// April 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
sitting in uptown Italian coffee shop
tempted by gelato at 7:56 with sun on foothills
cool ambient tones bounce, bass keeps time
as well as sandy blonde little boy
marching like rhythmic robot
step, step around display of coffee beans
$12.95/500 g
his dad bought him a croissant
just like me
only he doesn't have contraband clementines
on side
// April 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
This is a note for all people that move to a new town and want to be part of the community. Get a small job serving your community.
When my husband and I first moved to Colorado two years ago we did not know anyone. He had a consulting gig he carried over from Miami, I got a gig working with a consulting firm here right away. I traveled a lot and was home for a week then away for a week. Our circle of friends was non-existent as the summer started in 2008. Eventually I made friends through work and during one of my weeks off a co-worker and I decided to cook up a crazy Indian feast. It was a Boulder Farmers’ Market day so my husband left us in the kitchen while he rode down to the market. When he returned he had all kinds of produce, a delicious pine nut macaroon for me and news… he got me a job. I looked at him like I wanted to kill him, I already had a job and enjoyed my week off, but I heard him out.
If you know him he is a chatty guy. Well the bakers where he bought the macaroon from used a sweetener I am not allergic to and he was overjoyed he could buy me a cookie. After talking with them longer he learned they needed Saturday help for their bakery stand. He said I would do it. I have to admit, it was a pretty damn good cookie and I was in. The pay was not much, but it isn’t like I had a lot of people to hang out with on my week off.
So it was, I would man the stand on the Saturdays I was in town and my husband would take the shift the weeks I was gone. And oh my goodness, did we have a blast!! The both of us began friendly relationships with regular customers, other vendors, and quickly found ourselves as part of the community we just moved to. Towards the end of the summer the two of us would run the stand if the bakers were busy, in the winter we set up shop for them at the Fort Collins Winter Market, and we have become really good friends with the business owners.
Sadly the economy took its toll on the bakery and they are now defunct. We are still solid with the bakers though and consider them family. Their opportunity allowed us to engage in the local food community in such a swift way that I know who to call if I want someone to raise poultry for me, if I want someone to pull a raspberry bush off their property so I can grow one too, and I have a phone number to pick up stone ground wheat even if I want it in the dead of winter. I have met many good people thanks to our experience at the market.
Therefore if you are new to town, or just looking to have a great time meeting your community and the local food scene try to work a stand at a market. We have so many here in the Front Range. I know there are ads on craigslist pretty often during market season asking for help. And it never hurts to say hello to your food producers and see if they could use an extra set of hands.
// December 7th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized
let me see… December… close to ZERO degrees in Colorado for a few days now… cooties are spreading among us… holiday partying is wearing us down… are you feeling 100%? If you are sliding or just want to boost your immunity here are a few of the simple comforts us here at Ossumniss HQ rely on when we are not feeling our best.
#1 good old fashioned rest
#2 good nutrient-dense food, vitamins if you need to supplement
#3 probiotics, we have a cow share that supplies us with raw milk, consider yogurt or supplements
#4 honey, naturally antiseptic
#4.33 honey with lemon for a bad throat
#4.66 hot toddy if you are just feeling like sh*t (squeeze two lemons, add honey to taste, heat til really hot, pour in mug, add whiskey til it slightly burns your eyeballs when you go in for a sip… vary with spices and liquors… go wild!)
#5 saline wash (add sea salt and water to gargle for your throat, use this mix in a neti pot if you need it for your sinuses)
#6 elderberry… this is a new one for us and we have been doing elderberry and zinc herbalozenges because we have not hit the cool threshold to make elderberry syrup ourselves with dried elderberries
#7 tea – we darn near live down the street from Celestial Seasoning and they are going to do well this cold & flu season for a reason… tea is comforting and in the right blend it has healing properties. just stay away from the caffeine because that will not help if you are trying to tell the mucus to go bye-bye. you can also bath with some mint and/or eucalyptus blends or just put them in a bowl to breathe the vapors.
