I turn 27 tomorrow. I turn 27 tomorrow and I still carry my belongings to work in a backpack. It is not cute. It is sort of useful, in that it has various pockets for things like laptops and pens, but it is not cute. It's easier on the shoulders when carrying heavy stuff, but all I carry most days is my lunch and a few other papers. It's also decidedly not professional, but I'm not sure this really matters when people think it's worthwhile to complain about not being able to wear jeans to work.

[An aside, but I abhor the word professional when used as a noun. "I am a young professional." Turn-off.]

So here I am, ready to make the big bag switch to a big bag. Only past shopping experiences have shown that I am very picky when it comes to bags. I don't like excessive buckles, or weird textures, or anything too shiny. To make the whole process even harder, I wanted something big enough to fit papers, a lunch, and preferably with some separate compartments so there's some internal organization.

These bags exist, they do. The problem is that they all look something like this:


Fossil Executive Top Zip Tote

I mean, really. If I can barely tolerate the word professional, do I really want a bag that's called executive? No. I could wear this to work if I wore pantsuits and pumps every day, but thank god, I don't.

So off I went to other outlets. There were some contenders, but I had a really tall order to fill. (I also didn't really want to spend $200.)


the annie leather bag


xl tote shopping bag (sold)

As I looked at my options that were okay, but not perfect, I kept thinking back to that Target bag I spied a few weeks ago. Large. Simple. Cheap. I finally just bought it, knowing that it could be returned. But I tell you, it is growing on me.



I like that it has convertible straps (good for biking!), and it is nice and roomy for all sorts of things. It does have a divider and one internal pocket, but nothing else to help organize everything in such a cavernous space of a bag. That worries me a bit. But for $23, it's really not bad.

Anyway, if any of you shopping savvy folks have other ideas, let me know.

smashed chickpea salad, and variations.

A few weeks ago I came across the recipe for smashed chickpea salad on the Smitten Kitchen, and I was like, HEY! Hummus without having to use a food processor! Brilliant! So I made some, stuffed it in a pita with spinach and ate it for lunch. Yum!

[As an aside, this has been my new go-to food blog. I'm not sure how I missed it for so long.]

Then last week I had extra cilantro and felt like using it. (Why did I have cilantro? Oh, because I was making another smitten kitchen recipe instead of watching the super bowl a few days earlier.) Instead of using chickpeas, I just used a can of black beans, lime juice, olive oil, and the cilantro of course.


(It looked better pre-smashing. I smeared it on a tortilla and heated it up with pepper jack cheese.)

This weekend I roasted red peppers without any idea of what to do with them. The answer became clear sometime today:



Smashed chickpea salad (yes, AGAIN) on a pita with roasted red peppers. SORT OF like pizza, though not really. Yummy, though.


What have we learned, friends? SMASHING BEANS WITH OIL AND SOME SORT OF ACID LEADS TO GOODNESS. The end.

on cleanliness, and trying.

I grew up in a slightly messy household, though one that certainly aspired to be clean based on how often my mom told me to "find my floor." ("It's right there!" I would respond, snobbishly.) My room was pretty much always dirty, and it was always a point of contention. Yet at some time after moving out, I got better at cleaning. Not great, but better.

I firmly believe that messiness or neatness is mostly a byproduct of being bothered by the mess. Neat people will go nuts if a single extra credit card bill sits on the desk. Messy people will think nothing of the three foot pile of clothes in the corner of the bedroom. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I'm trying to become one of those people who becomes so incensed by clutter and messiness that I am driven to clean everything up straight away! I will no longer settle with having my window air conditioner sit on the floor of my living room for the entire winter. Clothes will be put away in a timely manner. This cookie recipe that has been sitting on my desk since December will find a new home!

This is all part of my general apartment improvement plan, which was mostly inspired by reading a bunch of old Domino magazines at the Y. I've lived here a while. Some things need changing. Or just cleaning.

First accomplishment: Covered that stupid old pillow. (it used to be clouds. hello, college!) In the process I learned how to make buttonholes. Folks, there is no stopping me now!



Stay tuned...

picture books, the bad.

I came across this book in school once - it's a very easy book, meant for very low readers. We had a lot of these books around for the newbies, and pretty much all of them were boring and very simple. But this one has always amazed me. It's called The Good Life, and you can see the whole book here.

