A Timeless Dream

This new year has me looking back...on the romantic dreams of my tween days and the one-hit wonders that served as the soundtrack to my life.

Remember this?



And this?? (Vanessa Carlton was more than a one-hit wonder, to be fair.)



How about this? (Of course you remember this.)



And this...the song that I pictured every boy I had a crush on singing to me. Oh lord. I'm just now finding out what Daniel Bedingfield looks like...I think I'll stick to the Latino dreamboat I pictured as a 12 year old.



I listened to these (and a lot more, trust me, I spared you) over and over on my beloved cassette tapes that my uncle mixed for me using the very first music pirating software. Point is, they still make me melt. Oh, what the years can't change, hard as they try (trust me I tried, during my "no mainstream music whatsoever" phase).

What were the romantic dreams of the 10-13 year old me, you ask? Just what any girl would want: a musical, poetic, intense-eyed hunk whose dream girl was me. Reasonable, right?

But I suppose what I was really hoping for, underneath it all, was something and someone special. And looking back on the years since then, I can say with certainty and a smile that what I hoped for came true. Everything that has happened, that which has come and gone and left its mark, has been special to me.

I don't feel as if I've loved and lost, only loved. And the dreamer in me hasn't been silenced. What more could I ask for?

Happy New Year, and happy new moon. May this coming morning be, as with every other morning, an opportunity to live your dreams and see the best in the world.

xoxo
Juliana

A California Christmas

It's not exactly snowy here in the bay area. The leaves are still falling...



Flowers are still in bloom...



Fruits are still ripening.


But our wintry spirit will not be deterred by this faux wintry weather. We will make gingerbread, even if we keep the dough in the fridge too long and have to thaw it in the 64 degree sun outside.




Guarding the gingerbread against cookie dough burglars.



We'll convert the courtyard into an enclosed, heated hall for Christmas Eve dinner.


Little sister cleaning obsessively (when she was 4 or 5, she asked for a broom for Christmas).


Imagine this with lights, space heaters, a big rug, and a candlelit food-laden table in the center. Too much? Maybe, but worth it.

We'll add to the stars in the sky. Aren't these beautiful?



We'll do outdoor yoga in little clothing in the backyard. I unfortunately don't have a picture of that, as I was upside down at the time. I'll continue to ponder my vegetarianism and why I'm somehow not bothered by eating fish. I'll go see "the Hobbit 2"--absolutely ridiculous--with a fellow Tolkien purist so we can list every little thing that's wrong with it (already working on an informative, if a bit rant-y, post on that subject). I'll see some dear friends visiting from near and far, make my Christmas sangria, henna my hair, get *something else* pierced, continue to try and do an unsupported forearm stand...

I could go on and on. Soon classes will be in session again, but until then, I'm trying to spend as little time as I can sleeping and as much time as I can doing things I love with the people I love. To-do outpaces done, and fortunately I thrive on to-do lists. Especially when the lists include things like "bake cookies" and "go on a hike" (aw, really? Do I have to?).

On a perhaps less cheery note: today, as I watched my mother write out her list of every obligatory present we had to buy for everyone we know, I felt the holiday spirit was a little lost. I found myself thinking how nice it would be if people didn't expect presents by a deadline. Nevertheless, until I decide if I want to try and convince our family to change the system, I'll abide by the current constructs. While I haven't the money to buy anyone Christmas presents this year, I'm doing my best to be super crafty and thoughtful and come up with costless gifts for my clan. I'm telling you, it's not easy being creative. Maybe I'll make everyone gingerbread cookies? In their likeness?



I also found some uberadorable fairy doors on Etsy. These made my heart flutter. At first I thought of getting them for my 10-year-old sister and said to myself, no, she's getting too old for that. Then I scolded myself for thinking such awful thoughts. *No one is ever too old to build fairy houses, Juliana*.



And happy Solstice, all. Now finally the sun will start hanging out with me more. Just what a summer child loves to hear.

xoxo
Juliana

The Meat Of It

I've been home for break for about a day now and have so far crossed two recipes off my to-bake/cook list. While I definitely have the time to make these things while at school, there's a special sort of culinary motivation that only comes from cooking for your family. Whether or not they end up being able to stomach what you make for them, if you're as lucky as I am, you have a handful of loving guinea pigs who are willing to try.

