November 5, 2015

This is an emergency 2…

Emergency Preparedness, Homegrown, Pacific Northwest, Seattle

OK, getting out of Europe trip recap mode and back to reality for a minute. Check out part 1 of my emergency preparedness brain dump here.

So we’ve got all of the supplies in order. What else are we missing? Ahhh, that’s right: food and water.

WATER.
We recently purchased a Berkey water filter. Seattle water is great, but our pipes and/or water heater aren’t in the best shape so we bought this bad boy for uber water filtration. It will come in handy if we have to snag water from an alternative water source like our Water Bob 🙂 We also have 25 gallons of water stored with this cool boxed water kit. The general rule of thumb is to have one gallon of water per person for two weeks, which we don’t quite have, but hell, it’s better than nothing! I also plan on adding iodine pills to the mix down the road.

FOOD.
Out of everything that needs to be prepped, food is where I’m the weakest. I’ve never been able to figure out a good system for rotation and end up wasting a lot of items that I don’t catch before they expire. There are also items that have a great shelf life that I’d rather not eat on the regular. Here’s a list of what I try and keep on-hand.

Rice and beans – I like the Vigo brand
Peanut butter
Oatmeal – Trader Joe’s carries one that rocks
Nuts – Costco has an assorted, no salt mix that’s handy to have around
Pasta
Power bars – Larabars are my jam
Rice
Instant tea and coffee
Sports drinks
Soup and chili
Booze!

I like to think that my gardening skills could come in handy too if there happened to be some sort of food shortage, but I can only count on that for four or five months out of the year right now. I do plan on winter gardening next year though so that could help stretch that length of time.

Oh, and I can’t forget Miss Stella! I always pick up the largest bag of dry dog food possible to keep around. She mostly eats wet food but I can never keep up with buying enough – it’s darn expensive too. At least I know she’d be OK crunching on some dry stuff if it came down to it.

OK folks, what am I missing?

November 2, 2015

Ljubljana travel highlights

Bled Castle, Bled Island, Dragon Bridge, Hostel Celica, Ljubljana, Ljulbjana Castle, Postojna Cave, Predjama Castle, walking tour

stayed: Our one and only hostel, Hostel Celica which was a converted Soviet jail. Each cell was designed by a local artist and ours included bunk beds with intricately carved wood work. Although a bit of a walk from the main core, it included breakfast and offered inexpensive dinner options too. You guys, having breakfast = key to success. I never had to wait for a shower in the mornings and they even gave you a fan in the room. This is a well-run establishment folks. Highly recommended even if you don’t think you’re a hostel person. Try it!

saw: Slovenia in One Day Tour. Highly recommended! It is a bit steep on the price side, but I think you get your money’s worth seeing some of the most spectacular sights in the country. Stops included: Bled Island, Bled Castle, Predjama Castle and a spooky trip to the Postojna Cave.

We took a free walking tour the second day we were there. Local architect Jože Plečnik pretty much designed everything in the city including the funky bridges. His name comes up A LOT. I will ace this Jeopardy question one day…Also, graffiti is a thing here. It’s everywhere and VERY cool.

A milk machine kiosk! Local farmers bring their unpasteurized milk and literally dump it in the machine for people to purchase. They even had a variety of bottles for you to choose from. Mind blown.

conquered: An 8 hour bus ride with two border crossings. With the train situation being a bit sketchy while we were there, I opted to book us a bus to Slovenia. We had to cross the Croatian border twice during that trip so there was a lot of getting on and off the bus with passports. I’d say half the drive was just getting on and off the bus.

Ljubljana has a thing for dragons and the Dragon Bridge fully represents that!

Be still my beating heart! A Farmer’s Market you say? Open every day? I’m packing up my bags and moving here right now.

Ljubljana Castle, which is also a beautifully renovated event space too. Get outta here. This event planner liked that.

other travel notes: This was by far our favorite city. Note to travelers – If you plan on being in this neck of the woods, give this country a few days. I wish we’d had more! What beautiful countryside ready for exploring!

I’m pretty sure we ate at a restaurant with foul (aka baby horse) on the menu :-/ Sorry Liz.

They are on the euro, which is nice IF you remember that AND kept your euros from Amsterdam. Yeah, we didn’t.

