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Marathon
April 14, 2010 – 2:17 pm
Yes! The lady and I ran our first marathon on April 11 (hence the animated gif). This was a real feat for the both of us. 26.2 miles. That is really far. About 2 round trips of our old commute to work, but who’s counting.
Back in August or September, somewhere between swimming in the lake every morning, watching Lost, and the general cabin fever associated with living with 12 people, we decided to run a marathon. Seemed like a great way to become more intimate with this landscape and achieve a goal. We needed to sweat more, for everyones sake.
Training
As we increased our mileage in training, our world here felt small and close and well… we had a hard time finding long runs. We zig zagged through streets in Anacortes trying to get enough miles. This is a small island. We even resorted to driving to Bellingham (nearly an hour away) where they have longer trails.
The necessity of mechanic rhythms and mantras is much greater than it was with riding bikes. The sound of the wind is much quieter than the sound of your feet, breath, and heart. So much pounding. The biggest lesson so far over the past 7 months: run no matter what. Don’t worry too much about distances or times of days or when you last ran or any other self-inflicted constrictions. Get out and run, every day, and the rest will come. After the first 4 miles, the weird aches work themselves out.
The Race
We started out running around this tiny soccer field, graduated to jogging through the misty night air on the high school track, to 6 miles trails along the water, and now we’ve run 26.2 miles. In the early morning, the first 17 miles of the race almost felt like a breeze, even the massive hill at mile 7. My feet hurt and I was tired, but I felt great.
But the last 8 miles, now that is another story. This was the part of the course that the lady and I didn’t drive. We figured it would be mellow, on the water front, flat. Ha! The hills rolled on. If there is one word to describe the Whidbey Island Marathon it would be hills. Lots of them. I did get a lei, though. It seemed that everyone had an iPod. For some reason I thought this would be frowned upon. I thought I would want to commune with nature and the sounds of everyone running. But at mile 22 all I wanted was to listen to some Usher.
After the race we went out with Nick and ate a whole lot of pizza and then I slept for 4 hours. It took about two days to start walking normal again.
Chick starter
April 10, 2010 – 6:42 pm
There is a box in our living room filled with little silver velociraptors! JK. We wish. We got some baby chicks to be our friends and eat cool bugs and scraps and turn it into golden compost and blue eggs.
Right now they mostly just chrip, chirp, chirp and poop in their water and sleep beak-down like real yogis. Margot thinks they are weird.
We mixed our own chick starter food for the babes because it will make for tastier eggs and healthier chickens. But mostly because it is a huge hassle to go get the food. No store in town sells any and the store bought stuff is sold in tiny bags (and is mostly soy and corn, etc.).
A quick search on good old google dot com and we were on our way to mixing up a nice batch of eats for those nerds.
Here’s the list/recipe:
2 x Corn
3 – 4 x Wheat
1 x Barley
1 x Oat groats
1 x Shelled sunflower seeds
1⁄2 x Lentils
1⁄2 x Split peas
1 x Millet
1⁄4 x Flax
1⁄2 x Seaweed
New Fruits
March 26, 2010 – 2:38 pm
We went to Kauai! One of the major highlights was going to the farmer’s market and getting to meet new fruits. Along with the expected pineapples, papayas, passion fruits, lychees, and coconuts, we tasted:
1. Guavas – SO DELICIOUS! Tart and seedy and grainy like a pear. Matthew’s favorite for sure.
2. Cinnamon kiwis – Looks like the familiar kiwi without fur, but the flavor is surprisingly reminiscent of yeasty bread.
3. Egg fruit – I was the only one who had more than a bite of this one. The texture is spot on to a hard egg yoke. Very dry. Sweet and custardy. Would make a great sub for pumpkin in a pie or curry.
4. Mountain apples – tastes like a ripe yellow plum or pluot, shaped like a tiny oblong apple with thin red skin and white flesh.
5. Cream apples – look a these guys! We were super bummed out that we only got two of these at the market. The flavor is hard to explain, simple and not too sweet. Very pleasant. So much going on with the texture!
Oh man, plum jam
August 20, 2009 – 8:42 pm
A few weeks back we discovered another gift from 1011 12th Street, a plum tree, in our very own yard, laden with delicious tiny plums. Actually no one knew what kind of tree it was for a long time. There were guesses that it was a cherry tree by the looks of the fruit. Someone tasted an early fruit and absolutely didn’t like it. I think the unripened fruit freaked them out. We all avoided the tree. But then a nice man came and was pumped and picked handfuls and shared the goodness with us. Now we know.
