Sending Love to Colorado

I am sure you all have heard of the horrendous flooding in Colorado. I lived in Boulder for about 9 years, so I have many close friends in the area and it is a place I hold near and dear to my heart.
A bunch of my very favorite people in the world are currently stuck in Jamestown, Colorado. They are essentially on a mountain island, as all of the roads in and out of town are washed away or covered in water. Someone in Jamestown (a great friend of my friends) was killed yesterday when his house collapsed on top of him. The news was devastating to everyone. My friends are fairly sure their houses are all destroyed, but as of last night they were still safe. However, we haven't had any word yet this morning, and the lack of updates is making us all stressed.
I feel so helpless right now, being many miles away and unable to do anything for them except send good thoughts their way. Thought maybe they could use a little mojo from the blog world.....
Everyone, please keep Colorado in your thoughts today! Pin It Now!

Yarn Along, A Call for Help, and A Special Guest Post

Happy Yarn Along! Joining with Ginny of Small Things today....

I am almost done with Phoebe's poncho but I need to set it aside for a special cause.... one of my best friends lost her three year old niece several years ago to cancer. Breaks-my-heart-sad. So, this month, her family is holding an auction to raise money for childhood cancer.  It is a sweater-weather auction, and they are auctioning off hand-knits for cool weather: hats, mittens, cowls, sweaters, etc. Pretty cool, huh? So, I am knitting some arm warmers (and hopefully something else if I work fast enough). Any of you super-knitters want to pitch in and donate a hand-knit for the auction? The children will thank you! If so, give me your email and I can give you the details. Thanks!

In the world of reading, I am still reading Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, a non-fiction about bottled water by Elizabeth Royte (I didn't get much reading done at Burning Man!).  I also started Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. I am drawn to the book because it takes place in Oregon, but, if you have read much Kesey, it is sometimes hard to filter through his thought process. It is a long one, and I have a feeling I will be reading it for awhile.

What are you reading? What are you knitting?

And, if you have a few extra minutes today, jump over to visit Amber at My Open Roads. I have a guest post on style! Thanks! Pin It Now!

Check out my Guest Post (and My Style!)

Amber at My Open Roads is doing a series on style and today I am featured as her guest blogger. So, stop on by, say hello, and learn a little bit about me and my style.  Pin It Now!

My Baby Is Starting Kindergarten!

It's hard to believe that my baby (who, just the blink of an eye ago, was a squirmy newborn) is starting kindergarten tomorrow. Tomorrow!
Some of you may have read my posts last year about Finn's transition into the pre-K Japanese immersion program. In short, it was pretty rough.
This year we are trying out our neighborhood elementary school, so it will be a new school with new friends. We have done a lot of preparations: social stories, visiting the school, talking about the routine, meeting with the new teacher, practicing calming strategies.....and I can only hope that the transition will go better than last year.
I am actually feeling pretty good about it though. I know that there will be a transition period. I know he will cry. But I think that over the past year he has matured a lot and I think he is much more ready to handle the independence of school. Don't get me wrong, I am nervous, but I am also feeling optimistic and ready to see what the new year brings us.

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My Return to Reality

It has been a summer of adventure. A trip to Colorado, a road trip through California, a visit from my parents, and now I just got home from a week-long girl's trip. A couple of friends and I headed to Burning Man. I had never been before, and was a little nervous about the whole endeavor.... hot temperatures, dust storms, nowhere to buy food or water..... but it was amazing. It is a huge event, over 60,000 people, but I didn't witness one fight or any negative encounters. Everyone was just happy. And nice. And having a whole lot of fun.
There was amazing art everywhere, music galore, crazy costumes, and people gifting things left and right. And the scale of this temporary city was enormous. I was told that it was going to be big, but it was bigger than I could have imagined. We rode bikes out into what seemed like the middle of nowhere, and still found art and other folks wandering around. The camp that I stayed with had an incredible foam dome and a giant 360-degree swing (that I was too much of a whimp to ride). Despite the fact that I didn't know most of these folks, they welcomed me with open arms.
And, more than anything, it was nice to have some time away from the kids. As much as I love my kiddos, and as sad as I was to leave them (I did feel like backing out last minute because I felt nervous to go without them), I knew that some time away would be a good thing. The first couple days were hard, but then I settled into the routine of only having to be responsible for me, which was pretty darn nice. But, by the end of the week, I was missing them quite a bit, and was ready to be back home. So, all in all, it was a perfect end to an adventurous summer.
Finn starts school next week, and I start back at work a couple of weeks later. So for now, I am resettling into life in the real world, attempting to get us back on a schedule, and feeling lucky that I had a week of time all to myself.

