemed very comfortable.
Granted I’ve been fairly careful with them (never leaving them in the car, almost always on my face or in a very safe place), but I really was pleased with how well they’d held up as the years passed.
When I bought a nice new pair of glasses with metal frames three years ago, I stuck with the old faithful plastic frames, with the new pair as the back-ups. Fortunately, I did have the good back-up pair when disaster struck.
I wasn’t terribly optimistic about the chances of a decent repair, but after two days in the back-ups, I bought some super glue to attempt to salvage my favorite spectacles. At first it didn’t seem like it would work at all — it was very difficult to hold the two pieces together in just the right position without gluing my fingers to the plastic in the process.
However, I managed a fairly decent, if not quite perfect, repair job. They’ve held up through a couple days’ wear, though I’m not sure it’s wise to go to far from home without the back-ups. Either way, I’m happy to have my comfy plastic frames back in action for now, and I’ll probably look for something similar the next time I’m glasses shopping.
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Simply food
I started this blog as a place to write, and I rarely used pictures in my early posts. In general, I try to avoid photo-heavy posts, but these days, my opportunities to actually get to the computer and write are limited. Most of the following photos have stories that could (and perhaps still will) be posts unto themselves, but for now, the pictures will do most of the talking.
Ground cherries (AKA husk cherries): related to a tomatillo (same papery husk), but smaller and sweeter.
We had a decent harvest this summer, and Gabriel was especially fond of them. They’re good but nothing particularly amazing in my book, so I was shocked to see them selling for $9/pint — definitely wouldn’t pay that.
A rainbow of potatoes, boiled whole, and smashed . . .
. . . then topped with a thick, rich eggplant sauce.
Buckets o’ basil — I froze seven bags (each with four packed cups of basil) for pesto and other cooking throughout the winter.
Deep dish cast iron pizza goodness . . .
. . . served with a three-bean salad. And that’s a wrap!
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Another year, another festival
With the exception of my first summer in St. Louis (when I wasn’t in the know), I’ve been to the Festival of Nations every year. In 2010, I wrote about the efforts to “green” the festival.
Last year, we deemed it important enough to attend with a seven-week-old.
I can hardly believe he was ever that small — he looks SO different now! I don’t remember much of last years event, other than the fact that using the festival “shuttles,” which were school buses, was rather tricky with a big ol’ stroller. Biking would have been much easier, but we weren’t biking with him at that point.
Our plan this year was to leave immediately from the festival to head to the garden for the rest of the day, so we drove the car, which is probably the first (and hopefully the last) time I used that form of transportation to get there.
In the background are the Nigerian and Iranian food booths, a couple of our favorites from past years, conveniently right next to each other. Unfortunately, the Iranian booth did not have baklava this year, but the Nigerian booth had our favorites, African honey beans and honeyed yams.
We also tried a couple of new items from the Thai booth: a curry mushroom puff and sweet, sticky rice roasted in bamboo.
We enjoyed sharing the delicious, unique flavors with Gabriel, who was quite happy to dig in to the spread. It’s crazy how much a year (or two) can change things — from no baby, to a tiny baby, to a curious, active almost-toddler.
We compromised and used their paper plates with our utensils.
After eating, we wrapped up our trip with a visit to the main stage, and Gabriel made friends with the man sitting next to us and jammed out on his “drum.”
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A week of Indian food
Since the food swap netted not one, but two, delicious meals, I decided it deserved two posts — plus, I managed to photograph some of the food before devouring it this time!
As I mentioned last week, Nupur’s cooking inspired me to pull out the southern India cookbook we have and make a few dishes myself.
Between Nupur’s two meals and my big batch of tomato (and tofu and veggie) rasam, we ate Indian food for at least one meal a day for a week — no complaints here!
In her post, “A week of vegetables, and eggplant dal,” you can read about the swap from Nupur’s point of view, including a couple of very lovely pictures of the vegetables. In her second round of cooking, she used the veggies from our garden to create the dishes she shared with us, which made for extra fun eating.
Her Green Life 