Angela's Posterous

<---------DAY 4 and 5------------>

Intro: O.K. major confession here that I kinda got lazy on the challenge when it snowed all last week. How was I supposed to complete fistpump-worthy sprint workouts with my butt cheeks falling off from the deep freeze of winter? Or resist the warming comfort of chocolate cookies to distract myself from the misère of bleak grey skies? I wasn't supposed to, that's what. So here we are several days later with a 21-day challenge back from hibernation, hip hip hoorah-cha!

Success Score: 3/10 (minus 6 for above reasons, but also because thats how cold it was)

Random pictures of random meals: (1) Bacon with 1/2 avocado on top of cabbage-cauliflower steam-fry, (2) Another steam-fry of purple cabbage, chicken and mushrooms

(download)

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haha-woops-time-lapse-primal-blueprint-21-day-challenge-day-4-5-wCFuiiAqqoFiyqrAzCrE.zip (2.03 MB)

New Challenges:

(1) Stand-up Work Station

Hey, did you know that sitting for extended periods of time, whether at work or otherwise, is really not that very good for you, like at all? Yea, so personal anecdote, for the last few months I've been having hip pain. I did a few physiotherapy appointments, which helped me figure out what's going on in my body, and I'm now taking pilates classes, etc. But I discovered that the solution that did the most to solve my pain problems was divorcing my desk chair. While most chairs eventually do cause me discomfort, the one in my room has apparently been aggravating my hip, being lower and more annoyingly cushy than most chairs I guess.

Anyways, after investing my own precious pocket change in a wireless keyboard and mouse, I have set up a permanent standing up desk in my room. I love it! I can dance while listening to music on the computer, I can sway like a palm tree when I am not, and my body is perfectly comfortable- no lifted shoulders pain, no tilted head pain, no squashed hip flexor pain, no more painful toe jams in awkward places when clumsily getting up. The benefits are like, ennddleessss, my friend.

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haha-woops-time-lapse-primal-blueprint-21-day-challenge-day-4-5-iEHczBzuDctgqpmlGeAs.zip (2.15 MB)

I've inserted a fun/frightening graphic that criticizes the evils of sitting at the bottom of this post. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I definitely do with the main take-home.

(2) Technology fasting

This one happened somewhat unintentionally. Sometimes the wireless connection at my place decides to give up on life, which happened last week. For 5 days I was too lazy to reboot the whole system, which turned out to be very much in my favor. Without access to the internet at home, I spent my mornings chewing thoughtfully on my breakfast like a contented pasture cow, and spent my nights re-igniting my thirst for literature and lying comfortably in my bed digesting my day. I was forced to only check my email and organize all my biz when I commuted to work on campus. I noticed an increase in mental clarity, insight into my life and general enjoyment whilst savoring the small moments of my life with undivided attention. Nice.

<---------DAY 2 and 3------------>

Success Score: 9/10

Meals: Same as Day 1, plus 72% dark chocolate, and coconut milk & butternut squash stew

New Challenges:

(1) Play! Do something new, spontaneous, and fun.

During the second week of each semester, UBC's recreation centre offers all their classes for free. So I dropped into the Women's Self Defense class for fun, hoping to learn how to decapitate my would-be future pedophile prowler person. The guy running the class taught us a few useful things, like how to throw a decent kick, hold a good defensive stance, block punches and cause a lot of pain will very little effort, so as to buy enough time to run away. I had a good time beating the crap out of their practice pads.

On the 3rd day, my new spontaneous play time involved renewing my membership to the student recreation gym, and scrambling around "the climbing cave". I've decided to pick up the sport (rockclimbing) again. Happily, I ran across an old friend from highschool, and ended up having a pleasant catch-up hangout sesh as well. Unexpected double success!

(2) Calm, Relaxing Evening.

