And I wasn’t even near it!
The air quality where I live has been generally poor, as of late. Not from one wildfire, but from two, plus a Haboob from the Middle East that blew sand halfway around the world to settle on the East Coast of the U.S.. It was the fire in New Jersey, however, that left a film in my mouth and throat and a grimy feel on my skin this past Saturday.
Continue reading Today I Tasted the Devastation of a WildfireI am not a vegetarian or a vegan or pescatarian or anything. I hate labels. They confine us into a box and if you stray a little, then people love to comment on it. My eating style varies and I have good days/bad days and good weeks/bad weeks. In the winter I really struggle, succumbing to the scourge of seasonal affective doom and gloom – plus, I think we are all just hairless bears, refusing to hibernate as we ought to do. My point is, I don’t ascribe to any diets or self-proclamations that would limit my options.
Continue reading Protein: How Much is Enough?The other night I was invited to watch a friend present some poetry at a local bookshop. Every second Friday of every month the bookshop hosts a Poetry and Prose night where anyone can come and present their work. As I sat there listening to the thoughts, emotions, and personal stories of the lives of strangers, I started to hear a theme weave through the words of these writers. A theme of advocacy for human rights, environmental justice, and political cries against our current Federal administration, writ large.
Continue reading Brick and Mortar Brought us BackBroccoli is a member of the cole crops (also known as cruciferous vegetables), all of which are derived from a singular species known as Brassica oleracea L.. This includes kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and cabbage and each of these foods share a genome with the wild type, Brassica. As with so many things, it’s difficult to prove exact origin of species, especially when it involves human cultivation and migration; however, most studies indicate Europe, broadly, as the birthplace of these Brassica plants. Very little evidence indicates Asia as a potential origin and within Europe there is a slight divide between the UK and Greece, but there is stronger evidence for the rocky shores of England. There is a fascinating paper that uses linguistic terms for “broccoli” in various ancient cultures to help identify the origin that some of you might be interested in reading. In the end, broccoli is just one form, or cultivar, of a group of plants that has been selected for it’s specific geno-/phenotype that gives us what we, today, call broccoli.
Continue reading Broccoli!I’m not sure if I consider myself someone who LOVES FOOD. There are foods that I love, sure, and I do enjoy trying local cuisine when I travel. The joke always was that we travel to eat when we lived in Germany. It isn’t as though you couldn’t find any good food where we lived, but they definitely liked to “germanize” the ethnic foods and tame the spice level. It was actually amazing when we found a Thai place in Wiesbaden where “scharf” (spicy) really meant SPICY.
Continue reading Welcome & Let’s Eat!There’s not mu[c]h-room in this backyard for a beast like this one! But it looks like such a fun-g[uy]! No? Fine – I’ll stop, but I’m sure it’ll disappoint all the dads out there.
Continue reading Mushroom: My Latest Side QuestIt started with a scone. Lemon blueberry scones, to be exact. I’m not sure why…I think I was just hungry for them. So, I found a recipe on Pinterest and made my own sweet lemon butter to accompany the scones, and left a few by my friend’s door. Who doesn’t love waking up to fresh, warm scones and fancy ass butter?
Continue reading A Look Back on 2020: The FeastI could probably write a book on this subject. I generally don’t think we talk enough about the positive things that come from tragedy and disaster. It’s probably why our culture is so fearful and morbid about death or why we are always suffering from “never enough” syndrome. I’m not a psychologist, just an internet expert, so don’t take my word for it – I’m just over here, speculating. That said here is my (not quite complete, but who has time to read these days) list of positive lessons I learned from the pandemic.
Continue reading A Look Back on 2020: What I LearnedI have been thinking a lot lately about our life during the pandemic, partly as it has come up in conversation a lot with friends. This is a blog and not a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers. I would need months to dive deep into the literature we have compiled on the “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic response, so this will not be that. Rather, I’d like to share some lessons-learned and thoughts on the pandemic that I have heard amongst my group of friends and within my family unit.
Continue reading A Look Back on 2020: Enter the LockdownThere has been a smell in the air these days, pretty much everywhere I go now: the grocery store, festivals…my backyard. It has the scent of someone who has wandered the forest for days without access to a shower or any modern hygienic amenities, having spent their time wrestling skunks and other manner of wildlife. When you smell it, you are all too aware of what it is, and has become a rather ubiquitous odor in modern society, of late. The grand smell of weed. Marijuana. Mary Jane? Pot! Reefer?! Okay, it has a lot of names in English, and can even go by their vernacular ‘sativa’ and ‘idica’, partially bastardizing the generally agreed-upon species delineation. The reasons for all of the various nicknames is likely as diverse as the names themselves. The real (albeit, general) name, however, is Cannabis (or Hemp, more on that in a second). There is even a debate on taxonomy and classification (is there one plant with different phenotypes or three separate species? The jury is still out).
Continue reading Let’s Hash Out the Ecology of Cannabis
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