Confession: I have long harboured a desperate desire to go to a masquerade ball. We even have one in Halifax but I somehow haven't gotten there yet and it's also kind of more fetish-y than fantasy. Which is rad, don't get me wrong - it just doesn't quite scratch that God-I-Want-Jennifer-Connelly's-Hairdo itch. I might go for my birthday, though - as long as there's a good theme in January

Maybe I should learn to crochet in the meantime. Crafty lust!

Victoria so desperately wants to be British.

11 Winter Salads to eat right now

At the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver

If I could be anywhere in the world right now, it would be at Linnaea Farm, doing their gardening program. I mentioned as much to The Boy a while ago and he replied, "Well, what's stopping you?"

What, indeed? One of these days I really will pick up and go - just wait!


(Not Linnaea, but the farm I was on this summer - also delectable!)

Saskatoon. Flat.

Dear Vitamix,

I can't stop thinking about you. You haunt my dreams. I fantasize about pressing your buttons and feeling you come to life - 2 HP of raw strength under my fingertips.

You may think I'm being unfaithful, messing around with those other blenders. But they mean nothing to me. I just keep trying, fruitlessly, to find satisfaction with them until your $600 price tag is within my means. You're the only one I want.

Please tell me you feel the same way. We can make such sweet, sweet smoothies together - not to mention soups, dips and nut milks.

Maybe the magic of eBay will bring us together soon. Until then I remain

faithfully yours,
Sassy Tortuga

Creepy art in Ottawa.

Angela's rooftop in Montreal.

'Tis the season: I'm hopelessly devoted to the good ol' balsam fir (comes from growing up on a Christmas tree farm) but how about these zany alternatives to ease your treehugger angst?

This girl's life:


The very green beverage, by the way, is spinach, pineapple and cilantro with bee pollen granules sprinkled in top. Sounds kind of gross, right? Surprise! It was totally yummy. Of course, The Boy might have a warning for you about how much faith to put in my description of something as "yummy"...

As I try to pound out an answer to a brutal Environmental Law take-home exam, as I berate myself for dropping the ball on the readings for this class, as I yawn and rub my eyes and wish that I'd picked up some chocolate and remind myself that it's too late for chocolate anyway...I keep reminding myself:

This isn't suffering. You are incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to do this. In choosing to keep on keepin' on, you honour the blessings that the universe is showering all over you.

Then I stick my tongue out and raspberry the universe, and then I go to bed because I am WIPED OUT.

Good night darlings! Wish me luck!

THANK YOU.

Forest love!



(You might want to turn down the sound if you're at work)

Knitting pr0n alert:

How much do I love this sweater?

This morning on The Kitchn: Weekend Meditation - The Shared World. Food speaks volumes about our relationships with each other. What are you saying with yours?

My buckwheat pancakes say "I like being around you, spending time with you even when it's just lazing around on a Sunday morning". Sometimes they also say things like "I have an essay due tomorrow and I don't want to do it" - but let's focus on the warm and fuzzy, shall we?

Today the experiential portion of my degree taught me that Chambers is really boring.

I was actually supposed to go last week but I went to the wrong courthouse and had the following conversation with the security guard there:

Me: Excuse me, can you tell me where Chambers is being held?
Him: What matter is it about?
Me: Well, I'm a law student...
Him: Oh. My condolences.

I feel the same way sometimes.

Love in my tummy: kohlrabi!

Crunchy, juicy and a little bit sweet. Apparently there's a lot you can do with this crazy-looking brassica, but I just like to cut it into matchsticks and eat it as-is. Then again, I'm a rabbit in human clothing.

Small island states looking into new real estate as a climate change contingency plan

An attempt to curb my compuslive web surfing when I should be studying

My Mark is famous!

I have no idea what he's talking about in this *incredibly geeky* video but I'm so proud.

Oh, Maha Devi. I will never cease to lust after your whimsical collection of textile delights.

Picture Sassy Tortuga covering her ears, saying "What recession?" and ordering arm warmers in every colour.

Hey there. Remember me? I'm currently in the middle of the first term of SECOND YEAR (dunh dunh DUNH) and I'm burrowing in piles of paper (sounds kind of happy but it's so not). But I wanted to share this with you. Because who hasn't been there?

Date Local: The Case Against Long-Distance Relationships

Think of it as a new slant on the "eat local" movement.

Oh, my. Was that naughty? :)

Sassy Tortuga's Hot Date

ZOMG. Prince Caspian comes out tomorrow, and shameless Narnia fan that I am...I'm so there. That lovely man of mine is actually willing to sit through two hours of me acting like a kid at Christmas, clapping and trying not to squeal and going "ooh, this is the part where Aslan shows up! With the voice of Liam Neeson! OMG so awesome."

