Bow Chika Wow Wow

...or however it's spelled.

Today I bring to you some SFW pr0n. Fruit and Vegetable pr0n, to be exact. The plants swear to me they like it, so I keep taking photos. They're all legal too, so don't worry.

So I ate my ONE ripe strawberry today. And it was absolutely delicious. I have an internal record of the most delicious strawberries I've ever eaten, and this is up there with the Spanish strawberries I had in Paris, and the strawberries grown across the freeway from my house in Dixon...when the entire month of May smelled like strawberries.
It was like someone soaked it in simple syrup. The most pathetic part is, I still have half of it left. In a baggy in the fridge. Because, you know, gotta savor my crops. All one of them.



Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?


Literally the day after I bitched about the carrots not sprouting, what did they do?

Yep.
Now I feel guilty for complaining. This is what always happens.

And this is how they look today:

I feel like an old family friend. Well I remember you when you were THIS big [puts hand beside knee], and now I just can't believe how much you've grown! How long has it been - what, a day? Now I just feel old!

Soon enough it'll be time to thin those little guys. Or I could just leave them be and wait for one giant Supercarrot.

And lest we forget the peppers, which were bought a few days ago and are now all snug in their planters, except for Senor Jalapeno, who will be given a proper planting tomorrow. The okra seeds have also been planted, but taking a picture of dirt is pretty boring.

On a side note, we've been watching a hell of a lot of Gordon Ramsey shows lately. I think he has 300 shows at this point, but they are all so good. Now that James has gotten me obsessed with BBC America, I've been watching a lot of The F Word. And I swear every episode, he makes something absolutely and amazingly delicious. The best part about his food is that it's so simple and fresh. Which is what I've always thought with cooking, the simpler, the better.

Lastly, this totally sounds old lady (but we know I possess the maturity of a 68 year old, with the hot looks of a 45 year old, all at 24 oh my!), but I'm really interested in canning and pickling. I mean, for reals, store bought pickles taste like total ass. And they always have this weird neon yellow-green brine that just doesn't seen natural. I want the pickles of my childhood, from the Jewish delis. So I'm going to make them.

If I have learned nothing else, it is that if no one else can do it right, it's best to do it yourself. Unfortunately this rule works horribly for retail and food service jobs, but not when it comes to pickling.

fluffy kitten marshmallow rainbows

Jeebus do I have heartburn. What the eff is that about? I think it's from the raw garlic I just consumed in my cucumber salad. I'm really working hard to keep people away. Garlic is a great way of achieving this. I think it's been successful, so far.

Anyway. We are growing organic consumables in plastic storage bins in the hopes that a) we will have a bountiful harvest of strawed berries and carrots, and b) the plastic will leach into the water and make us grow the inevitable third arm as our DNA slowly mutates.

So far no third arm, not even so much as a nub, but my bountiful harvest is slowly coming to fruition. Get it, FRUITion?? How fantastic am I?!?

For the love of god, keep it on track Lauren.

OK.

So we've got one pretty red strawberry, despite weather's cold, heartless attempt to freeze my little lovelies. I'm giving it one more day until it turns into a tasty snack.



I'm so proud of my little red berry, standing up to adversity, not wanting to shrivel and die like its other companions. Ok so they didn't ALL die, but they're just taking so very long to become delicious snacks that it makes me worry. I want instant results!!! This is America damn it!!

And as for the carrots, I haven't seen any surface results.



But the carrots are all like, "What the eff do you expect? We grow underground. We're all totally four inches in the dirt, all orange and shit, waiting to be on your salad." At least that's what I'm thinking is going on.

And of course, in the back of my mind I worry about eating my strawberries and carrots. Can one actually eat something that hasn't been hermetically sealed in plastic wrap at the grocery store? Is it safe to eat things grown in this country? All of my produce comes from Mexico and Honduras. Should I be the one harvesting these? Shouldn't I have laborers toiling over my 18 gallon planter? Why doesn't my produce have a shiny layer of carnuba wax? Isn't that like, the plant's afterbirth-- carnuba wax?

So many questions!!!

And I've been informed via TXT that we get to go to Home Depot today to buy an additional planter!! Yippee skippee! I'm hoping to plant some okra, assuming they blossom already deep fried in cornmeal. Also, I'd like some cayenne peppers, so I can make dried pepper garlands and then rub my eyes afterwards, forgetting that I was just touching the equivalent a thousand suns in hell.

this post is making me hungry.

