80's Party!

Well, if there's one thing that's awesome about having a huge house full of people, its having a huge party! Friday we had an awesome time partying it up in 80's style. Here are some pics, and there are many more but I didn't want to put up too many pics of people without permission...so here's just a sampling...

Ah, 80's food, hmm, it seems like we all just ate junk in the 80's

Eating Developments

I've been thinking a lot about food lately. Back in Early Febuary I was convinced by a friend to check out and try the "South Beach Diet". Now on first hearing this title I was not convinced since I've done all sorts of things like this before and have always failed and gotten very grumpy (including a very brief trial of eating only fruits and veggies before a trip to Virginia Beach that resulted in an emotional breakdown and lasted a mere 2 days). But, I read the book and was quickly convinced that this was a way of eating that made sense for my health so I gave it a two week trial. The basic premise is just to give up all processed foods, sugar, and saturated fats. So, I've been eating lean meats and dairy, lots of veggies, some fruit (lower sugar ones), nuts, whole grain breads, and I guess that's about it (except all the cheating I tend to do on weekends)

That was over 2 months ago. I lost 8-9 lbs in the first month and have stayed at that since; so that was pretty cool. I've actually learned a lot of new cooking skills, especially ways to make veggies tast good. And, I've actually lowered my trigycerides and cholesterol significantly.

Anyway, that's just the background for this post. Since I've been thinking a lot more about eating foods in their natural state, I've been thinking about what's in food and where it comes from. Also, my recent gardening has prompted me to think about maybe growing some of my own stuff (although I've failed in that area in the past as well). And I'm starting to become a proponent of anything local and non-corporate.

So, today, Austin and I went to the library and got some books out that have already started to fascinate me. Here are the four we've checked out:

Plenty: One man, One woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.

This book is also known as the 100 mile-diet. I've gotten about 50 pages into it and already want to give it a try. The 100 mile-diet means eating only items that are grown or raised within 100 miles of where you live. It sounds awefully difficult, but so fascinating and fun. We've been talking for a while about buying a whole pig or cow from a local farm, getting it butchered (yes, mom and dad I know we could do this ourselves, but it so much easier this way), and keeping the various cuts in a chest freezer until we eat it all up.

2nd book: Solar Gardening: Growing Vegetables Year-Round the American Intensive Way.

This book may just help my green-thumb develop. There detailed instructions on many things, and we are planning on building a little green-house in the back of our house off the door to the basement.

3rd book: City Gardening: Planting, Maintaining, and Designing the Urban Garden (no picture online). This one's pretty self- explanatory.

4th book: Good House, Cheap House

This one Austin picked out, since he's always interested in how to build from scratch a super energy efficiant house someday that's super small. This was partially inspired by a Lawrence company: http://www.powerhouse-enterprises.com/

The weather here has been totally awesome so we spent the day at some local gardens reading outside, and planning out when and how we may be able to put our new ideas into practice.

Not so green-thumb :-(

So, I've discovered that I do not have the gift of gardening. No, it will be a skill I will have to practice over and over. My little seedlings were doing wonderfully, all popping up and having about 2-4 leaves each. I decided to bring them down from the attic and start putting them outside during the day for more sun; so I made a stop at the sink to water them a bit. I had some problems using the sprayer from the sink and ended up soaking them a little too much, apparently, since the next morning they were all DEAD! That was several days ago and they are still dead :-(. So I will be starting over from scratch. Oh dear...I need to invest in a spray bottle to avoid this disaster again. I'll update with more pictures when I get new seedlings.

House Retreat

We had our first annual house retreat two weeks ago at a bed and breakfast up in the mountains in NH and it was tons of fun! Here's the guys doing some climbing up some rocks at the Basin.
It sure was beautiful in the snow

Here's our newest house-mates to be this fall who were able to join us
And here's the group before our trip up Mt. Washington in the cog railway
Here's a snow battle between Austin and Dave as close to the top as the train would take us

And this is us at our awesome dinner at the B&B, it was delicious!