life without lettuce

Um, before I write anything, take a look at this. I can't believe that this is finally coming to an end. Super excited. Super dark-looking. I hope we can get a babysitter so we can go to the late show this weekend. YIP!

In my concern for food origins, local eating, etc., we've taken it upon ourselves not to buy the three following things from stores any longer: 1. Pickles, 2. Lettuce, and 3. Salsa. Of course the chocolate chips I bought yesterday probably negate all of this, but whatever. It's a start. And a good start. And, it's going well. We were lucky enough to trade Stewart's grandma 1 big jar of blackberry jam for 6 jars of pickles (3 dill and 3 butter), and I've pickled all those carrots and green beans. The thing I miss lettuce on the most is on sandwiches (I can do without green salads for most of the year)...(but I will say that we're still eating these three things "out" if we ever are lucky enough to eat out). For the past 2 months I've kind of experimented with putting different kinds of sandwiches together without tomatoes and lettuce (I've kind of stopped buying tomatoes often too). Today my favourite was had and I wanted to share it with you.

What I did is I took two thick slices of the yummy olive bread I grabbed from wildfire bakery on our way out of victoria last weekend and put a slathering of garlic and red pepper jelly I made on it (recipe here), then some shredded red cabbage (local, from saanich! woop!), some of stew's grandma's butter pickles, and then a big chunk of mozzarella cheese. This was the best sandwich i've had in a while and I'm happy to say I'm definitely through my needing meat on a sandwich. Or even an egg. bleck. I'm good with preserves, veg, and cheese. YUM.

even though we've been back from our long haul vacation for a few weeks there are still piles of shit everywhere. bleck. so unmotivated to do very much. but i'm still doing a lot. of knitting. and cooking. and relaxing. i have to go back to work soon and i'm kind of dreading it. we're toying with putting seth in daycare part of the week (we don't want to) so we can both work and it be less stressful. i sat down and had a candid conversation with someone at service canada yesterday...i was crying at her desk and we waxed poetic about job losses and the drain-hole of port alberni. i'm not looking forward to looking for work. i'm not looking forward to working minimum wage and long hours just to pay the bills. but it seems like there's no jobs here (or even on the island) so i don't know what we'll do. i'm pretty sure i'm going to get a job to pay the bills and stick with it and then every so slowly apply for a real 'career gal' job in a number of major canadian cities. who knows, this time next year we could be in a new province? i want to own a farm with my sister in a handful of years and that's not going to happen if i don't pay off my debt. which isn't going to happen if i don't get a super well paying job. which just isn't in this town or even on the island (go liberals of provincial government suck!).

okay, done my rant, my eyes are getting droopy and my knitting is beckoning me. if you want to read more blogness, my sister from another mister has a blog (finally) and it's wonderful. GO READ IT.