Live Off the Land!(?)

Ya'll know I'm just talking. I frequent Walmart and the other discount stores just as much as the rest of you. And I love natural fibers just like the rest of you. But you know how marketing does, they know that all you need to see is 100% on the label so that the consumer can feel right about buying a certain product. With that said, how close are you to nature really when you buy 100% natural fibers? You know that if one day this country ends up in apocalyptic conditions (And it's a thin line, baby. If you don't think so you need to wake up.) there ain't gone be no mercerized cotton or no superwash wool.

We gone be knitting with fibers not much unlike Cascade's Ecological Wool. Straight up cut the frills, perfectly suitable to clothe you and your family more than effectively, might as well have sheared that sheep myself, and spinned the wool myself yarn. And thank God there are still a few of us who would know what to do with it without seeking the services of another should the need occur.

I think I'm making good progress. I'm working on the tomten's hood right now. It's the sleeves I'm worried about. I've just followed Elizabeth Zimmerman's rule of quarters both vertically and horizontally to get the right dimensions. The sleeve holes are supposed to be enormous like that.

My name is Nicole, and I'm a carnivore. Before I became a mom, a few years before that I only ate sea food and tossed salads with dark leafy greens. Boy was my skin fabulous. This is why I decided to try to go back that type of diet. My skin improved dramatically within this short period of time. Hey, it's one of the few beauty treatments detailed in the bible (Daniel 1), and I couldn't even make it 10 days.

Last week I only ate vegetarian 6 out of 7 days of the week. I started with a screamin' "tuna" salad. I kid you not, I crave this stuff now. Then I used protein crumbles in my spaghetti instead of meat; soy chicken strips in my stir fry, stuff like that.

Then we gorged on various fruits like these grapes. We've barely had any bad fruit this summer. You've all probably seen those gigantic white peaches and nectarines in the grocery or at the farmer's market. Oh, and the cherries before they hit $6 a pound. OMG!

Living here in the Central Valley of CA, you get to meet a lot of hobby farmers/gardeners, whatever you want to call them. Tomatoes are easy, but I felt blessed when offered this beautiful eggplant. I kept petting it all day and couldn't wait to get it home.

This is not something we ate when I was young. My parents tried to make vegetables taste like something else most times. This must be why, as an adult, that I don't want nothin' to do with no pot liquor. Yuck! Use it once and toss it for God's sake. I don't think I bit straight through and asparagus without it being stringy until I was in my twenties.

We made eggplant mozzarella(with the left over spaghetti sauce) with this delicious soy cheese and cabbage wedges. Yummy yum.