Website Changes

I've been doing some thinking, and I've decided to create a secondary website for all my dog stuff. It will be my "kennel" page, whereas this site will remain my personal/portfolio website. I will also be starting another blog on my kennel page, but it will be for recording my team's progress - strictly mushing-related posts.

I'm sure some stuff will leak over from that blog into this one, and vice versa, but I think it will help those who strictly want to read about dog stuff.

It might be hard to believe, but I DO have other things to write about, other than dogs. And I think this separation will force me to focus on some of my other interests... some of which have definitely been neglected.

So, in the coming year, I hope to blog about the following:

• Food - I love to cook and I love to eat. Hopefully I'll have some interesting recipes or restaurants to review.
• Art - Drawing has always been a huge passion of mine, and I admit I haven't been honing my skills. I'm hoping to create more art and share it here.
• Photography - My photo-taking has dwindled down to pictures of the dogs. I'm going to get back in gear and start photographing some other subject matter. (And the dogs too, duh)
• Homesteading - This is the main reason this website isn't just a simple portfolio hub for my work. One of my main aspirations is to create a food-producing homestead by keeping a successful garden and small animals. Obviously, this is somewhat on hiatus until A. it's warm enough to plant and B. I'm able to legally raise chickens. But there are always things I can read and write about, in preparation for my future plans. And I need to get my butt in gear.

So there you have it. I'll be setting up my kennel page within the next week or two, and I'll post the link somewhere pretty obvious on this site. Stay tuned!

Wordless Wednesday: Things I Like

Jessica's Favorite Salad

I've been having these salads for lunch the past few days, and they've been amazing. Here are the ingredients to make your own:

• "Sassy Baby Blend" lettuce -- substitute with your favorite kind of leafy greens, preferably home-grown! And none of that ice burgh junk. 
• Dried cranberries -- "craisins", if you will. These are key, and make a great snack when you run out of lettuce. They taste like Fruit Roll-Ups.
• Feta cheese -- Actually, any good sheep or goat cheese would probably do just fine. I find feta to be a safe bet, as some goat cheeses taste a bit too much like a barnyard.
• Raspberry vinaigrette -- This stuff changed my life. Well, my salad-eating life. I bought Old Cape Cod brand, but you could totally make your own -- which I plan to do.

That's it! It's very simple and tastes delicious. You may want to add a nut of some sort, maybe halved pecans or almonds. I'll have to remember to buy some next time I'm out.

The Harvest

Yesterday we drove up (er, west, technically) to Chester, NJ to visit one of my favorite farms. I admit, it's very commercialized -- it's as much a tourist destination as it is a working farm. But that seems to be the norm with a lot of NJ farms. I guess we're lucky it's that way -- I don't know any farmers personally, so I doubt I'd get the chance to visit a farm any other way.

We picked a bunch of apples, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and raspberries. We grabbed some other produce, cider, pumpkin pie, pumpkin butter, and fresh eggs at their little farmer's market. I love supporting local farms. There's something comforting about food that wasn't trucked half way across the country.

Afterwards, we ended up at our usual supermarket to pick up some stuff we couldn't get at the farm. While browsing, I noticed that the raspberries they were selling came from Guatemala! It's kind of scary to think about how far our food travels. And isn't it weird that we're eating the produce of places we've never even visited? It always bothered me that all my clothes and, well, almost everything I own was made far away, in places I've never seen. But my food, too? Something that only stays in my fridge a week or two, has seen more travel than my 23-year-old body.

The only solution is to take advantage of more locally-grown foods (and anything else, for that matter), and to travel more. I need to see more of the world than my raspberries have!

Official Summer-Goodbye, Labor Day

My town's favorite holiday has come and gone, and aside from a stabbing in my neighborhood (yikes), it went off without a hitch. We celebrated with our annual family/friend BBQ -- which gets bigger every year. New and old friends shared drinks, food and games all day. Even Dexter had some doggy friends to spend the day with.

Labor Day is undoubtedly the fastest day of the year -- I get up and go to the parade in the morning, and in the blink of an eye, we're all gathered around the lake for the fireworks.

I'm settling into a fairly pleasant routine. I have plenty to look forward to, which makes the monotony of the work week not so bad. This weekend, we're getting decked out in plaid and picking apples. Afterwards, we will hopefully make a pie (pictures and recipe to be posted here, if all is successful). The weekend after we'll be heading out to the woods for some camping. I'll have photos, even if it means layering my D60 in Ziplock bags for protection.

I'd like to end this post with a summer treat that Robert and I made, and will surely make again with different, more Autumn-y ingredients. We love smoothies, and decided to make them into a dessert of sorts. We purchased pre-made, little cakes -- I presume intended for strawberry shortcakes. We blended a banana with strawberries, yogurt and mashmallows (to thicken it a little) and poured the mix into the cakes -- topped off with a blackberry.

I wish I had some sort of whipping contraption, because the first few were a bit runny. We put the remaining cakes into the fridge, which made them thicken up and easier to eat. However, the cake wasn't as tastey. So all in all, an interesting treat -- but not yet perfected. I think I'll try again in a few weeks, with peanut butter, apples and vanilla cream cheese.