Last night, with some assistance from my little sister, I churned out two loaves of Finnish Christmas bread (following this recipe, noted by Milla in one of her recent posts) and, this afternoon, in accordance with my new vegetarianism, cooked my first batch of seitan.


Some beautiful bread if I do say so myself.

What I learned: a) kneading bread dough with molasses in it can be incredibly frustrating and confusing ("haven't I added enough flour already??") and b) simmering something in vegetable broth and soy sauce for an hour will give you some very, very flavorful stuff. I'm talking about the essence of savory. It's not something I could eat on its own; I'm thinking of incorporating it into a vegetarian spaghetti bolognese, a suggestion made by Claire in her own personal seitan recipe. If you follow the link you'll find a recipe much more personalized and complex (and undoubtedly delicious) than the one I used:



as I wanted to start with the basics. I find it so cool that you can do this whole process from scratch and add whatever you like. I've tried out a few other store-bought meat substitutes, but the daunting unpronounceable ingredient list on most of them, not to mention the simple fact that they're frozen and not fresh, never fails to give me the chills. No labor, no love.

I have yet to ponder what else I might add to my own (I'll certainly be trying out Claire's recipe). And why don't I have a picture of the seitan up? You know why. It looks like brains. As soon as I actually use it in a meal I'll reveal the appetizing-looking version.

I'll also, hopefully, have some unique recipes to share with y'all coming up. With this wonderful holiday time on my hands now, I have plans to cook, bake, cook, bake, write, and hike. And then cook and bake. You'll be hearing from me.

I hope the holiday season finds you all merry and well, and if you happen to be reading this, many thank yous to Milla and Claire for inspiring two delicious recipes that will be made over and over.

xoxo
Juliana

Light, Clean and Green

I never, ever in a million years thought I'd be saying this, but:

It looks like I might be becoming a vegetarian.

I've tried to post about this a few times, but I couldn't seem to write anything that made sense. After all, this is all new to me. I have never looked down on vegetarians, but I've never understood them, either. Eating meat is a natural thing; food chains are built upon the fact. We derive necessary proteins from it, and we are not the only animals who eat other animals. There is nothing wrong with eating meat. Right?

Yet suddenly, after an incident with some ribs, I can't eat it anymore. I feel like a cannibal.

I haven't necessarily justified it, because as a personal and harmless choice, I don't feel the need to. But I have attempted to explain the sudden turning of my appetite with the following logic: regardless of our biological needs and instincts, humans have, whether as an element of evolution or despite it, developed socially and spiritually to the point where each of us may have our own moral code. We may choose to do or not to do certain things that, without conscience, biology would drive us to. And this is also a natural thing.

So no, I no longer believe that animals should be raised and slaughtered and processed in order for me to eat. They don't have to. I can get protein from other places, and I can even eat meat substitutes (currently testing Gardein products; the crispy tenders are deliciously guilt-free).

I've tried to eat meat a few times since my initial realization after the rib incident (explanation: a couple of months ago I ate a half rack of ribs, suddenly felt disgusting, and had to go throw them out in the dumpster because I couldn't bear having them in my apartment). I know myself as a meat lover, after all, and I couldn't quit cold turkey (hah). Each time, however, I've felt the same way: dirty, weighed down, and guilty. When I've gone periods of time without it, eating extra fruit and vegetables and actually less starchy food (just going by what I feel like eating), I feel so much better. Light, clean and green. I feel more pure. Because after all, this is only half about me, the consumer, and the other side of the relationship--the "giving" side--is so much more important. While I can't keep anyone else from eating meat, and don't look down on them for it, I sleep better at night knowing that nothing has died for my "benefit" today.

We are all children of this earth, none above or below any other. If I have the choice not to eat my brothers and sisters, if I can survive and be healthy without eating meat, then I will make that choice.

So while I haven't labeled myself a vegetarian concretely, I'm in the midst of a personal experiment, and it looks to be headed that way. I also came to the conclusion, however, while discussing this with E, that we don't need to label our diets. What we eat is a personal choice, and it doesn't need to follow strict guidelines set by a dictionary definition; only what we feel is right in our hearts and our bellies.

