I love restaurant food. I love my food to be covered in cheese and grease and contain magic-restaurant calories and be made by someone else and brought out to me. Increasingly, I’m less interested in the part where it’s made by someone else. I really enjoy being at home, and I really want to know what’s in my food (even if it’s cheese and grease). I want to save money by making things at home. All sorts of reasons. Sometimes this leads to frustration, though, as the stuff at home tends to be “healthier”, and doesn’t always satisfy me when I have a craving for junk food.

The other night, I was hungering for something restaurant-y, but I didn’t want to head out to an actual restaurant to get it. I opened up my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook determined to make myself something yummy. I don’t have very much experience cooking, but I was sure I could find something. The very first item in the very first section (appetizers) was pizza rolls. Ah ha! Cheese! Meat! Bread! Hard to go wrong.

I found this post in my drafts. Apparently, I never posted it. It’s 5 months later now, and I’m well settled into my new home at The Wallow. What has happened and what has yet to come? Here’s the draft I wrote back in August:

“I won’t be moving to my new house in Tennessee until October. So much waiting! I’m reading up on bees and pigs in the meantime, as well as prepping for Burning Man and Alchemy, which happen between now and then. There’s lots to do, but I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming away, too.”

Every time Joshua or I makes something homemade (usually Joshua) that I’ve only ever purchased from elsewhere, I am amazed. Every time we go shopping, I buy bagels. I really like having them for breakfast and sometimes as snacks. This time when I went to reach for them, Joshua stopped me and said this would be the week we made them at home.

About a year ago, Joshua and I decided not to get married. Our reasons ranged from not wanting to support an institution that not everyone has access to to not wanting to legal co-mingle our money.

Just a bit after making this decision, we came across the Sandra Boynton book Your Personal Penguin.

Now that it’s 2010, I’m thinking towards the year ahead, which always involves a nod back to where I’ve been. The biggest whirlwind of awesome has been in just the last handful of months. In case you missed some posts, here are a few of the highlights for me:

For many people, today is Christmas. For me, it’s Friday. Well, it’s Christmas for me, too, but only in the way that it’s still Super Bowl Sunday even when I have no idea who’s playing, what time the game is on, or even that it’s happening at all until I get to the store and find out the pretzels are all sold out.

I use washcloths exclusively in the kitchen. Joshua feels strongly about having paper towels on hand for a couple of specific tasks. I feel strongly about paper towels not being visible in my kitchen, so that they do not accidentally get over-used. The end result is that there is one lonely roll of paper towels hidden in a little-used cabinet, but I personally only ever use washcloths.

Originally, this choice related primarily to environmental concern. Paper towels are single-use items, which seems especially grievous for a small task like hand-drying. Over time, I have become less vocal about attributing certain choices to environmental reasons, though. The truth is that I don’t know for certain how this single choice stacks up environmentally. For example, am I wiping out all potential environmental benefits of reusing by washing them in hot water? I don’t know.

Here at the Wallow, Joshua and I had a nice tail-end to fall with our new cat, Juli, usually affectionately just called Kitteh. Now that it’s almost winter and it’s much colder outside, she doesn’t have much interest in staying out. Very occasionally, she sits at the door to go outside, but then just a minute or two later she’s back at the door wanting back in.

Joshua and I have been trying to get pregnant for about three years, to one extent or another. We gave the non-medical route a year to work on its own. Then for a year or so we tried the half-assed medical route, which involved a doctor who would give me Clomid but not do much else. After two miscarriages, we spent several months on pause. Now, I’ve been added to Joshua’s insurance, and we’re ready to go the medical path to pregnancy, at least for a little while.

Remember the red tree in the now-pasture I mentioned in the Weeds to Pasture post on Wednesday? The quest to identify it (as, I hope, a Black Walnut) has a new development, so I thought I’d tell you the story from the beginning.

I’ve been trying to identify some of the trees and plants at The Wallow. It’s fun to know what’s out there, to know what’s edible, and to give things a name. When I realized there was a tree amidst the brambles in the field, I wanted to save it from the bush hog. There are no other trees in the main part of the field, and it would be nice to give the pigs some outside shade. Of course, I tried to identify the tree based on its leaves.