The Gamble Life

Guilty Pleasure: My Favorite Lunch

Chipotle salsa with tortilla chips.  Yum.  I'm afraid I could eat this every day.  I am capable of eating an entire jar of this salsa in one sitting; the chips merely make it easier to get the salsa in my mouth, they are not the important part.

I've always liked salsa.  In high school my friend Anna and I would get together with books, a big jar of Pace Picante Sauce (today I do not like this brand; it's too runny and too sweet) and a bag of tortilla chips.  We'd spend a very happy afternoon together, reading and munching.  Good times.

Round Up

1.  I'm no longer taking photos of every loaf I bake, but I am still really, really enjoying baking with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  Yum yum yum.

2.  My lunch box issues are pretty much resolved.  I found these sources for stainless containers.  They were both sold out and while I was waiting I found a set of stainless prep bowls with plastic lids in small sizes so I bought those and they are working out well.  Also, I started sending more leftovers after testing it out and determining that my thermos (stainless) keeps his food warm enough even though they do stick his lunch in the fridge all morning.  So that obsession is over.  Now I want a better lunch sack for him but I am going to sew it as soon as I think through the design.  Then I can make a few and toss them in the wash when they invariably get dirty.  I'm pretty excited about my plans.  I'll post some pictures when I get them made.

3.  Zebrafoll is back on track!  Sleeves (I almost said "arms" which is kind of creepy.) are finished and body is coming along nicely.  It will fit this time.

4.  I have been going nuts because my Sigg bottle condenses all over the inside of my bag and on my books and wallet, etc.  Well, I knit it a cozy!  Too big, so I'm going to knit another one and I'm going to modify the top to try and make it look a little better.  But until I get around to that this one works really well.

5.  More sewing too!  Finally a non-annoying place and way to keep my double pointed knitting needles.  I think I'm a little bit in love with it.  I should make some for my knitting friends as presents; it's that wonderful.  And who knows?  Maybe I will!

6.  Last, but so not least, a friend of mine is being recorded for "This I Believe" (one of my favorite radio programs)!  She hasn't posted about it that I can find, but I'm sure she will.  I'll let you know when her essay is on the air.  She rocks.

Labels: the kitchen sink

Green Halloween?

We are very, very excited about Halloween in the Gamble household.  In fact, after our morning walk my son asked me to pull out the Halloween chest so he could start decorating; never mind that it isn't quite October yet.  While he agrees that it is too soon to start thinking about Thanksgiving or Christmas ("They are crazy putting Christmas stuff out already!" said whenever we spot something in a store, magazine, or junk mail), he is also adamant that summer is over so it is time to decorate for Halloween and fall.

How to keep this holiday from turning into a massive meltdown of plastic and candy?  What does a green Halloween mean anyway?  No plastic?  No spending?  No candy or only organic candy?  I've been thinking about this and I want it to mean, mostly, no shopping.  Holidays too often are an excuse or an obligation to get out there to the stores with our credit cards.  That's not a holiday!  So around here we're going to celebrate with the bare minimum of shopping.  Here's what that means to me:

Costumes:  I (or maybe my mother?) will make any costumes, no plastic store-bought ones for us!  My son doesn't watch TV so he, thankfully, doesn't have any desire for a "character" costume.  I remember one year I wanted to be a mummy and for reasons that I cannot comprehend my mother and I literally wrapped my whole body in long strips of fabric and then sort of hoped they'd stay on (because they were tightly wrapped?  I don't know.).  All I wore underneath was a t-shirt and underwear so we weren't able to sew or pin the fabric strips to anything.  It was a disaster.  I remember everything slipping and sliding off of me at school right during the costume contest.  I think that was the year I pretty much gave up on costumes and became a gypsy every year after that (long skirt and lots of scarves?  easy and safe!).

Decorations:  We've got plenty, because I try to get decorations we'll use year after year.  And for the rest, we'll make our own.  One year I did this Martha Stewart witch and it looked really great.  And what's the best decoration of all?  Pumpkins!  We'll carve at least one and I want to buy a few pie pumpkins and try cooking with them when we've finished looking at them.

