Two years ago we essentially lost access to some growing spots outside the unit we are renting. It’s brought my partner down a lot since one of their most-loved hobbies is gardening. We are waiting to move for so many reasons. The pandemic made it difficult to look for other options that are affordable, and housing prices have gone up a lot in the past two years. Our rent hasn’t changed here though and we are hoping it doesn’t go up before we leave. There are so many things in the way of finding stable housing that meets all of our needs and wants. I try not to think about it too much since I think a lot of people are in the same situation and there isn’t exactly anything to do about it as individuals besides wait (or find and join housing cooperatives, I guess).

I decided I wanted to try having a garden even though we’re not in an ideal situation after watching some of Internet Shaquille’s and Her 86 m^2’s (older) videos about container gardening. I started a container garden this year to try to at least have some plants and dirt around. I started collecting my yogurt containers instead of putting them in the recycling. I will start making my own yogurt once we have all the containers I need. I’ve been meaning to switch to making my own for a while—it’s really easy and way cheaper. I think we can switch to milk that comes in glass instead of the tetra pak cartons and get the bottle deposit back when we bring them in.

“Real” planters—ceramic and plastic—are way outside of my budget right now. These yogurt containers will be reusable for a long time and then ultimately recyclable when we’re done using them. They’re food grade number 5: one of the only plastics I’m willing to grow food in. For awhile I was planning on using our metal cans from canned food, but I’ve switched to dried bulk for most of our beans and pulses, so that doesn’t really make sense. Also, most of them are lined and I don’t feel like trying to figure out how to remove the plastic liner (I don’t care if they’re BPA free...I still don’t trust it unless it’s labelled).

Someday, I might use glass nut butter jars for growing herbs if I can find a tool that can drill holes in glass without instantly shattering it into pieces. I’ve seen it done, and I’ve worked with sheets of glass before, but I’m hesitant to believe pieces with concavity/convexity (are these words??? wow, after a quick search, they both are) are so simple to put holes in. Or, maybe I can use mugs that are broken or have chips? There are mugs that mean a lot to me that my parents have, but they have chips. I think about using them whenever I visit either of them, but they’re not safe to drink out of. It’d be nice to keep them by repurposing them into cute planters for herbs. They might be willing to part with the mugs if I let them know that I’d be using them.

Anyway. The company we buy yogurt from has two sizes for the yogurt type I get: normal household size and your-household-likes-yogurt-too-much size. Sometimes the store is out of the normal size, so my partner picks up the huge one. They’re both great sizes for different types of plants. We have one of the huge ones right now that I need to polish off. Once the yogurt is gone, I think I want to combine the huge tub with one of the normal yogurt tubs to make a tiered strawberry planter. I would probably buy a seed variety that doesn’t send out runners. Or, if I have time for the maintenance, I guess I could try to germinate some store-bought or farmer’s market-bought strawberry seeds. We’ll see. I think I want to get some dill seeds and lavender seeds, also.

My partner got me a small bag of organic dirt from our favorite local gardening store. I already planted some cilantro, parsley, chives, flat leaf sage, lemon balm, and tulsi. The seeds are from two years ago, so they’re technically expired, but most of them are sprouting. The cilantro and parsley seem to really like the spot I’ve set the containers up in. I planted two tubs of cilantro so that I can let one bolt to get coriander seeds. When the night time temperatures aren’t too cold in a month or two, I can move them onto our South-facing porch so that they get optimal light and relatively “normal” conditions (the porch is enclosed, but not climate-controlled). I’m really excited to see how much we get out of these plants.

I think the herbs I’m growing will compliment the CSA we’re getting this year, too. It’s the same organization as last year. I really liked the variety and quantities we got. It helped me grow a lot as a home cook.

I’ve been working out for about 6 weeks regularly now. My body is changing shape and composition slowly. I need to eat more and drink more water than before I started. I feel much better, though. I’ve lost a lot of my flexibility over the past 5ish years, and I think it had been contributing to a lot of my aches, pains, and physical limitations. I’ve been stretching my legs, back, and neck a lot. I don’t need my inhaler as often for things I would regularly.

I made my first cardamom bread braid a month ago, I think? Around that amount of time ago. I’ve made it two more times since then. The braiding step is my favorite part. The dough is squishy and elastic like bubblegum and springs back when I poke at it. It has a pleasant flavor and fluffy texture. I haven’t made any chai lately, but I think it would be a really nice snack with some spicy chai on a weekend day.

