Eh. Dan isn’t going to write me the recommendation letter for Penland. I understand his reasons – he probably doesn’t even remember me. Let’s face it, I’m one of hundreds of menopausal overweight white women he teaches a year in probably a dozen or so venues – I’m sure that after a while we all…

Well, we’ve already started off the year right with black-eyed peas (Eden Foods canned but organic) and turnip and mustard greens from the Back Forty. I cooked the greens with a couple of strips of cooked bacon (certified humanely raised, and organic to boot) and a couple of cloves of garlic, also from the Back…

I did have to simmer the butterbeans a little more on the electric stove, but they cooked enough to be edible on the woodstove without me stoking it up beyond normal. I left the pot on the woodstove all night and most of the “pot liquor” evaporated and the beans had a bit of a…

I am officially on vacation. I leave on Sunday morning for John C. Campbell Folk School to spend one glorious week in a beautiful place learning to make wooden covers for books and Coptic and Greek binding. There will be autumn leaves, music, good food, great birdwatching, and dancing. This week I’ve made paper from…

We’re making our preparations for winter. Yesterday we bought a truckload of firewood from a different man who brought us twice as much for the same price as last year’s firewood guy. And the wood is good quality – last year’s was too green and I ended up using much of it for borders around…

John McCain must think that we all are morons. Here’s a message for Joe the Plumber. Get the hell away from John McCain as fast as you can. He is insane. I don’t think that I can listen to the rest of this debate. It’s like getting “Hey Jude” caught in your head, except it’s…

Charlie writes about the Cretan diet in today’s News and Record, the third and last article (that I know of) about his and Debby’s trip to Greece. Now if they decide to lead some group tours to Greece, that will be something else for us to save up for! Sandy would go to Greece in…

I came home early today to take delivery on my new washing machine. It is the first Energy Star appliance I’ve ever bought, and a front loader, which I have no experience with! So far it’s working like a dream. It has a second spin cycle choice, too, and from what I’ve heard, the main…

Since a search of News-Record.com did not turn up an online version of Charlie’s latest installment of his and Debby’s journey to Crete, as an FOC (Friend o’ Charlie) I’ve copied the article he emailed to me here. Wouldn’t you like for Charlie to start blogging? He is writing a book. Two Faces of Crete:…

It’s not like I don’t do much. It’s like, I don’t do as much as I’d like. You can check out Two Frog Home for the details and the purpose of the challenge. My goal is to make a new kind of book every month until the end of the year, when I’ll set myself…