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Our Ducks: An Update

Well, the baby ducks that our mama duck hatched in June are pretty much all grown up. That sure happened fast, right? I mean, yes, they are still the babies, and yes, mama still helps them make decisions and show them what to do, but they are huge. The 3 babies we kept are actually all taller than mama, which, at 2 months old, just seems silly.  But, everyone seems happy and mostly healthy. Rye, our baby male who we kept because he has a neck problem, still has a bit of a crooked neck, but he seems to get along just fine.
Watching ducklings go from eggs in a nest, to full size birds has been pretty amazing. I only wish we could have been around more this summer to watch them grow! But soon enough, we should be getting 3 eggs a day. THAT will be amazing!

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On Pickling

Last year I made pickles for the first time. And they were delicious. So, of course, I wanted to make more this year. Sadly, our pickling cucumber plant didn't produce much, so I had to head to the farmer's market to get enough cucumbers to pickle... but it was worth it. I made some refrigerator pickles, loosely following the same basic recipe I used last year. Easy and delicious.
When we returned from our travels, one of our pepper plants was full of peppers, all ready for the eating. So, I also made a jar of pickled Bulagrian sweet pickles using basically the same recipe: I chopped up the sweet peppers, as well as one serrano, added peppercorns, coriander seeds, garlic cloves, mustard seeds, and a couple of grape leaves for crispness. Boil some white vinegar, and cover the peppers until jar is about 2/3 full, add enough filtered water to cover the peppers. Seal lid, let cool, and refrigerate. Easy. The peppers are yummy,  although they are quite a bit hotter than I expected (I think I should have removed the serrano seeds first!).
The pickles and peppers were both good, however, I was feeling the need to be a bit more adventurous in my pickling and wanted to try more than just basic vinegar pickles and peppers. I recently read Michael Pollan's Cooked, which has an entire section on fermentation. We think of pickles as being a fermented food, because they once were. However, most pickles we eat today, like the refrigerator  pickles I made, are not truly fermented. The are pickled in vinegar, which is itself fermented, but from what I understand, the pickles themselves never actual ferment. And fermented foods are amazing for you... they are essentially packed with probiotics and do wonders for your digestion. But, I guess those pickles made with vinegar are cheating. So, I wanted to make REAL pickles. The kind that actually ferment. The kind that grow probiotics.
So, I did.
I looked up recipes for pickling using lacto-fermentation. There wasn't a ton of information out there and there was a while lot of variation in what I did find. Many called for whey, which I didn't have and didn't really want to bother with, so I loosely followed a recipe that just used salt instead of whey. Here is what I did:
Cut the cucumbers and pack in a jar. Add in peppercorns, fresh dill, a garlic clove, red pepper flakes, and mustard seeds. Stuff a few grape leaves and horseradish leaves in the jar, add salt, and fill the jar full of room temperature filtered (non-chlorinated) water. Screw the lid on and leave the jar on the counter for 3-4 days. Apparently, the bacteria naturally present in the foods start to get to work and ferment the food one it is all sealed up.
After a day or so, I saw the water in the jar start to change colors and become dingier. I also saw some bubbling, which was a good sign that things were actually fermenting. I checked the pickles after 3 days... and it smelled pickle-ish but also a bit like sulfur. Ewww. In Cooked, Pollan talked about how fermented foods sometimes go through a gross stage before you get to the good part of fermentation. So, I shut the lid, and decided to check again on day 4. Things smelled better so I decide to give it a try. And, they were...... pickles!! Yay!! Except WAY too salty. I had followed salt amounts from a website, but they were definitely incorrect. I think I added 1 Tbl to my quart jar and it made these pickles inedible. I think I would halve the salt next time around.
But it worked! I fermented something, for real, and am very excited to try it again. Sort of amazing that I can grow my own good bacteria in a jar! I am planning on doing some more fermentation experiments over the coming months, and will share what I learn here.
Have any of you lacto-fermented foods? Any tips? Great websites? There was not as much information out there as I had expected, so I am guessing this technique is not used all that often. I am eager to learn more so I will have to look into doing some research....

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