mama be joy

every other sunday k, his roommate joe, and i invite people over for soup. the three of us take turns as the soup masters. this last sunday was mine and I made big heaping batch of minestrone with gluten free rice pasta. the recipe came from a book I gifted k before a winter letting him know how much I looked forward to spending another winter with him (especially if we could make soups all the time)! needless to say the book was Millie Katzen’s Recipes: Soups. 

 you all know who she is duh the Moosewood cookbook. anyways this soup book is just as wonderful and is really cute. it has a built in stand so it stands up so you can see the recipe as you cook all with keeping your hands free!

among our friends that have been making it regularly lately are be joy and catfish and they have been bringing their daughter Azalea Ruby over to our great joy. i have know be joy and catfish for almost eight years now. they are the fist of my friends that i have watched go through the process of having a child. no I don’t mean that in the i watched her giver birth way because i didn’t. i mean it in the way that here are these two people i have grown to know and love and now there exists a third person in this world like them and yet different all in her own right. i have always held a lot of respect for be joy as someone that embodied wisdom, nature, and artistic expression and from the moment i knew she was expecting i was so excited i could have burst. i knew she would be an excellent mother and raise the type of person we need more of in this world.

on top of being super-mom, having a job, and a social life, be joy has started an organic homemade skin care business. she is extremely knowledgeable on how different herbs and essential oils effect our skin and bodies. all her products are all natural and chemical free and produced in a as sustainable and mindful way as possible. what set be joy off on this path you might ask? well she asked why if we eat a diet of organic food and try to take care of ourselves then why should the things we put on (and then are absorbed by) our bodies be any different? in addition she found information he learned thins like the fact that we absorb more chlorine when we shower then we do drinking the same water. now if our skin operates in those ways image what we do when we put toxins on our skin. one thing that had always put a knot in my stomach is when I see people putting chemical loaded sun block on their children. it breaks my heart because obviously these parents are trying to do what’s best for their children by protecting them from harmful sun rays but all those toxins are quickly absorbed by the child’s pores as they open due to sweating. 

for the winter holidays i knitted Azalea Ruby leg warmers. i was very careful to get the correct gage for a child her age. however as we tried to put them on I realized that I should have been a little smarter and made them are little bigger for a baby girl that was almost 10 pounds when she was born. now at six months Azalea is 23 pounds, the average weight for a 15 month old. needless to say i needed to make some new leg warmers! I have since made two pairs and when Azalea Ruby showed up on Sunday to my great joy she was wearing a pair! 

don't miscount the lives of spoons

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after four years of photography school and three years of watching k go through grad school, i am sad to say that i have lost my taste for art openings. in fact, i relate heavily to Ellen Cherry Charles in Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All. she fought her entire life to be a recognized artist and make it to New York City and her not so smart boyfriends puts metal wings on their mobile home and turns it into a turkey and suddenly he’s an art genius.  i related desperately to Ellen Cherry and clung to her for all my life as I walked on egg shells in the world that is fine art. much like her i had to give my romanticized vision of what the art world was. i felt her heart break of shattered dreams and she felt mine.  if you have been deprived of reading this book or any Tom Robbins for that matter please deprive yourself no further and fallow this link http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780553377880-0 . my favorite is still life with woodpecker. i still have my copy, a much  treasured gift from k.

stay with me dear reader for I do have a point and a happy one at that! on the eve of last Saturday the  23^rd i went to an opening and had a splendid time. the show was at Barbara&Barbara http://barbaraandbarbaraloveyou.com . i enjoy this space, it is too laid back to be formal and stuffy and not laid back enough to feel quite like a hipster party. otherwise it’s a profoundly good mixture for professionalism as well as nice time to spend with friends. good conversations to be had and good art to look at. this particular show features the work of Helen Maurene Cooper, Jennifer Ray, Grant Ray (no relation) and Eric Bessel. Grant was in k’s year of grad school and somehow surviving that the two remain close friends and colleagues.

as always Jennifer Ray’s work was captivating and intriguing http://jenniferray.net .  i have always found her landscaped both mystical and taboo and calling into question what we find to be natural. please have a look for yourself.  

it must be said though, Grant’s images captured the heart and imagination for the gallery going crowed that evening. no I am not tainted by the fact that he is a friend it is just simple truth. http://www.grantray.com his work is highly intellectual as well intriguing and i will not be the first to admit that it goes over my head at times. however instead of that fact pushing me back it draws me in making me want to know more. the images become precious objects that communicate all on their own to me just as the object within them do.

oh the secret lives of objects like the  Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell. for those of you that have read the above mentioned book there is your tie in to start of this blog. now it all comes together now and my story is done.

little green seeds

my sprouts fill me with wonder as if they were my own off spring. they sit happily in a jar soaking up sunrays and waiting for their baths twice a day. i coo over every new speck of green that is produced by the seeds. the birth of life. it’s quite magical and i somehow feel as if i’m in a fairy tale when i look at the little guys in their jar.

these particular sprouts are Sunflower seeds. they are rich in vitamin E, are anti ageing, and also help with nerves and sight. different seeds will have different sprouts with very different health benefits. a wonderful list can be found at : http://www.andreajenkins.co.za/article002.html

to be quite frank i am a new sprouter with tons to learn. i’m excited to investigate and learn how to work on my own immune (or lack there of) system and K’s. he is recently recovering from an outbreak of Shingles. we are baffled at what caused his immune system to drop to the extent that he was even susceptible to Shingles. we put the Er doctor at Skyline Hospital in his place after he made the assumption that K was anemic from his vegan diet. why do people assume that the only way to get protein is from meat? Oh right back to topic…. Sprouts.

as much as i have been enjoying the aesthetic and romance of sprouting in jars, i would like a larger production. i have a keen interest in sprouting trays. there are so many types to choose from! i wonder which work best and why. luckily they are not expensive. they are plastic however, and in a lot of them i wonder what kinds of plastic are used and how they are produced. also, i really need to figure out a great place to order seed from. thus far, i have been purchasing organic sunflower seeds from Whole Foods and that is so not the way to go!

once those inquires are solved my next move is to grow wheat grass. not that i can afford a wheat grass juicer at the moment. Margaret of Mother’s Marketplace in Hoodriver advised me to incorporate more wheat grass into my diet. she is a gem to humanity and one of the wisest women i have ever met.

in other news my wonderful grandma has sent me a box of lemons and tangerines off the tree in her back yard. i was as giddy as a little child with these gifts. my grandma said to me that her tree is so ripe with lemons that she doesn’t know what to do with them all. imagine they joy of walking into your back yard and picking fruit! i feel so far removed from such an experience that it really kind of blows my mind. should i make lemonade or lemon tarts?