And yes, I ate turkey on thanksgiving, because if I hadn't my abuelita wouldn't have known what to do with me.

xoxo
Juliana

Coffee, Math & Rain

It has been raining all day. The type of silver-skied rain that makes every hour look like seven in the morning. So I feel no shame in waking up at two, making myself breakfast and coffee, and sitting here at my little table by the window with a hot mug in my hands looking out at my beautiful Santa Cruz doing its watering.



All classes were canceled today because of an on-campus strike that I don't completely understand, so I'm very relaxedly working out some ridiculous discrete math problems. The kind where every problem is a challenge problem and finishing one makes you feel like a genius.



This is my perfect day, the kind of day when you don't need music, because mother nature provides it for you.

Rainy Woods

There is no scent more wonderful than that of the earth after it rains.

Get Away From My Mother (Desalination Plants)

Ah, Fall is in full swing. The air is nippy, the trees are glistening gold, I'm wearing my favorite sweater and scarf....

Wait. No. It's 72 degrees and sunny and I'm going to the beach before going to a Halloween party tonight.

It's difficult to tell what's "normal", weather-wise, here in Santa Cruz. While our temperatures throughout the year only span about 30 degrees, you literally never know when it's going to be 72 and sunny or 54 and foggy. What we're in now is our Indian Summer, I suppose, though the environmentalist in me never fails to end up believing wholeheartedly that it shouldn't be like this in late October and this is our fault. And then proceed to go to the beach anyway. Sigh. The dilemma.

My environmental guilt is a nice segue into a magazine that recently caught the bulk of my attention: Growth, a student-produced magazine on the expansion of University of California, Santa Cruz. Relative to overall area and student population, UCSC has the most undeveloped land of any UC (have you been here? We're all trees!), and as the UC system is required to admit the top 12.5% of California's graduating high school class each year (which continues to grow), we are being pushed to expand. Right off the bat, without any sort of logical reasoning, most of us slugs will object to expansion and proceed to sit in a tree. I know that was my reaction the first time I heard of it.


All these pictures from 2007, at the last big protest.

Yet us tree-huggers and tree-sitters and overall tree-appreciators also have a logical side, and I've found it in this magazine. And it doesn't limit itself to trees. In fact, one of the most interesting arguments I found was one about plans for a desalination plant on the Santa Cruz coast.


Can you see the irony in this? (from the city's website promoting the plant)

What does this have to do with expansion? As we use so much of the city's water (although per capita campus water consumption has fallen 40 percent in the last 30 years, maybe because some of us only shower when it rains), no plans for expansion could be approved until, as Growth states, an extension of water and sewer services is approved.



So that brings us to desalination. Without ever thinking too deeply about it, I have always considered this "solution" to be flawed only in how expensive it is. We all know that most of earth's water is saltwater and undrinkable by humans in our current evolutionary stage. The problem is never that saltwater is running out (although its quality, for our marine bros and sistas that live in it, is a whole other issue), but that freshwater is running low. So obviously, it seems reasonable that if we can convert saltwater into drinking water, we should be good on h20 for a long time.

Yeah, kinda not really.


LRDP: Long Range Development Plan.

I was horrified when I realized that I had never thought about what they do with the brine (salt and other minerals) after they extract it from the water.

You know what they do?

THEY PUT IT BACK IN THE OCEAN (or sometimes in landfills) along with other toxic byproducts from the plant.

And do you know how they run the desalination plant itself?

PETROLEUM. COAL. Unless they put in the time and resources to find a renewable energy source (ha).

Hello greenhouse gas emissions and oversalinated marine ecosystems.

Forgive me if I sound like an overemotional ranting hippie. It's what I am. I love trees. I love clean air. I love the goddamn earth beneath my feet. But the ocean? She is my mother. Just as I cannot express in words the love I have for my human mother, I cannot tell you how much it infuriates me when someone messes with the ocean and all her children. And it's not like I can tree-sit the ocean, or trust me I would. For as long as it takes.



I'm sure that right about now you're thinking, well, she sounds like all the rest. Angry about the issues but not presenting a better solution herself. That's pretty true. Environmental studies is a dismal science. But thankfully, Growth does present an alternative: increased effort put into recycled water. More research could also be done to design a more sustainable desalination plant, because their implementation is gaining popularity worldwide and they will happen.

