Friday Favorites for February 17, 2012

Posted on February 17, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in Featured 2, Friday Favorites, This 'n That | Leave a comment

Friday Favorites for February 17, 2012

My favorite thing this week was the return of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead,’ after a four month long mid-season break. I never would have thought I’d love a show about zombies so much, but amazingly enough, I do. Every episode keeps me on my toes and never fails to leave me hanging at the end. If you like ‘Breaking Bad,’ which you should, because it’s the best show ever, I would definitely check out ‘The Walking Dead’ as well. It’s an equally satisfying show and will make you appreciate how wonderful life is without having to worry about zombie attacks!

-Kate

Miracle car wash is amazing!!! There are many services they provide that I appreciate, but my favorite is their oil change special. Not only do they change the oil (quickly, might I add), but do a check on all of my lights, top off all the fluids, and look over the car. Then, after all of these tasks are completed, my car comes out clean and sparkling from the car wash and vacuum services. What seals the deal? The price!! For $29.99 I receive all of these services. Around this area, $29.99 is the going rate for simply a basic oil change. This deal rocks!

- Joni

I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I think working in a restaurant and then in a flower shop for 7 years ruined the holiday for me, but the fresh pasta and champagne pasta sauce that my husband brought home for us to cook on Valentine’s day this week was by far my favorite. I have been sneaking left overs all week!

-Shanti

Friday Favorites for February 10, 2012

Posted on February 9, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in Friday Favorites, This 'n That | Leave a comment

Friday Favorites for February 10, 2012

featuring Gayla Trail (a.k.a. YouGrowGirl) who has a new book out this week title Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces.

“My mother’d say, “Pick everything up so nothing gets wasted.”

I recently stumbled upon “The Gleaners and I,” a documentary that I first saw several years ago about the ancient tradition of gleaning, or rummaging for unwanted stuff. In the film, Agnes Varda follows many different types of people as they glean a variety of different things: primarily food that has been tossed away by farmers, city dwellers, and so forth, as well as objects, furniture, and whatnot that is used by people for their subsistence or turned into art. Through the film, the filmmaker herself is revealed as a gleaner of sorts: a gleaner of gleaners. And in gleaning these stories and experiences, she asks a lot of interesting questions about how we assign value to food and objects within a culture of commodification and over-commodification. Is commercial value meaningful, or arbitrary and shallow? What is beautiful? What is waste?

The story that is most poignant to me as an eater and a gardener is the first one that takes us to a potato field where tons of perfectly good, edible potatoes have been cast aside to rot as waste because they are too big, too small, or misshapen. The value placed on the potatoes that make it to market is purely aesthetic–they are unblemished and therefore deemed beautiful and commercially viable. It has nothing to do with nutritional value or taste.

As a gardener, I have hands on experience with food. I have a hand in its development and I see its progress from seed to harvest. I know what food looks like, feels like, and tastes like. Through this process, I am given an insight into what good food is and how to define it. Through the experience of being a producer, I become an educated consumer, and at times, the lessons of the garden have helped me to redefine “value” outside of the parameters of commodity in general. Beauty is messy, mangled, and imperfect. Some of the best things in life are free. My yearly income has absolutely no bearing on my value as a person. The fact that I can grow my own food is a skill that I can use for the rest of my life. Its value is limitless.

Watching this film again was a good reminder of these lessons that gardening has taught me. It was a reassertion of where I’ve been, who I am, and the life I have created for myself. It was a gift.

-Gayla Trail

House shopping can be extremely overwhelming. I know this as a previous Realtor, and now as a potential buyer. There are so many options even in our small town. Remembering details from each house, discovering new areas of town, determining the most ideal aspects of a home, and finding time in an already busy schedule are just a few factors that make house shopping overwhelming. This week, however, one house in particular made our house shopping experience amazing! We walked into a house that already had curb appeal, and smelled an amazing aroma of freshly baked cookies! It put us at ease immediately. As we made our way to the kitchen, we were enticed with “to go” packages of the ACTUAL fresh baked cookies. Turns out, this home has been our favorite so far. =) My friday favorite is the hospitality that homeowner provided, putting us at ease as we perused the premises. At that moment in particular, I absolutely LOVED house shopping!

- Joni

I distinctly remember being in kindergarden, sitting in a large circle with my classmates, participating in the elephant song (you know the one where you get to use your arm as the elephant trunk!) and thinking that Christmas break would never arrive. Christmas is exciting enough for a 5 year old, but you stack a December birthday on top of Christmas, and the days drag on and on and on.

The anticipation for Christmas as a five year old is the equivalent of the anticipation for my new car to arrive as a twenty eight year old. My beloved Camry drove it’s last mile on Friday January 13th, and since January 14th I have been twiddling my thumbs waiting for the day that my new Mini Countryman S would arrive. I try to limit the amount of times I log into the Mini’s Owner’s Lounge to check the progress of my cars production and transportation because it makes the days pass even slower, but today I logged on and found out that my car has been built and it awaiting transportation. My new little girl still has miles to travel before she arrives at her new home, but she is about to start her very first of many memorable road trips.