But first, if the Hungry Chilli's weird hours allow, we're gonna get us some damn fine Szechuan food, maybe some tangy eggplant and hot numbing tofu. *coo!*

A feast for the eyeballs

Okay, my travel blog, viscountesslucy.wordpress.com is now up and running. What's up with the name? You'll just have to go and see!

One week to liftoff...

Cornish-English-Japanese phrasebook - you know, just in case.

Seeking more suggestions

I take off on my epic pan-Canadian Road Trip a week from Wednesday, and I'd like to have a separate travel blog for it. Any ideas for a clever and charming title for said blog? Also, do you have a recommended hosting service? Not that there's anything wrong with Blogger, but I'd like to expand my horizons. I'm thinking maybe Wordpress, which give you the option of including an actual calendar as a sidebar. Your thoughts?

Love in my tummy, vol. 4

Totally on a roll with the food posts. What can I say? Winter is a long time to go without tender leafy greens. Sometimes you really just need a good leafy salad...and kale's great cooked, but I just CANNOT get into it raw.



In my fridge right now I have spinach, mizuna, arugula, dandelion, sorrel and beet greens. Imagine all the salad-y possibilities!

Another great quote, this one from George Carlin:

"It's called the American Dream because you've got to be asleep to believe it."

And now for something completely different.

Prettiest vibe EVER. You could totally hide that baby in a handbag for fancy parties or leave it out in plain sight when your Mom comes to visit, and nobody would be the wiser. Only thing is that it's made of plastic. Violet Blue says hard plastic is okay, but when it comes to toys I don't know if I can see myself upaying $75 for anything other than silicone. But that's just me. And it is awful pretty.

On Casaubon's Book today, a great quote from Carla Emery:

"Life is always a struggle, whether or not you’re struggling for anything worthwhile, so it might as well be for something worthwhile."

By the way

I'm on the planning committee (well, sort of - except that I keep flaking for exams, etc.) for this event that's coming up in May. It's a make-your-own-festival festival, and it will be delightful. Check you the Mudder's Day website and bring yo mama to the Commons on 11 May!

Are you artsy?

In the advent of the big move, I've been feeling sickeningly domestic. And I'm trying to choose a paint colour for the walls. Problem is, I'm not terribly visual - and the condo is a bit challenging. I'll post some pictures soon, but here's an idea of what we're dealing with: a remodeled unit in a very old building, with an open concept kitchen and living room area. The front door and kitchen cabinets are two different variations on a goldish wood stain; the floors are mahoganyish; the countertops are medium gray; the fridge, stove and light fixtures are metal and the kitchen wall is done in brick behind the stove. The walls are currently a variety of builder's beige, which goes quite unoffensively with everything but isn't terribly interesting. It's a big, airy space - which is great, but it would be nice to make it feel more cozy, especially since right now our furniture is so, shall we say, minimal.

No doubt the other elements of the room will evolve organically, as we get donations from friends, family and Freecycle. Right now we have a mishmash of hand-me-down furniture: two grayish-blue armchairs, an antique trunk for a coffee table and an ugly gold floor lamp, plus some chocolate brown bar stools that The Boy's parents bought last summer. The most substantial art we have to speak of is a giant poster of The Great Wave of Kanagawa. As you might imagine, I tend to gravitate towards Earthy and spicy colours as well as jewel tones like turquoise, and natural materials of all kinds. I also really like the orange and gray look but I fear it wouldn't mesh well with my general style or the several mismatched shades of wood that pepper the condo.

Any ideas? Suggestions from creative types are always welcome!

Love in my tummy, vol. 3

Warning: unless you're a sushi fan, you're probably about to go "ewww, SEAWEED?" But yeah! After years of snubbing it, I've suddenly fallen for dulse.



So far I've only tried it on salads - just snip it into small pieces using scissors, then sprinkle them on top. It's salty, delicious, subtly ocean-y and very PURPLE! I think it also adds to my Nova Scotia cred.


Photo taken from http://www.seaweed.ie/algae/seaweeds.lasso

If you'll be in Halifax on Tuesday 27 April and if you eat food, you should come out to a public forum entitled "Crops, Cars and Climate Crisis" that will be held a 7:00 that night in the Rowe Building at Dal. My friend Nicole has been hard at work organizing the event, which will feature speakers from Argentina, Canada, Colombia and the UK, talking about the very real effects that the agrofuels rush is already having on people's lives all over the world. Expect some really thought-provoking discussion of why we might want to think twice about using food crops to feed cars rather than people in a world of increasing scarcity.