The point is, as Growth states so well:

Plans for expansion are currently stalled by a lawsuit, but the issue won't stay tied up in court forever. In the meantime, arm yourself with knowledge, and figure out where you stand on the matter. Go out into the forest, and find a quiet spot. Listen to the redwoods and firs creaking in the wind, and to birds talking amongst themselves. Poke around for mushrooms, and see if you can spot a salamander. Ask yourself: what does this place mean to me?



Also, god do I love my school.

xoxo
Juliana

Blastfromthepast Part I

On this sunny Sunday, the upcoming marriage of my youngest uncle and his need for childhood pictures brought about a mass resurrection of dusty photo albums from the abyss that is My Family's Garage.

Don't worry, we found plenty of him. The real gem, though, was finding pictures of my immediate family--mom, dad, little sister 1, little sister 2--dating from as far back as the 60's. I did a lot of laughing and awww-ing before my common sense came along and I started snapping pics of pics with my phone. And so I only have a few at the moment, but just you wait. The pictures of my dad in college are priceless.

We got me and my best friend Shannon, such 90's kids. I believe I'm actually wearing a denim jumpsuit. Or some kind of jumpsuit.


We got the quintessential autumn day picture.


We got me, Shannon and our other best friend Sierra. How did we all know each other so young? My mom's best friend from high school is Shannon's stepsister and my godmother, her sister Lisa is Sierra's mother, SO Sierra is Shannon's niece and I'm all god-related to everyone. Get that? Also, check out the vintage television.


We got my parents being all attractive holding me.


And finally, gem of the year, we got my mother literally being a model.


My parents kept the my-mom-is-a-model thing secret for a *long* time. While my mother is beautiful (and still looks like she does in that picture, over 20 years later), she exudes none of the vanity/insecurity/pretentiousness/etc that is often seen in models. My mom wears overalls and her only flaw (that I can see) is she gives and gives to everyone and doesn't take enough time for herself.

But of course one day I was looking for my confiscated Gameboy Color in my dad's underwear drawer and found a picture of my mom, not just modeling, but bikini modeling.

I will violate my parents' privacy no more, but the point is, ^THAT IS MY MOTHER. Jesus.

We looked through these albums for 3ish hours. We found naked baby pictures, naked adult pictures, pictures of weddings, births, magic shows, halloween costumes, and me as a toddler literally stuffing my face with food. We found pictures of our old apartment and our house when it had staples holding the floor together.

But the most mind-blowing thing of all was seeing my parents when they were my age, in college, hanging out and being ridiculous with their friends. Seeing my mom in her lace-and-leather night-out outfit and my dad chugging Jack Daniels and holding a baguette between his legs as if that would fool anyone. Seeing them cuddled together on a futon in bathrobes with what looked like full double shot glasses (their friends documented everything very well). It showed me a past I had only ever imagined, reinforced what I know in the present about the incredible love my parents have for each other, and gave me hope that my future could be just as bright. Because after all, I was raised by an amazing, loving family, and I am my parents' daughter.

I hope you're all having a wonderful, wonderful Sunday.

xoxo
Juliana

Yoga Love

I'm discovering that sometimes the inside of your own head can be very exciting, and that we all possess a certain power to move ourselves that often goes untapped.

When T and I broke up 5-ish months ago, one of the main driving forces behind the split was that I did not feel like myself. I set out on what I suppose you could call a journey inward, as cliche as that sounds, and I've found a number of very accessible things that turn my soul inside out and make me feel like a real Juliana.

One of them is yoga.

I've been doing sun salutations religiously for years now, but a little more dedication and real instruction has opened my eyes to how vast the world of yoga really is. While I'm far from flexible (I have the tightest hamstrings in the world next to my mother), I've learned in the past couple months that yoga is much, much more than that. It is an entire philosophy. The narrow definition of yoga as a physical exercise is, in fact, an entirely western notion. One may take the practice of yoga as far as one wants to go, as well as explore those schools of thought that incorporate it or are related to it, such as Ayurveda and tantra (the root of modern yoga). Whatever your beliefs may be concerning the order of the universe and that of your body, I've found that I benefit from envisioning myself as a series of chakras connected by nadi through which prana is ever-flowing.



Of course, the life-giving breath of the universe flows through the channels of my body.