I usually do this, more or less. But the book describes an evening stroll, some relaxing activity, dimmed lights, and turning to this leisure almost as soon as it gets dark outside. So after eating dinner at around 6:30 I went outside for a 15 minute walk, came back in for a little guitar strumming and braiding friendship bracelets, reading, and just sitting, meditating I guess. It was very pleasant. Needless to say, I conked out right away and had an equally pleasant sleep.

(3) Full-Length PEM Workout

PEM stands for Primal Essential Movements. Fancy shmany paleo terms for exercises that are good for you. The book instructed me to do a 5-minute cardio warmup, then two sets of maximum repetitions of pushups, squats, pullups, and abdominal planks. So I did! As expected, I pulled some pretty facepalm-worthy numbers....

Set 1: 3 Pushups, 30 Squats, 0.5 Pullups, 20 seconds Abdominal Plank

Set 2: 4 Pushups, 40 Squats, 0.5 Pullups, 25 seconds Abdominal Plank

I definitely could have pushed myself to do more squats, and possibly one or two more pushups, but I was saving my energy for the climbing cave. In any case, hopefully I'll be able to do at least one pullup and substantially more pushups eventually!! Jeepers. For the sake of striving to acheive, here are my goals: by the time I graduate I will aim to be able to do 15 quality pushups, 100 squats, 1 pullup and a 60 second Abdominal Plank. No idea if those are realistic goals, but might as well try!

New Business:

After realizing I should be a little more well versed with idea of sleeping on the floor before sacrificing the quality of my sleep further, I poked around on Mark Sisson's (author of my guide book, 21-day Total Body Transformation, and leader extraordinaire of the paleo movement) website to find out more. It seems there is barely any scientific evidence on the matter, except for that the surface of your bed probably has very little to do with the health and alignment of your back. Rather, it is what you spend most of your time doing while awake that determines that. Grok, who was on his feet most of the day, versus your average sedentary modern day guy, would definitely have healthier alignment, and thus better sleep. So moral of the story for me is to just be as physically active as possible. However, I do want to be able to sleep on harder surfaces so that I can avoid sleep-deprvied crankiness while out on overnight trips in the wilderness.. Maybe I'll just remove my special memory foam and try the slightly harder surface of the mattress. If you want to read more on this subject, go here and here.

Closing thoughts:

Two things I have introduced into my diet this week is coconut butter and walnut butter. I bought brands from Artisana, a nice company that crafts all sorts of alternative butters and the like ("Raw life-energy from sun to plant to body"). Oh man, they are both sooooo tasty! The other day I ate 3 giant mouthfuls of walnut butter one morning when I felt particularly ravenous. And the coconut butter goes splendidly with just about anything; I've been eating it with my steamed broccoletti. So, I highly recommend, if you want something dessert-like and scrumptious, yet marvelously healthy.

Today I am thankful for butter :)

As of last night, I decided to embark upon a 21 day journey to build upon my knowledge of my  "primal" lifestyle in a way that packs the least coordination effort possible with the most fun.

It is based on the book, 21-Day Total Body Transformation: A Complete, Step-by-step Gene Reprogramming Action Plan, created by Mark Sisson, one of the leading proponents of, what he calls, "The Primal Blueprint".

The lifestyle regime can be refered to with the following terminology: Primal, paleolithic, paleo, primal blueprint. It refers to our hunter gatherer ancestors and their way of being, including diet, exercise, social interaction, and wellbeing in general. The primal community today is one of the largest health movements in the word. The idea is that our bodies have not evolved to truly benefit or thrive in the modern day lifestyle, whether it involves sitting endless hours in an office, or eating processed foods, like junk food, but also notably grain-based foods, like pasta and bread. Instead, the offer is that, from an evolutionary and biology point of view (A.K.A. darn good science), to maximize the health your genes were programmed to manifest (A.K.A. ones that still most resemble our hunter gatherer grandpa's) is a worthy calling. I am only scratching the surface of all what the primal lifestyle entails.

