The Eve Of My Retirement

Tomorrow is my last day of work at the newspaper. I am throwing myself a small "retirement" party at a local bar/restaurant and invited anyone in the company who wanted to come by and send me off. I've been getting lots of encouraging words and emails...

Fiddleheads: Why You Should Forage For Food

My friend HK used to use the term “forage” for what she’d do in our college cafeteria. Like any cafeteria situation no matter how good, you end up having to look around and create meals yourself with what’s available… you know, unless you like having the same hot meal in rotation every three weeks.

The foraging continues in my adult life, only this time it is inspired by my grandfather. Pepere Bee* is always picking various seasonal crops and sharing them. In the fall, he picks apples from wild trees and potatoes behind the potato harvesters that leave the smaller, though still tasty, ones behind. (Note: You should probably ask the farmer before you do this.) In the summer, it’s strawberries and blueberries. And in the spring, it’s fiddleheads.

Fiddleheads grow near soggy areas in the spring. Essentially they are ferns before they pop open. If you are looking for fiddleheads, make sure you are pretty confident in your identification skills and try areas alongside (clean) riverbanks in places that are harder to access by people. They end up being less picked over that way plus, you know, if you are going to eat something that’s been sitting in water, it ought to at least be clean water.

Here is my foolproof recipe. My friend Jake says it is better then his Memere’s** and my friends raved about them at Too Cute Tuesday.

Fiddleheads A La Nicole

1 pound of fiddleheads
Good butter
2 bouillion cubes w/2 c. water
Sea salt
Pepper

Melt butter in a large pan on medium high. In the meantime, wash the fiddleheads at least three times. You want the water to be relatively clean when you are done.

Dump fiddleheads in the pan and saute for a few minutes.

Add bouillion cubes/water. Cook for 10-15 minutes until fiddleheads are tender but not “limp”. (I think a lot of people overcook them.)

Add salt and pepper. Yum!

Don’t want to forage? They are for sale lots of places around (in Maine at least), including roadsides and at the grocery store.

Eating seasonally: cheaper, healthier, and tastier!

*We call grandfathers “pepere” where I am from.
**We call grandmother’s “memere”. In both these words, the “r” is sometimes not pronouced, making the words sound like “mah-may” and “puh-pay”. Ok that’s all the French lesson for today, folks!

Too Cute Tuesday: Needle Felted Animals

Here at Craft Central, we’ve been meaning to needle felt for awhile. Unfortunately, this requires felting needles, which is a special kind of needle that I ended up driving the next town over to get.

No matter, with the proper equiptment in hand (and some fiddleheads à la Nicole in our stomachs) we enjoyed stabbing fiber and creating cute creatures!

Materials Needed
Fiber (this is cool terminology for wool/fur that hasn’t yet become yarn, you can apparently buy this in craft stores by the bag though if you have friends who are “into” fiber, they just have some lying around)
Felting needles (I got the variety pack of 4 needles for $6)
Styrofoam (stolen from workplaces)

Cocktail of the Day: Margaritas! (Note: Make sure you can handle sharp needles and alcohol before proceeding with the cocktail)

1. Make fiddleheads (you can look up a recipe or get my super-easy good one tomorrow on the blog!). Tis the season!

2. Pour cocktail. Have friends take out their bags of fiber and compare their wares.

3. Make a vague shape of what you want with the fiber. (ie My ant head was a small roundish ball and the ant abdomen was a slightly larger variation of that). Stab using the styrofoam to protect yourself, cutting board style. Stab evenly around the fiber, which will keep your shape round. The more you stab, the tighter it’ll be.

4. Despite warnings of sharp needles, stab yourself and draw blood. Continue with the craft because one has to work through the pain.

5. You can use the felting needles to also “stab” the multiple pieces together. Eventually you will have an animal, promise. Dorrie had a dragonfly, Sarah a mouse, Sue a fish, and Nicole an ant.

6. Embarass your unembarassable dog by sticking your new animal on top of her head.

Aren’t you crafty? And really isn’t it fun to stab things?

Want a heads up on what crafts are coming up? Just want to see our goofy outtakes? Be a fan of Too Cute Tuesday on Facebook!

Plenty Of Fish: Works For Me!

You may remember a while back, I interviewed my friend D. who had jumped into online dating. Using both paid and unpaid services, she was getting dates and meeting people. I’ve been watching from the sidelines, admiring her courage but myself a little hesitant.

It could be that spring is in the air but I thought I’d finally give online dating yet another shot.

I wrote my online profile on PlentyOfFish, uploaded a photo, and waited. (As a side note, turn off the photo rating option on your profile if your self-esteem is at all shaky. People apparently expect a lot these days!)

The initial response was lukewarm. I got two e-mails, one asking if I design websites (aww, using me already?) and one simply saying “yer cute” and that’s it. Not quite what I was hoping for.

I looked at my profile again a week or so later with a more critical eye and realized that while I sounded really nice, I also sounded kind of boring. I tapped into my slightly wacky side and rewrote. I then got 7 responses in 24 hours. Plenty of fish indeed!

A few dates into my great social experiment, I met a nice young man that I am now dating. For the moment we’ll call him John, since that is his name and he’s ok with me using it.

A few words of caution from my most recent stint in the trenches:

1) There are some weird people out there, on free and paid services. While most correspondence has been nice (if gramatically incorrect), I got an email that would make most men apologize for their entire gender about two weeks ago. (It was quite graphic and inappropriate.) Just hit “block” because just like in real life, you don’t have to correspond to anyone you don’t want to.

2) You shouldn’t have to convince anyone to be with you. No chemistry? It’s fine. I feel like I have a lot to offer and not a lot of time or energy to chase people who don’t agree. Keep putting yourself out there and eventually you’ll get chemistry on both ends.

3) Don’t be too nice. Ok this sounds counterintuitive but everyone out there is “a nice girl looking for a great guy who likes to be outdoors and cuddle while watching movies” or “a great guy who’s tired of girls who play games” (plus that last one makes it sound like you have issues with the ladyfolk i.e. is a big red flag to me).

Under interests, I put such things as “avocados”, “social media”, and “dogs with short legs”. Yes, it’s great to be nice but if you are selling yourself on these sites, you need to stand out from the crowd. Just like your high school English teacher taught you, show don’t tell. “On the weekends, you’ll catch me biking around Acadia National Park because I do love those hills!” says a lot more to me then “I like biking.” That said, don’t go on and on. A couple paragraphs should get people interested; let them ask you the follow up questions.

4) Just try it. Did you know one out of every eight married couples met online? Trust me, the stigma against this is almost completely gone. There are so many people on these sites, why shouldn’t you be one of them?

Oh and if you have some good online dating stories that went bad, at least you can contribute them to this fine website that my friend Mel and I are trying to start. One way or the other, you’ll get something out of online dating!

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