And yet it makes me feel like so much more than a vessel. When I open my palms and reach towards the sky, whether it be in chair pose or warrior I or even just tadasana, I don't feel as if I'm worshipping some god, as I've been trained to do, but instead accepting the greater truths and most positive energies of the universe into myself, with the promise that as the truth and positivity flow into me, they will also flow out.


Just a place with a whole lotta positive energy.

This is bound to come out wrong, but there is a deep peace to be found in the realization that you, as an individual physical entity, are nothing special. This isn't to say that you're worthless; just that you cannot hold yourself above any other living thing. The same breath of life flows through all of us. Though our senses make us out to be single, closed-off organisms in this world full of physical boundaries, there is a universal harmony that, if we can tune into, may lead us to an internal and external balance accessible to all who wish to find it.

I'm not saying I've found it, and I'm not trying to preach. Yet something must explain the subsiding bitterness for humankind in my head and the growing love for trees in my heart.

My next goal: bakasana.



Namaste, good people of the universe.

xoxo
Juliana

Autumn Lust

It's the middle of the day in Santa Cruz and under 60 degrees and cloudy. So, I'm pronouncing today the first day of sweater weather and pumpkin everything.

^Written last week, and followed by paragraphs and paragraphs of autumn lovin'. Literally listed everything I love about this season.

What I really needed, though, was a picture to replace those thousand words. So thank you, Thomas Kinkade, for making this possible.


Autumn Lane

Or maybe two.


Autumn at Ashley's Cottage

And to top it off, Claire's homemade vegan pumpkin creamer. I hope she doesn't mind the shameless promotion. :)

Off to get snuggly and write an essay about muppets.

xoxo
Juliana

Considering My Pretend Titles

When it comes to writing, I have a problem finishing what I start.

Time between writing that sentence and writing this one: like a minute. Case in point. I can write first sentences well enough. I couldn't even begin to quantify how many first sentences I've thought of for novels. And god, they were all fantastic. I could assign a feeling to them--a general theme--but, alas, never a fully dressed tale and never anything past the first paragraph. Well, a couple times I was able to. But a couple out of a thousand. A fraction of a percent.

I suppose I'm particularly good at crafting pretty doors, in life and in writing. Yet in life, the problem presents itself sooner and is inherently more important (it is more critical to get on with my life than to get on with my book).

It has led me to believe that I simply don't have the drive. I have the imagination, but not the commitment and the perseverance. I do think someday I might finish my book. But my dream of being a published author (being commercially successful is not important, just that I have a solid book of my own that I can hold in my hands and give to all the English teachers I've had) in this stage of my life has, I think, gotten away from me.

Can I consider myself a writer if I can't finish my story?

Can I consider myself an artist if my art is drawn on printer paper with supplies leftover from my high school art classes? Can I consider myself an environmentalist if I'm not going door to door asking people to support the cause? Can I consider myself a gardener if all I grow is three herbs in little pots? Can I consider myself a musician if all my songs are recorded using my iPhone's Voice Memo tool?

Well, it appears I've gotten a little off topic, haven't I. *How unusual*.

Maybe I'm having an identity crisis?

Not a Knot

There are ways I know you are not my other half.
When I do not see you for months,
I do not despair.
I continue rolling along on my own,
With the quiet thought of you alongside me,
And your memory, without touch, making me smile
Every once in a while.
When I hear love songs
Praising, adoring, crying and dying,
I do not think of you
I do not think of weddings.
Without you I am not incomplete.
You do not make me weak in the knees,
You will never make me say please,
Stay, I’ll do anything.
Neither of us are steady.
I run off when I hear distant music,
You have your nose buried in other worlds.
We are not a knot,
We cannot bind ourselves together,
We are ever growing,
We would suffocate.
This is how I know you are not my other half.
This is how I know you do not complete me.

This is how I know that if I am sometimes a wave,
You are sometimes an otter.
This is how I know that we are both anchors
On our own ships.
This is how I know that if there is one
Who would roll alongside me
And let me be whole,
If there is someone like that
In the world,
I know
It would be someone a lot like
You.


Don't steal my shit, you know.

Sea Witches & Silver Warriors

Frank Frazetta's fantasy world, a main component of mine. And the soundtrack always playing in my dreamland, by the righteous babe herself:

Black Henna & Nose Rings

Once again, I am born anew.



