This week’s topic is Ten Things You Like About Where You Live. Here goes!

1. I’m closer to family than I was previously.
2. There are a lot of wonderful Farmer’s Markets and CSA opportunities.
3. If I want to be alone, I can get in the car and be out in the middle of nowhere in about 20 minutes.
4. Another benefit of being within reasonable driving distance to the middle of nowhere is experiencing night. I mean, really experiencing it. No ambient light from neighbors or the city lights. It is just you, the crickets and pitch black.
5. I love the small town vibe with all the conveniences of a major metro.
6. Prairie dogs crack me up.
7. I live somewhere cold enough to wear my hand knits.
8. Midwesterners, in general, are a friendly and welcoming lot.
9. BBQ
10. I love the thunderstorms. (Though I could do without the tornadoes!)

But not all at once, of course…

MamaInBlue will occasionally drink sugar-free beverages like Crystal Light and I do not. We both like fruit juices and sometimes indulge in the vino or a mixed drink but neither of us like to drink our calories. So we’re looking for something that doesn’t have any added sugar, doesn’t use artificial sweeteners and is relatively low calorie. Where to turn? Why, aguas frescas, of course.

To be honest, I might be playing a little fast and loose with the term. I know that aguas frescas can mean different drinks in different areas. I tend to think of them as fruit, veggies or herbs mixed with water for a light and refreshing drink. I’ve been winging recipes from day to day:

• Cucumber Water – A few years ago, I bought a glass of it at the Farmer’s Market in Winter Park, FL on a hot day. It really hit the spot! Quite simply, this is plain water with a few slices of cucumber dropped in. I prepared them a few hours in advance and put them in the fridge to allow the flavor of the cukes to develop in the water.
• Blueberry Seltzer – One night, I muddled a handful of blueberries in a glass, poured cold seltzer over and served immediately.
• Fruity Seltzer – Another quickie. We had frozen mixed fruit in the freezer, a mix of pineapple, mango, peaches and strawberries. I put a handful in a glass, poured seltzer over and served immediately.

Last night, I decided to make use of some watermelon that had been in the fridge a few days and was starting to get a bit soft. I cut it up into chunks and tossed it in a blender to puree until smooth. I muddled some of our garden’s mint in the bottom of a glass, filled it about halfway with the watermelon puree, filled it the rest of the way with seltzer and stirred gently with a spoon.  Tasty! I would have liked to add a little squeeze of lime but we had none in the house.

In the future? I have plans for light iced teas made from one of the many varieties of mint growing in the garden. A cherry-mint agua is also on my mind.

The pattern is the Marsan Watchcap, which is my favorite Go To pattern for dudes. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy in Midnight Derby. (Note: I find the large size to be quite small so, depending on the size of the noggin, I generally cast on 96 or 104 stitches instead of the recommended 88.)

Sweet corn from the farmer’s market + a squeeze of lime + a sprinkle of chili powder = GOOD!

More specifically, I am living at home with my Mom. She was gracious enough to offer me a place to stay until I figure out where I want to land permanently. I don’t like being the thirty-something single gal living with her mother. But hey… free rent! Can’t complain about that, I suppose.

So I have a few projects on my plate right now:

First of all, I am planning to take a completely different direction professionally. For assorted reasons, I’m going to keep that mostly off this blog. This will be something completely different than anything that I’ve ever done professionally though.

Also, rather than take over a bedroom in the main section of the house, I am taking over the basement. I’ve been living on my own for over 13 years and it is tough to suddenly be in a roommate situation. This gives us both a little extra space. The good news is that the basement is finished and quite comfortable. I’ve got room for an office, a TV/crafting room, a bedroom and a bathroom. I have a lot of work to do on the bedroom and getting myself settled in.

And lastly, cooking! I offered to take over a majority of cooking since Mom works full-time downtown. And this brings me to the shift in focus on this blog.

In addition to daily activities, I’m planning to journal my efforts in the kitchen to satisfy both my mom and myself. We do have some differences in opinion. She is on the Weight Watchers program and actively trying to lose weight. I am currently anti-diet though I do want to eat very healthfully. If weight loss results for me, that’s great. However, I do think that dieting and diet foods are both counter-productive to good health and maintaining a good weight for one’s body.

What I’d like to do is prepare meals that are healthy, responsible, organic and local whenever possible. I will be eliminating processed and prepackaged foods wherever possible. And I want to do it on a budget. This means I’ll be making the most of the area Farmer’s Markets and sourcing meat from local farms. Of course, I don’t anticipate that this will all go off perfectly. I think the moral of the story is that we’ll be doing the best we can with what we’ve got. I think there will also be some compromises to be made. (See below regarding today’s dessert at lunch!)

