Okay.

It has finally happened. 

I am in studio for the record now.

Delectable Electables.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Ours was wonderful and low-key. Every single vegetable I used for the dinner was either grown by ourselves, the farmer across the street, or in a couple of cases, other local farmers. 

We had...

Roasted beets, turnips, brussels sprouts and carrots

Mashed purple potatoes with pink peppercorns and vegan gravy

Crispy tofu cutlets

A VAT of amazing gluten free stuffing

Orange Spiked Cranberry Sauce

and...

Gluten free local Empire Apples apple pie!

All so good...

Then I woke up this morning and marched myself across the street and  voted NDP. 

All in all, a good 24 hrs.

xo.h

The Place to Be.

You should see the looks on people's faces here in Langley when I say I don't own a car.

The transit system here leaves much to be desired (ie. a trip that would take 25 minutes to walk takes 45 minutes on the bus because of all the weird loopdy loops the bus makes up and down random side streets) but I am determined not to give in to the call of the Toyota dealership.

There is a push out here by the few people with any interest in public transportation to have a light rail system reinstated here that would connect different parts of the Fraser Valley to each other and to Vancouver. I hope it ends up happening. The Langleys (both the Township and the City) are a Conservative stronghold and are quasi-rural, so you know what that means -- generally lots of oil being used to push lots of single occupancy vehicles around from one big box store complex to the next. Much of the time my mom's car (with us in it) is the only car in the HOV lane all the way from Vancouver back to Langley (even during rush hour).

I took a walk to go meet a friend the other day, and was so disturbed by how pedestrian unfriendly the whole event was. I walked from 200th and 56th to 200th and 72nd, and the experience was so disheartening -- semi trucks flying by me with nothing around but WalMarts and Winners stores. Trying different routes has proved fruitless. In many cases I am lucky to even get a sidewalk. When there are sidewalks, they often turn into just a line painted on the road with no warning, and no way to cross the street safely unless you walk back a mile.

I live in the only really pedestrian friendly part of Langley City that I have come across. There is a big Opus Art Store across the street, and some cute stores on the Fraser Highway (more like a normal street near where I live). There are beautiful parks nearby, and several bus stops (too bad the buses only come on the half hour at best, though.) My wish for Langley is that it would become a city that feels more like a community, though, in terms of its pedestrian culture -- or even several communities separated by big stretches of highway and Petsmarts.

There is a group in Toronto that ambushes city streets with impromptu bike lane paint jobs. Maybe they would consider a cross country tour. 

The Nature of Pins.

I spent the afternoon today at the David Suzuki Foundation making "Vote Environment" pins for the foundation's upcoming university tour (several dates of which he will be speaking at). The pins are so cute. I will have to post a picture of one here. To find out more about the tour and everything else they are up to, go to the foundation website. 

life in bullet point form part two

no time for any thing but bullet point at the moment...not sure why...

- Kohlrabi. Grow it. Peel it. Roast it in small cubes. That is all. Who knew?

- Moving to the big house for the fall/winter because the (tiny)cottage is under some very creaky acacia trees and there are some crazy wind storms here in the fall.

- Studio is almost totally cleaned out and decorated. This Saturday I am going to Long and McQuade to rent equipment, and then I guess I record this thing...

- Have temporarily stopped using cookbooks in order to increase my arsenal of recipes that feature food that is totally in season and found either in my backyard, or in the backyard of my CSA farm (which happens to be across the street.) Tonight was tomato-coconut-basil tofu with sides of braised chard and beet greens, roasted kohlrabi, baby beets and zucchini and wild rice with blueberries (from the best, and best priced, organic blueberry farm ever.) Loves it.

- Grey's Anatomy comes back on September 25th. I now think about this every day, so I figured I should make a note of this on my bee-lowg. I don't care what anyone thinks. That show got me through 24 hour a day morning sickness when I was pregnant, and is now my blissful one hour to myself a week. Sometimes TWO hours! Like on September 25th! 'Til series finale do us part. 

- Books I have read so far this summer: The Omnivore's Dilemma (Pollan), Frankenstein (Mary S.W.), In Defense of Food (Pollan) and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Kingsolver). 

That's it for now. Better update with photos soon.

xo.h

life in bullet point form...

Some updates on my life here in manure-topia...

- The lettuce glut has finally come to a close, and we are now able to eat just one big salad a day rather than trying to figure out how to include lettuce as "a part of your complete breakfast."

- Now is the season of (from our farm) continued chard and kale, little spicy yellow peppers that are coming in before all the other peppers, basil, cilantro, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, cherry plums by the dozens falling from the sky, beet greens, chives, early blackberries, etc.

- Right now there are also cute little versions of what will be future eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, all the squash, tomatoes, artichokes, red runner beans, and many more etceteras. I should have bought a deep freeze when I moved here. Next year...

- Something sad. A mother rabbit unfortunately decided one night to build her nest and have her babies in the middle of our strawberry patch which has just come into berries again, and is routinely visited by all manner of probably predatory small mammals and birds. Anyway, one morning my mom and her friend discovered that three of the babies had been killed, one rather brutally, by some sort of small animal -- at the time my mom did not know if these were rabbits or mice or what, but she buried the three and her friend brought the two others to the wildlife society here in Langley where they said they were indeed baby rabbits and that they were both hypothermic (from the cold night uncovered in the nest) and lethargic (from being exposed to 30 plus degree direct sunlight the whole morning before they were found.) The prognosis was not good, but we are going to check in to see if either of them survive. 

- There have been two bear attacks in two days in Burnaby. Freaky. One happened in someone's front yard, and one happened in someone's basement. I have just come into some bear spray in the form of a pen. "Excuse me Mr. Bear, before you eat me, do you think I could have your autogr...ZOINK!!!" 

- This is the part where I say the record is coming along, except what I have to say actually is that it is written, as it has been for a year, and that I am going to be recording it on mostly rented equipment in a garage that I am "turning into a studio" -- the quotation marks are for indicating that in fact I am mostly just picking peas and arranging parts in my head these days. More to come on this. I say this so I feel pressured to actually work. Whoever thought deciding to make a record in the summer was an idiot. Oh wait, that was me...

- Kai is becoming a total beach bum. He even has spiky hair and he's kind of salty tasting.

That's all for now. 

Please send me record making vibes. 

Love H

 

Play Your Chards Right!

Pictured directly above is a big bunch of Bright Lights Swiss Chard that I pulled from the vegetable garden that my mom, my husband Adam, myself and some brown bunnies have been tending to. Also ready for harvest are red and green lettuce, snap peas, strawberries, mustard greens, mesculun mix and the first blueberries of the year. The salad (pictured at the top) featured everything mentioned above, and definitely tasted as good as it looks! Hooray for eating as local as it gets!

xo.h