The setting is a house, where two brightly colored birds are in their cages, chatting. Kip talks about wanting to live somewhere else.



Kip's housemate Bud describes his old home, Moon Island. He flew free there, he could play in the mud. But then Bud warns that island life wasn't as good as it seems.



On Moon Island, no one gives you food! Or fresh water! Sure, he had friends, but he also had birds who ripped food right out of his mouth!



After this thoroughly convincing argument, Kip decides that maybe Moon Island is not the place to be after all. For instance, he can fly around the living room every afternoon! Living in a cage, that's the good life!


Every time I read this book, I start thinking of it as some sort of backwards reasoning for why slavery is a good idea. I mean, seriously? The good life is spending time in a cage in a LIVING ROOM for your entire life? Being free to fly around the island is such a drag? I mostly just disagree with the whole message of not following one's dream, and instead staying where things are safe, where you can be waited on, but life is boring.

So, children. Follow your dreams! Go to Moon Island, or anywhere else that can make you happy!

maps won't show us where we're going.

1. Hey, remember that time I turned a panda into a puppet for my world traveling friend Joel? Here's a write up of his adventures! Read it and be jealous.

2. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I am typing to you from my brand spanking new macbook. It is so pretty, I gasped when I took it out of the box. (Pathetic, I know.) Then I had some issues transferring files and yadda yadda yadda but NOW everything works and ohhhhh my. Still great.

3. I'm going up north for the long weekend and I abhor packing, as usual. This is the second time using my new luggage in two weeks!

4. Uhm, stuff. That's all.

picture books, the good.

It's true, I love picture books. It's in my blood, I cannot be the daughter of an elementary school librarian and not adore them. I especially like reading them as an adult, finding the meanings that a lot of kids might miss, perhaps slyly inserted by authors for the entertainment of us older folk reading them to kids. [Imagine my surprise when my coworker saw my copy of Swimmy, and immediately noticed the little fish all swimming together to make a big fish was also a symbol for union organizing. Or socialist organizing? Either way, it makes sense...the little fish getting eaten by the big fish until they band together for a revolution!]

Right, so there's a lot to love about picture books, especially the pictures themselves. Thus, I was really excited to hear that there exists an entire museum devoted to picture books and the art within: The Eric Carle Museum Of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Oddly, I was just thinking the other day about how pages from picture books would make lovely wall hangings - but to do so you must destroy the book, which seems a travesty. So I looked through the store hoping to find prints, but all I could come up with was large posters and postcards, only in packs of ten. Guess I'll just to go to MA.

The coolness is not over, though. The online shop also sells Eric Carle inspired fabrics, and asks those who have bought it to show off their work on flickr. I looked at a bunch of pillows and quilts until I came across this:



Holy cow, a dress with the Hungry Caterpillar print! Nice. Picture books inspire us for years to come.

(This is the part where I would post a bunch of pictures from my favorite books, but they're rather hard to find on google. Sigh.)

Addendum: I actually agree with Mr. Bush on this one: "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." (from Top 25 Bushisms)

sweet potato and bean enchiladas.

I've been on a sweet potato kick in the past week, but after a while I got tired of simply baking them and eating with butter, salt, and pepper. (Still absurdly delicious, though.) I remembered a recipe I made years ago from one of the Moosewood cookbooks for sweet potato and black bean enchiladas. I looked it up quickly, but the truth is, it's one of those recipes that doesn't need a recipe.

First, you take 2-3 sweet potatoes, peel and cube them, and throw them in boiling water until they're nice and soft.

While this is happening, chop some onion and garlic and saute it in oil. Add spices like cumin, chili powder, cayenne, and red pepper flakes. (And salt.) Also, drain a can of beans - black or pinto work fine.

When the potatoes are nice and mushy, drain them and mash them in a bowl. (In the original recipe, this is the part where you're supposed to use a food processor. You know what? Not necessary, as you're essentially putting tasty mush in a tortilla, so it doesn't really matter that it's perfectly smooth.) Then add the onions and the beans and mix.

