Mondays...

Honestly, I have to stop working. It's startling to note how I go from full of ideas and energy through the weekend to zero when I have to return to work on Monday.

Of course, the time change Sunday helped not at all.

So on this longest Monday of the year, I leave you with an adorable solution to living in a small space. Even though I live in the land of bigger is better I've always been intrigued by space saving concepts. I used to own a VW Westfalia which managed to fit beds for four adults plus a small fridge, a sink, a two burner stove and a closet within a not very big van. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to having an Ikea locally is because they've long been catering to a population with space issues.

Digging out

It took me twenty minutes just to clear the snow off of my car this morning. There was a good ten inches piled on the hood and the windshield, somewhat less on the rear window. Once I'd cleaned the car I drove over to Hyde Park, one of Cincinnati's tonier neighborhoods. There are always joggers in Hyde Park and today was no exception, snow and ice be damned. I saw a man jogging down the street holding what looked like a pizza box at first glance. When I got closer I realized he was jogging with a box of donuts from Busken Bakery.

The reason I drove to Hyde Park this morning was to meet a woman from Mohr's Animal Acres in Urbana, Ohio. They are regulars at the Hyde Park farmer's market and in the off season they've arranged a pre-order system and they meet their customers in a bank parking lot to drop off the orders. I picked up some lamb for my traditional Irish stew for St. Patrick's day and some smoked ham to put into bean soup.

So since I've set out on my quest for locally produced food during a Cincinnati winter I've found an untended honor system store, where you write down what you took and leave payment in a lock box, I've picked up pre-ordered winter greens from a porch in Wyoming and bought meat out of a parking lot. It seems so very clandestine for some reason and I'm having so much fun doing it. I'm really looking forward to visiting farms that will be selling peas, asparagus and strawberries this spring. Those goodies are generally in season well before the farmer's markets open, but I feel sure they'll be worth the extra effort.

Snow Shadows

Snow Shadows
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

The great Cincinnati Blizzard of 2008 has passed and given way to blue skies and sparkling snow. I put on my coat and headed out for a bit to stomp around in the drifts and make sure my car hadn't been hit by a snow plow (it's fine). Fortunately digging out won't be too bad; it's heading into the fifties later this week.

I posted just a few pictures in my Flickr account and there's a short, silly video at YouTube taken this morning.

Blizzard!

The predicted snowstorm has been upgraded to a blizzard. It's Cincinnati's first blizzard since 1978! Staying home from work today was truly a capital idea. I think we've had four or five inches of snow so far and we're expecting up to a foot total snowfall. I'm so very ready for spring.

I spent the day studying my Intro to ArcGIS course work and I love GIS. It's so much fun playing around with maps. I see a new career blossoming before me.

Finally, I leave you with this interesting New York Times article about MSG. I worked for many years in a Chinese restaurant and the "no MSG!" people always got under my skin. So many would claim to be deathly allergic but would still order the hot and sour soup or the eggrolls after I (not so) patiently explained that those items contained MSG and there was nothing we could do about it. I still think claiming to have an allergy when none exists does a real disservice to those people who have genuine life-threatening allergies, such as those to peanuts or shellfish.

Blue-Stemmed Goldenrod

Blue-Stemmed Goldenrod
Originally uploaded by lilysecret42

It's not the greatest photo in the world, I know. Back in the old days, before I carried a digital camera on all my hikes I used to carry several field guides in case I came across a bird/tree/flower/mushroom I didn't know. It made for a very heavy pack. Now I take pictures of the things and identify them later. Sometimes much later. I took this photo last October and have just now got around to looking it up. As best I can tell, this is a Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (Solidago caesia). I found it growing in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore park (which is a lovely place) and there was a lot of it around at that time of year.

In other news I had my yearly performance evaluation at work today. It was all very positive; there were about a dozen anonymous comments from various co-workers singing my praises and saying how much they like working with me. I'm going to file them away and pull them out on those days when I feeling all blue and unlovable.

Another one of those days

in which I am too tired to type very much. So, speaking of typing, I leave you with a Brief (but fascinating) History of the Typewriter.

Drum Roll Please...

I ran a mile today! OK, it wasn't fast and it certainly wasn't pretty and little old ladies out for a walk were passing me by, but I ran a mile, by all the gods in Olympus!

I'm dead chuffed.

WTF?

Today I received a letter from the folks who hold my Ikea credit card, one GE Money Bank. They explained to me why they couldn't increase my credit limit at this time and as far as I can decipher their reasoning, it's because I payed more than the minimum amount due more than once and because my balance decreased over time. I thought those were supposed to be good things. Their logic does not resemble our Earth logic.

California Woods

March has decided to come in like a lamb here in Cincinnati. After last month's bitter cold, snow, ice and slush, today's sixty degrees felt heavenly. I grabbed my camera and binoculars and headed out to California Woods to hike the trails. I was hoping to catch some early emerging wildflowers but there were none that I saw. I did spot my first Turkey Vulture of the year though. Of course, some of them don't migrate all that far south in the winter; they just mosey down to Kentucky or Tennessee for a couple of months before heading back this way.

The park is collecting maple sap for syrup and many of the trees near the nature center had buckets attached. One was overflowing so I helped myself to a few drops of the faintly sweet sap. It helped convince me that spring is truly on its way.


There was a nice stand of horsetails in the park and I hunkered down to get a few snaps of them. They get the name horsetail from the feathery fronds that sprout up later in the year. Horsetails are primitive plants, reproducing from spores or rhizomes and they have been around since the reign of the dinosaurs. The stalks contain crystals of silica and were at one time used for polishing and scrubbing pewter ware; their other common name is scouring rush. They prefer wet soil and I found these growing along the flood plain of the Lick Creek.

Grass Fed Beef

I decided to make some Pineapple Beef Curry from the ground beef I purchased at Red Sun Farm a couple of weeks ago. I tried today to determine the difference in number of calories per serving that would result from switching grass fed beef for the typical corn finished beef and it was no easy task! Even though I found many websites touting the health benefits of grass fed beef and many suppliers, virtually none of them posted a simple Nutrition Facts label. This wasn't due to unwillingness to provide the information, simply that it's not required for single ingredient items such as beef (or indeed, coffee) coupled with the fact that the nutritional analysis is very expensive. I did find several interesting facts along the way though, including:

• Grass fed beef has 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of fat as does corn finished beef
• Grass fed beef is two to six times higher in Omega-3s and other healthy fats and is much lower in saturated fat
• Grass fed beef contains more vitamin E
• The e. Coli count is much higher in grain finished beef than in grass fed

This information and much, much more is available at EatWild.com. After reading and weighing the pros and cons for a couple of hours, I had to come to the conclusion that there are only two reasons not to eat grass fed beef as opposed to corn finished; taste and cost. Some people find grass fed beef too gamy for their tastes. I'll reserve my judgment on taste until I've actually tried it, although I don't think that will be an issue for me; I mean, I've eaten moose and liked it. But grass fed beef is more expensive, mostly because it tends to come from smaller producers. For me, cost isn't much of an issue since I don't eat much meat (I've only had beef once in the past 5 months), so I can afford to splurge a bit.

At the end of the day, it's really very simple. Letting cows be cows, and doing what millions of years of evolution have honed them to do (eat grass very efficiently) is better for the cows, better for the environment and ultimately, better for us.

Still, after two hours digging, I didn't find a simple calorie count until I stumbled across the nutrition information for Wild Oats Organic Grass Fed Beef Burgers. Using that and some raw calculations from the information I did find, I've decided I'll assume grass fed beef has about 80% of the calories as the conventional stuff. That's good enough for my calorie counting purposes.