The World Surrounding Me

It’s official: 2012 will be the final Cornerstone Festival. (Barring some absolute miracle-act-of-God, which is never out of the question, of course, but which I don’t think anybody is banking on.)

If you know me at all, I hope you know that Cornerstone means something to me. In fact, it means a lot. It’s hard to put into words, but I didn’t think I could let this moment pass without a small remembrance.

Netha was my neighbor, and my friend Sally’s mom, and –wow– could she cook. One of her enduring recipes is simply called Netha’s Salad. It’s a fairly straightforward recipe for a salad with greens, fruit, nuts, and poppyseed dressing. It can be adapted in a few ways. I share the recipe here, with the stipulation that you, too, must call it “Netha’s Salad.”

Netha’s Salad:

A combination of greens. Use several varieties, such as romaine, green leaf lettuce, spinach, etc.

A combination of fruit (bite-size). Use several type such as pineapple, blueberries, and strawberries. Use your imagination and focus on whatever is in season.

Sugared pecans: You can sometimes find these in the bulk section of the grocery store. If you want to make your own, slowly stir 1 cup sugar and 1 cup pecans over low heat, until sugar has melted. Do not overcook! Put onto cookie sheets (a silpat liner is your friend here) to cool.

Top with poppyseed dressing:

• 1/4 c sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1 t dry mustard
• 1/3 c vinegar
• 2 scallons
• 1 c oil (the original recipe says vegetable oil)
• 1/2 t poppyseeds

If you’re keeping track with Matt & I, you might remember that we won a trip to Mexico from Greenling! (Check out the funny video of how we found out & other details on Greenling’s blog.) Greenling, the Austin-based produce-delivery service we use, gave away this trip in conjunction with the eco-resort Playa Viva, calling it “6 Days in Paradise.”

If I’m completely honest, I will admit that we were skeptical in addition to being surprised that we won. We were skeptical of Mexico in general (when you live in Central Texas, you hear a lot of horror stories about violence in Mexico). We were skeptical of going to a remote part of Mexico in particular. We were skeptical of taking a precious week off to try a new destination instead of going to a trusted place we already know & love. We were also skeptical of the “eco” style of the resort. We were skeptical of potentially crazy people who might show up at an eco-resort, the politically-charged conversations we might get wrapped up in over the communal dining table, the food we might have to eat, and if we might miss US-style luxury amenities while living off-the-grid.

If you’d seen me struggling to ask even basic questions in French-speaking countries a few years ago or if you ever meet my High School French teacher, you might not believe that I would ever be called bilingual. Yet, I’m actually learning and understanding Spanish! This is partially for fun, and partially with a purpose.

Last August we won a trip to Mexico from Greenling. I know that you don’t actually need to speak Spanish to go to a resort in Mexico. I also know that my husband speaks enough Spanish to get us through shops/customs/etc. But, I wanted a new project and I wanted to be able to have polite conversation, so I set out to learn Spanish.

I considered Rosetta Stone, but the high price turned me away. I had tried teach-yourself French CDs and books prior to our trips to Tahiti & France — which clearly did no good. A web search turned me onto LiveMocha. Rather than starting with grammar or casual phrases intended for tourists, the site starts by simply giving you pictures, written words, and audio from native speakers. Through a series of quizzes and exercises you naturally pick up on the language and the subtle differences that build into proper grammar.

The site has worked remarkably well for me! At this point, I’ve completed 34 Spanish lessons and have several dozen lessons left to go. You can buy the advanced lessons, but I have done them entirely for free so far. By helping international students who are learning English, I earn tokens which I can spend to buy into the upper-level Spanish courses. I’m now one of their top 2000 students in Spanish and I have been a “Teacher of the Week” in English several times.

I like the LiveMocha approach, but I’m also a grammar snob at heart. So, I’ve studied some Spanish grammar on my own. Initially, the hundreds of possibilities for verb conjugations flummoxed me, but with study (and asking Matt, who studied Spanish in high school & college), I at least understand the basics. I’ve also tuned into a few podcasts and utilized a few web resources to take my study to the next level.