#8 emergen-c… why is this stuff da bomb?!? stay with a flavor you like though. we have too many friends that decided to be adventurous and buy a box of acai berry, that stuff tastes like a$$.
do you have any remedies to add? the more old-timey and accessible the better.
// December 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
I have been looking for the fun craftster scene since we moved to Colorado. There are a lot of cool crafty people here who upcycle and create, but I have not found the craftster scene yet. That is until today. I followed the trail from Friday’s re-nest post on 23 handmade craft shows to Hello Crafts post on the shows from last week. Low and behold, Holiday Handmade in Denver, CO. Yeah it was this past weekend, yesterday and Friday to be exact. No problem though, the link took me to Fancy Tiger Crafts and Denver Handmade Alliance. I will be heading into this craft store the next time I am in Denver on a weekend afternoon, I will also be following both online.
However I do not live in Denver, a little further north. In my hood I love the lab space at Common Threads in Boulder as well as their consignment clothing store.
Also this past weekend in Longmont was the holiday market the local farmers market puts on at the Boulder County Fairgrounds if you wanted to buy local in person.
If you want to craft and/or upcyle yourself my fave stores are the Salvo on 33rd just north of Arapahoe, the Humane Society Thrift Store on Arapahoe and the Resource Yard on 63rd to find bits and pieces of projects to work on.
// December 2nd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized
It has been a very odd consumer day for me. First I bought this
then a little while later I bought this
I have Steel Impressions, not this Wildflower palette
You should know that I am not the best artist but I can paint way better than I can put on make up! Tonight I have done two watercolor paintings and practiced two versions of the elusive “smokey” eye. I looked like Ursala from the Little Mermaid with the first attempt… it was that bad! However it is fun, and putting a little color in your life is all about fun.
// December 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Perhaps I was harsh with the STFU December, but I was honest. If you cannot add value then shut it.
At Ossumniss we are not going to shut it. For the month of December we are going to challenge ourselves to a NABLOWRIMO-style challenge and post all 31 days. We will post content that hopefully adds value to your day.
This challenge will be easy. Gwen Bell has also challenged her social media friends to do a “best of” month and has 31 blog post prompts listed on her site. We will do daily content and if we really like one of her prompts or get stuck for an idea of our own we will use one of hers. Today is a prompt of hers that I really like… WHAT WAS YOUR BEST TRIP OF ’09?
This is hands down an easy response, our two-week road trip in Sept/Oct from Colorado to California to Arizona over to New Mexico and back to Colorado. I did a photo blog chronicling some of what we experienced and suppose this is a good forum to say why. Sadly I cannot give all the whys of how auspicious this journey was, but most of them.
First off the main purpose of the trip was to 1) attend teachings with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama 2) spend time with my best friend and her young daughter and 3) have some fun with my husband away from the mundane.
singing bowl I picked up at the teachings
The teachings were powerful and unexpected. I have attended several public speaking engagements with HHDL before but not teachings. I was surprised that we did initiations and felt like I was in a right place with my spiritual practice to partake. We did the Amitabha Initiation, the Medicine Budhha Initiation, and I took layman vows while a few in attendance chose to take the Bodhisatva vows. I know I am nowhere as cool as those who took the Bodhisatva vows but was overcome with joy that they were in the right place to take that step and that I was present to witness. The overall experience put me at ease with the world and my place in it.
Husband playing with our #1 niece
Being back in Los Angeles was nice for a few days. That is my hometown. My husband and I used the time away from the teachings to visit my old haunts, eat good food, and play at the beach. I can make anyone love L. A. because there is so much love and diversity in that city. You just need to know where to look. We only stayed a couple of days as to not infringe on my best friend’s Yom Kippur observance… so we headed south to the beaches near San Diego. That was fun for a short time but we were aching to move on and it wasn’t all that warm at the beach.
