The weekend recap

Bad news first--So much for a car free weekend.
We took Wolfie in to a groomer to get him shaved for the summer, which meant a ride out to the almost country.

The Good News--On the way we saw vast fields of wheat being harvested and trucked away in 18-wheelers, wondering where it might be going.
Horses and corn and big skies with far off groves of pine trees.

I did lots of cooking and preparation for next week--a week of local eating. I found the 100 mile radius on 100milediet.org and have been looking into local resources to be prepared as much as possible: cooking with local butter rather than olive oil, milk to make yogurt and cheese. Bread recipes for sandwiches and local grains to make the bread with.

So far it's been a fun distraction from everyday living. Learning, researching, thinking about food in terms of the people responsible for it. Even since signing up for the produce delivery, my trips to the grocery store are less and less frequent; enough so that the last several times I've had mild panic attacks from the weird lighting, over-sized milk bottle singing robots and huge variety of products. Not to mention the screaming kids and the responsibility of decoding labels and ingredients.

The beverages for the week will be interesting. Of course, we can do without alcohol, but it's a good excuse to find local wonders, right? North Carolina wines tend to be muscadine varieties, which means dessert-y sweet. Of course, we have Budweiser brewing right down the road, as well as a handful of other small breweries. The hops are probably not local. I wonder what the limitations will be on that. They fit within the Carolina Farm Stewardship guidelines, but me and Mr. C haven't discussed these small details.

In the meantime, I'll be doing a bit of blogging here as a way to explore my connection with the world a little further, to keep up with resources, and to keep the mundane details away from this here blog.

So how was your weekend? What sort of fun surprises did you find? Did you relax and enjoy the days?