I like to make this salad when I pretty much have no idea what I’m doing with my life, but know that I want something healthy in my fridge that will keep for like 5 days and is versatile enough to add to most meals. It’s kind of like this blog – the main driving impetus behind it is ennui and hopeful creativity. Followed by sloth.

What started out as my mom’s Beet + Carrot Salad has become a salad with a renewed focus. Beets and carrots can be substituted with other hard vegetables (kale and cabbage come to mind). The strong flavours from the ginger, garlic, fresh herbs, and apple cider vinegar are the backbone, which improves (and mellows) over time in the fridge. Really great over fresh greens or on its own.

For the Dressing, whisk in a large bowl:

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

1 small clove of garlic, diced

½ thumb of ginger, grated

Salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste

At least two of the following: parsley, cilantro, dill, basil, chives or sweet onion. Minced.

 

Grate one beet and four carrots. Or finely chopped kale, or savoy cabbage. Or all carrot. Whatever, figure it out.  Add to the dressing; toss.

Optional additions: a squeeze of lemon juice, some hemp hearts, raisins, jalapeno (actually really nice minus the seeds!)

I recommend letting it chill for a while, as I said to let it all mellow. There’s raw garlic in there, man. I’ve been told that that shit’s cray, but it’s all cool, man! Just let it chill.

Shout out to the real birthday hero with that ever persevering push: I’m so sorry that I was so reluctant to leave your warm insides, MomButts. But can ya blame me?!

Also shout out to all of you who still choose to consort with the likes of my CRAZY. I feel very grateful when I read messages from far and wide, even if it was a social media artifice that reminded you to do so. You’re all swell and you make my heart swell.

ALSO shout out to whatever force that caused me to dive into the rabbit hole that is my old picture files hidden in weird places in other files. That was fun. Let’s do this again sometime.

Anyways. I’ll stop shouting.

I think I’ve come a long way.

❤

Earlier this Summer I was wondering to myself, “Gee I wonder if all that liquid coconut oil (in the 38 degree Kelowna heat) would take up some of the fragrant and ameliorative properties of say, cloves.” I LOVE the smell of cloves, so much so that I’ve put clove oil it in one of my pots of cocoa butter and now don’t I just smell like the sexiest cookie in town.

Yeah that inital cookie comment was just like a matador or something.

SIDETRACKED: Then I found this recipe.

I’ve read that essential oil of cloves can be diluted in a carrier oil form to be used externally to help alleviate muscular aches and sprains. Mom-butts (she loves it when I call her that) also found some wild lavender while she was out conjuring up the gifts of nature or whatever, and we all know that lavender is good for everything.

I also really love black pepper in massage oils, so I threw that in too.  Apparently it has anti-spasmodic effects as well.

So I wound up basically making this calming muscle rub, and if you look here at the first link, you’ll see that the finished product appears to be green. Mine turned out brown but it was a nice light colour, not unlike dandelion or Manuka honey. I intended to use it to lure people towards massaging this mess.

I think I’m about two pregnancies and a hefty weight gain from being disabled… Hopefully 😉

Instead I gave half of it away to my pregnant BFF, and half to my stepdad who refuses to drink water. When I showed it to him he started rubbing it all over his upper body, and appeared uplifted.

I need a shorter and more succinct name than Lavender Black Pepper and Clove Herbal Salve to Calm and Relax Marika’s Battered Turtle Shell of Soreness. Also doesn’t need to be so specific I guess. Suggestions are encouraged!!

Alright now for the funny story tie in. The recipe calls for beeswax and MomButts just happened to still have a chunk of beeswax that I must have given to her during one of my stints working at something-something-bees (somehow frankness and employment don’t always mix). I can’t even remember all the people I’ve given random hunks of hive to, there was lots of it laying around without honey or brood in it. She happened to have the perfect amount, too.

Something about the perfect design of the comb is kind of arty, isn’t it.

One of my best beekeeping stories is of when I got stung on the nose. Now, not only does National Geographic agree that getting stung on the nose entails some serious facial nerve pain that is worse than being stung on yo dick, but I also swell up like Hulk on a methamphetamine binge while looking at a bunch of assholes wearing stupid costumes. Not just to bee stings, to any bug bite.