Inspired and converted by my good buddy Miss Binns, I switched over to this way of being this past summer. And I love it! I will never go back to the way I thought, lived, ate...with sugar and grains as my main source of energy, with thinking "chronic cardio", like treadmilling for an hour, or running my guts out is the ideal way to exercise, that thinking a high-paying desk job is an acceptable way to spend most of your life. And who knew bacon would actually be good for you? Good golly.

And, to answer your question, no this is not some stupid fad diet/hobby I've let myself be brainwashed into believing because I am a silly health nut with naïvety stamped on my forehead. I am of course deeply concerned about my health; which is why I opened myself to this way of being, and since it worked brilliantly for me, the proof is in the pudding. Er, the proof is in the bacon I bring home. I don't eat much pudding anymore. At least conventionally crafted pudding... Anywayz.

However, while I have definitely made many changes to the way I live and eat, for the past few months I have felt the need to deepen my primal lifestyle even further. Plus the idea of doing a personal how-many-ever-days challenge has appealed to me for a long time now. So here I am. And here I go.

<----------DAY 1------------->

Success score: 7/10

Breakfast: Steamed Kale, 3 strips of bacon, cabbage omelette, alkalizing lemon water

Lunch: Coconut-milk based curry chicken with cauliflower and cabbage, on top of oven-baked spaghetti squash

Dinner: Steamed broccoletti with half an avocado and two tablespoons of coconut butter, 4 whole raw carrot sticks

(download)

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grok-on-primal-blueprint-21-day-challenge-day-1-nwDwyrDsHiqhGsgpebJA.zip (2.17 MB)

New Challenges: (1) Increasing daily movement, (2) sleeping on the floor, (3) more challenging yoga classes, (4) Bedtime life meditations.

(1) Increasing daily movement.

I mostly failed in this department. Not to say I did not move at all - in total I walked 20-25 minutes getting to places on campus and whatnot... but fairly negligible, especially considering its what I have already been doing anyway. So, fail.

(2) Sleeping on the floor.

I succeeded in completing the task, but failed to really benefit from it. As to be expected though. To go from sleeping-on-clouds intergalactical-worthy memory foam, to the cold, hard, mean-looking stretch of my floor, does not necessarily make for a particularly restful sleep. Last night I seemed determined to just be disciplined and sleep like this until I get used to it, but on second thought, taking away a good nights sleep usually results in a sick, despicable and unhappy me, so maybe I'll save that for some other time...

(3) More challenging yoga classes.

Today I attended my first Vinyasa yoga class! I have been getting a little too comfortable in the easy, relaxing sways of Hatha and Yin classes. This class met my expectations by making me perform just a little too many downward dogs... but I made it through without scowling viciously at my instructor. Success!

(4) Bedtime life meditation.

Part of my healthy enlightenment includes "tending to the garden of my mind", as I like to say ever since I read Jill Bolte Taylor's wonderful book, "My Stroke of Insight". I made this "life meditation" thing up the other night. Every night before I go to bed, I would like to create some sort of meditation for myself that nurtures my sense of wellbeing and helps calm the throws of my turbulent gah-I-really-want-to-eat-bacon-bourbon-brownies-every-moment-of-my-life mind. Tonight, I am going to start my gratitude journal as a new ritual. I bought myself a cute little 2012 organizer, in which for each day I will write a phrase of thanks for something that happened that day. Today, it is: "I am thankful for my ability to eat two cookies this afternoon without mentally punishing myself about it, despite my supposed commitment to this 21-day primal challenge. Life is nice when you are able to openly welcome and accept your flaws, and even find them weirdly virtuous". Har har, the things people do to justify stuffing cookies in their mouths.

Closing thoughts:

Good thing I am going public with this, otherwise I would probably not follow through on the challenge. As our prototypical hunter gatherer person, Grok, would say....Grok on!

Inspired and encouraged by what I discovered at the Hapa-Palooza Festival in September, I excitedly attended Jeff Chiba Stearn's Retrospective to watch a screening of One Big Hapa Family as part of the Vancouver Asian Film Fesitval this past Wednesday.

