I haven’t done one of these for awhile (Wow, mid-Feb, to be exact! How time flies) but I thought I would do one today.  Thanks as usual to Jennifer at Conversion Diary for coming up with this idea and hosting it.

1.  Springtime in the mountains is, um, interesting.  Sunday - Wednesday we saw temperatures in the mid-80’s and then this morning we woke up to snow.  Granted it didn’t stick and it turned to rain before too long, but 35 degrees is a long cry from 85 degrees!  For someone who is accustomed to the relatively mild and stable weather of the Bay Area, this whole weather climate takes some getting used to.

2.  Nathan is really mobile now.  He scoots quickly all over the house and he’s even starting to move around quite a bit outside.  He’s also starting to pull himself up on things too.  He’s also huge - I just moved my 10 month old boy into 18 month size clothes!  One of the things I like best about the early mobility stage is how it gives me an insight into what the baby is thinking.  It is so fun to watch him go off in search of people or things and to see what he notices. 

3.  I can eat dairy again!  I am really happy to be eating yogurt and cheese again.  Now that I’ve had real cow cheese again, that almond cheese tastes rather plastic-y and weird.  I think I missed plain yogurt mixed with strawberries, raisins and granola the most.  How convenient that my reintroduction to dairy came right as strawberries were coming into the market from the coast!  And grilled cheese sandwiches made with real cheddar cheese are lovely too.  And homemade ice cream.  Yes, I have been enjoying my dairy products these last couple weeks!

4.  Matt and I have decided we want to be a lot less pragmatic in our food choices these days.  I’m not sure I’m declaring the complete end to our food pragmatism, but we’ve decided to take some steps away from industrial agriculture and towards foods that taste better and are really better all around (except on the short term pocket-book - the only thing industrial food has going for it!)  We’re trying to eat in season and also to eat more locally.  After all, we live in California, not Minnesota so eating locally really shouldn’t be that much of a hardship!  Also to this end we’ve decided to join a local CSA for the season (starting at the beginning of June) and I think we’re also going to join a CSA sort of thing (Mom, don’t read this - just skip to the next one *grin*) for pork over the summer too.  Every third week we’ll pick up pork along with our CSA delivery out at the farm.  The pork comes from local free range pigs and I’m looking forward to tasting it.

5.  There is also a share available with the same arrangement for chicken, but the whole chickens end up costing $20 a piece.  Now I know that these are organic and truly free-range birds…  but wow, $20 bucks for a chicken!  I usually get three meals from a chicken which helps somewhat…  but it is hard to get over the sticker shock.  I know the 69 cents per pound birds that go on sale at the grocery store periodically are a vastly inferior bird, both nutritionally and in how it is raised and slaughtered (and then there’s the people who work in those environments and what they are exposed to as well) but that is such a huge price difference.  Matt and I were trying to do some back of the envelope calculations for what we thought it would cost to raise a organic free range chicken and we’re estimating about $7 max for the feed, perhaps a couple dollars for the chick (if not raised on the farm) but we’re rather stymied in trying to estimate capital costs.  It is something I’d like to research more, but I’m not entirely sure where to go from here.

6.  This also led to an interesting discussion about raising food.  Matt and I are interested in raising meat chickens and for some reason we’re much more willing to buy the feed and do the work to raise organic (or at least natural - the certification isn’t all that important to us) chickens than buy them, even if the cost difference doesn’t end up being all that much.  Our chickens could very well end us costing us $20 a head because we wouldn’t be raising as many and therefore couldn’t spread the capital costs over as many birds as a larger operation.  Somehow we’re ok with that, but not with paying someone else $20 for a dressed bird.  I’m not really sure this makes sense, but there you go.

7.  I’ve been reading a lot of fun stuff recently.  My mom highly recommended Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to me (even going so far as to buy it for me - thanks, Mom!) and I really enjoyed it.  I’ve since read Raising Dairy Goats, Barnyard in your Backyard, Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors and Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food.  (BTW, I like Water’s book a lot better -  I think it is much more usable.  Madison’s book is fun to read and pretty, but it feels more like a coffee table cookbook) I am currently reading Raising Chickens, Home Cheesemaking, and Real Food:  What to Eat and Why.   I also have Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto on reserve at the library.  I’m ready to get a flock of chickens and turkeys, set up some pasture, and buy a cow.  Just gotta get into that *&^!@! house first!