For example, Farmer’s Markets have recently been yielding some really stunning produce lately. Tomatoes, berries, cucumbers, zukes, onions, corn, herbs, peppers, chiles and on. I did make a batch of Heidi Swanson’s Roasted Tomato Soup. We had this for dinner one night and Mom took the leftovers to work for lunch the next day. (She reported that this was excellent this next day!)

This weekend has been centered around the grill. Yesterday, we had a lunch of cabbage with bacon done on the grill. It couldn’t have been more simple and it was really tasty. Basically, you just take wedges of a head of cabbage, place them in a foil packet with a drizzle of olive oil and a bit of salt/pepper, drape a slice or two of bacon and seal it up. We had the grill going at medium heat and the cabbage took around 45 minutes to finish. The bacon gave the cabbage a wonderful flavor. It was an inexpensive and tasty meal.

Since the grill was already going, we put on a grill pan of veggies. They were seasoned with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. I love the flavor a grill gives veggies… especially onions! The plan was to do a quiche or something similar the following day. I wound up making a frittata.

I started out with around 4-5 cups of grilled veggies. I used what I had on hand, which was onions, green peppers and zucchini. You can, of course, use whatever you’d like! These were cut larger for the grill pan but I chopped them up a bit before tossing them in the pan with a bit of olive oil. I sauteed them over medium heat in an oven safe skillet for a bit until they were warmed through.

While the veggies were sauteing, I whisked up 8 large eggs, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, 1/2 cup soy milk, salt/pepper to taste and a liberal dose of onion powder. After this was mixed well, I poured it into the pan and stirred it gently with a spatula.

After cooking until the bottom and sides were mostly set and the middle was still runny, I topped it all off with around a cup of shredded jack cheese. I popped the oven safe skillet into a 425 degree oven and baked it the rest of the way until the eggs were set and the cheese was melty. Lots of recipes have you broil the frittata at this point but this Caphalon is only oven safe up to 450 degrees, thus the lower temperature.

The resulting frittata isn’t the prettiest or most colorful example you’ll find… but it was delicious! The grilled veggies gave it a really nice depth of flavor and the cheeses made it taste very rich. We both declared it a winner and a good option for the days we decide to have vegetarian meals. Neither of us felt that it necessarily needed additional seasoning but, should you try this out, some fresh herbs would probably be a welcome addition. I’ll definitely try this again with different veggies and possibly some meat added in.

Mom had also seen a dessert on the Weight Watchers forums that she really wanted to try. Basically, you take a sugar-free instant pudding mix and prepare it as directed on the box. You immediately pour it into an ice cream maker and let it do its thing. I wasn’t wild about the idea. I’m not big on such processed stuff and I do not like artificial sweeteners at all, to put it mildly. But I decided to do it and try it since I had moved my ice cream maker with me. We used a lemon pudding mix. While the pudding was whirring away in the ice cream maker, I made a sauce from around a cup of cut & cleaned strawberries, a cup of blueberries, 3 tablespoons sugar and the zest & juice from a lemon. I let the sauce simmer for around 10 minutes and it made a lovely sauce for the pudding ice cream

Mom loved it all. I did like the warm berry sauce with the cold lemon flavor. The flavor of the artificial sweetener in the pudding got in the way of my enjoyment, though. Mom uses and enjoys sugar-free instant pudding. I feel a little guilty because when we were discussing it, I commented that I didn’t care for the artificial taste of the pudding and didn’t plan to eat it again. She reacted, in a way, like this was somehow a rejection or a slight. It wasn’t, of course, meant that way. Since I’ll be doing most of the cooking, I’ll see if I can’t find an alternative that will satisfy us both.

And so… that’s it for now. I’m off to kick back with some knitting. I’m working on a Marsan Watchcap with some fabulously squishy Dream in Color Classy. Pictures soon!

So what does this mean for me? It means that I’m closing out my apartment in Florida and moving my home base to the Midwest again. The great news is that this leaves me free to bounce around a little. There are some opportunities opening up here & there and I’ll be flexible enough to entertain them all. I find the thought appealing.

I’ll go more into my professional plans when the timing is right… but I’ve given a lot of thought to the direction I want to take this blog. The last several months have been a bit chaotic and I’ve not had much to say that I thought was appropriate to post in such a public forum. I think that’s getting ready to change.