Oh man!!! It was super duper excellent. I almost felt like I was finally sitting in a church designed for me or something. Watching the movie and hearing Jeff's stories was SO self-validating and fulfilling. It was like Jeff was a priest, or a missionary, and he converted me into one of his disciples. Hahah, I like extravaganzifying metaphors.

(download)

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one-big-hapa-family-wsrxJbCjdjbbqobmupll.zip (373 KB)

Anyway, here are the golden nuggets from this experience I would like to share:

(1) Hapa people need to refer to themselves as whole people.

Because we are whole people! Describing ourselves as 1/2 this, 1/4 that, divvying up our identity into fragments and fractions is not healthy. The first thing we should think when asked about our identity is - I am... Canadian! or Hapa! We should explain/think of our mixed rootedness as secondary to that. Here is an excellent clip from the movie that touches on this notion:

(2) We should go through life always questioning ourselves - "Who am I?".

It is fine to not have a clear grasp on our ancestral identity. It might be that hapa's have an advantage to having such complex identities because it keeps us on our toes through life, allows ways for us to come face to face with ourselves constantly and thus become stronger in our resolve, our grounding and vision in life.

(3) It is intriguing and important to consider how we are moving forward as an increasingly ethnically-racially blended society.

One of Jeff's pointed questions in the movie is if the increasing profuseness of hapa people is ending multiculturalism. This question boggles my mind! Does that mean we are entering an age of...interculturalism? or just culturalism? or something else? And what does this mean for my work as a sustainability leader? Can hapa people be the bridge, the connectors, the conveners of different people in the move forward to participatory democracies and sustainable communities of solidarity?

(4) We are entering a world of increasing social complexity.

I am just dancing giddily on the tip of the iceberg here. This idea, as well as my other golden nuggets, are all really new to me. I look forward to talking with you about these things, and exploring what this all means in more depth!

If you're curious about the movie, Jeff's website is great to peruse. Below I've pasted the 'about' blurb:

"After a realization at a family reunion, half Japanese-Canadian filmmaker, Jeff Chiba Stearns, embarks on a journey of self-discovery to find out why everyone in his Japanese-Canadian family married interracially after his grandparents’ generation. 

This feature live action and animated documentary explores why almost 100% of all Japanese-Canadians are marrying interracially, the highest out of any other ethnicity in Canada, and how their mixed children perceive their unique multiracial identities. 

The stories from four generations of a Japanese-Canadian family come to life through the use of innovative animation techniques created by some of Canada’s brightest independent animators, including, Louise Johnson, Ben Meinhardt, Todd Rams

ay, Kunal Sen, Jeff Chiba Stearns, and Jonathan Ng.  One Big Hapa Family challenges our perceptions of purity and makes us question if mixing is the end of multiculturalism as we know it."

I would like to introduce you to four new members of my family: Gingered Carrot, Sauerkraut, Pickled Beets, and Kimchi!

Currently, the gang looks like it is just chillin' out on the ledge outside my room. However, don't let those shiny faces fool you. In truth, they are actually having a wild party on the micro-scale.

They are undergoing Wild Fermentation.

Whassat you say?? According to the mother webpage:

**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**

Wild fermentation involves creating conditions in which naturally occurring organisms thrive and proliferate. Fermentation can be low-tech. These are ancient rituals that humans have been performing for many generations. They are a powerful connection to the magic of the natural world, and to our ancestors, whose clever observations enable us to enjoy the benefits of these transformations.

Wild foods, microbial cultures included, possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. These microorganisms are everywhere, and the techniques for fermenting with them are simple and flexible.

By eating a variety of live fermented foods, you promote diversity among microbial cultures in your body. Biodiversity, increasingly recognized as critical to the survival of larger-scale ecosystems, is just as important at the micro level. Call it microbiodiversity. Your body is an ecosystem that can function most effectively when populated by diverse species of microorganisms. By fermenting foods and drinks with wild microorganisms present in your home environment, you become more interconnected with the life forces of the world around you. Your environment becomes you, as you invite the microbial populations you share the earth with to enter your diet and your intestinal ecology.