-Shanti

I used to spend a fortune to get my hair done. Every six weeks I would spend hours having my hair wrapped up in foils to keep my beautiful faux golden tresses in check. After highlights and a haircut, however, I was left with empty pockets and a few less hours in my day. Sometime last spring, I had an epiphany of sorts. If I let go of my need to be blonde, I would be saving about $100/month and could actually afford to do FUN things with my money! With a recommendation from the Free Range Chick herself, I picked up a box of Clairol Perfect 10 in ‘Golden Brown,’ and haven’t looked back since. I play around with different colors from time to time, and I must say none of them have let me down yet! It only takes me ten minutes to color my hair now, and at just $9 a box how could this not be one of my favorite things?

-Kate

Friday Favorites for February 3, 2012

Posted on February 3, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in Friday Favorites | Leave a comment

Friday Favorites for February 3, 2012

featuring DJ Phillips who has a new album which you can pre-order right now!

I have to start my Friday Favorites post with a confession. What follows are not this week’s favorites. I got food poisoning this week. So unless NOT spending my evenings sequestered in the bathroom counts as a “favorite”– and it does rank highly, I must say– I have to go back a bit.

Luckily, the week before last I was in Hawaii getting engaged to my lovely lady and generally enjoying paradise, so I’m not exactly lacking in favorite things! I had three of the best meals of my life on Maui including: a Mahi-mahi fish sandwich from Coconut’s Fish Cafe, a ridiculous Mediterranean Chicken Pita and a platter of fresh Ahi Tuna caught by the owner that morning at Pita Paradise (we went there twice) and an appetizer duo of Spicy Tuna Nachos and Pan-Seared Crab Cakes at a place called Cuatro. It’s impossible to adequately describe how much I enjoyed these meals. I want to never not be eating these things.

Pile that on top of sunsets every night so picturesque that it makes you yell at the horizon, “Really?! Again?!” and a trip up to the summit of Haleakala, a dormant volcano, where there are plants that exist nowhere else on earth and you are literally above the clouds. My cup of favorites runneth over.

-DJ Phillips

I LOVE my daughter!! She was ten months old on the 2nd, and I found myself reflecting more than normal on the intensely joyful and incredible journey we have been on. She is spirited, passionate, determined, and stubborn. I love watching her discover something new everyday. Currently, she insists on waving 58 minutes of every 60 (or so it feels) and the other 2 minutes playing pat-a-cake. Yes, she is ALWAYS on the go!! I have never experienced a love like this… And am so, so in love with that little girl!! I’m so blessed to be her momma.

-Joni

These past 3 weeks I have transitioned into running this blog and the Free Range Chick Etsy store fulltime, leaving 3 part-time jobs behind. As I’m sure you know, no transition comes without some hiccups. My main hiccup happened when I went from spending 8-10 hours a day on my phone and email to just a few hours here and there, leaving me with a lot of quiet time around the house. Since I now spend the majority of my time fulfilling Etsy order for custom Toms I decided to dive into How I Met Your Mother on Netflix which can easily run in the background as I embroider the day away.

The show has been highly acclaimed by my friends for years, but catching up on six seasons was a daunting task. After taking the plunge I was not disappointed. This light hearted sitcom nails both pop-culture and real life issues that everyone faces between college graduation and their early 30′s.

So if you haven’t experienced the joy of How I Met Your Mother I highly encourage you to try it out, and for this edition of Friday Favorites I am signing off the same way Marshall ended his letter to his 30 year-old self. Have a great weekend and A Licky Boom Boom Down

-Shanti

To be honest, finding a ‘favorite’ thing this week was a little tricky. I had a nasty cold for most of the week and spent the majority of my time lying in bed, surrounded with used tissues. Coincidentally, my MacBook got sick at the same time and was shipped to the Apple Hospital to get a new hard drive (among other things).

With all this time in bed and no computer to keep me company, I spent a good amount of time listening to podcasts. I downloaded the ‘How Stuff Works’ app on my iPhone, and it has a plethora of podcasts to listen to. Shows like ‘Stuff Mom Never Told You,’ and ‘Stuff You Missed in History Class,’ to name a couple.

One night I was listening to a show called ‘Stuff to Blow Your Mind,’ and the particular episode was called The Anatomy of a Hangover. Talk about mind blowing. I thought I knew exactly what was going on inside whenever I wake up feeling like death after a night of drinking, but apparently I did not! I had no idea that one of the reasons you have a splitting headache the next morning is because your vital organs are borrowing water from your brain, which causes it to shrink in size. I had no idea aboutmany of the specific processes that happen to rid the toxic junk from our bodies. It was very enlightening and will definitely make me think twice about what I ingest! You can listen to the podcast here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind/id350359306 or by downloading the free app.

- Kate