My blog was more successful and perhaps more entertaining when I was blogging about my adventures in food, cooking and following Weight Watchers. I am at a point in my life where I am NOT dieting. My goal is to eat and live healthfully. On the other hand, I’ll be living close enough to my mother that we’re planning to share cooking duties.  She IS following Weight Watchers. In all likelihood, I’ll be doing most of the cooking and I’m thinking about reviving that focus. Specifically? Healthy eating on a budget. We’re planning on getting a CSA share, shopping the local farmer’s market, planting a garden and looking to local sources for food.

I’ll probably be quiet for a few weeks as I uproot and then will become much more active in the beginning of July.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being painfully shy and horribly insecure. I’ve occasionally been able to get around it simply by putting on a mask of false bravado and pushing through. All the while, that little voice in the back of my head is telling me to retreat. People have sometimes taken me for snobby or unfriendly. In reality, it was me being scared or insecure and handling it badly.

I’m a fat girl. Even in my thinner days, I always had that mentality. I was always acutely aware of what other people thought of me and what they said about me. I would listen to things my grandmother would say about my dad, who also had a weight problem, and think that’s what you think about me, too. Schoolmates and eventually work associates were frequently unkind and occasionally just cruel. What’s truly ironic? I thought I was horribly fat back then when, in fact, I really only needed to lose around 30 pounds. Things didn’t get painfully out of control until after I graduated from college. Seems like I was determined to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sigh. I wish I could go back and do some things differently. It makes me sad to think about the things that I’ve missed out on because I was too scared to jump in with both feet and too intimidated to disregard opinions that didn’t matter.

Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20.

A few years ago, I started knitting. Well, more accurately, I had learned the basics of knitting when I was a kid. I got more interested in the craft around the time I moved to Florida. I started visiting local yarn shops and really talking to people. I joined Ravelry and then started to meet with a group of local people I met in the forums. I started getting more comfortable with myself and with other people. I started realizing that, while there are a lot of idiots out there, there are also a lot of people that are really awesome. I consider myself fortunate to have connected with my knitting friends.

Knitting has given me a community.

Is it strange that something as simple as string and two pointy sticks has changed my life to such an extent? Perhaps. But I’m starting to regain my faith in myself and that’s a gift I can’t take lightly. I am grateful for it every day.

A short while ago, I ordered some dried beans and pozole from Rancho Gordo, a specialty food company that specializes in heirloom beans. Earlier this afternoon, I decided to put a pot of beans on the stove and make good use of an excellent ham bone in my refrigerator. It was comfort food but it was also a bit of a revelation. Every so often I find myself in this same place. Sometimes I forget how good food can be. Thankfully, I stumble across reminders from time to time.

How is it possible that something so simple could be so rich and complex? The beans were excellent. The ham was excellent. But the pot liquor? Oh my. Rich. Salty. Smokey. Yum.

I cruised around the innerwebs and looked for some ideas. What I came up with was a combination of several recipes. I started off by sauteing some a large chopped onion & 3 minced shallots in a bit of olive oil in a medium stock pot. When they were barely translucent, I peppered them up a bit and added a pound of Rancho Gordo’s yellow-eyed beans. (Dry. I found some recipes that recommended a pre-soak and still others that said to go ahead and use the dried beans straight up. I decided to take a chance.) I sauteed the onions and beans for about a minute and then added the ham bone, 10 cups of water and 2 bay leaves. I covered it up and simmered it for around 2 hours. The beans were creamy but still firm and the bits of meat were falling off the bone,

So good. I am smiling again. Somehow, a bowl of beans has made things seem manageable again.

What’s still standing?

Get Rid of Cable – Yep! Still no cable TV. I thought it would be more difficult but this was the easiest of them all. I still watch shows & movies via free sources like Hulu. I also have a Roku, which I use to stream instant play movies/shows from Netflix. Sure, I’m missing a few shows I would have liked to watch. I figure they’ll come out on DVD eventually.

No Fast Food – Yep! No McD’s, no Taco Bell, no KFC, etc, etc. This one hasn’t been so tough except I do every so often crave a quesadilla from the Bell. OTOH, the smell of fried stuff coming from various joints has started to make me a little nauseous.

No Soda – This was the most difficult one of all. The first seven days were the worst. Headaches. Mood swings. A horrible taste in my mouth that no amount of brushing or mouthwash would take away. The worst of the symptoms lasted a full 7 days. I’d like to say it got easier but there wasn’t a day during the next few weeks when I didn’t think about getting a soda. I’d drive by a CVS, consider going in and think that no one would know except me. I didn’t fold though I did come close.

Now, in mid-April, I still think about it. For the love of Bob, what kind of stuff do they put in Diet Coke to make me fiend over it like a detoxing crackhead? I really just wanted to last the full year without drinking soda but now I think that I just have to avoid it altogether.