Wild fermentation is the opposite of homogenization and uniformity, a small antidote you can undertake in your home, using the extremely localized populations of microbial cultures present there, to produce your own unique fermented foods. What you ferment with the organisms around you is a manifestation of your specific environment, and it will always be a little different.

The prized cultures of a San Francisco sourdough, or the finest Bleu cheese, have their roots in wild fermentations that took place in someone’s kitchen or farmhouse long ago. Who knows what compelling healing flavors could be floating around in your kitchen?

**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**

Haha, man I love this stuff. So fascinating and so WILD.

Thanks to another awesome workshop organized by The World in a Garden, I have learned how to make some wild fermented foods for myself, as you can see! Our foodie-workshop-guru-facilitator was Julie Beyer, a sweet and passionate lady of many talents, and who runs her own business, For the Love of Food. According to her instruction, I need to wait approx. 3 days for my new food family to ferment to a desirable state.

I absolutely can't wait to burn my tongue off with kimchi, to pucker my face with sauerkraut, to clear my sinuses with gingered carrot and cleanse my liver with pickled beets. So far I have laughed in the face of the Inevitable-September-BackToSchool-Sickness-Sasquatch monster, and I will slay it in the grande finale of september's last week with my super-micro-biological army.

Mwahahahaha!

Check out some pics of the event here!

All my life, 99% of the new people I meet always ask me this question, usually within like 2 minutes: what is your background/ethnicity?? And 99% of those times I make 'em guess, to make it funner for myself. This is what happens to halfies like me- the ethnically amgibuous, mix-mash-mystery faces of the post-alter-modern globalized world. Because my blood traces to places all over the world, I've always struggled to figure out the meaning of my culturaland ethnical identity, and how I should embrace my roots. Should I become involved with the filipino community? The First Nations/aboriginal community? Learn about the history of all my ancestry and develop some sort of spiritual connection to this? Or should I be sated as a pure canadian, since that is the culture I was born into and grew up in? All of the above??? I don't know. It's kinda confusing and a little overwhelming to think about sometimes.

Confusion aside, today I had the immense joy of checking out the first ever Vancouver-based celebration of people like me: the Hapa-Palooza Festival: A Celebration of Mixed Roots Arts and Ideas! I was so ecstatic when I found out about it, I was like, "HOLY GUACAMOLE! Finally, something ethnical that speaks to me, that acknowledges my existence!!! So I'm maybe not as marginalized as I thought!"

And when I thought about it, I realized, yea, you know what, the mixed race demographic is probably becoming pretty big now. In fact, I can think of quite a few of my friends who are mixed race, perhaps even most of my friends. I'm guessing I'm among the second generation of hapa's, which is probably why the cultural acknowledgment of this has been slow to surface.

The festival spanned four days, and I dropped in on the last, the big Festival day of free concerts and a community booth area in Robson Square. I toured all the booths and watched the performance stage for an hour.

Needless to say I was very pleased by my experience. I learned about the need for mixed-raced blood and marrow donors (MixedMarrow and OneMatch Donor Drive), the existence of mixed-race arts businesses and initiatives (The Eatery, Ricepaper Magazine, Rabbit-fool Press, MixedMe), the talent of mixed-race artists (The Whitridge Brothers, Jocelyn Pettit Band, Chibi Taiko, Ndidi Cascade and Deanna Teeple), and of the need for dialogue around mixed-race issues through movies like One Big Hapa Family ("and you thought your family was mixed up!).

