One of the Girls

Picture: My drawing!  I have the artistic skills of an very talented toddler!  It looks a bit better in person, but not much.

Because Hannah and Greg are artists, they have a studio on the 2nd floor of the New Barn.  It's beautiful and bright and stocked with easels and brushes and pastels and the like.  Today I felt like doing something vaguely artistic, so I climbed past the eagerly bleating goats on the first floor and up into the studio.  And then I looked around, feeling very much out of my element.  I grabbed a pencil, paper, and chair, and sat down by the window to sketch what I saw.  I tried my very best and STILL ended up with a drawing that could have come from my 2nd grade portfolio.  I like it though.  I actually put a lot of thought into it, successfully captured some things.  Like how the sky looked before a recent storm, and the way the fields sometimes look like a patchwork quilt, and the different layers of the mountains.  I gave no thought to perspective...the goats are as big as the trees.  Ah, well.  I showed it to Hannah and Greg and they managed, admirably, to make positive comments without laughing.  Quite impressive on their part, I think.

Then I had an urge.  I had an urge to know what it's like to be a goat.  I went downstairs, climbed the fence, and sat down in the middle of the pasture.  I picked a blade of grass, I put it in my mouth, I chewed it thoughtfully.  Then, suddenly, I was surrounded by a small herd of young goats, who seem to think that everything is edible.  Everything.  My shirt, the ties on my pants, my fingers, my hair, my ears, my nose.  I'm surprised that all the features are left on my face.  If the goats had their way, I would be a naked, earless, noseless, fingerless, bald young woman.  Eventually their nibbling tickled too much and I had to stand up.  I discovered that being a goat mostly consists of standing around eating grass, baahhhhh-ing at everything that moves, and running in and out of the barn for no particular reason.  It's an action packed life.

Remember when I made those soba noodles with almond butter sauce a few weeks ago?  I found an interesting recipe on Orangette for soba with a peanut lime sauce.  I've adapted it below:

Soba with EXCITING Sauce

Organic, All Natural Peanut butter

Lime juice (I didn't have limes, so I used lemons)

Olive oil

Soy sauce

Cayenne pepper

Powdered ginger

Chopped Garlic 

Nutritional yeast, obviously

Water, to thin it

Soba noodles

Daikon or regular radishes, sliced thin

Lamb's quarters, spinach, or bak choi, sliced thin

Carrots, sliced thin

Whisk together all ingredients for sauce until it turns into something sauce-like.  It'll be lumpy for a while, but keep stirring and it'll become smooth.

Boil soba noodles for about 2 minutes, until al dente.  Drain and rinse in cold water.  Put in bowl, mix with veggies and sauce.  Enjoy!

I have felt entirely uninspired for the past few days.  You may have noticed that.  I think that I am going to make this a Monday-Wednesday-Friday blog, that you can stop by on your way to check xkcd.  If you don't know from xkcd...that would sadden, but not surprise me.  I wouldn't have the faintest idea of what those four letters represented if I hadn't met Susanna and her posse of webcomics.  You'll have to do the research yourself, though.  I don't want to make it too easy to discover.