Thanks, Moby.

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger cut ALL of the state funding for California's Domestic Violence Shelters?

I work at a DV shelter, and 100% of the money I make comes from the state, so when I heard about what Schwarzenegger did I really started to worry about the future for women experiencing DV in California.

Well, Moby recently made a fool out of Schwarzenegger by deciding to donate 100% of the profits from his upcoming California shows to California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.

He told the L.A. Times, "It was such an insignificant amount of money, it felt like somebody was going out of their way to be mean-spirited. The people that use their services are the most disenfranchised of the disenfranchised. If these shelters are open, people's lives improve, and if they close, people die. There's nothing abstract about it." (In other words: "You're an asshole, Arnold.")

Since Moby and so many feminist organizations were attracting attention to what Schwarzenegger did, he had no choice but to sign a bill restoring the $16.3 billion in funds to DV shelters.

We need more stories like this.

I've got some celebrities to call in favors from.

Cooking for 7

Monday nights are my dinner night. I cook for the other six people who I live with, and in exchange I am served dinner for the rest of the week. It's a nice arrangement. Cooking dinner for seven isn't easy, though. And while my roommates stick to the stuff that makes sense for feeding a huge house, I tend to make kind of complicated dishes. Given the fact that I've only been cooking from scratch for a year, this can be difficult. I've been making these dinners since January, when I moved in, and last night was the first time I felt like "shit, I've got this." I made a vegan cheese sauce in five minutes. I tended to the stuff in the oven as well as the three pots on the stove. And dinner was only fifteen minutes late.

My favorite feeling is the one you get when you're finally starting to get the hang of something you always thought to be difficult. It's super exciting when this feeling comes sooner than expected (like, whoa, brewing kombucha is incredibly easy, and so is playing the ukulele), but it's also pretty exciting to see hard research and practice finally pay off after months and months or years and years of working on it. I've learned enough about food to cook without recipes sometimes, and I know that if I'm out of baking powder, all I need is baking soda and cream of tartar. Making dinner for seven? Sure. No big deal.

The highlight of last night's dinner: Sweet Roasted Vegetables. They're covered in cinnamon, ginger, and maple syrup. So they're kind of like french toast vegetables.

Sweet Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients:

2 lbs. Root vegetables (I used carrots, parsnip, celeriac, and turnips)
2 lbs. Potatoes
10 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil
Maple Syrup
Cinnamon
Fresh Ginger

Directions:

Set your oven to 400° F.

Cut the ends off of a bunch of root vegetables. Dice the roots so that the wedges are about 3/4 of an inch. Peel as much garlic as you think you can handle. Leave these whole. Cut potatoes into one inch wedges.

Oil a pan with olive oil and then drop in all of your vegetables. Cover them in olive oil; make sure they're drenched. Grate some fresh ginger and place it in the pan. Drizzle maple syrup over the whole thing, and sprinkle some cinnamon on top.

The vegetables need 35-45 minutes in the oven, and they should be turned over after twenty minutes. They're done when you can stick a fork through them.

I'm feeling awfully domestic, so I think I'm going to go balance myself out with some basketball.

I'll love you in the country way.

I just got back from a day and a half on Willowood Farm, a farm on Whidbey Island where my friend Willow has been an intern this season.

I grew up spending each summer on my grandpa's ranch in Oregon, so hanging out on this farm made me feel like a kid again. Especially the riding in the bed of a pickup truck part.

Here's Willow:

They have SO many birds on the farm. I love noisy birds. I don't care what anyone says, they are the best alarm clock. Here are the turkeys..

Joel figured out how to get one of them to hug him.

We cleaned a bunch of beans before packaging them. Much harder than it sounds...

We also delivered vegetables for their CSA.

And ate a lot of delicious farm fresh food, accompanied by PBR.

I'm back home, extremely positive that I am going to sign up for a CSA this coming year, and trying to figure out what I want to be for Halloween this week.

Sm'apples

So my friends and I got really excited about fall and decide to go apple picking. We filled up a wheelbarrow, which is apparently 130 pounds of apples...


At the time, I didn't realize that I would be dedicating the next week of my life to those apples. Two days spent making applesauce...My roommates dumpstered some pie crusts, so I spent an afternoon making pie. Then we made some juice...and half of the apples are still sitting in my kitchen. I have moments where I think I'm sick of them, but there really is nothing better than the smell of apples cooking on the stove, or making apple juice in the kitchen with your best friends while singing along to "I Can't Make You Love Me" at the top of our lungs (yes, I am talking about Bonnie Rait).


Along with the apple endeavor, I pickled beets and roasted red peppers with my friend Kathryn earlier this week. I am finally getting the hang of food preservation and it feels really satisfying and exciting.

I am actively working to fight off seasonal depression this year, and I'd like to think I'm as persistent as my grandmother is about fighting off colds. I am constantly reminding myself that it wouldn't be green here without the rain, and I am pushing myself to embrace and appreciate seasonal foods and activities so as to keep in mind that sometimes the bad weather helps balance me out. The rain pushes me indoors, which encourages me to spend time with people I love, drink more cider, take out the knitting needles, listen to music in my room, write letters, make more bread, and finally learn how to play the ukulele.

Not that it's all bad weather yet. There's still plenty of time to play in the yard with the chickens.

Left to right: Donna, Molly, Lois

ordinary people completing out-of-the-ordinary assignments — with extraordinary results

I recently checked out Learning to Love You More from the library, and so I've been feeling really inspired and excited about simple and sweet things.

I am currently working on my first Learning to Love You More Assignment.

#14, Write your life story in less than a day.

Can't stop

So, we reached our goal of selling enough cupcakes to get to Texas.

Why stop there?



I really enjoy dressing up, feeding drunk people vegan treats, and going home with some grocery money.

her 2010 calendar

Nikki McClure's 2010 wall calendar looks amazing. I leafed through it while at a little shop in Portland earlier this week and gasped when I saw this print:


Seriously, this is beautiful. I'm adding the calendar to my Christmas list right now.

San Francisco has the most breaktaking street art