Cranberry Juice

Ever since I got kidney stones (which are PURE AGONY) Aaron and I have kept a pretty well supplied stash of cranberry juice around the house. I like cranberries but I'm not a huge juice fan. It's always a little too sticky sweet for my taste.

Lo and behold, Aaron and I discovered pure, unsweetened cranberry juice at the store. I was really excited. I expected it to be tart but it's strong enough to make your hair curl. It tastes a little bit like cranberries and a whole lot like turpentine. I keep trying to water down with other beverages but that's had some disastrous results.

Turns out that if you add a drop or two to a cup of milk, the milk curdles. But it doesn't taste that bad, kind of like old yogurt. (My curiosity got the best of my so I had to try it.)

So if anyone wants a good third grade science experiment, I suggest cranberry juice. It's a great demonstration of what happens when you add an acid to a base. I'm sure it can also be employed as a pretty funny church object lesson, any ideas?

Screen Printing Kit

This week I'll be ordering a screen printing kit. I'm looking forward to making a few t-shirts. My first plan is a onsie for Eliza with a portrait of her namesake, maybe with the words But A Very Little Meat. I've got a few other ideas. I'm excited for it to come. So now you all know what to expect from me for Christmas this year.

Presidential Fitness

Illustration by John Cuneo


During a commercial break from the Duke Belmont game I flipped to C-Span. President Bush was encouraging me to get off my comfy couch and go work out for at least 30 minutes. You have to respect his fitness level. See this great article. He continued by speaking about the presidential fitness program. That brought back a lot of happy memories of elementary school glory and I started wondering if I would still be able to meet the standards I achieved handily much younger. So I decided to look it up. Here's what I found:

While I plan to verify my assumptions in the next day, I think I'm still in the game. The curl ups, sit and reach, and running I got, no problem. The pull up or push up option, I'm not so sure about. I'm still doing about 40 push ups every day but wimpy style so I'm not sure if I can do 25 right angle push ups. I'll have to try to work on that. (My wrist problems bring me down on that one.)
I noticed that according to the chart, we peak physically at 15 then the numbers start to descend again. What's up with that? If logic follows at this point I'm back to a ten year old level.

Anyway, I also found out when I was at the Presidential Fitness page that they've started a program for adult. If you do well enough you can get a medal from the president. You get points each day for the amount of time you work out and once you get 20,000 points you win! According to the website 20,000 points is about six weeks of running five miles every day. You can get the details here. Anyone want to go for bronze with me?

John Adams

Aaron and I are really loving HBO's John Adams. We staid up til 1:30AM watching it last night. I'm buying it when it comes out on DVD. It's fascinating. It makes me so excited for American Independence I'm considering getting something like this done.

Go Time

So Aaron and I are going to try to do the $150 for our food budget for the month of April. We're practicing by spending only 45 a week for the next two weeks. On Saturday, I spent $17 at C-ville market for produce (10 lbs of potatos, 10 lbs of apples, bananas, cabbage, cilantro and kale) and $27 at Kroger for everything else (milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, frozen vegetables, cereal etc).
So far, I've been amazed at how do able this is. It takes more planning but Aaron and I are eating the same meals and we've eliminated a lot of "waste." Since I know a lot of people are generally curious about what we eat day to day, due to our mixed household, I thought I'd share our recent menu.

Saturday: Poblano Cilantro Rice with canned vegetarian chili
Somebody bought poblano chilis about a week ago for chili relleno but I HATE chili relleno and I didn't want to let them go to waste so I tried this recipe for the first time. It was pretty good.

Sunday: White Bean Casserole
Great recipe for a day old baguette, you know the kind that's on the "Manager's special" This casserole is probably my favorite casserole we make. I love it and it has Kale. I love kale. I don't put the cheese on the toast, it makes it too cheesy for me. It's yummy and cheaper without it.

Monday: Quorn Mushroom nuggets, mashed potatoes, green beans and a big glass of milk with some green food coloring
The Quorn mushroom nuggets were my splurge at the grocery store (they were on sale for $3.39) and my celebration of St Patty's day. Ask Aaron, they're really really yummy to carnivores too.

And here's the recipes we have planned for the rest of the week:
Tuesday: Perogies, apple cider cabbage, and Fage yogurt
Wed: Spaghetti
Thursday: quesidillas with fresh salsa and home made bean dip
Friday: Polenta Pizza -Get a cake pan, put a layer of cooked polenta down, then tomato sauce, cheese and veggies and cook it in the oven til everything melts together.

Sufjan Casmir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens

I really love this song. Thought some of you might enjoy it too. I couldn't find an audio file, just the video so wa-la.

Charles Harper

I'm sick again with a sinus infection that you-know-who brought back from the law school. And get this, Aaron told me that the law school sent out an email warning that MUMPs has broken out. Mumps! Yuck.

So I'm taking it easy on the couch tonight and searching through the lovely work of Charles Harper. The man is a brilliant illustrator and wonderfully inspiring. I'm sorry to say that he died this last June at the age of 85. His work is gorgeous. He has this amazing way of simplifying and stylizing really complex nature scenes. I love how clean and beautiful his designs are. (The man makes zooplakton look dreamy!! How amazing is that?) His work from fifty years ago still looks fresh to me. I've put up a few pictures here so you can see what you think.



I'm drooling over his books. I really really want Charles Harper: An Illustrated Life but since it's $100 used I'm probably going to just have to dream. Still $100 is better than the $2,000 The Giant Golden Book of Life: An Introduction to the Science of Life, which he illustrated in the 50s, is now selling for. (If you are of a certain age you might want to check your closets for that one.) And happily Flickr has a group dedicated to him so if you want to see more for free you can go here. I was trying to think of what I would have to do to be willing to reward myself with a 100 dollar book.

I've been toying with the idea of attempting to spend only $150 on groceries for the month like Lindsey did, in Brooklyn(!!!). (If can be done in NY, it can be done anywhere!) She managed to make some pretty tasty sounding meals on that budget. Check it out here. I tried to get Aaron on board with the experiment but he was more than hesitant. I think his words were "terrible idea." Aaron and I do like good food and making food together is a way to spend time together so I sometimes lump our entertainment and food budget together. Still, I love a challenge. When I was at school I was living on ten bucks a week for food. Now I'm thinking if I could manage to keep the $150 food budget in April, I could use the savings to buy the Harper book. Man can not live by bread alone, right? Now I'm trying to think of what reward could be good enough motivation to persuade Aaron to join in. Any ideas?