hubby finishing meditation at Buddha with stupa behind him
We headed on over to camp just north of Sedona, AZ in the canyon. We were lucky and given a nice campsite along Oak Creek the first night for free. I had been to Sedona before but had never visited the stupa there. It is not the easiest thing to find but when we did we could hardly contain ourselves… it was an Amitabha stupa. Amitabha, just like the first initiation we took with HHDL. Woah! We visited at sunset one day and sunrise the next. Making offerings and meditation there were also very nice. Another highlight of Sedona was Slide Rock park, I had only been in the summer months and the water was in the 60s but I spent more time in it that I did at the beach. It was cold but so much fun.
only balloons we saw at festival were demo helium ones that wanted to fly away
After Sedona we made our way out to New Mexico and stayed in the mountains just east of the city. In town the balloon festival was just starting and all kinds of stuff was going on. We got to meet the Navajo Code Talkers from WWII, go to a bunch of garage sales, hit up Trader Joe’s, and go to the balloon festival for the evening glow. Unfortunately it was too windy so no balloons launched and we were tired… so we drove through the night to make it home. And rested on that last day.
The best part of the trip is a project us here at Ossumniss began working on while on the road. We need a few more things to develop but like our title states… it will be OSSUM (AWESOME). We’ll look to the start of the new year to announce it.
One other amazing part of the trip, the food. We came back thinner and stronger than we left. We ate simply and well. A lot of fresh produce. We went to Trader Joe’s and bought pre-cooked grain in a bag and pre-cooked legumes in a bag and would put them on the car dash to heat up. They made great lunches and dinners with a touch of cilantro and lime. I will list three great restaurants along the way that can satisfy the most gourmand vegans and provided some great desserts.
1. Mani’s Bakery (Los Angeles) on Fairfax between Wilshire and 3rd
2. D’Lish Very Vegetarian (Sedona) on Hwy 89A
3. Annapurna World Vegetarian Cafe (Alburqueque) near the university… they also have a Aryuvedic cooking school here
Overall it was a great trip that I think will impact us for the rest of our lives. Between spirituality and the developing project coming out of it we will fondly look on these pictures with huge smiles.
// October 6th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Uncategorized
We headed out to attend teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and visit a dear friend and her family.
The trip lasted 10.5 days on the road.
Boulder, CO > Los Angeles, CA > San Diego, CA > Sedona, AZ > Albuquerque, NM > Boulder, CO
We talked, took pix, listened to music, and bought a few things a long the way.
It was fun for us.
The Wanderlust / Flogging Molly
// August 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
In honor of Stephen Colbert decreeing that Boulder is the TEA BAGGING CAPITAL OF AMERICA, and all the giggling I did here is my latest post. Hell, I giggle at the Celestial Seasonings Tasting Room where they have their certificate for the Guinness Book of World Records World’s Largest Tea Bag. Anyway I am doing my round of up of mate lattes in this area.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Even Better-er Know a District – Colorado’s 2nd – Jared Polis | ||||
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Something all of you countless Ossumniss readers should know is that we here at Ossumniss headquarters are a frugal lot. I don’t really go to coffee shops and tea shops. I buy my quality tea in bulk from Pekoe and make an exquisite cup at home just the way I like it. That is until one day this past January when I had to kill some time at a coffee shop and took a gander at the mate latte to make it worth my while. The Cup in Boulder, January 26th, around 2 PM. I remember this occasion because my husband was getting his one and only tattoo that day next door at Rising Tide.
I ordered. The barista prepped. I took that pint glass of frosty green to my lips. The green was like an avocado mixed smoothie. The scent was complex like dirt, with grass, topped with dirt, and a touch of cow juice. It was earthy and delightful. I sipped gently from the foam. Ahhhh, I was hooked. (more…)
// August 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Wake up America. There is something seriously wrong with our food supply system that affects our diets, politics, fuel economy, and environment. Please get informed and make good choices. In the last few days a coalition of big food production companies that include Hershey Co., Kraft Foods Inc., Mars Inc. General Mills, and Unilever United States Inc. has written a letter to the Secretary of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Tom Villisack, to raise quotas of the amount of sugar that is imported to the United States. Sugar is now at a 28-year high and they are concerned that as a country we can run out which will mean food production could be brought to a screeching halt. Here is a summary of this situation from the Los Angeles Times and the BBC.