I know I’m not fluent. I know that my accent will give me away and shop-keepers and fellow travelers may switch to English when they hear me. I know I’ll have to ask Matt for help on our trip. But, I’m proud of myself. I know enough Spanish that I can write several paragraphs without needing Google Translate (which is a nice tool, but it is not accurate!). I can read simple stores in Spanish and, while I miss some of the finer points, I get the gist of the story. I was able to interact with a store clerk at a Mexican Bakery in Spanish. I even understood some overheard Spanish-language conversation while shopping yesterday.

In addition to LiveMocha, here are the resources I’ve found most helpful:

• A great list of Spanish Verb Forms, from a professor at Purdue University Fort Wayne.
• SpanishChecker: it’ a grammar checker in Spanish, essentially. It helps when I’m struggling with some of the finer grammatical points like objects.
• Forvo: a source of audio files with native speakers pronouncing words in many languages. You can see where each speaker lives, which is very helpful for a language like Spanish which differs widely in, say, Argentina, from how it is used in Spain or Mexico.
• The Everything Spanish Phrase Book, kindle edition (free loan if you’re the primary account holder on an Amazon Prime subscription). Good for tourist phrases.
• The Everything Spanish Grammar Book, kindle edition. Great book for understanding grammar! I’m evening managing to learn some of the irregular verbs now!
• An Elementary Spanish Reader, kindle edition (free — has a few technical goofs, and some of the stories are too hard for me to read, but it works)
• I’ve tired a few podcasts, but haven’t found anything that I really like yet. SpanishPod is decent.

In less than a month, I’ll be trying out my new language skills when we arrive at the Ixtapa/Zihuateneo airport and then head on south to Playa Viva! I’m sure it’ll be great, but thus far, I think I’m more excited about getting to speak Spanish than I am about the rest of the trip!

Wildflower season came early this year. The first bluebonnets became obvious around Austin nearly a month ago. So, rather than our much-more-typical April trip to see the flowers, we headed out yesterday.

Thanks to reports online, we decided to head south of San Antonio this year, rather than to the hill country west/northwest of Austin. South Texas has a slightly different wildflower mix, so we looked forward to adding some new flowers to our list. In particular, I wanted to see the Sandyland variety of bluebonnets that grows there, which is different than the bluebonnets we see around Austin.

If you want to drive to see flowers, read my detailed trip report at the very end of this post.

If you just want to see pictures of flowers, keep reading– or browse the entire album.

Note: Matt left for a business trip today, so I wasn’t able to download the pictures from the good camera. So, all I’m, posting so far were taken on my little point-and-shoot.

White Poppies

Sunflower

Bladderpod (I think)

Crown Tickseed

Sandyland Bluebonnet

Field of Sandyland Bluebonnets

Fringed Pucoon

Indian Blanket & Lazy Daisy

Purple Thistle (I think)

I have no idea what this is -- didn't see many of them

Indian Blanket, yellow TBD and white TBD (could be Milfoil?)

In addition to these, we saw:

• Spiderwort
• Pencil Cactus
• Prickly Pear Cactus
• Skullcap
• Vervain (I think)
• Magenta Phlox
• Primrose in several colors

TRIP REPORT:

As of Saturday, March 24, 2012:

• I-35 from north of Natalia south to Devine: AMAZING!
• White poppies in abundance, alongside magenta phlox, various yellow flowers (coreposis, groundsels, others), and some bluebonnets.
• Take the frontage road (where it exists) for the best views. There’s plenty to photograph here.
• County Roads 777 and 7711 east of Devine: Phenomenal!
• Entire fields were white from the poppies, plus huge swashes of bluebonnets, paintbrush, indian blankets, thistles, etc.
• FM 2504 from 173 to 476 (between Devine & Poteet, more or less): Great.
• One particular area labelled Mortellaro’s (appears to be a tree farm) has great (and relatively easy to photograph) fields of bluebonnets.
• There were other large fields of blue; we stopped to let a car pass and look at a field  closer to Rossville and a loud younger woman drove up in her car to ensure we knew that it was her land. Yes, we know. We’re just stopped alongside the road. Oh well.
• Highway 16 north of Poteet towards San Antonio: average/light covering
• Jett Rd going east of Highway 16, then curves around to connect with 1604: Not very photogenic, but excellent.
• The views here were less photogenic (due to lots of houses/machinery) but the flowers were great.
• There were more bluebonnets and fewer white poppies the further east we went from I-35.
• After crossing thru San Antonio (where we didn’t see many wildflowers) we headed north on 281. There were some decent fields of bluebonnets in the ditches & medians near Bulverde, but nothing accessible for photography.
• Highway 46 connecting from 281 into New Braunfels: Almost nothing (just a few few small patches of yellow).
• I-35 between New Braunfels & Austin: the roadsides were frequently speckled with blue & yellow.

As of this morning, Sunday March 25, 2012:

• Highway 183 from the Austin airport going north towards I-35: Decent
• Some good patches of bluebonnets and yellow flowers (coreopsis, I think — I find yellow flowers harder to identify when driving by at 65 mph!) along with some paintbrush. However, they’re starting to be overrun by the taller yellow flowers.
• Highway 183 & Mopac near the Arboretum area in Austin: Excellent on hills, but hard to photograph
• These areas are not that photogenic, but they’re a nice treat when driving to Home Depot.

Here are some helpful links for finding good places to see flowers, and then identifying what you saw:

• http://www.texaswildflowerpictures.com/wf_index.htm
• http://www.wildflower.org/plants/
• http://lnstar.com/wildflowers/flowers.htm

“Eat local!” seems to be the rallying cry of my generation. And, I must admit that some of their arguments do interest me, particularly when I get to walk thru luscious farmer’s markets like the one we visited Saturday in San Francisco. If I lived there, I could easily spend hours and way too much money just buying the dozens of different varieties of lettuce they had!

However, most of the arguments I’ve heard for why people eat local (or become “locavores” to use the new term) leaves me unsatisfied. So, even when I’m happy to find a perfectly ripe tomato show up in the box from Greenling, or even when I get a bit jealous that my cousin who lives outside of Houston has an awesome raised-bed garden that produces crops nearly year-round, I still am not a locavore.

Here are the most common arguments I’ve heard (casually & online) for eating locally-raised food:

Energy use/transportation cost:

The argument tends to be that shipping (for example) strawberries from a farm in California to your local grocery store uses a lot of energy (which impacts global oil demand & greenhouse gasses & whatever else). So, you’re better off to buy strawberries that were grown in a greenhouse in your area. There have been quite a few studies on this idea of food miles, and several of them have methodological flaws. In the case of the strawberries, the reality tends to be that growing strawberries in a greenhouse probably takes more energy (especially if you have to heat the greenhouse in a cold climate) than it would to ship them cross-country. So, unless you’re going to limit yourself to only foods that are grown outdoors (without needing intensive effort, lots of extra water, or a heated greenhouse) that argument tends to fall flat. And, this whole battle of energy use gets thrown out the window when, instead of driving about 2 miles to the local grocery store, I drive 10+ miles to the local farmer’s market. My car is the biggest culprit for those greenhouse gasses!

Healthier/better for you:

Studies comparing organic and conventional produce have not found any discernible difference in nutrition. I haven’t found any studies comparing locally-produced vs. non-locally-produced produce, however. But, I rest on one simple argument: There are a lot of nutritious foods that I simply don’t like to eat, or (as in the case of things like brussels sprouts & collard greens), I will only eat when slathered in butter & bacon drippings. For me, it’s healthier & better for me to buy some broccoli that was shipped in than to eat a locally-grown deep-fried turnip chip (just for the sake of consuming the local veggie).