The first thing I have to say is holy jesus do not ever try to henna your hair alone. You might have a mini breakdown and end up taking cute pictures like these in the process.



Other things you must not do:

1. If the instructions say you can use either rubber or latex gloves, it means use latex gloves. Using rubber gloves to henna your hair is like trying to play piano with mittens on.


What it looked like with the suggested amount of water added to the powder.

2. When the instructions say use either a tint brush or a 1 1/2" paintbrush, take their advice and don't throw caution to the wind and use a 1/2" paintbrush.


What it's supposed to look like.

3. You must also not assume that because you've dyed your hair by yourself plenty of times with normal hair dye, you should also be able to henna it by yourself, right? No. Henna is not built for the consumer. You are painting clay onto your hair. This is not quick and dirty, squirt it in your gloved hands and smear it all over your head hair dye. This will make you call your mother begging for help halfway through because you've realized there's no way you can paint the back of your head.



The whole process took me about 4 hours (I have a lot of hair, but still), including preparing the concoction, applying it, waiting an hour with that plastic turban on my head, and washing it all out in the shower. This is about 8 times as long as it used to take me to dye my hair. Do I regret it? Hell no. It's so good for your hair and now my tresses are black as night. But will I ever do it by myself again? Also hell no. This is something I would actually pay to have done.

But I will take in the same product, because it worked wonders.


Black henna: henna (red by default) mixed with indigo. Gave me slightly blue-green ends on the bleached part of my hair.

A couple days after this ordeal, yours truly went to finally get her nose pierced.


Me saying, "let me see this hollow needle you speak of."

I couldn't have had a better experience. I went to Fatty Zone in Mountain View (half head shop, half piercing place). The guy who pierced me, Mark, has been doing this shit for 20 years, so I wasn't worried. There was moderate pain for like 5 seconds and then it was over and I had a lovely little gem in my right nostril.

With each of these "modifications" (though when I say that I think of things more along the lines of, like, corset piercings), I felt a little more like myself. A work in progress, an unfinished art piece, a project in self-fulfillment. As if I'm an image in a coloring book, slowly filling myself in (and often scribbling outside the lines).

xoxo
Juliana

Perfect Fermented Dill Pickles

I am so stoked because...MY PICKLES TURNED OUT!

But let me begin at the beginning.

The very beginning: I love fermenting and canning food. One of my fundamental beefs with cooking and baking is that, well, things expire. Since my girl E and I are the only ones in our apartment and we generally buy and cook our meals separately, I'm buying and cooking for one person. So, say I want chicken one night. Since it's basically impossible to find uncooked single servings of chicken breast/thighs, by buying the 7 or 8 thighs or breasts I'm committing myself to eating chicken for the next two or three nights. And what if I'm not home? What if I REALLY REALLY don't want chicken?


Not taken by me, obviously. Who has a shadowless white background lying around for food photoshoots?

Not a serious problem, I know, I know. A *grocery* problem. You know the kind. In short, I'd love it if I could roast a whole chicken and eat it slowly over a few weeks. Better yet, and endless supply of forever fresh fish. Ah, a girl can dream.

So if I can somehow find a way to make food last longer, and make it more delicious in the process: that's me striking gold. Enter fermenting, canning, preserving, the works. If it's in a mason jar, I'm down. Enter jams, jellies, salsas, and...pickles!

The even more fundamental beginning: I love pickles. Tangy, crunchy dill pickles. Mmmmmm. I *don't* love long, complicated recipes. So when I found a recipe for pickles in a book I was reading that was about 4 sentences long, I was there. And I shall now pass it on to you, in a slightly more structured but equally vague way. I'll let you come up with exact amounts of ingredients based on your taste and the pictures. I made enough to fill 2 mason jars.



Ingredients:

1 big bunch of dill (I used a lot as it's my favorite herb)
5-6 persian cucumbers (smaller and a little sweeter than regular cucumbers)
10 cloves of garlic
4-5 large grape leaves
Brine - enough to fill jars


Directions:

1. First off, make the brine. If you've never made brine before, it's easy at its simplest: just salt and water. I recommend you read this how-to for optimal brine making. I used kosher salt, so the ratio was 1 1/2 - 2 cups of salt per gallon of water (kosher salt, lacking iodine, weighs less than table salt).