Reasons cited for a global shortfall by the big companies include turbulent global weather patterns affecting harvests, competition for sugar cane between food markets and fuel markets, and an increased U. S. sweet tooth.
According to the American Sugar Alliance, a coalition representing domestic sugar cane interests, the U. S. annually consumes 10 million metric tons of sugar per year. The current quota via the USDA is no more than a combined export of 1.3 million metric tons to the U.S. annually excluding Mexico due to NAFTA. Yesterday’s press release from the American Sugar Alliance is that the big companies are “crying wolf” and domestic sugar suppliers are more than capable of meeting their needs with the October harvest around the corner. (more…)
// July 9th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized
On Sunday morning my husband woke to the option of one of two tasks:
1. Go for a bike ride. Get orange juice for mimosas.
2. Stay home. Make waffles.
In his dreary stupor he paused too long and I was out the door with my pannier on my bike to get the orange juice. Sucker.
I didn’t realize I would be leaving him with an overwhelming task. We eat whole-wheat waffles 3-4 times a month. He made a batch last summer when I was headed out for a work trip so that I would have a week of breakfast in my hotel fridge. His waffle mastery is still being worked on. In this latest batch he forgot to add the whole-wheat flour and we were left with some sub-par waffles. The taste, texture, and satiety of the breakfast just was not there.
In my husband’s defense I admit I do not have the clearest directions in my “black book” of recipes.
First off, if you know me at all, I cannot eat sugar. Or at least not cane sugar. I have an allergy. And for those a-holes of you that want to correct me and say I have an intolerance why not hang around me next time my throat closes and the breathing thing does not work out so well. For the 2 tbsp. in this recipe it is a given to use crystalline fructose, xylitol, or beet sugar. Or use agave and a little extra flour.
Second, the flour. I copied this recipe from somewhere and did not make the modifications on the page because they seemed obvious to me. 1 cup boring processed flour, 1 cup of rock and roll stone ground wheat flour. A 1:1 ratio so that there is some substance to the waffles while still letting them be fluffy.
There is a difference between the two flours which is shocking considering they are the same food. Just on different ends of the processing spectrum.
Actually not on completely different ends of the spectrum. My husband thought the wheat was already mixed in because I have been known to combine them in the past, and it wasn’t as white as the flour he was used to seeing his mom cook with. It is unbleached organic flour from the bulk bins. There is flour out there that is whiter.
The stone ground wheat flour comes from Butte Mill Flour Company at the Boulder Farmers Market for $1/pound. Farmer John also sells via Cure or you can pick it up off from his porch in the winter months.
Besides the color of the waffles there was something else different. The taste. The texture. The experience. We max out on the number of waffles we eat pretty early. With the batch we had over the weekend we could have eaten all 12 of them. They were not satisfying. It was disturbing but at least we supplemented what was going in our tummies with blueberries, champagne, and orange juice.
If you have any questions about the difference between the two flours first look at the glycemic index. It is an index of how carbohydrates breakdown in our systems and are assimilated in our blood stream thus affecting our glucose levels. The bland white flour absorbs much more quickly than the robust brown flour. It basically acts like a sugar dissolving in water when compared to its counterpart that still retains fiber (and nutrients). We basically had sugar waffles that our bodies absorbed rapidly compared to the wheat waffles we usually eat.
Thanks to my crazy food allergies we do not eat many processed foods in our home. We manage to stay away from a lot of the overly-processed diet that many Americans thrive on. The case of these two flours is only a miniscule example of why people can eat so much damn food all the time and still be hungry. Over processing plays tricks on our bodies and we don’t feel full. There is no substance. Wheat is only a tiny portion of what we eat in the U. S. Anyone that has seen King Corn or basically knows about the prevalence of corn in our diets knows exactly what I am talking about.
We ate the bland processed flour waffles. Hubby took a stack of them to work with some fruit and maple syrup. He also learned a basic kitchen 101 for our household, there is a huge difference between stone ground whole wheat flour and the more processed flour.
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