Local Food

I love days off! It gives me the opportunity to think about and do things that normally I don't have time to! Of course, some of these are just boring things that include cleaning the house (blah...dishes...blah...laundry) but some are actually enjoyable! I have grand plans for today, which (although I probably won't get to everything) include starting a knitting project, lesson planning for next week, and looking up information about local food online. This last part is what I'm really excited about! 

Sometime this week I got home before Daryl and was watching some TV. I love watching the food network and the travel channel, but some shows on there are just ridiculous! The travel channel has this one called Food Paradise, where they focus on a specific type of food and highlight different restaurants around the country that serve it. Well, on this particular day, the show was Deep Fried Paradise. Blech! Now don't get me wrong, I crave french fries from time to time, and I have tried fried pickles and fried mushrooms and do enjoy them. However, I try to limit those things from my diet whenever possible, because they are extremely bad for me!! Watching this show was like watching a train wreck - it was so awful, but I just couldn't pull myself away. As I was watching it, I was wondering why they had never done a "Vegan Food Paradise". Probably because that wouldn't be as popular, but I'm sure if they looked they could find enough places that sell vegan food to do a 60 minute show. The wheels in my head started turning. I had a sudden urge to open a vegan cafe in every city in America, and ban any fried food to be served there. Of course, that's not reasonable.

So I started researching local food and farmer's markets. Now, I will admit - I have lived in Topeka for just over a year (ugh) and have convinced myself that there is nothing good here, there are no vegetarian places, and everyone here eats crap. I told myself that I would just try to survive here until we moved to Lawrence. Well, this past summer I learned that there is a farmers market here in Topeka! Did I ever go? Nope. Can't tell you why. I guess I'm lazy. I breathe Topeka air and it's starting to get to me! Well, in all my research this week I also found out that there is a local food coop here in Topeka. What?? That's incredible!! On my to-do list today is to go by there and check it out after I bring lunch to Daryl.

I think that if I wasn't eating vegan food (or at least trying to ... sometimes I suck at life) then I probably wouldn't think about all this as much. I want to actually start recycling, even though that will mean driving the stuff to the recycling place because they don't pick it up, and I want to start paying more attention to where my food comes from. Want to, want to... how do I actually make myself do these things? I want to start working out... has that happened? Well, I did for a couple weeks - I need to start it up again. 

Anyway, here are some of the great websites I checked out to find information about and places to buy local food.

http://www.foodroutes.org/ - This website has a lot of great information about how and why to buy locally, and different options for doing so.

http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home - This one lets you put in your zip code or city/state and look up places near you to buy local food.

http://www.localharvest.org/ - This one's not quite as detailed as the others, but it also has some good information, and a search option.

http://www.lawrencefarmersmarket.com/index.php - Lastly, if you live around here, the Lawrence Farmer's Market is still going on. Based on their website, it has some pretty sweet stuff, and me and Daryl are going this Saturday.

Bon anniversaire

Just kidding, that means happy birthday. I don't know how to say "happy anniversary" in french. 


This weekend, me and my lovely celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary! It was beautiful and glorious. I won't bore anyone with all the mushy details, but it was fantastic! We stayed at the plaza and ate at The Melting Pot. If you've never been there, you should go. Right now. And have Liz as your server. She will rock your socks off. It was beautiful and romantical and wonderful. Here are some photos of our suite:

This was the entrance. To the left is the bathroom.

The bed. Ahh... it was so comfy!

The other half of the room.

The view from our balcony. We were on the 6th floor - beautiful!!

 Another view. See the pretty fall trees? :)

A view of the balcony. We ate breakfast at the cute little table this morning before we left.

And, of course, here's the happy couple! I love you, babe! You made this year incredible and you are amazing! 

Ink

Lesson learned: when getting a tattoo in a foreign language, MAKE SURE it appears correctly when printed.


Okay, so some of you know that I have a tattoo. Those who don't - surprise! It's on my left shoulder and it looks like this:

I got it in college on a trip to Tennessee with some friends. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision by any means; I had been thinking about it for quite awhile. Oh, by the way, the word is in Arabic and is supposed to say "beloved". After searching for the perfect translation on the internet (apparently online arabic translators had a lot of room for improvement 5 years ago) I copied and pasted into a Word document so I could print it out. 


Discovery: Word does not support Arabic text!!! 


Since I never had a human translation, I was always somewhat curious as to whether or not it actually said what I thought it did. So this weekend, while procrastinating grading papers, I did some research I discovered that, lo and behold, Word is unsupportive of Arabic text, and had flipped my cool arabic word around so that it is actually backwards of what it should be. 
Awesome. 
Commence mild panic. 
Deep breath.
Resume research.
After continued research, I actually found out some good news! Because this arabic word has repeated letters, only the letter that looks like a giant "E" at the left end is incorrect. So what my tattoo should say is closer to this: عزيز. Not too difficult to fix.


So on my to-do list now is get this tattoo fixed so I will no longer look like an ignorant idiot walking around with a foreign word on her back just to look cool. 


I mean, how would you feel if you saw someone walking around with a word on her shoulder that said "devoleb". Dumb, right? You would probably laugh at them. To yourself, of course.

Sicky sick-o

Ugh.  This suck. It sucks to be sick on a beautiful day, and it sucks to be sick on an ugly day. Either way, it just sucks. Of course, if you've ever been sick, you know this. 

Anyway, that's really all I wanted to say. Except that, at least while I am sick I get the pleasure of watching our neighbor do ... something with his porch. I think he's cleaning it. I'm not really sure. I wish I had a picture of the before. But maybe that would be mean. I'm just hoping he won't put all the stuff back on the porch.

Oh, and we're watching all our DVR'd shows. Fever, go away!!!