micro greens...

'Red micros', purchased from the Goshen Farmer's Market yesterday.
These are sprouted from arugula, mizuna, kale, amaranth, mustard, cress
and tatsoi seeds.
Crisp. Spicy. Extraordinary.

I'm addicted to microgreens. I guess that's not a bad thing. Sprouts are in fact the most nutrient dense food on earth, themselves ripe with the magic of life's essential enzymes. My mouth told me as much when I first tasted the mix above at the same marketplace a few weeks ago. A package or two later, my increased energy became their best spokesperson. A micro second later came the familiar nagging greed for possessing the knowledge of 'doing it myself'.

So I embarked on a Google journey. After hitting dead end after dead end in my search for a workable home system (let's just say most info sources are geared towards selling the expensive little gems), I discovered a wealth of info at SproutPeople. There I found my ideal: hemp bags. Seeds for micros need some sort of medium and the hemp fiber is an easy, reliable and reusable (and therefore economical) one. Next step: obtaining a bag of seeds that replicates the 'wow' of the above mix.

An Amish farmer at the above market declared that it now take five apples to match the nutrition found in a 1965 version of one. Depleted soil, herbicides, pesticides are perhaps the basic culprits. But a larger issue looms on a grander scale: In our good intentions to feed humanity easily and thoroughly, we may not have done either as we super-manage food producing, processing, packaging. "We're consuming 'edible foodlike substances' -- no longer the products of nature but of food science." (Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food). Honing the art of nutritional science, we're seemingly much less healthy than where we started. Malnourished some would say. Perhaps we've lost something essential: What food was truly meant to be.

Thank goodness the pendulum is showing signs (...not macro quite yet) of swinging...of increasing awareness of and desire for health and wholeness. Being human, we will ever do it imperfectly. For now, I'm choosing a micro remedy - with some hope and gratitude in the mix.

talking cat...

Miz Minka's recent post with a singing dog has reminded me of this YouTube video. When I discovered it a few months ago, both Bixby and Lucy came barreling into the room, trying to locate the interloper. On 'replay', Bix jumped onto the table beside me, walked across to the computer, went around back to sniff the speakers and...hissed!!!

Of course, I just couldn't resist replaying just a few more times for him. Some would say that's messing with his brain. He did end up staring at the speaker for quite some time.

Catatonic???

pond music...

We're enamored of the nighttime bullfrog-serenading going on in the pond. While living in Aumsville, Oregon, thirty years ago, we enjoyed these amphibians on the millrace that bordered our property, which was across the street from a feed mill. (I'm not going to go 'there' now as the mill's practice of putting out poison for their mice had a fateful effect on two of our beloved cats, including the one we got as a kitten when first married. Well...I guess I did go there. heartbreak...) The 'singing' can be considered irritating But, like a gently rolling train in the midwest background, it truly grows on you.

Soon after the first bullfrog commenced his unique arias - a month or so ago - a second one emerged across the pond. Some nights it was obvious they had moved, but still seemed to be facing each other on opposite sides of the pond/island/etc. I took to calling them 'Tristan and Isolde', thinking them star-crossed lovers that yearned to be together but were separated by familial expanse: Mom & Dad didn't approve of a liaison. Then, my visiting sister-in-law googled bullfrogs and announced if they're singing they're both males.

Like most males in the animal world, they have to work hard to attract females. In this case, the females are a bit larger than them. The wily mates not-so-slyly and attractively (???) honk away. When females come to check out the nature-karaoke and are put into some altered state by the males' bravado, they are summarily and quickly jumped on. Nothin' romantic or star-crossed about that.

Just yesterday I heard an NPR story on Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isolde. Well, actually, the drama surrounding the writing of it. While consumed by the T&I story, he was also consumed with passion for his benefactor's wife, Mathilde. By the time of the opera's premier years later, his wife Minna and said mistress Mathilde were both out of the picture. And Cosima Liszt von Bulow (Franz Liszt's middle daughter) - wife of Hans von Bulow, a famous conductor who was, in fact, collaborating with Liszt on the opera and conducted its premiere performance - had just borne Wagner a daughter. She would bear him a second child and be pregnant with a third before officially leaving husband-von-Bulow for fifteen years of marriage with Wagner. At his death, she clung to the corpse for 24 hours and longed to take the plunge to the afterlife with him.

Makes pond life look pretty dull. But, clearly, in some way that refuses to be pinned down, 'it's not over until the fat toads sing'.

Recently, Fr. C submitted my blog for a literacy test. Came up 'junior high' level. OK. I can take that, I guess. My propensity for making up words and writing incomplete sentences and often disrespecting the English language and its rules (though I was fastidious when young) are most likely to blame. However, Richard Wagner's life-tale is certain to ensure a solid PG rating.

Interesting quote about Wagner: During rehearsals for Tristan, Wagner's friend August Roeckel recalled: "If a difficult passage went particularly well, he would spring up, embrace or kiss the singer warmly, or out of pure joy stand on his head on the sofa, creep under the piano, jump up onto it, run into the garden and scramble joyously up a tree."

Click on the picture of the scary frog above and a National Geographic page comes up with lots of interesting bullfrog info. You can even listen to their 'music'.

we're pregnant...

Well, not exactly us. Sum and Dom are. Well, actually Sum is. Delight does not even begin to express our multi-faceted joy, generously kissed by gratitude.

Some time before the end of 2008 (hopefully a month before, for Sum's sake), we'll welcome a Chester or a Charlotte into this life. Oh such darling names! Middle names: 1) the D.C. station where S&D agreed to meet for the life-changing blind first-date; or 2) Sum's middle name.

They've heard the vibrant heartbeat, which has become palpable in grandmother/nana/wingedlady's prayers...a precious bird-in-hand...