Oh, and admission is free. For more information see cban.ca/agrofuels.

Love and bicycles,

A

Spring Clearing

Photo by ranhar2


I think April is vastly superior to January in terms of making resolutions and a fresh start. For example, this year I actually called a do-over on my New Year's because school started up so suddenly and got so overwhelming, so quickly, that I fell into old patterns almost right away in the name of surviving the school year. Then I felt guilty about it - not good.

Spring, on the other hand, is so effing inspirational that I can't help but WANT to make changes. Exercise is suddenly fun because it's a matter of going for a walk or bike ride outside rather than hauling ass to the gym and sweating all over some retro elliptical while reading a copy of Good Housekeeping from 1988. Everything's coming to life and you don't want to be left out. Plus, you're probably going to do some spring cleaning anyway - so why not do it right?

At this point you probably, like me, have lots of junk to clear out of your home, body, mind and spirit. How you deal with it depends on your style and schedule, but how about some inspiration?

Real Simple has zillions of cleaning and organizing tips, plus printable worksheets for keeping track of anything you can possibly imagine. There's even a feature for e-organizing your favorites.

Apartment Therapy's Kitchen Cure at TheKitchn.com - make a space where you'll actually want to eat, and figure out what to do with that leftover barley, clam juice and moonshine jelly.

The icing Transformation Challenge with Gala Darling, your purple-haired cheerleader.

Get some perspective from Kris Carr, creator of Crazy Sexy Cancer, who's delivering an ass-kicking to cancer with whole foods and positivity.

Laugh!

Personally, I'm cleaning the bejeezus out of the condo in preparation for moving in all my stuff (!) and just generally being really good to myself. I'm replacing processed crap with fresh, whole, mostly-local veggies; doing yoga every morning and meditating every night; going to bed early; getting outside as much as I can, and catching up on all the life I let pass me by during the 1L exam insanity. Aaaannd...wasting time blissfully, guilt-free, because I finally can!

Gah - please help

I may or may not have blogged about this before, but in case I haven't - or in case you've forgotten - there's an organization in Hants County, Nova Scotia called the Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society who are opposing an open-pit gypsum mine on the peninsula. There's already one gypsum mine in the area, and the company is applying to dig another one. They recently submitted their environmental impact assessment, which means that public input has to be received by early next week - I think Wednesday, but possibly even by Monday. So I shouldn't have put off writing this post until today - bad girl. Anyway, there are a number of problems with the proposal.

1) The environmental impact assessment process is notoriously soft. There's a desperate need for full and independent assessments of projects like this, but no dice.

2) The area is covered with valuable farmland and farming communities, which we need more and more as fuel prices rise, the need to curb global warming becomes more dire, and the public increasingly demands locally-sourced foods. It's also a big tourism area because it's ridiculously beautiful.

3) The topography is karst, making the watershed particularly vulnerable to contamination (say, from mining runoff...).

4) The proposed mine would destroy forest habitat which is home to a number of rare and endangered plant species and which protects the watershed by filtering out contaminants.

5) Even the possibility of a mine (and definitely the construction of one) destroys property markets, so retiring farmers who need to sell their land to pay for their retirement have little choice but to sell it to the mining company, making it even harder for the rest of the community to make decisions for their own future.

6) The company started clearcutting and doing other pre-mining activities even before the environmental impact assessment was completed, and local residents are already seeing a degradation in their water quality and forest resources.

7) Gypsum is 100% recyclable. Loads of it are taken to dumps every day, but builders are beginning to source recycled gypsum - calling into question the long-term viability of gypsum mining as a profit-making enterprise

8) Mining companies...aren't exactly rockstars when it comes to cleaning up their mess after they've raped and pillaged a piece of land. It's the local residents who will be left to clean up the mess...well, at least the ones who haven't left town in search of jobs once there's nothing left in Hants County...

It goes on. So please take a moment to go to the APWPS website (at the top of this post) and sign the petition. maybe even send a message to the Premier and to your MLA. We're talking about food, water and the ability to make a living without being beholden to some foreign company that doesn't give a shit about the big toxic hole they're digging in your backyard. These things are fundamental, and the consequences of one mine flow far beyond the immediate area...

Apologies for my failure to post regularly or to cut the excess white space off the above photo. But y'all should go to the next M4F - it's Saturday the 23. I'll be there, and so will a whole bunch of yummy food. besides, law school is eventually going to drive me over the edge and I'm going to become a farmer. So by supporting the farmers NOW, you're supporting my future. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Thought so. See you there!