finding purpose

When you are unemployed, it is easy to fall into the slump of sleeping in and doing absolutely nothing...what is the point of getting up if there's nothing to do, right?

So to make myself purposeful, I've gotten into the rotation of yoga, shoveling, reading, photographing walks, and cooking.

Cooking might be the most rewarding to me because I've also made it the most challenging. I have purchased a local CSA winter share, which means a bag of veggies every 2 weeks. Which means, the only things really in season (or in winter storage) are carrots, turnips, kale, potatoes, winter squash, and radishes. It will be interesting, considering my go-to is to sauté everything.

One of my first experiments is kimchi! My version is carrots, daikon radishes, and garlic, which is currently soaking in salt water. It is a couple days away from being ready.

And complete sidebar...I made flour tortillas from scratch! Olé!

wait, what do you do?

Seems fairly ironic that about exactly a year ago I was sadly packing my bags to move back to Chicago, and now I'm packing my office for a new design gig! Going back to corporate...back to layout design. Still freelancing on the side. Still farming. And of course, still lovin' the Colorado life :)

So how do I still farm...and where is this Denver farm? It is a fantastic concept of the CSA (community supported agriculture), that's even more local...the NSA (neighborhood supported agriculture). Located in the Highlands, 12 homeowners have donated their large backyards for us to garden. Homeowners as well as garden apprentices (like myself) receive a weekly NSA share of vegetables, and the rest of the produce is sold in NSA shares and at the Highlands farmers market.

Check it out!

It's an efficient use of space, water and human energy. Veggies are much more useful than a lawn! And it saves me trips to the grocery store where I'm overwhelmed with well-travelled, out of season produce and packaged foods with ingredients I can't pronounce. BTW: I hear the rule of thumb for packaged foods is to only buy if it has 5 ingredients or less. So long cereal...hello real oats!

Anyway, a seasonal update: most everything is now in season, except for asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, and peas. Spinach will come back around in the fall. There's not really any reason to buy anything grown outside the states, except bananas. That's next on my 'to grow' list :)