good news bad news

The goods news is that I sold two pieces today.

The bad news is that today's been a really rough day; I woke up to one of the most jarring messages of my life and it's been weighing me down since. I'm trying to act on it by being productive, knitting madly for Christmas and listening to NPR and whatnot, but whenever I slow down or stop doing what I'm doing I feel myself getting sad and upset again.

Oh well. Here's hoping everything resolves kindly and smoothly. And soon.

On a completely unrelated front, my boyfriend and I are embarking on kind of a weird project. We both have a really good mutual friend, Pip, who aside from being hardcore talented and awesome is also vegan. Before Thanksgiving Pip came over to the apartment for a couple small dinner parties, and coming up with interesting and exciting menus over those couple weeks was surprisingly fun - possibly the most challenge I've had in the kitchen in a long time.

So we're going vegan.

Kidding! Well, kind of. Me and Camden eat meat, and we enjoy eating meat. We're lucky in that we live in Northern California, with easy access to companies like Niman Ranch and Rosie's Organics, not to mention the local butchers and charcuterie stands at the farmer's market, so we can support companies that practice humanely and compassionately. Have our meat and eat it too, if you will.

But it occurred to me that I like vegetables, and - miracle of miracles - so does Camden. In fact, I think thanks in great part to the amazing produce we get from our Full Belly Farms CSA, Camden has recently started to enjoy vegetables that he wouldn't even have used as toilet paper a year ago. But now? Pile on the kale and cauliflower!

So, as an experiment, we're going to try to expand our cooking and baking repetoires by alternating weeks of our accustomed diet with a vegan diet, not as a political or ethical statement but just for fun. By not using dairy or meat, Camden hopes to learn more about slow-ferment breads and baked goods, and perhaps resurrect a second batch of sourdough starter (the first died an ignominious death, alas); while I'm hoping this experiment will help me conquer my trepidation towards Indian, Japanese and Korean cuisine. I only wish it didn't get dark so soon so I could take better pictures of the results.