Tough Nut to Crack

February 27th, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Life - (35 Comments)

If you’ve been following along, you may recall that I recently spent some time hulling black walnuts.

These black walnuts have spent the winter curing in my cool, dry attic. Rumor has it that black walnuts are really hard to open. Rumor has it this would be why I’ve been none too eager to get cracking here.

Black Walnuts Curing in the Attic

Come to find out that when you harbor black walnuts and don’t crack them, you’ll be haunted by backyard squirrel ghosts; the lost souls of squirrels who died from winter starvation because you deprived them of all the food they would have otherwise stored for hibernating.

Movie Night

February 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Parenting - (4 Comments)

Recipe for an hour of peace and quiet.

Ingredients:

3/4 c Arrowhead Mills Organic popcorn
2 Tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp salt
Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

Movie Night

Directions:

Pop popcorn in your ancient air popper from the 1980’s, top with melted butter and salt. Insert Barbie DVD into laptop, plop two small children in pajamas (or not) with popped popcorn on the couch.  Back slowly out of the room to dash up the stairs with your yoga mat in hand.

Serves one mother an hour and twenty three minutes to do as she pleases at the end of a long day.

CSA = Community Supported Agriculture.  (Not “Can’t Stand Alison”, thankyouverymuch.)

If this acronym is new to you, in short – a CSA is an opportunity for you, the consumer, to get your produce direct from a local farmer.  Find a farm that offers CSA memberships and you can buy a share of their crops for what will hopefully be a bounty of locally grown fruit and/or vegetables from late spring until mid fall – or whatever the growing season is where you live.

Don’t Dread the Tread

February 12th, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Fitness - (12 Comments)

If wearing your Vibrams on the treadmill at the gym doesn’t get you any looks, taking a picture of yourself wearing your Vibrams on the treadmill at gym should totally take care of that.

Star Trac

I actually don’t know if anyone gave me the stink eye on this particular day while donning my favorite pink toe shoes.  I do know that I was fully prepared to say “but look at how stinkin’ cute they are!!” if someone called me a freak or a did that thing where you hold your pointer finger near your temple and swirl it around a bit.

I’ve written casually about my favorite way to make Brussels sprouts before, but now I feel that this vegetable dish deserves an official post of its own because:

1.  I make them all the time and have therefore seriously improved my method

2.  I want to flesh out each step that goes into preparing Brussels sprouts in this manner

3.  Cooking vegetables can be highly meditative – as I will now demonstrate

OK.  Before we get started, let’s take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths.  In through your nose… out through your mouth. Yes, that’s it.  Very good.

Salad For Breakfast

February 5th, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Weight Loss - (17 Comments)

I think it was mid-December when I started looking for an alternative to my typical oatmeal/grain-based breakfast.  Not because I stopped digging oats mind you, but because somewhere toward the end of last year I came to understand that sugar is just no good and I wanted to start eating less of it.

Now before you get annoyed with me and that blasphemous statement, I’m not saying that I’ve stopped eating sugar or bread completely or don’t enjoy sweets.  I’m just not eating sugar (or as the case may be, foods that your body eventually converts to sugar – i.e., grains like rice, pasta, bread) on a daily basis like I have for oh, I don’t know – 31 years?

So I dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a month and a half or something.  Oh yes, I’m still here – new camera collecting dust while I’ve been off having fun with much of the following:

1.  The Primal Blueprint Meets The 4-Hour Body.

I devoted a bunch of posts in December to the wonders of The Primal Blueprint and how much I was digging it, right?  Well, The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris deserves the same accolades.  Quite informative and entertaining in many respects.  Funny, inspiring and errr, intriguing?  (Be sure to check out the chapter on the 15 minute female orgasm, for the illustrations if nothing else.)