Jumpstarting My Garden: On Seed-Starting Inside

Last year was my first year trying seed-starting inside. While it was not a slam dunk, I found that for some of my veggies, it resulted in stronger, higher-yielding plants. It's also more cost-effective than buying veggie starts.

This year, I've started multiple varieties of lettuce, jalapeno and Serrano peppers, tomatoes (primarily San Marzano), kale, and herbs including cilantro, parsley and basil.

Colorado Front Range Craft Distilleries: Part 1

Cheers!

We’ve been on a kick lately. It all started when my new company, 3 Aspens Media, decided to donate bottles of local spirits to a fund-raiser dear to my heart. Benefiting the Friends of Warm Hearth, our Colorado chapter of the Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief has an annual fund-raiser for Warm Hearth’s art programs. As part of that, a raffle is held.

And thus our distillery obsession began. We decided rather than just purchase some bottles for the raffle, we’d make a day of touring some of the local craft distilleries in the Front Range.

Since that first day – when we visited two distilleries – we’ve visited five more and expanded our liquor selection considerably. There are more, and we intend to visit them. But for now, here’s Part 1 of my take on the distilleries we visited.

My Spinach Lives (Despite the Cold)!

It's not growing, but I do have spinach continuing to live in my garden. Apparently you can grow spinach in the winter, under a cold frame, in climates like mine. But I don't have a cold frame.

I planted spinach in the fall, mulched it with leaves to protect it, and when it got cold enough it went dormant. And has not died.

Which is awesome. I get excited about little things. I'm hoping in the spring when things thaw, I'll have a great start on my spinach and an early harvest. It's all theoretical at this point as I've never done it before.

Pantry Organization Trick: Baskets

My pantry is a mess. But now it's less a mess than it was.

I have a tendency to throw my produce on the shelves of my pantry. I added baskets to the mix for said produce.

It's not perfect, but it's a start. I'm intrigued by the possibilities for organization. More baskets will be purchased.

Before:

 

After:

Homemade Chicken Fried Steak

My man had a craving for chicken fried steak. And while I generally avoid breaded things, chicken fried steak is really one of the best inventions ever.

It's one of the best comfort foods - the kind of food that you eat when you're bummed or after a great hike because you feel justified after burning 1,000 calories.

Thing is, there really is no good reason to make chicken fried steak. You can get pretty good chicken fried steak for not a whole lot of money at any good - or even decent - breakfast place. It's far more time-consuming and expensive to make it yourself.

Still, though it'd be easy enough to go buy chicken fried steak, I thought it'd be fun to make chicken fried steak. But I wasn't sure where to start.

A quick Google search turned up Alton Brown's chicken fried steak recipe.

I was introduced to Alton Brown while I was in the Peace Corps. My friend sent me videos of Alton Brown's show Good Eats on CD, and I watched them on my laptop.

I figured he'd have a good chicken fried steak recipe, and I was right.

A Resolution a Week: Week 5 - 20 Sit-Ups a Day

Every night, I used to do sit-ups and plank. It all started when I was in the Peace Corps. I didn't have TV then - well, I did, but it was in Russian and Armenian.

It certainly motivated me to do something. I would do 100 sit-ups, and worked my way up to 30 "girl" push-ups. (For the record, I do "real" push-ups now so I've made some progress. Turns out, you just have to do them, and eventually you can do more of them. It just takes time.)


It's so sporadic though these days. I still stretch almost every night. Occasionally I'll do push-ups. And when I feel like it, I do ab exercises.

If I committed to 20 sit-ups - crunches really, as my physical therapist told me I can't do full sit-ups with my awesome hips - it would make a difference. Rather than the 30 or 50 a week I end up doing when I'm sporadic about it, I would consistently do 140 sit-ups.

When you put it like that, 20 a day doesn't seem like so little. Chances are - and I shouldn't jinx it - I'll probably do more.

New Year's Resolutions: If at First You Don't Succeed ...

The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that people make them, break them … and then leave them in the dust.

I can be counted among those. Except I won’t leave them in the dust.

I’m making a resolution a week this year.

So far, I’ve made three and kept none. Go me.

It’s not like I haven’t done anything on my list. I just haven’t done any of them up to the standard that I declared I would. I’ve run, just not three times a week the past couple weeks.

I’ve successfully not watched TV as much. But I’m not sure it’s the “avoiding TV two times a week” I was planning on.

I’m not living up to my goals. I could blame not feeling great and work travel. Work travel indeed throws a crimp in routine. But given all the travel I have scheduled in the next few months, I should probably learn to adjust. I could also blame the weather; I live less than a mile from Planet Fitness, though, so is that really an excuse?

My point is, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Because the only way to make the changes in your life that you want to make is to keep trying to make them, even if you fail. Don’t wait until January of the following year.