2. Tear up the grape leaves. Why grape leaves, you ask? They have tannin, which helps keep the pickles crunchy. I wish I could tell you where to buy grape leaves, but alas, I just took 'em from my grapes growing in the backyard.

3. Chop/don't chop the cucumbers. I made one jar with whole cucumbers (2-3 fit in the jar) and one with sliced ones. If you're only making 1 jar, I recommend slicing them, as it's easier to see their progress during the fermenting process.

4. Dice the garlic.

5. Chop the dill. I cut off most of the stem and slice up the rest of it almost to the point of mincing.

6. Stick everything in the jars! With the whole cucumbers, you kind of have to stuff it all where it'll fit. With the sliced ones, you can be more creative with your layering process.

7. Finally, cover it with brine and seal the jars.

8. Now, very important: put the jars in a storage place with a constant temperature of around 75 degrees fahrenheit. Plus or minus 5 degrees is fine. Leave to ferment for two weeks. This is the optimal temperature/time combo. If the temperature is cooler, they will take longer to ferment, and vice versa.


My lil pickles just after preparation.

After about a week and a half, this is what mine looked like:



Once everything in the jar is this shade of muted green and the pickles are mostly translucent, depending how thick you sliced them, they're ready! Remember that once you open the jar, their new home is the refrigerator. I'm serious, fridge 'em.




A uniquely Juliana snack: one pickle slice on a tiny plate.

You should know these are going to taste different than store-bought pickles, because unlike store-bought pickles, these are not pickled in vinegar. These are real live fermented pickles, folks (the difference can be confusing - read this!). So they have a softer taste, less sharply vinegar-y and more sweetly tangy. I didn't know if I would like it, honestly, but I DID. Thank goodness. I might never go back to store-bought if I can help it.

How do I know I'm not crazy? My mother loved them. Aaaannnddd success.

Enjoy, y'all.

xoxo
Juliana

Blue Moon, You Saw Me Standing Alone

Happy blue moon tonight y'all!


My super high res phone pic of last night's moon, before we got hit by super weird dry lightning.
No, you say? Poor Juliana, she doesn't know what she's talking about? A blue moon is the second full moon in a month, and this ain't it?

*Actually*, as I discovered recently, that's not the original definition of what a blue moon is. Check it.

When I looked it up a few days ago, that was the only article that showed up. If you google it now, you'll find that in the past day or two everyone has jumped on the blue moon bandwagon. Hmmm.

The gist of it is--I'm paraphrasing from that article here--that there are typically three full moons in a season. If there happen to be four, as there are this summer, the third one is called a blue moon.

So anyway, this:



And, in honor of the occurrence's colloquial use in the phrase "once in a blue moon", maybe take this opportunity to do something you've been wanting/waiting to do for a while. I, for one, am getting my nose pierced.

xoxo
Juliana

You Sucked My Brain Out

Sometimes, after a couple days of laying in bed feeling sorry for myself, I have to remember that I am a whole.

Not a half, waiting for her other.

Not a half, having separated herself from her other.

Not a bureaucratic sphere filled partly with me and otherwise dedicated entirely to the working world, regardless of whether the "me" part of the equation wants to be there or not.

A whole, with plenty of nicks and cuts. Sometimes I have to remember how my flaws get me into trouble.

Sometimes I have to write to remember.

Sometimes I have to remember that the choices I've made speak to some kind of strength within me.

Sometimes I have to listen to Ani DiFranco and drink a shitload of coffee.

Alright. That's it. This is my real name:

Hey y'all.

Since I started my blog, I've been using the name "Maralah" to identify myself (it means "born during an earthquake", which is a reference to the environmental chaos that's been going on for a long time and that I was born into).

While I did that in the name of anonymity, which is often a wise decision when conducting personal business online, the name thing has started to be confusing (at least to me). So I'm changing all this stuff to my real name, which is Juliana, and which I love. And my profile picture, though not exactly hi-res or recent, is now this, which is not a picture of me walking away from you but an actual full-frontal picture of my face.




So hi guys, my name is Juliana. Nice to meet you for real.

xoxo
Juliana

On Tattoos, Changing Minds

Well, I'm at the point I feared I'd be: I'm rethinking the tattoo that, two weeks ago, I was 110% sure I was going to get.