Candy though, well the candy is a problem.  Not just because I will buy a big bag to hand out (plus some pencils, which last year the kids liked even more than the candy), but also because there is just too much of it.  Even eating only a few pieces a day won't work because he'd still be eating them when Christmas rolled around and Christmas has enough sweets!  So I've been working on a plan, and working on getting my son on board with it:  we'll indulge on the holiday itself and for a week afterwards on his favorites only.   The rest we're going to get rid of, one way or another.  I'm thinking I'll send it to my husbands office, or just trash/compost it.  Can you compost candy?  I've never tried so I guess we'll see if that works.

So my Halloween purchases this year?  One big bag of candy and several pumpkins (grown locally--we'll go to a pick-your-own farm).  This feels pretty green to me and still lets us celebrate in style.  What about you?

 

 

This post is part of the Green Mom's Carnival, hosted by Green Bean Dreams this month.

Labels: environment, holidays

Review: Dharma Glass Straws

I have to admit that we really didn't have a need for these at all, but I read about them over at Fake Plastic Fish and kind of fell in love with them.  I ordered the cute dot straws.  My son adores them.  He uses them for every drink now!  I'm going to sew a little carrying case to put one or two in my bag, but that's pretty low down on the list of things to do (it's a long list too).  My son has already put to the test the unbreakable claim (by throwing them down on the floor) and so far so good.

I'd say they are exactly as promised and we are definitely enjoying them.

Labels: environment, review

Museum of Life & Science

We had such a nice week, even if it did rain for half of it. Luckily it warmed up towards the end for the swimming, and for a great visit to the Museum of Life & Science. This is easily the best thing about Durham. We visited every single week last year, sometimes more than once a week and never got tired of it.

It has two butterfly houses, one tropical and one North Carolina. My son's favorite is actually the North Carolina one even though the tropical butterflies are more dramatic in their coloring and variety. Here he is examining a butterfly with a newly-formed friend (he has the wonderful ability and inclination to make friends wherever we go; he's always on the lookout for other little boys his age). The museum provides those butterfly guides for each of the houses so you can identify what you are looking at. We've spent hours and hours there. Sometimes we get lucky and a butterfly is in the mood to pay a closer visit, like this one did last year:

We also love the insectarium which employs really entomologists who are friendly and like kids as well as insects! Remember that giant spider we saw on vacation? We took the picture in and the entomologists spent part of their lunch break teaching us about her (wolf spider, hunts without a web, that IS an egg sack and when those hundreds of babies hatch they climb on her back for awhile).

You might be saying "wait! those are bears! in captivity! what gives Maya?" but they are bears that have been affected by too much interaction with humans, making them unsafe (for us, not them) to be released into the wild. There are also lemurs (part of the Duke Lemur Center), and endangered red wolves. At this point the red wolf wild population is down to about 100 so it seems captivity is an important part of their survival, unfortunately. There are also a variety of farm animals, but I don't have any issues with their captivity (oh the contradictions!).

There is a train ride too. Always fun. And this was the baby's first ride ever. He's grinning at his brother. I knew it would be this way, but it is still amazing to see how much he responds to his brother. Their bond is already incredibly special. I'm an only child, and happy to be one, but I am excited to see my sons have each other.

An old quarry has been turned into a very large wetlands and on this visit it was chock full of frogs.

I think this picture captures how much fun we have there. We are so lucky to live near this museum. It really saved me last year when we first moved here and I was so sad and lonely and homesick. It gave us something really fun to do, very cheap ($105 for a whole year's membership), educational and we even met some nice people there that we've gotten together with again.

Swimming

With my mom visiting for a week (what a wonderful week!) and it being the last week of pool season we made sure to spend some time at the pool, despite the cool air and cooler water.