So you can imagine my trepidation when, after walking away from my coworkers and animal-calling to the universe, I take off my gloves to promptly get stung 3 more times on my hands and arms and find the stinger still in my nose. After about 20 seconds, that thing has released all the butt juice that it’s going to and so without further ado, a montage of my life for the next couple of days.

 

When I came down with a rather pernicious case of bronchitis & sinusitis this Summer (which was completely resistant to the first round of antibiotics) – I came up with a method to get all the goo out of me as well as heal and nourish inflamed lung tissue.

If you’re not a pussy:

Set yourself up with tissue and a spit cup beside a bath. Fill a bathtub with somewhat hot water halfway. Sit in tub. Try not to reminisce about the womb too much because you have work to do, you sick fuck. Begin to fill the tub with rather hot water, and as you do this put a few drops of eucalyptus oil and/or Sunrider in the bath. Try not to open your eyes too much as you bend very close to the water to inhale the vapours very deeply. When you can’t stand it anymore and all of the oils have evaporated (very important), lie on your back and submerge thyself. Hold your breath for as long as you can before emerging to cough your brains out. The buoyant forces you’re enjoying underwater help to unhinge the stickiness.

And you’ll know what I mean by stickiness if you’ve been here. The gurgling, crackling, rattling sounds when you breathe, that’s oxygen trying to be friends with your lungs. All that mucus is totally cock-blocking you towards your destiny as a self-actualized human being. Usually after this bath treatment I would feel much better, but if this witchcraft remedy doesn’t work, go see a doctor ASAP. I didn’t realize how poorly I was functioning without oxygen until a second doctor prescribed an inhaler. What a shot of espresso/life force that was.

DHHC5 Project Presentation

This was my undergrad research project focusing on how different genotypes and neuron morphologies can result in schizophrenic and/or autistic traits.

I still hate the word. Slimy red things on my sandwich that need to fuck off. Tastes like a mixture of fresh cranberries and milk, which I have been served before with cereal. Acidic AF. Just no, alright? Don’t talk to me about it.

Well I’ve been converted to the world of thinking that tomatoes might be okay like maybe sometimes. I’ve always liked them cooked but “raw tomato” – what are we dogs here? I didn’t even like cutting them, and would for real ask the weirdos that wished for raw tomato to cut them they damned selves. I did that. What a cunt.

So this bitch done gone and contracted the bronchitis and sinusitis in Late July, after hauling lumber in a rotting shed while hopped up on cold meds and kindness. I couldn’t smell or taste anything at all for over two weeks.

I’ve been reading The Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking by Elisabeth Luard and using it as a food bible. And I’ve learned that the result of cooking halved tomatoes stuffed with garlic and herbs on low heat for over an hour is an explosion of flavour (YES FLAVOUR WITH A “U” WORDPRESS YOU FASCISTS) that works well as a side dish to whatever protein you’ve deemed fit for consumption, as well as a base for really good soups and sauces.

So now I want to talk about this recipe. I’ve modified it a little bit and the way I jot down recipes is a little different. I’m hoping that what Heidi SwansonHeidi Swanson did here http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/richard-olneys-garlic-soup-recipe.html at her recipe journal 101cookbooks.com is totally Kosher.

Provençal Tomatoes

8 large ripe garden tomatoes, like beefsteak varieties

3 tbsp olive oil

2-3 garlic cloves

1 handful of herbs: basil, parsley, chives, etc.

Salt

Use two cast iron frying pans. If you don’t own one, don’t be an idiot, go get one! And learn how to clean it properly, you’re not a goddamned farm animal. Cut tomatoes in half, remove seeds and that woody part in the middle. Heat the oil on low (3); add tomatoes cut side down. Fry them over the gentlest of heat for 40-45 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time so that the tomatoes do not stick and burn. It is this slow, patient cooking which gives the dish its unique flavour.

Peel, crush, and mince garlic with the herbs.

Turn the tomatoes over, and sprinkle them with salt and minced garlic/herbs. Let them continue to cook very gently on the other side – another half hour isn’t too long.

This cookbook is an honest-to-God treasure, I highly recommend looking into it.

Buy on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Old-World-Kitchen-Tradition/dp/1612192688 

http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/the-old-world-kitchen/