The statue in their main square is of a local poet and his topless muse. Not a war hero gallantly riding his steed, but a poet. Notice the tree to the left – planted to keep her lovely nude figure hidden out of site when you exit the church after services. That right there sums up this country.

At this point in the trip, we were OVER paying for bathrooms and water. Ljubljana was a breath of fresh air with free bathrooms and free water fountains!

Try those greasy bureks. Yum. And they make this red pepper spread that’s the bomb too.

October 29, 2015

Budapest travel highlights

Budapest, chicken paprika, Fisherman's Bastion, gelato, ruin pubs, Szechenyi Baths, walking tour

stayed: An air bnb in the shadiest looking building but holy geeze, it was amazing on the inside. It looked straight out of an IKEA catalog all shiny and white-like. I didn’t want to leave! I wouldn’t consider Budapest an easily walk-able city, but this apartment was in a decent location to all public transportation lines. It was also close to plenty of good restaurants.

saw: A whole ton of PDA. European teenage boys are the kings of it I think. On the bus, at dinner, on the street…you name it. We saw one try to get to second base on the tram! Sheesh.

A laid back ruin pub. As I recall it was a Sunday night, so things weren’t poppin’ but I could see why this outdoor bars were so popular.

The infamous Kelti Train station. We’d seen this place on the news a lot prior to our trip and I was a bit worried about what it’d be like there. We arrived on our second overnight train around 8:00 a.m. and found the station to be very quiet. As we made our way to the subway, we did see some tents and a few groups of people sleeping.

conquered: The Szechenyi Baths. We weren’t able to check in until later in the afternoon so figured chilling at the bathhouse was the best way to kill a few hours. The hot water felt SO good after another bumpy train ride. All shapes and sizes were present strutting their stuff. It’s a huge facility with three large pools outside plus a bunch inside with hotter than hot steam rooms.

Drying laundry on a train – check!

The highly recommended Absolute Walking Tour which included a strudel stop and a recommended gelato stop, which we made later that day. Oh and yes, they did show us the main sights in the city too 🙂

Fisherman’s Bastion – the best view of the city IMO!

other travel notes: They’ve got small cabins (basically a small closet) to rent at the bathhouse that fit all of our backpacks, etc. so we didn’t have to worry about storing our stuff in another location. Note to travelers – Bring a towel if you got it, or else you have to rent ‘em. OK to bring in food and booze too.

All of the buildings on the hill of the Buda side were destroyed by the Nazis so everything you see there has been re-built. A big bummer for this history buff because things felt a bit “new” over there, but what can you do?

The streets can look rough, but it’s totally safe to walk around. I’d feel totally comfortable walking around by myself at night.

Note to travelers – Order the chicken paprika with dumplings. You won’t regret it. Best strudel place: Reteshaz. Best gelato place: Gelarto Rosa.

October 26, 2015

A garden update

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these so I thought it might be good to review my goals from this year’s growing season and start to pencil in new ones for 2016. I mean, I am a planner you know! Looking back, I didn’t accomplish as much as I’d liked but it was definitely a year for learning.

GOALS for 2015

Figure out a rain barrel system and add at least 2 to house – D. Well this did not happen. After purchasing some supplies to start this, I ran into too many road blocks and gave up. Fortunately, our water bill wasn’t high at all this summer, even though it was a scorcher. I don’t think I’ll keep this as a priority as it isn’t recommended for watering vegetable gardens.
Add raised bed next to shed OR try straw bale gardening – C+.So this happened and it was a fail. I couldn’t keep the pests off them and every little seedling got eaten. I suspect it might have been because of the proximity of my compost pile, but either way, I won’t be trying this again. Luckily, I’ve got good straw for my garden next year.
Add fruit trees and blueberries plus herbs to patio bed – A+ on this one! We added four fruit trees plus more herbs this year. I hope to even add more next year. Muah!
Attempt winter gardening – F. This did not happen this year with Europe in the mix. I COULD have been a bit more proactive in August and I’ve still got this month to get things started if I really want to but I’d rather focus on putting things to bed properly to start fresh in the spring.
Add a bee house – C. I didn’t do this, but I did make a few bee watering ponds and placed them around the yard. So there.
Add more flowers – B. I loved, loved, loved sunflowers this year so will definitely plant them again! I had mixed reviews on my flower seed starts – the cosmos did well but everything else sorta flopped. Note to self: just buy starts instead of trying to grow from seed.
Add rocks to front flower bed and plant bulbs – D. I didn’t get to the rocks part as I’m looking for free landscape rocks but I did plant some bulbs, which didn’t fair well. I might just pull up the weed barrier and soil and let this bed go back to grass for lower maintenance.
Add tomatoes in front yard? N/A. I didn’t need to because they do so freaking well in the garden. We harvested tomatoes until mid-October.