Fresher:

In my experience, some local produce & meat is fresher. But, it depends on what “locality” you’re in! If I’m in the midwest and can get corn that was picked this morning and cook it up for dinner tonight — that’s a certain win. But, a lot of produce actually stays very fresh — and indeed improves (think of avocados), as it sits while being transported. And, a lot of locally-produced items just aren’t nearly as good as those from other areas — take apples, for instance. I don’t so much care if an apple grown around Austin is fresh — it still doesn’t taste as good as the ones I brought home last time I visited Lyman Orchard in Connecticut in the fall.

Supporting the local economy:

Sure, the “buy local” movement is strong and can sometimes make sense. But, I tend to come back with a counter-argument. People who live in Idaho have to buy computers that were designed in Austin (thereby supporting the Austin economy). So, why can’t I buy a potato grown in Idaho? We live in a global economy.

More unique items available:

Yes, when I go to the local farmer’s market, I can find items that my local HEB doesn’t tend to carry — unique melons, heriloom tomatoes, etc. That’s a good thing. I like the foodie-aspect of cooking with those unique ingredients. But, they’ll never be the staple of my diet. And, sometimes, the uniqueness isn’t really that appealing. I’ve cut up quite a few watermelon radish and unique forms of squash from our Greenling box these past few months. Yes, they’re unique — but I don’t really enjoy them. I also suspect that if consumers demanded it, our normal grocery stores would carry more of the unique items.

Arguments in favor of not being a locavore:

Wise money decisions:

Sometimes, when I consider buying a locally-produced cut of beef (costing $10+/lb) vs. picking up a perfectly tasty cut of beef from the grocery store for far less money, I think about a little girl in Swaziland that I get to correspond with thanks to World Vision. I think about how, prior to Matt & I becoming her sponsors, this little girl & her family got their water from the same well that animals drank from and which the animals used as a latrine! If I spend more of my money to buy just locally-sourced items, that means there’s less money left in our budget to share to ensure that this little girl has clean water. That’s an easy trade-off for me. Thanks to modern American agriculture, the average American family spends only 10% of our income on food (source). That leaves a lot of money left to use to do good.

Starvation & Unemployment:

If everyone only ate locally-raised items, a lot of the world would starve, and a lot of good farmers & food processors would be unemployed. Think about Iowa as an example. I have friends who are pig farmers in Iowa. Let’s imagine that they were only allowed to sell their pork to other people in Iowa. And, let’s imagine that people here in Austin could only eat food that was grown around Austin. Well, quite simply, most of us in Austin would starve — and my friends on that pig farm in Iowa would quickly run out of consumers. It simply wouldn’t make sense to try to grow everything we need around Austin when you can grow the same crops – with far better yield for far less effort — in another part of the country. Let the people in Austin’s tech industry focus on finding ways to for the world to be less efficient & use less energy to ship food to us from Iowa instead of forcing them into farming in an area that’s just not well suited to growing a lot of what real people want to eat.

Treating others as we want to be treated:

This is a confusing point, but one that I want to try to make. Some emphasis on eating locally comes with a very subtle “haha, I’m better than you” attitude. It seems to say “I’m on the top now; I don’t care how I got here.” Our country needed mass production & sustainable-yet-non-organic farming practices to become the “bread basket of the world.” We needed people to dedicate their lives to raising good midwestern beef or pork & growing grains that fuel our country. We needed infrastructure that could take great produce from the land of the Jolly Green Giant or the lush California farmland and truck it to places like arid Texas. Without that background, we’d never really be in a position where we could choose if our food was local or not: we’d be in a position where we were happy to get whatever we could scrape up. We’d be in the position of a little girl I love dearly, who (when she first came to the US from Africa) would gnaw a fried chicken leg to the bone and would eat every last morsel on her plate (even if she was no longer hungry), because she was so accustomed to not knowing if/when she’d eat again. Our nation needs agriculture. Our global village also needs our nation to need agriculture. When we in Austin shun inexpensive & tasty pork raised in Nebraska to prefer dry & expensive pork raised nearby, when we thrill with delight over finding a locally-grown yet way-off-season box of strawberries at the farmer’s market, we are in effect saying “I’m on top now. I win. You lose.” I don’t want to be part of that.