So, this week I decided to pick a few buckets before they were gone. Margot hung out with me the whole time. She finds solace in the shade of this tree. She is able to watch birds and remain aloof all day. But she was happy for me to come visit her in her zone.
It took be about an hour to pick and pit. This I did alone. It was fun and therapeutic. Afterward I had a bowl of pitted fruit and stained hands.
That is not to say I did all the work myself though, really I only did the easy part. Laura picked up some jars and sugar at the coop. We had a late night of making some decent tart jam. Exactly as I want jam to always be. Not too sweet, nice and gooey.
It was our first time canning and it was a real experience. I was extremely nervous and intimidated by the process. Laura reassured me and told me that I was a geek for freaking out too much. Turns out, the process is really mellow and now we have seven jars of extremely delicious plum jam. We are saving some for the winter when fresh local fruit is scarce.
I’m really only writing this post to boast. Sorry, but it is so delicious and I think about it constantly, like LOST.
Land Camera to Guemes
July 22, 2009 – 11:02 pm
Five-minute ferry ride to another Island for lunch, tested out one of the land cameras we found in the old darkroom at the DoS.
This morning the lake was warm, our palms stained from thimbleberries. Summer on Fidalgo Island — rules pretty hard.
Lake Swimming
June 8, 2009 – 1:48 pm
Have you ever done this? Man, lake swimming is pretty amazing. Part of growing and living in “SoCal” is the ocean, you don’t have lakes. Lakes are something entirely different. They have a different kind of mystery. The ocean can be brash and noisy, but lakes are more quiet about their secrets, they silently suffer.
Although I miss the salty waves and bobbing around in the swell, I have fallen in love with swimming in lakes. Lakes are something we have an abundance here on beautiful Fidalgo Island. There are like ten. So far, my favorite is Trafton (pictured above). I was told that it is very magical and I believe it. It was made by a meteor. The water is the color of rust. Much darker than any of the other lakes.
But isn’t this an island, you ask, isn’t there ocean surrounding you on all sides? Well, yes, that is true, but it is not like La Jolla Cove with its rhythmic waves and tickling Garibaldi. The ocean is more like a bay — and it is very cold — even for Lynne Cox, maybe. There is one “swimming” beach nearby though, it is waist deep forever:
Exploring
May 15, 2009 – 4:05 pm
With a baguette and coffee in hand, we drove around the perimeter of Fidalgo Island.
Stopped near a private beach to skip stones and touch oceanic travelers.
Turns out I need some practice with the skipping.
Cultured Butter
April 16, 2009 – 5:21 pm
When I was in my sophomore year of college I spent a semester on a experiential learning term in LA — taking classes, interning, and living with a family from a different cultural background. It’s where I met most of my favorite people. For our urban religious movements class, I chose to do my research project on Judaism mostly because of this book: Traditions in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism.
In her book, Lynn Davidman explores the resurgence of Orthodox Judaism among modern American women through the experiences of two distinctly different groups of single Jewish American women as they return to their secular roots at a contemporary Orthodox synagogue (Lincoln Square) in New York City and a Lubovitch Hasidic community (Bais Chana) in St. Paul, Minnesota. The book is comparative throughout and seeks to communicate to a lay audience why traditional religious forms are attractive to contemporary women who have come of age since feminism.
You could, and I will, say that the slow food movement is a parallel battle/journey. From the compost of customs a new plant will rise. Again and again, from structure to unstructured, unstructured into new form. Each phoenix, with it’s own virtues, meets it’s end and is reborn. The post-feminism orthodoxy is new and unable to exist outside of it’s own context; the slow food movement is similarly marked and born from history.
With each ancient practice relearned, we inevitably encounter. The intersection of time and movement is a strange place.
If not for the health benefits, the environment, the farmers, or the pure ecstasy of taste… make things to encounter. You will be better for it.
There is magic in welcoming outsiders and integrating ourselves into the community of The Other, no? Perhaps this is the heart of my attraction to culturing foods. And so, with each opportunity, we welcome microorganisms and are thus transformed by/through our collaboration. Food becomes easier to digest and convert to energy, we become stronger and more resilient — our palates are rewarded by the wonder of tang and earth. We are better for being open.
Looking for water, we sink out roots deeper. We remember that feelings of rootlessness are a vehicle and not a place.
I think it was back in September when we made out first batch and we have never looked back. Store bought butter tastes like nothing and earth balance, while deliciously nutty, just does not compare – where even are all of those ingredients sourced from? when were they harvested? how much energy has gone into producing it? Anyways…
So here’s the drill:
1. Get yourself the best quality cream you can. We usually get 2 bottles/cartons of these little dudes.