One of the performances I was particularly tickled by was Kathara. Partly because of the mixoticness (mixed + exotic) and folkiness, but also because it directly represented my ethno-situation:

Founded by Elenita “Boots” Dumlao and under the artistic direction of Filipino-Canadian Babette Santos, Kathara Canada fosters awareness of Philippine indigenous identity through theatre, traditional and contemporary music, dance and martial arts. Their colorful costumes, indigenous sounds with unique instruments and variety of neo-ethnic dance, martial movement, represent how beautifully diverse the pre-colonial Philippine roots really are. Kathara Canada members, although born in the Philippines, Canada or of blended origins, are all very passionate about connecting and exploring their Filipino heritage and sharing their experiences. Members occasionally travel to the Philippines to study with the Masters in dance or Martial arts, musicians, artists, community organizers, and indigenous groups.  In the spirit of intercultural exchange, Kathara invites guest artists or collaborates with Vancouver’s World Music Musicians to explore the Philippines and its interwoven ancient history with linkages to India, China, Islam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Kathara Canada is committed to the preservation of all indigenous cultures and creating peace through art.

I am also pleased to learn that the organizers intend to continue Hapa-palooza as an annual event. I am very much looking forward to next year's festival! In the mean time, I have a lot of resources to chew on. I'll be looking forward to watching a screening of One Big Hapa Family and browsing hapa stories on the websites of those hapa initiatives. Maybe I'll even invite a bunch of my hapa friends for a fun sushi night at the Eatery to dialogue about our hapa-ness :)

Just for fun, take a look at my parents, from whom I inherited my silly genes:

(download)

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the-hapa-palooza-festival-gung-haggis-fat-choy-kgfnrcluIkdiHudowhiE.zip (605 KB)

And last and actually least, my amateur photos of the festival:

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I completed the following reflection for the course I took earlier this summer (SFU Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue: Wilding Vancouver). I spent a lot of time thinking and writing this and consider it to be one of my best pieces of writing, and, more importantly, a subject close to my heart that I would like to share. I welcome your thoughts, ideas, personal stories.

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Friday, May 27, 2011

The concept of “flow” keeps weaving in and out of my life in the last 2 months.

First, it was when my roommate was talking about an article she read about it. It was described as a state of total submersion in the activity at hand, so that time ceases to be noticed. You become so ‘lost’ in what you are doing that half an hour or three hours can pass and you would not know because it feels like either no time or eternity has just transpired; a timelessness of a sort. It was said in this article that those people lucky enough to be in flow state most of their lives tend to be happier, successful people.

Then, at the end of April, I travelled to a secluded yoga retreat on the lush green side of Molokai, Hawaii, where I experienced an elongated state of flow. My past and future ceased to matter to me as I completely enjoyed my vacation, concentrating myself into the practice of asthänga yoga in nature, and feasted my senses on the freshness, vivacity and vigor of tropical Hawaii; the ocean, the wind, the jungle noises and the sun. I had barely a care in the world. My mom was there to take care of details, and the retreat owners prepared our food, all of which was organic and raw and most of which came from their garden, the surrounding trees, or from elsewhere in the Hawaii locale. I was completely at ease with the flow of ease. Thoughts about the past and future dipped into my thoughts on occasion, but I just let them in and out, like rain sliding off a leaf, effortless. I do not think I have ever been happier and so relaxed for so long.

Then I recently watched Martin Seligman’s TED talk on the state of psychology. In his talk he used the findings of positive psychology to define 3 kinds of happy lives: the pleasant life, the good life and the meaningful life. The pleasant life is hedonistic, the meaningful life is devoted to a cause greater than oneself (advocacy, community service, benevolence, etc.), and the good life belongs to one in constant states of flow. For instance, states of flow can be achieved whilst engaging in a favorite hobby, like knitting, or watching sports (so, like, the Canucks going to the finals is a really, really good thing for Vancouver…).

Then flow has come up in this class, where we tried to learn about it through ‘experiencing’ Still Creek and its surrounding area. There was this metaphor of water, of a stream and the human attempt to tame it with construction, concrete and fences, and how this was a bad thing.

To flow, to be flow, seems to be another incarnation of what is wild. More and more I am finding this concept of wild to mean goodness, happiness, an integral part of freedom, self-empowerment, reaching human potential, de-structuralizing and de-stressing oneself, wading through the jumble/jungle of one’s complex mind without panicking about the possibility of sinking. There’s an element of let go, a que sera sera, a laissez faire, mixed with a determination to live life as you will.