It has been either one year exactly, or approximately one year since I've updated this. And in this time, my writing skills and lexicon have dropped down to the essentials: subject and verb, an the occasional adjective. It also doesn't help that I'm currently listening to Tim and Eric songs, which is such a HUGE distraction when you're doing anything. In fact, I just spent five minutes staring at my computer screen so I could focus on listening to "Beaver Boys".

Anyway, this morning I decided to play around with the shutter speed on my camera:

There aren't many things that move with much speed at early hours of the morning except our krispy kritters and the ceiling fans...and even the latter had to be turned on since it's been so cold lately.



I think it's about 1.5 seconds, I forgot the aperture.

And then to celebrate our ritualistic smoking of the pork butt, I took some meat photos. Meat is fascinating to me. You can add it to any photo and it instantly livens up the scene. It's quite the conversation starter.





This, of course, being the typical diet in the Mitchell household. Well, that and a 3 pound block of cheese.

And lastly, let us come together to reflect upon this hour of meat, and contemplate it's deliciously tender smokiness.



Go henceforth, my children, with my message of meat, and spread it to the hungered masses, forgiving those in vegetabledom who may not understand thy message.

and what happens to good boys and girls who eat their meat?



That's right!

So I forgot what the point of this entry was.
But I plan on taking more photographs, knitting baby blankets and booties so that my cousin's child will be wearing them until age twenty, and maybe learn a thing or two about these internets.

It's time to make nana puddins.

Fabrixxx

I am in the process of making my first charm bracelet, but I'm looking for black acrylic bows...and having trouble finding them! So far its an alternating sequence of gold leaves, amber beads and tiny rectangle picture frames. I think I might put pictures of my great-grandparents and make it a "family tree" theme...get it..cause of...the leaves....yeah.

I bought some more charms from Etsy: two black rose charms, blue cameo connectors, blue feather charms, and pink gem connectors. They. Are. Adorable. I plan on making a necklace out of them.


I'm also making my second article of clothing EVAR, just a simple sleeveless dress. I'm using a mustard stretch knit, and I'd like to do some kind of applique but who knows. Gotta make it first!

I found a great website, Repro Depot Fabrics, which has the cutest Japanes fabrics. I was looking for something for a shirt, but I saw this:

It's photocopy, and abstract and completely beautiful. I thought it would make a great purse, quite possibly a shirt though.

I've also looked into these fabrics:







Cool shiz for REAL!!!!

juggernart

as is my inevitable nature of waxing and waning, i am back in creativity overdrive. except now its not so much knitting and photography (well it will always be photography), now its sewing, jewlery and linocut. Actually, I'd love to do woodcut, but it's hard enough finding a flipping art store wherein the biggest draw ISN'T scrapbooking and scrapbooking supplies.

i. need. a. studio. ! ! ! !

a big barn. with lots and lots of fabric. and yarn. and paints. and canvas. and a darkroom. and silkscreen. and woodcutting. and metal sculpting. and a potters wheel. and a kiln. and an espresso machine.

le sigh.


i bought fabric yesterday for my next project. its a really beautiful mustard yellow stretch jersey...im still trying to figure out ways to embellish. maybe buttons, maybe embroidery.

i also wandered over to the jewlery section and decided to make a bracelet. i dont want to go in to detail in the off-chance my idea suxxx. ill post it if it turns out real nice like.

and as far as the linocut goes, i decided to use it for valentines day cards. i love the look of relief printing and it beats buying hallmark.

second best twilight zone. EVARRRRRRR.

the one with the woman who has bandages covering her face because of some horrible physical deformity, and when they finally reveal her we come to see that she's gorgeous (to us), and everyone else looks totally ugly (to us) except its the norm (to them).

beauty is relative.

SECOND. BEST. LESSON. EVAR.

happy new years

went for the first walk of 2008. that sounded retarded. anyway it ended up being the longest walk ever and i found new trails with really cool things...which got me thinking it would be fun to create natural art pieces to display along the trail...i guess my sophomore 3d art class came in handy after all...it could be like...andy goldsworthy....and shit...

oh man...the best twilight zone episode ever is on right now...where the guys put themselves to sleep for 100 years because they find a huge gold mine...they wake up in 2061 and their greed gets the best of them and they all kill each other off, until one guy is left and he's so desperate and thirsty that with his last breath he trades up his final bar of gold...and then you come to find out that gold is essentially worthless because it can be mass produced.

BEST. LESSON. EVAR.

i completely digress.

i also think i saw a hawk on the trail. it was hugemongous. its wings blocked out the sky. and its eyes gleamed at me with power of a thousand suns. come to think of it, it might have been a griffn. a merv griffin.