Where it lands for me:

• I still get a box of local veggies delivered from Greenling twice a month. I do it not because I want to eat local, but because it’s a way to force us to eat more veggies – and to try new things. If our budget ever gets tight, this is the first luxury I’ll cut out. And, it really is a luxury. That doesn’t mean I’d cut out nutrition (I can find just as much nutrients at my local grocery store — and maybe more considering how much bacon I tend to use when cooking from the Greenling box), but I would cut out an expense.
• I still like to go to Farmer’s Markets, but they’re much more a way to go on a date with Matt than they are a way to fill up our fridge. We enjoy taking a Saturday morning to just be together, and wander around and talk about what food we might try to cook. The cost of driving to the market & the cost of buying specialty items at the market feels like it belongs in an entertainment budget instead of as food.
• I am preparing to re-do our raised garden beds. And, as you can guess, that’s not because I think I have to revert back to a world where I am self-sustainable. It’s because I like gardening as a hobby. I like being able to go to my yard and cut a few sprigs of thyme instead of shelling out a few dollars for a box of herbs at the store. Sure, I’d love it if we ever produce a good tomato from our yard, but I certainly don’t suppose that tomato will be better for me, less expensive, or better for the environment.
• If you choose to eat local, or if you choose to eat organic, I don’t want to judge your decision, but I hope that you’ll respect my right to choose otherwise.

Related reading:

• Seeking a Balance Between Factory & Farm (NY Times)
• The Omnivore’s Delusion (The American) – long article but has fascinating sections about raising turkeys, understanding the need for nitrogen in farming & more.
• Farmer Knows Best (The Weekly Standard)
• Wordless Wednesday – a drawing from a child growing up on a family farm
• Common Ground – answers to common food questions
• Visit a Fifth Generation Family Farm – watch the video
• National Pie Day | “Local” Food – a different take on what “local” means

And, I even have a shirt to prove it!

I had planned to rent a bike and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge last Thursday, on my own, while Matt was at his conference. Rain dashed my plans, however. But that wasn’t all bad — Matt & I & two friends wound up going together on Saturday instead. It was an absolutely beautifully sunny day — which made for better road conditions — but which also brought out huge crowds.

Panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge. Photo © Becky Laswell.

I call myself a re-beginning cyclist, since I’m getting my road legs back after many years off the bike and fighting foot/leg injuries. But, since making it my goal to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge, I’ve been doing some training rides to prepare for the hills I’d encounter on the trip. I’m proud to say that I conquered 2 of the 3 big hills (and would have easily conquered the other hill, had the crowd not gotten in my way). I even got kudos from one of our riding partners for how I did on one hill — and she has ridden competitively! Parts of the bike route were tough, but if you’re willing to keep going (and not ashamed to get off & walk your bike if needed), I think this is an approachable ride for almost anybody.

The bridge itself was in need of some fresh International Orange paint (it’s undergoing a small repair right now), but it was still gorgeous. I barely remember seeing it when I was 3 or 4 years old, and caught a glimpse from the air on a flight to Hawaii a while back. Seeing the towers & cables up-close, from the very deck of the bridge itself, was amazing!

I have an odd fascination with bridges, so I’m happy to add this iconic treasure to the list of bridges I’ve crossed.

If you want to bike the bridge, I recommend reading this article on TripAdivsor. (We loved the tip to carry our bikes on a catwalk below the deck then descend on an uncrowded road thru Fort Baker, rather than riding along the freeway into Sausalito.) We rented with Blazing Saddles — rode from their shop at Fisherman’s Wharf over to Sausalito, then took the ferry back.
 

I’m so excited to be traveling to San Francisco! In preparing to take the trip, though, I realized that we never bought a case for the HP TouchPad that we bought last summer when they were discontinued & deeply discounted. Last time I flew, I kid you not, I wrapped the touch pad in a scarf to keep it protected. But, not this time! No, I’m headed to a stylish big city! No more scarf-wrapped tablets for me!