There also seems to be a twinned element of creation and connection that comes out of that “que sera sera” space. Flow seems neutral, unbiased, without direct purpose, and it somehow becomes positive (helpful to human survival and thriv-al). I realize that this reflects the way of the natural world. What becomes a fully functioning ecosystem becomes that way because of wildness; the flow of energy through biology and chemistry and physics, dancing a seemingly magical tango of natural selection, evolution, symbiosis, photosynthesis. To let flow the world means to let the patterns of the universe swirl into a cathedral of structure. To let wild is the dance between the twins of chaos and design.

I find some of the best things have happened to me and the best ideas have occurred to me when I am in flow. When I command myself to create something and empty a space in my mind, nothing happens. The magic happens only when the seeming unintentional currents of my mind flow in. It’s like trying to fall asleep. It cannot happen through conscious will, it is more of a letting go, an effortless, mindless submersion into the flows of a running stream.

Why do I think ‘flow’ is important? What about it has resonated so deeply with me? Because.. I feel that a lot of good things in my life have happened because of flow. Because it keeps coming up from people I respect and trust who have been thinking about sustainability and prosperity and health (which is what I have been thinking about a lot). Because that guy on the TED Talk has access to a robust network of scientific evidence that has determined living in flow is a large part of what makes people happy, and I believe in this credibility. Because I want to embrace and flourish the wild in me and flow with the whims of time and space and movement. What should I do with myself? What is my path? What wave should I surf my boogie board? Maybe I should just have faith in myself and in the wildness of the world, and before I even know it, I will be on that wave. Gosh darn, I am probably already on it right now.

One thing I definitely missed out on in my childhood was climbing trees. I have climbed quite a few large ones this summer, and it is so liberating! Scary, and potentially prone to accident, but SO, MUCH, FUN! Being someone my size is extra fun too, because, even though being short sometimes means I cannot reach a branch and have to exert more scrambling force, it also means that I can balance on lighter branches and squeeze through tighter spots.

My tree climbing capabilities really paid off yesterday when, along with some good friends of mine, I foraged wild fruit from an abandoned house. After spending an hour picking blackberries along the fence, we went inside the backyard and spotted a tree sprouting many apples for a-pickin'. I consequently spent more than an hour scrambling up and around three different trees that had intersecting branches with each other, allowing me to make fancy dancy maneuvers into acrobatic harvesting positions.

Me, high up nestled cheerfully in the trees!

We collected so many apples!!!!! By the end of it I was pretty exhilerated by the bounty I collected, albeit fairly scratched up from pokey sticks and blackberry vines, as well as sweaty and floppy-limbed. I woke up really sore today. Talk about a dynamic workout in the wild! I've got the swelling battle wounds to prove it! Oh yeahhhh

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how-to-be-pawesome-possum-GmmeEAtifsbohmgfqBvE.zip (3.81 MB)

Since we collected way more apples than we could realistically eat before mushiness settles in, I volunteered to take lots of them home and dehydrate them into apple fritters for everyone.

Reflecting back on this experience has made me realize that I definitely want to take more opportunities to find climb-able trees (maybe make my own map of the City's "forest gym"...get it- forest gym, not jungle gym?), and to attempt tree-fruit-harvesting sans équipement. One cool option, though I doubt this will mean I get to climb trees, is to volunteer with The Vancouver Fruit Tree Project Society. Or maybe I'll just go back to that abandoned house again and pick the pear tree that is sure to be ripe eventually.... :)

All this wildergobbling and freefrolicking sparked an interesting discussion on whether we could live in the city practically for free. We figured with a little upfront money, you pretty much could, given a little guts and gusto, a little spite in your spit, and a little grit in your thrift. If you catch my drift. I am actually seriously considering this possibility.

As some know, I have a serious relationship with the UBC Farm, the only working farm in the City of Vancouver. One of the manifestations of this relationship is the Farm's CSA Box Program, of which I am a member.

