One more week to go and I can finally plant these guys. I’ll be hardening them off this week. I am wondering if I started them too early (as opposed to last year, too late). Here they were just three weeks ago!

I picked up the rest of the plants for the garden today at Growing Hope’s annual plant sale: kale, jalapenos, rosemary, and basil.

I recently checked this fantastic book out of the library, called “The Grammar of Ornament,” after reading about it on Roxy Marj’s blog. My eyes exploded when I first cracked it open. Featuring extremely detailed samples of “ornament” from different cultures throughout history, it completely speaks to my obsession with intricate patterns.

Persian

Indian

Written in 1856 by Owen Jones, the 1928 copy from the library with chromolitho printing is beautiful. Wanting to add the book to my collection, I found a used 1986 “facsimile reprint” online (the earlier printings can cost thousands of dollars). The printing isn’t nearly as breathtaking, but will work just as well as a reference.

The seeds I started last month are growing like crazy! I believe they have already outgrown their current containers, but I don’t have the space to transplant them into something bigger, and it will be about a month before they will go into the garden…

I’ve started seeds for this year’s garden. I believe I am starting about a month earlier than last year, which is good!

This year I slimmed down the number of plants to start indoors, and am focusing mainly on tomatoes, with a couple of basil plants. Basil wasn’t very successful last year, but I love basil, so I am trying it again. The eggplant and peppers didn’t do well last year, so I am skipping them. The tomatoes did well, so I figured I’d focus my energies there. And then I will probably pick up jalapenos and kale later in the season as small plants.

Similar to last year, the basil, brandywine and rainbow tomatoes are growing quickly, while the black tomatoes are much slower.

(For reference, here’s “One”.)

Everyday Food, April 2012 issue, “Hot rice cereal with nuts & raisins” (pg. 56)
A simple and delicious warm breakfast of rice, milk, and toppings that is a great substitute for oatmeal. (By the end of winter, I am tired of oatmeal.)

• Milk: This one’s easy. I cooked the rice in my rice cooker in a mix of mostly almond milk with some coconut cream for a creamy taste, and used almond milk as the pourover.
• Toppings: cashews and/or almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, maple syrup, ground flax, golden raisins.

Photograph note: The screen on my iMac, which I use to process most of my photos, is deceptively bright! Everywhere else I see these photos, they are too dark. (sadface)

Awesome mug note: Glam Breakfast

While I’d certainly want to have my son back (though I can’t even imagine him now, at age 21), the truth is that life cannot be undone, it only goes one way, and we humans have no choice but to learn the lessons our lives present. The truth is that there are lessons to be learned from the experience of great loss, ways of being in the world that are different than before, a way of understanding others you didn’t see before, ways of empathizing with others’ pain, ways of learning to “be with,” and so on.

– Fran Dorf, “An Open Letter to the Radio Lady Who Said We Should Find ‘Closure’”

A few weekends ago I drove out to Pittsburgh, mostly to make a first-time visit to the Andy Warhol museum. I left the digital cameras at home and only brought along the Minolta Hi-Matic F. A few of the photos are posted on Flickr. I found Pittsburgh to be a lovely town.

In addition to the Warhol museum, delicious pizza from Spak Bros. and waffles from Oh Yeah! were consumed.

I’ve been subscribing to Everyday Food, Martha Stewart’s food magazine, since 2009. While there aren’t a lot of vegan recipes right out of the box, I’ve found it to be relatively easy to convert many of the recipes to be vegan. I like the magazine because there are a lot of photos and it is nicely designed, and the recipes are fairly simple and use simple ingredients.

The modifications needed to veganize most recipes are not complex, and in most cases do not seem to sacrifice flavor. I also enjoy the challenge. Here is a recent example:

March 2012 issue, “Rigatoni with broccoli & sausage” (pg. 37)
A one-pot pasta-based dish with broccoli and sausage, that is tossed with a “dressing” of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, anchovies, and S & P.

• The recipe calls for anchovies, which is stated to be essential for a “deep, savory flavor without fishiness.” Instead of 4 anchovy fillets, I used a tablespoon of white miso, and I think it added the depth and saltiness to the flavor normally supplied by the anchovies.
• Sausage. I am more likely to have a slab of tempeh on-hand than any of the fake-meats, and I approached this one like I do whenever I need a sausage taste — crumbled tempeh cooked in my cast iron pan with olive oil, sage, fennel, and soy sauce.
• Lastly, the final touch is a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Here I went for my standard Parmesan-sprinkle-substitute: a dusting of nutritional yeast flakes.

(I promise to work on making my food photography more appetizing.)

My friend Jennifer recently gave me her dad’s old Minolta Hi-Matic F 35mm camera. During a snowy night last week I experimented with a test roll of expired Fuji 400 Superia (400 shot at 400). I was happy with the results, and took the camera and a few rolls of Portra film to Pittsburgh this last weekend. To be developed!

I shot a couple more test rolls of 35mm film recently. Soon I’ll be ready to dive into a project on film.

Thus far I have been shooting on Fuji Superia 400 (overexposed by one stop) and getting the negatives processed and scanned to CD at Walgreen’s. Okay enough for now.