I like working with dough because it reminds me of playing with playdough and different types of clays as a child. Molding playdough and clay was one of my favorite creative activities. I could make almost anything I wanted with them. I remember making a poodle statue with porcelain at school. It was awful and looked nothing like a poodle (or a dog for that matter) but I was very proud of it. I gave it a frying pan to wear on its back for some reason. My mom might still have it. I also remember making a terrible pikachu statue when I was around 6 or 7. I tried to color his face with a scented marker after he was fired because I forgot to mold his eyes.

One of the people who babysat me as a child was a fundamentalist Christian woman, but she expressed her religion through a hippie lens. There are a lot of people like that in the cities in the Midwest. She was very calm, understanding, and engaging, but I still think I upset her often with the things I did and said. I didn’t mean to. Her son was a late teenager when I was around, I think almost done with high school? He had a video game addiction already, so long ago. I think that upset her, too. I’m not sure why she let him play them since they seemed to be absolutely against her morals. Sometimes I watched him play first-person-shooters while she was making lunch or dinner, and she’d be very upset once she realized where I was. He turned the blood splatter effect off when I was watching him play the game. I don’t know which game it was. I wonder where he is now, what he’s doing with his life?

One of the activities the babysitter did with me that completely captured my attention was making Christmas tree ornaments out of homemade salted dough. We made the dough out of flour, salt, water, and I assume a rising agent because I seem to remember bubbles in the end result. Then we rolled it out flat. She had some shiny aluminum cookie cutters for me to choose from. We used a drinking straw to cut a hole near the edge of each shape. When we were done with all the cutting, she baked them in her oven. Then we had to wait for them to cool. She had some sparkly craft paints to decorate them with, and then some festive bows to tie through the holes. My mom still has the ones I brought home in her box of ornaments.

Ah, I made falafel for the first time a couples weeks ago using Feel Good Foodie’s recipe. I really like her recipes. They’re easy to follow and every one I’ve made so far has been amazing. The falafels were phenomenal freshly fried. I used sunflower oil. I have never had one so moist (apologies for the use of the word, un-dry doesn't exactly describe it as well) from a restaurant or from the freezer section. I made some yogurt sauce and tahini sauce to go with them. I prefer yogurt sauce and my partner prefers tahini sauce, so we ended up just using the ones we liked instead of sharing haha. I look forward to making them again using my own home-grown herbs. They don’t reheat very well in the oven because they dry out easily, but they weren’t too bad when I wrapped them in a damp paper towel and microwaved them.

I forgot to start collecting onion skins for egg dying in April until recently. I had just been throwing the onion skins in my freezer stock jars. I’ve been using a lot of red and yellow onions in my cooking lately. Both make surprisingly strong colors for natural dye sources. I gave my last collection of onion skins to one of our friends the last time we were able to meet with them several years ago. She made dye out of them for us. She taught us how to decorate pysanky eggs using wax and kistka (the tool that delivers the wax to the egg surface). I grew up doing egg dying at home using crayons and the dye kits my mom bought at the grocery store.

I’m thinking about getting avocados to save the skins in the freezer for pysanky. They make a nice pink color if memory serves correctly. And purple cabbage makes blue, but I’ll just get that fresh the day of. I bought my own wax and kistka last year. My partner decorated some with me. We still have them on our bookshelf. They’re displayed in an egg carton. When we live somewhere more permanently, I want to make individual display stands for them and put them in a small glass cabinet or something. Egg decorating makes me feel like it is truly spring every year.

We almost made our own corned beef from scratch this year for Paddy’s Day. We couldn’t find Prague Powder #1 to properly brine it ourselves at any store though, not even the butcher. My partner got a small cut of brisket that had already been brined and I put it in our slow cooker for 10 hours. I also made a loaf of soda bread for the first time this year. It’s basically a huge buttermilk biscuit. Then we paired it with some strong fresh mustard and the sauerkraut I have sitting on the counter—which has caraway seeds. It was basically a deconstructed reuben sandwich without thousand island dressing or cheese. I enjoyed it a lot. We didn’t have any alcohol. I don’t particularly enjoy the taste or feel of alcohol myself.

I stopped working on my Blender donut as soon as I learned of the war. I had been waiting for a package from Kyiv before it started. It’s strange how life plays out sometimes. I haven’t picked the project back up since. I’ll get back to the donut later in the month, probably. I also decided to start my sweater over and use a real pattern so that it will be correctly proportioned. My body hasn’t changed *that* much from working out, but the shape of the sweater isn’t exactly what I want anymore. I always pick things up just to set them down for long stretches. I think it’s fine as long as I come back to them eventually.