GOALS for 2016

Make new raspberry bed next to shed and add new everbearing varieties – I think I’m going to try to order from Raintree Nursery this year.
Get current raspberry bushes healthy again – I just cut them all down (sad face) and am going to give them a second chance next year armed with organic fungicide.
Move strawberries to border patio beds and add new ones in main garden.
Add two blueberry evergreen bushes to the patio bed plus two to the front side yard – I’ll get these at the Seattle Tilth spring sale. The three I got last year rocked this summer.
Add two dwarf peach trees to the side yard.
Find a better way to net the garden. An ongoing problem…those freaking birds.
Build a permanent compost bin.
Divide main garden bed into 6 or 8 smaller patches for easier management. Add perennials and/or herbs to give it more of a punch and attract bees! Bee balm!
Prune apple trees. This guide is helpful.
Continue to maintain a pesticide free and organic garden!

OK, are you a crazy garden lady like me armed with a plan or do you let your planning happen more organically? Please don’t let me be the ONLY freaky planner here.

October 22, 2015

Krakow travel highlights

Auschwitz, Krakow, Main Square, Milk Bar, Night Train, Perogi, Wawel Castle

stayed: An air bnb on a bustling street right next to the tram. It was a crazy funky room in a shared apartment. We were only there for one night and had a bit of a shocking wake-up call when our host thought we were gone and attempted to start cleaning up our room :-/ I would recommend staying closer to the main square where most of the action is.

saw: Auschwitz and Birkenau. A sad, but necessary stop in our itinerary. The scale of Birkenau was mind blowing and just sickening. It was just rows and rows of old chimney stacks where the structures used to be. Our guide told us that the amount of visitors they see per day (up to 10,000) were the amount of people that were brought here daily during the war. Shudder.

We had a brilliant driver for the day though and chatting with him was very insightful. I really enjoyed grilling him about his country, the refugee crisis and his puppy Winston 🙂 He also helped us switch around our tour time so that we had more time in Krakow. Note to travelers – highly recommend this car service. Ask for Bart. He was really, really great.

Wawel Castle. Not much to report here, but walking the grounds were free.

The Main Square. Holy square! Probably the most impressive part of the city.

conquered: People watching and dessert in the square. Try Słodki Wentzl, a local favorite I’m told.

Our first night train from Prague. Ugh. Probably the single most horrible way to travel. Sure, it gets you from point A to point B but at the detriment of your health and well-being. I had all sorts of romantic notions of a slowly swaying night train but alas, this was NOT it. The train started, stopped, reversed and slowed down on repeat ALL NIGHT LONG. I was abruptly woken up all night long thinking we were at our destination.

Our first laundry wash. Granted, our host started the washer, but we proudly hung everything up on the drying racks. Ahhh, fresh clothes!

A milk bar! We went to this one. Basically a cafeteria concept made popular after World War 1 and carried through to the Soviet era. Now, they’ve become small, inexpensive restaurants that take advantage of welfare state nostalgia. I wouldn’t say this was our best meal, but it was a fun experience. And no, they don’t just serve milk!

other travel notes: Residential homes bordered both concentration camps and I wondered how people felt about living next to such horrible places. I suspect home prices reflected these less than stellar locations but still….Also, some people in our tour group took photos of themselves in front of every building in Auschwitz, which seemed very strange to me.

Krakow felt like a college town. Peeps were y-o-u-n-g making this gal feel o-l-d.

We were in Krakow on a Friday night and tons of people were on date night. Most women carried these cute lil bouquets of flowers given to them by their significant others. I found this very romantic.

Perogi = breakfast heaven.

Also, booking trains over the pond was harder than I imagined. I used this site to help me navigate the confusing websites. Also, trust your conductor to let you know when to get off the train. They start and stop a lot and we actually got off at the wrong stop. Luckily, ours waved us back inside before it was too late. My bad.

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