Bentos!

Finally the little Bento Sets are ready to go out in the world! Check them out at Wolfbait, Renegade or my Etsy Shop. I love the little coral and red-checked ones made from vintage tableclothes.

New Pet

My new serger! Below is the diagram showing how to thread it....

Letters I Should Have Wrote

So I always write out emails to people/companies that I have issues with. Sometimes I send them and sometimes I don't. Like today I got an email from a fellow pankaker who is organizing what sounds like a really fun event at a lake/pavillion/beer garden somewhere on the South Side for the Izaak Walton League of Americans. I had never heard of the group but apparently they have been around since 1922 conserving and creating recreational opportunities around the nation. Things sounded really good until the letter stated "I specifically added Vegan Kabobs to the menu for all you veggies out there :)." At which point I scrolled to the end of the email and found the menu which besides veggie kabobs includes 1 LB. Boiled Shrimp Plates, Kosher Hot Dogs, and Steak Kabobs. Now why would a conservation group include beef?! So I wrote a letter I didn't send. And what can you put on a kabob that is vegetarian but not vegan? Cheese?

Here's my letter:

The event sounds like a lot of fun but can you maybe make this point clear to whoever the person mainly in charge of the event is? Beef produces more greenhouse gas than all the cars on the road. Thanks for including the Veggie Kabobs for vegans who reduce their impact on this earth by 20% just by changing their diet can eat something at an event to conserve our nation. Also is the shrimp flown in? It just seems that the menu is not in sync with the mission.

Should I have sent this? Here this group is trying to conserve and make the U.S. a better place serving beef of all things! Manure pits anyone? What I particularly love about Iowa and Wisconsin are the wonderful factory farms. And the best thing about these farms is they smell way better than slaughterhouses!

See I could have put all that in the letter...

Camping!

Cooking the Lemon-Cornmeal-Blueberry Pancakes. Two mushrooms on the hike from hell.

Amos and I went camping this past weekend with my sister Katie and two of our good friends from pankakes. Now I was not aware of this but if you want to go camping in Wisconsin in any reasonable driving distance from Chicago you must book your site about three months in advance. So we were unlucky enough to get to Lake Kegonsa State Park about 1/2 hour after the office closed but lucky enough to get pulled over by the park ranger who told us there were only 2 walk up sites available and we should get there at 8 the next morning.

So we hustled over to camp the next morning, got our spot then headed into the nearest town since the campers on our site didn't have to leave until 3 p.m. In the little town of Stoughton we found a coffee shop with 71 cent coffee and homemade wheat toast and applesauce as well as a really interesting re-sale shop that was more like a thrift store and antique shop combined. Fortified with homemade goodness and a 2$ lawn chair older than Amos' and my age combined we headed back to camp.

If the lake hadn't turned to pea soup and the trails choked with mosquioes we might have done more than take three naps, read our books and eaten some veggie burgers. We did make a pizza for dinner which might have been excellent had I not burnt the crap out of the bottom of it.... It was still good if you just scraped the top off... And of course tho finish we roasted (vegan!) marshmallows for dessert.

The next day after lemon cornmeal blueberry pankakes cooked over an open fire we headed up to Madison to eat at Himal Chuli and there was a street festival going on! We also rented a sea kayak and paddle boat at Lake Wingra which was lovely swimming. Canooning is so much fun. Then it was home again home again - quite a fun trip.

Who is this?!

I was reading the Chicago Reader last night before going to sleep and it made mention of Fruitslinger - a blog about a fruit vendor at my market! Who is it!

Request

I've been thinking about this for a while - if I ever have children I need to ask my family and friends please please please no one buy him/her anything that requires batteries, lights up, makes noise, or propels itself in creepy fashion around the house. First of all I can't stand electronic songs being played over and over at the indiscriminate touch of a two year old - a jazzy version of twinkle twinkle being inturrupted by a even more horrendously updated version of mary had a little lamb on a pudgy finger's cue is enough to make me break out in hives. And if that isn't enough just check out this link. How cute is your chicken dance elmo now?!

Note: Maybe I need to give a shout out to Ellie (as in elephant) here - my little sister's favorite stuffed animal who tastefully played talk to the animals when wound up. Oh what a sad day it was when his voice box finally kicked the bucket from being played probably thousands of times....

Yo Soy

I just found a cute vegan blog named !Yo Soy! straight outta Culver City California. I'm really sorry I don't know how to make the exclamation point go upside down...