Actually, I've 110% decided I'm not getting it anymore.

It's a disconcerting feeling, being told "I told you so" by your own conscience. I was just itching so bad to just get it already and convinced myself that the design I had was the perfect one. And that the bodily location was final.

'twasn't.

I told a couple people about it and showed them the design, and I think I might've jinxed it. So, in the spirit of sharing and perhaps unjinxing, here's the tattoo that never happened.



Here's why it made sense:

1. I've always wanted a triple spiral or triple moon, representative of the maiden/mother/crone cycle and the triple goddess. (side note: I actually like the triple moon better, but came up with the reasoning that it was flawed because it only represented the mother phase as whole, and maiden and crone as slivers, as if they meant less. Then I realized that the slivers are just the visible parts, that the whole is still there, and that I would rather get a triple moon than spirals...sigh, my head)
2. I love the look of roots, and have always identified with them strongly, as I associate them with family.
3. I like to think I'm good at drawing leaves.
4. I designed/drew it myself, so it was original, goddamnit. I wanted it to be unique, not just the triple spiral so many people have.

Good reasons, right? But four fourths don't always make a cohesive whole, apparently. Even though I loved it, it didn't speak to me. I thought it would look good on my upper right side, around where a swimsuit could hide most of it, but the truth is, I don't really want a tattoo there. It's just the most reasonable place to put something larger that you don't want everyone to see. Socially acceptable, in other words.

So here enters the dilemma between what speaks to me and what speaks to society.

My head tells me to get tattoos where I can easily hide them; my side around my breast, my hipbone, perhaps behind my ear.

My heart tells me to get a triple moon around my bellybutton and a Pocahontas-like armband around my bicep.


The coolest (official) Disney princess next to Belle. Did you know she's the only DP to have two love interests? Props for acknowledging that not everyone meets a prince at 16 and lives happily ever after (nor does everyone want to).

The problem is my head is very persuasive and logical and does not back down easily. It says, think of your parents! Think of the work world, of that boss who won't hire you! Think of never being able to hide it!

So I come to you, blogosphere. Do you have visible tattoos? Have they affected your professional life? Do you worry about what your parents or your grandparents or your children will think?

I'm leaning towards my heart right now, but neither side tends towards surrender.

xoxo
Maralah

Unknown Outpaces Known...

Like to-do outpaces done.

A line from the book I just finished, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. First order of business: read it if you have the time (which, if you're anything like the author, you don't). It's about a city girl who started a farm with an infuriatingly passionate vegetable farmer. I won't say anything else--in case you have the pleasure of reading it--except that my god, farming is really hard, and that it taught me some things about the value of hard work and the magic of, literally, eating the fruits (and veggies and meats and cheeses and grains) of your own labors.



And, of course, that post-opening quote, which I had never really thought of before and provided me with a newfound sense of peace. Once I read it, I kind of hit myself in the head. Well of course, you can never really be done. Of course, with each new thing you learn, even more doors are opened to the unknown. The idea that, until the day you die, no matter what you do, you will never truly be finished and can never hope to be, is strangely comforting. Life is a process. You are always moving. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. And the hungrier you get to know it. Simp.

In the spirit of expanding, I picked up another book, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, that I read 20 pages of a few months ago and then stopped. It had been reviewed as being "equal to Lord of the Rings", so I went into it somewhat bitterly and expecting a lot (equal to Lord of the Rings...pffffft, please), and was not impressed. It was slow, it was dreary, it was dark.



Of course, after forcing myself to continue on, I realized that those first 20 pages are meant to be slow and dreary and dark to contrast with what's thrown at you next. So it's really good. Really really good. Not sure yet if it's on the same level as The Greatest Books Ever Ever. I'll keep y'all posted.

So there are two book recommendations.

Just got back from ten days in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada. Lots to say about the trees, the rivers, the clothes, the socialist agenda of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the layout of the cities, everything maple, the French language...etc. Posts in the works! Here's a taste:



And jesus, is it August already? Less than a month 'til I'm back in my beautiful beautiful Santa Cruz. My heart jumps a little every time I think about it. In fact, I might just post a countdown...

xoxo
Maralah