boolar

y’ever get so bummed that you can’t be bothered to water the plants or feed the fish or pick up yer dirty clothes or wash the dishes or whatever? you know, one of those blah days where everything just seems so difficult turns into one of those blah weeks and the plants are wilting and you’ve misplaced the floor for all the dirty socks?

yeah, well, for me today, it isn’t just all of those things above, it’s also feed the sourdough starter and get the kefir grains into fresh milk and what about the kombucha and “what are you going to do with all of this rye and garbanzo beans that are sprouting on the counter and when are you going to do it?” and check the incubating tempeh or yogurt and water the plant starts that are filling every window right now and golly gee a happy hour cocktail over the crossword with maryam sure sounds lovely right now but all of that hard work certainly doesn’t.

my solution? prints. i love this lp.

bradley and i might claim that Harry Nilsson’s I’ll Never Leave You is our song, but the album we fell in love to is Howard Hello, a gorgeous album half made long ago by one half of Prints, Kenseth Thibideau.

This here Prints is different than that early Howard Hello. You like hand claps? You like grooves easily locked into? You like happy shimmery jangle pop well produced? You like Prints. There’s got to be some reason why Kenseth and Rob Crow work together so much, and I’m guessing it be the brilliant pop sensibility the two men share.

And this guy Zac, the other half of Prints? I don’t know much ’bout him ‘cept that one of his other projects is called Who’s Your Favorite Son God and that is brilliant.

Love you, I’m gonna go finish the dishes now. The tempeh’s alright.

Wondering what’s been culturing ’round here lately?

Bradley has brought Wild Fermentation back into my life as a holiday gift (my copy has been missing for some time now)… How much I missed Sandor Katz! One perk (of oh so many) of not having housemates is not having to worry about inconsiderate use of kitchen counter space– it frees culinary creativity much the way not having to worry about inconsiderate use of noise frees musical creativity. And with all this freedom, we’ve filled the living room with instruments and recording equipment and the kitchen with bubbling crocks.

In addition to old favorites sauerkraut, fil mjolk, yogurt, and soft cheese, we’ve got our first batch of sourdough starter (all rye) going, my first batch of tempeh is incubating, and I’ve got some adzuki beans soaking for miso. I’ve also started making buttermilk for my world famous muffins. But can I tell you how excited I am to try my very own Black-Eyed Pea and Barley Tempeh? Very!

Things are very good around here. We’ve mostly been focused these past three weeks on ending our addictive relationships to those drugs which are most harmful to ourselves, the planet, and other humans. Withdrawing from caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol is neither easy nor fun, but boolar loves a good challenge. Because all of these drugs either mess with your blood sugar (caffeine, nicotine) or are sugar (alcohol), we’ve found ourselves craving things like sweets and refined flour products, things we don’t normally eat. We’ve also been (predictably) irritable, tense, and anxious. And ravenous. Our solution to these problems has been to eat a lot of honey (we get local blackberry honey for around $20 per gallon from Glory Bee Foods), both on it’s own and with yogurt, and drink a whole helluva lot of herbal tea. Our favorites are calming herbs like Valerian Root, Lemon Balm, and Damiana, and cleansing herbs like Burdock, Dandelion Root and Leaf, and Nettles. We usually mix them in whatever proportion suits our fancy at that moment (we buy organic herbs in bulk from the Alberta Grocery Co-op or from Azure Standard). We’re also eating lots of fresh, organic vegetables, as usual, and big bowlfuls of air-popped popcorn (which has really helped with the oral fixation) and watching lots of movies (notables: Mahkmalbaf’s The Silence, Bergman’s The Magician, and Kusturica’s Black Cat White Cat).

After three weeks, I can report one thing for sure: our dreams are much more vivid (my understatement meter just jumped into the red. Our dreams are awesome!). Maybe it’s the Valerian Root (we are considering adding other, more exotic dream-inducing herbs), maybe it’s the detoxing, maybe it’s the intense emotional release that goes along with ending any behavioural pattern, maybe it’s all (or none) of those things… but our dreams are wicked cool right now, bee itches. One of the better reasons to quit drugs, in my opinion.