I pulled thru my stash of heavier-weight fabric (which I use for bags & home-dec items) and found a piece of  linen-look f abric. I also found a set of luscious fat quarters from purchased last year at Kilauea Kreations II in Hilo, HI. Prior to unrolling the bundle, I didn’t even know what line the fabric was from! Turns out that one of the FQ’s was the Honeycomb pattern, in green, was from Joel Dewberry’s ModernMeadow line for Free Spirit. The green of that print was a nice contrast to the blue linen. And, bonus: while looking for buckles for my entry in the Moda Sliced auditions, I happened across buy-one-get-one-free buttons at Joann, and picked some beautiful & detailed green buttons from the Cut-Outs line from Bluementhal Lansing.

I’ve made enough other tablet/kindle/etc. cases that I don’t really need a pattern to make simple sleeves anymore. I mostly just use the formula I learned in a pattern for a zippered laptop case to make the case fit – take measurements around the table in both directions, divide in half, then add 1.25″ — then cut 2 each that size in lining & outer fabric. Fuse some fleece to the outside fabrics, stitch them together, and done! Without a zipper, these don’t take much time or skill, honestly.

To up the difficulty level, just a bit, I decorated the outer fabric with a Cathedral Window-inspired design. I did it my own way, but you can find a similar project here.

Here’s the finished product:

After seeing the Touch Pad slip into this new case so neatly, I decided that it was time to update my Kindle sleeve. My old one zips, which is fine — but an open-top case would be just as good. I’ve received a ton of compliments on my old Kindle case (including people insisting I must have bought it at a boutique shop), but I felt like it was time for a change. So, this afternoon, armed with a cold drink from Happy Hour at Sonic, I whipped up a coordinating case for the Kindle, and a triangular-shaped flat-bottom pouch (tutorial here), just for good measure. Here’s a photo of my new trio of travel cases:

And, that’s it! The insanity could go on, but I really do need to get ready for the trip now!

Becky Laswell #2: Cord wrap collage, a photo by beckylaswell on Flickr.

I really need to get to sleep, but I wanted to post one more photo tonight. Yep, this is another entry for Moda’s “Sliced” contest auditions.

This collage photo shows the elements & finished product for my 2nd entry, a fabric strip with buttonholes that is held to my desk via elastic Ironing Board Buckles. The buttonholes keep my phone/Kindle/iPod charging cords tidy – and keep them from falling behind my desk. The Ironing Board Buckles hold the wrap tight, yet also make it easy to remove without damaging my desk surface.

This entry isn’t nearly as complicated as my first (see prior post), but I think it shows my creativity, innovation & practicality to use up scraps!

Birthday Wheel, a photo by beckylaswell on Flickr.

My entry for the Moda Fabrics “Sliced” contest is up. Check it out! The contest required you to use Moda fabric pre-cuts, quilt batting, and a buckle. I worked all of those into what I call a “Birthday Wheel,” a perpetual calendar used to mark birthdays of friends & family. The Wheel has 12 sections to hold clothespins to mark birthdays of friends & family. (And for any of my family who are reading this: yes, I know your birthday is not marked correctly in the photo. I did that to protect your privacy. Before I hang this permanently by my desk, I’ll put you all back in the right order!)

I really wanted to create something unique for this contest, so while I love to make iPad sleeves & Kindle covers, I went in a different direction. I also wanted something that looked professionally done. I’m biased (of course) but I think this works.

I’ve never seen anything remotely like this before. So, if you’d be interested in a tutorial of how I did it, post a comment. If there’s enough interest, I’ll write one after I get back from San Francisco.

Yes, I’m heading to San Francisco soon! I’m meeting Matt there, at the half-way point of a nearly 2-week long trip he’s making to San Francisco & Silicon Valley. I’m looking forward to biking across the Golden Gate Bridge!