Then put a nice sized amount of the mix into a tortilla, roll it up, and place in an oiled baking pan. Repeat until you run out of stuff. Bake at 350, covered with foil, for about 30 minutes. If you wanna go crazy, add shredded cheese on the enchiladas, remove the foil, and bake some more until it's all bubbly. Serve with salsa and sour cream if you want. YUM.

happy new year.

Oh hey, kids! Happy New Year! Happy Holidays! Happy Most of December! I'm sorry I've been absent. My winter break was nice and long. New Year's was fantastic. Driving all over Wisconsin (or so it felt) wasn't super great, but the people are good!

I'm not going to talk about resolutions, I'm going to talk about goals. This is not organized at all.

ANYHOW.

Goals.

- NEW BIKE '09! With a firm intention to use it and often. Also, take a bike maintenance class.
- Learn how to spell "maintenance" without spell check.
- Be more social with more people. Have more dinner parties. Dance more, karaoke more, do things that are fun.
- Stop buying things I don't love, with an increased focus on buying used or making it myself whenever possible. (Re: not buying any new clothes for a year - I just don't think I can do it, and I've already broken that resolution anyway.)
- Some kind of race longer than a 5k. Either half marathon, full (eek), or a triathlon.
- Make the absolute best of things here, or move already.

That is all I can come up with right now. Hope you are well!

daily recommended allowance.

I know I pride myself on not eating processed foods, but I find it hard to abstain completely. One weakness is crackers, another is kettle cooked potato chips, sometimes I eat tortillas, but the biggest one? Pre-made stock. Or broth. Or some variation of salty, flavored liquid to put in soup.

I tried making stock for a while, but this is what I noticed about making stock myself:

1. It became this huge event, like Sunday would be Stock Day! Only stock isn't really that fun, it's just boiling vegetables for a few hours.
2. Since I always made vegetarian stock, I never noticed it to be that flavorful.
3. I would spend all this money on veggies and parsley but even when I made double batches, that would still only be enough for maybe two batches of soup, and dammit, I like to make a LOT of soup and it was sad to see my stock making efforts only go so far.

I talked to some friends who admitted they just used the canned stuff because it was so much easier and I said, to hell with homemade stock! I still had concerns, though - mostly regarding waste and sodium content. I solved the former problem by using bouillon cubes instead of cans or cartons. That sodium was still a concern, though. 1 cup of stock (prepared as directed) contains 35% of the daily recommended amount of sodium. Gross. So I tried to alleviate this by putting in more water than directed, figuring everything was okay.

So anyway, the other night I was prepping veggies so I could quickly throw together some lentil soup after getting back from yoga. Since I was making tea already, I figured I'd boil some extra water so I could dissolve the bouillon cubes beforehand. I came back after a while and found this:



I stared at it for a few seconds before realizing that the layer on the bottom was a CENTIMETER OF SALT. EW. I tried to make myself feel better, remembering that I was going to be adding 4 more cups of water to that, but it was a pretty frightening display of all the gross things in our food.

Now, this is the point where I'm supposed to say, "And I will never use pre-prepared soup broth EVER AGAIN!" but the truth is, it's so convenient. Also, when I actually made the soup, I added more salt immediately, so who knows if I'll ever learn. But MAYBE I'll try taking out that stock pot again. Maybe.

train of thought.

I just finished Plenty, which is about a couple eating locally for one year. I enjoyed it a lot, in part because it was engaging right away and I plowed through it in a week, and sometimes it's nice to just finish a book quickly. And even though it was non-fiction, it sort of played out like a story with suspense (how ever are they going to make it through the winter?!). But I would have liked more detail on things like how canning works and such.

The book got me to thinking about personal challenges and New Year's resolutions. I don't think eating locally is going to work too well, if only because I live alone and a CSA share can overwhelm even two people. But I feel like I should give something up.

The only thing I've thought of so far is not buying new clothing for a year. I really try to keep my purchases of stuff to a minimum for a variety of reasons, but clothes are my biggest weakness. Today, for example, I ended up in Urban Outfitters for no other reason than it was across the street from my brunch location. I ended up buying a pair of riding boots (not perfect, but good for $60), and then I needed new skinny jeans to pair with the boots, and then why not throw in a pair of $10 shorts for good measure? All of this without buying ANY presents for ANYONE! Ridiculous.

So yeah, it's something to think about. 2009 - the year without sweatshops?


(also, hello blog! I've missed you!)