Don't know what a CSA Box Program is? Well, my goodness! Let me tell you, it's a source of great pleasure in my life right now.

So basically...

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The deal is, they give me lots of fresh produce from June to October, and in return I give them $25 every week for each box, totalling 20 boxes by the end of it. It is a way for me to call dibs, so to speak, on UBC Farm food, but it is also insurance for the Farm. I am giving them guaranteed income, even if I get less produce or if I pay more for the produce as compared to elsewhere. That being said, I get extra produce at times of abundance! As it says on the Farm website, the program is a "shared risk and reward." Reward indeed.

I also have the option of "add-ons". I pay extra if I want eggs, flowers, or more produce. I currently have the egg add-on, but since their eggs are in such high demand, I am only allowed one dozen eggs every two weeks. Hands-down, UBC Farm eggs are the best I've ever had! Great muscle tone, great yolk colour and absolutely scrumptious! Did I mention they come from beaufitul organic, free-range chickens, whom I've met?

In general, I have found that UBC Farm produce is extremely delicious. Organic, fresh, local...It's as local as I can manage being a student living on campus. I only need to bike for 10 minutes to get there. Gee, life is hard.

Another perk is that I get to explore the local vegetable palette and broaden my cooking repertoire. I've tried some veggies I've never tasted, and I now know the names of some of the things I have eaten before. It also makes for great fun having someone else choose what kind of food I'm eating each week. It's like a christmas gift surprise for my stomach, all the time.

My stomach's favorite surprises from the CSA box include: Russian Blue potatoes (or as my mom and I affectionally call them- purple potatoes), purple basil, flower petals, raspberries, leek (specifically its garlic-like bulb), fennel and mini cauliflowers. Although I bought this from their regular market, I also really liked christmas mint, which I put in my salads.

Here are pictures of what my CSA box contained last week and this week:

(download)

Click here to download:

i-3-ubc-farm-life-as-a-csa-member-wpqadbhfntmCxaecoBcD.zip (2.25 MB)

From left to right:

Box #8: fava beans, basil, bag o' beets, edible flower petals, 3 zucchini, 3 cucumbers, beet head bunch, butter lettuce head

Box #9: rapini, eggs, potatoes, filet beans, leek, giant lettuce head, bag o' basil

I'm excited to see what I get in the next 11...

What happened when the mushroom met the algae? A: They took a lichen to each other. Hehe :)

Yesterday I took a sunny bike ride down South West Marine Drive to attend a workshop on Native Edible Plants at The World in a Garden. I learned a bit about how to forage for edibles native to BC and some of the Aboriginal uses of them, complete with a resource list, organic gardening magazine and a little starter native plant, the Stink Currant (Ribes bracteosum), which will eventually produce edible dark blue berries:

The World in a Garden is an educational urban agriculture site located on West 57th and East Boulevard (Kerrisdale), a scenic 35-40 minute bike ride from UBC. While they educate on multiple subjects in the stream of local and sustainable food, some of their main focuses are cross cultural acceptance and the seed to table process.

They're hosting a series of other cool workshops in the coming season, like canning, preserving, raw food preparation, fermentation and seed saving. Looks like I might check some of them out, seeing as the Garden will be pretty darn close to where I will be moving in a month! :D

(download)

Click here to download:

the-world-in-a-garden-kovoFcAnjpBCyBEdDHzn.zip (11.79 MB)

- Ethnobotany, definition: plants and our relationship to them

- A good way to tell if a plant is poisonous is whether the leaves are blemished by bugs or not. If they are unblemished, chances are that you shouldn't eat them, because bugs don't want to.

- What is a weed, really? Composting them back into your soil not only replenishes the nutrients, but it also adds the energy the 'weed' took in from the sun to grow. (there's probably more science to this, but I'm learning)

- mygardenbag.com is a distributor of good soil

- A book I'll probably get: Plants of Coastal British Columbia by Pojar and Mackinnon