I didn't get pictures of it, buy Mom and I both jumped off the diving board, which provided quite a bit of amusement for the few people also at the pool since I had never before jumped from the diving board and Mom hadn't since she was a kid.  It was scary (until we did it)!  Mom even tried to sit down on the end of the board (preparatory to sliding off?) which totally cracked me up.  We both shrieked, very silly, but it was super fun and next year I won't wait until the last day the pool's open to head to the board.  You won't find me on the high dive though!  That I'll leave for Chris, who leaped off without any hesitation or fear at all.

Labels: family

Book Review: Moose

Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm not a reader of Stephanie Klein's blog, Greek Tragedy, so I don't know how much of Moose is contained within it's pages.  I knew going into it that this might not be the book for me.  It's about Klein's experiences at "fat camp" as a young teen-ager and as a fat camp counselor as an older teen-ager.  I really dislike when someone's whole life is wrapped up in their weight and food.  It's just so boring and pointless.  But I was hoping that perhaps Klein had a larger message to share and had managed to come out the other side a more balanced person re. her weight and food, unfortunately I didn't find that to be the case.

I'm sure she isn't actually boring (I think I read that she gets many thousands of visitors to her blog everyday so she obviously has something of interest to say to a great many people), but she is still obsessed with her weight.  What a shame!  I simply can't believe that it isn't possible to be healthy without being twisted over food.  I was shocked by her parents, especially her father's, treatment of her as a child:  laughing at her being called "moose" by other kids, reminding her that she was overweight, sending her to a weight-loss counselor, not to mention fat camp.  Honestly, didn't she count as anything other than a body to her parents?  I wonder if they've read it and how they feel now?

The book doesn't promise to change your life, and it doesn't.  Instead it's more of a long story about her teen-age fat camp years; and possibly a cautionary tale to parents.  I was just hoping for more.

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Labels: books, health, parenting

Book Review: Farewell, My Subaru

Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Doug Fine moves to New Mexico and sets up his home trying to live entirely locally--this turns out primarily to mean going off the electric grid and growing a garden.  It's a great goal and a great idea for a book, but this book is very, very light.  He seems to approach the issues seriously in his actions, but his writing is more focused on being light-hearted and funny.  I thought the best part of the book was the Afterword where he lists his suggestions, but he calls them conclusions, of the most important steps to take to reduce one's carbon footprint.

It did make me want to raise chickens.  My family raised chickens when I was a kid and I have great memories of them running around in the backyard and of eating their eggs!  I think raising chickens is going on my list of things I want to do when we get back to Austin.

I think this would be good for someone who is afraid of getting a depressing book on the environment.  Although he does include related facts in little offset blurbs every few pages.  I found them sort of annoying and wish they'd been worked into the text instead of just stuck in between different paragraphs.

I've been thinking a lot about what I can do to rely less on oil and I was hoping for a more serious book about what one person did.  Instead it's a collection of mostly funny stories about setting up solar panels, biofuel, the hazards of coyotes on chickens, and how weeds can actually help a garden sometimes.

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Labels: books, environment

Knitting: Zebrafoll

 

I was so excited to start the last sleeve of this sweater I'm making my son  (I've already finished a version of it for the baby), I just had to document it:

 

Then I decided I'd just spread it all out and take a look.  That's when I woke up (because apparently I've been sleep-knitting) and realized that I'm knitting for a normal-sized 5 year old, not a very wide, very short person.  Sigh.

Ah well, that's life.  And one of the great things about knitting?  You can always start over!

Labels: knitting

Still a Chunk

 

 

Look at that happy baby!  He weighed in at 18 pounds at his 4 month appointment and I think he's carrying most of that in those yummy thighs.  I remembered from my first son how fun it is to set them up in a soft space and watch them slide to the side, so I decided to see if it was still fun:

I say yes, but what does he say?

There's a smile!  I think he thought it was funny too.  He's getting so much stronger, I won't get to play this game for too much longer.  I feel like he's growing so fast and changing so fast, and I'm trying to hang on to my little cuddly baby.  He's going to be charging around in the blink of an eye.

At least for now he stays where I put him, mostly.

Labels: kids