Playing with my food
I'm sprouting some emmer grains that I got at the co-op when I was writing about the Heritage Grain Conservancy.
Kevin isn't eating the wheat, so I feel like I'm just playing with my own food. I'm going to sprout some of this grain and then see if I can process it in the food processor, add yeast and knead it into dough. I'm prepared to add some flour if it's not holding together.
On Tuesday this week, I took a bus to Boston for research for a couple of Boston Local Food Festival articles. I visited the Red Fire Farm booth, and had a Grilled Cheese Nation sandwich. The handsome young man in the truck told me I'd ordered the most popular sandwich: a "Boston Common," which is Cheddar on sourdough, and I also got bacon and tomato on it. Chopped bacon: win. Sub-par tomatoes? Try again. It's tomato season, you guys. You can do better.
On Wednesday, I cranked out a story to submit to an anthology. I would have rather sat on it longer and revised, but it was the deadline and I really wanted to submit something for this one. It's a trans anthology being put out by a new, trans person-owned publishing company. The story I wrote is living in my head and I think it may turn into something longer. It might make a good serial. It's about a trans woman who lives in central Florida during a future gas crisis and mass emigration, as the coastal cities are being swallowed by rising sea levels. She lives alone in a dead suburb while civilization is crumbling.
Yesterday I took a long dog walk with Carolyn and her dog. I think I overheated Charlie, because about a half hour after we returned, he puked water right before dinner. On my feet. OMFG. All three of us, actually, are feeling kind of sick. We all three have the runs. We all eat different food, so I think it's related to the bad water after the flood. We walk along the Mill River and might be tracking nasty stuff home with us. Kevin scoffs at the idea of inhaling something that would make us sick, says we must be petting it off the dog or something like that, but smell isn't a virtual reality: it's actual molecules entering your nasal passage and touching the insides of your nose and sinuses. They are in your body, just like anything else you breathe in. If smoking a cigarette could give me the shits, and it has in the past, lots of times, then breathing in rotting sewage and dead squirrels might do the same.
Dietary changes are still kind of startling and full of new stimuli. I get cravings for fruit and salad, and I eat them. I eat some things not because the craving is clear but because past experience teaches me that this meal, at this time of the day, satisfies, or worse, that a failure to eat or drink anything before exerting myself feels pretty bad. With our bad stomachs yesterday evening, we both decided that a glass of hot bone broth was just the thing. A couple of weeks ago at Kevin's first Weston A. Price potluck, he found it odd that people brought things like bone broth and raw milk to share, but now he and I are both getting it more than we did. These are good foods, nourishing, and a little unfamiliar. Like, we know what they are and that they're traditional foods, but they seem to belong to another time. We live in a little self-made bubble where all of the food is like this.
This is a picture I took of the Red Fire Farm booth, and it's what I think a bounty of food in gorgeous variety of shape, color, and flavor looks like. Carolyn sent me a link to a very cool little documentary that some kids in the Bronx made about bodegas, and it takes me back. I've stopped even calling them bodegas to anyone except New Yorkers and people who speak Spanish. They're independent grocery stores, and they're everywhere in the City. They vary in what they carry, but most have lots of snack foods and drinks. The shots of some of the storefronts seem both to imitate and build upon this kind of natural display, with all of the different colors, textures, and flavors available.
It looks like a kind of riches to me, because I'm not used to looking at it and when I do now, I see a great deal of industrial processing that has to go into creating this effect. Food deserts are full of mirages.
Talking about the food in our old neighborhood got us going about the really good Latin food we could get in Bushwick. I'm going to attempt papas rellenas. Gluten-free, fried in leaf lard papas rellenas.
Kevin isn't eating the wheat, so I feel like I'm just playing with my own food. I'm going to sprout some of this grain and then see if I can process it in the food processor, add yeast and knead it into dough. I'm prepared to add some flour if it's not holding together.
On Tuesday this week, I took a bus to Boston for research for a couple of Boston Local Food Festival articles. I visited the Red Fire Farm booth, and had a Grilled Cheese Nation sandwich. The handsome young man in the truck told me I'd ordered the most popular sandwich: a "Boston Common," which is Cheddar on sourdough, and I also got bacon and tomato on it. Chopped bacon: win. Sub-par tomatoes? Try again. It's tomato season, you guys. You can do better.
On Wednesday, I cranked out a story to submit to an anthology. I would have rather sat on it longer and revised, but it was the deadline and I really wanted to submit something for this one. It's a trans anthology being put out by a new, trans person-owned publishing company. The story I wrote is living in my head and I think it may turn into something longer. It might make a good serial. It's about a trans woman who lives in central Florida during a future gas crisis and mass emigration, as the coastal cities are being swallowed by rising sea levels. She lives alone in a dead suburb while civilization is crumbling.
Yesterday I took a long dog walk with Carolyn and her dog. I think I overheated Charlie, because about a half hour after we returned, he puked water right before dinner. On my feet. OMFG. All three of us, actually, are feeling kind of sick. We all three have the runs. We all eat different food, so I think it's related to the bad water after the flood. We walk along the Mill River and might be tracking nasty stuff home with us. Kevin scoffs at the idea of inhaling something that would make us sick, says we must be petting it off the dog or something like that, but smell isn't a virtual reality: it's actual molecules entering your nasal passage and touching the insides of your nose and sinuses. They are in your body, just like anything else you breathe in. If smoking a cigarette could give me the shits, and it has in the past, lots of times, then breathing in rotting sewage and dead squirrels might do the same.
Dietary changes are still kind of startling and full of new stimuli. I get cravings for fruit and salad, and I eat them. I eat some things not because the craving is clear but because past experience teaches me that this meal, at this time of the day, satisfies, or worse, that a failure to eat or drink anything before exerting myself feels pretty bad. With our bad stomachs yesterday evening, we both decided that a glass of hot bone broth was just the thing. A couple of weeks ago at Kevin's first Weston A. Price potluck, he found it odd that people brought things like bone broth and raw milk to share, but now he and I are both getting it more than we did. These are good foods, nourishing, and a little unfamiliar. Like, we know what they are and that they're traditional foods, but they seem to belong to another time. We live in a little self-made bubble where all of the food is like this.
This is a picture I took of the Red Fire Farm booth, and it's what I think a bounty of food in gorgeous variety of shape, color, and flavor looks like. Carolyn sent me a link to a very cool little documentary that some kids in the Bronx made about bodegas, and it takes me back. I've stopped even calling them bodegas to anyone except New Yorkers and people who speak Spanish. They're independent grocery stores, and they're everywhere in the City. They vary in what they carry, but most have lots of snack foods and drinks. The shots of some of the storefronts seem both to imitate and build upon this kind of natural display, with all of the different colors, textures, and flavors available.
It looks like a kind of riches to me, because I'm not used to looking at it and when I do now, I see a great deal of industrial processing that has to go into creating this effect. Food deserts are full of mirages.
Talking about the food in our old neighborhood got us going about the really good Latin food we could get in Bushwick. I'm going to attempt papas rellenas. Gluten-free, fried in leaf lard papas rellenas.