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Some veggie orzo tomato soup for the sick. Delicious.

Screw the food blog. I'll write about food when I want. Got it. Just like everything else in my life right now, I'm just not sure I can commit to a food blog. Oh, commitment.

I'm at a standstill again. I'm just unsure of what I am doing, where I want to go, who I want to be with, what I stand for..... the standard questions that run through my head every hour on the hour. After coffee with my dear my mom yesterday afternoon, she once again reminded me that I think too much. Let me rephrase that: I over analyze the hell out of every friend, person, situation, and aspect in my life. It's my own personal hell and it takes a rare breed to get me out of it.

I'm ditching school. I don't feel too bad about it since I have already received a first degree. If it was a common bailout I might just THINK about it a little more. My adviser in the education program informed me it will take me about 3 plus years to get a second degree. I nodded my head and then spent the rest of the week pondering the idea of going back to school in Missoula for t h r e e more years of my life only be in just a little more debt, and only to come up on top with a degree that matches my other degree and giving me just a few more options and the same amount of money. Seems ridiculous, right? I will go back to school, but for a graduate degree and I want to think a little bit more about what I want to do. So, after this school semester is over I'll be back in the working field of Missoula and saving money and, of course, thinking.

I would like to say that I'm just a little frustrated. I wish this period of my life was just a tad bit easier on the brain. I guess you don't realize how stressful it can be to have no idea what you want to do or where you want to live and what direction or course you should be traveling. I guess I have the fear that if I just work a ho-hum job I won't ever get out of it. I have the fear that I will wake up in my 30s and be in the same place I am right now. Not knowing. Part of me also cherishes the relationships I have now. I hope I can continue to value this more than a glorious, money-filled future in the working world. I'm afraid, but I also need to loosen up because I'm tightly wound and feel a slight combustion coming on. Before my body blows up in flames, I want to remember what I do have and what I do enjoy out of life.

And before I go, will someone please save me from this scary world of the unknown. Coffee??? Anyone?

Season of the Squash

Squash has been my staple lately. It's good for a healthy-eating poor college student. I guess you don't have to be a poor student, just a poor human being who wants to eat healthy. Lately I've been baking it or stir frying it with other veggies, and adding black beans and some enchilada sauce and whatever spices you might think will taste good together. I've found it tastes fine just as written, but I've also put it on polenta or rice if you want a little more to eat. I have made some other fine tasting squash dishes using acorn and spaghetti, unfortunately I wasn't taking pictures of my food at the time. I'll make them again this month and post some pictures so you can SEE what I am eating.

*I did make the peach upside down cake and it tasted very good, but, unfortunately, it wasn't picture worthy. Soon.

My Sustenance

I've been struggling writing posts lately because I feel like I should be giving more information on the things I am interested in or care about rather than the insights of my life. I feel like my passion for food, exercise, and health are a good thing for me to start sharing since it takes up such a big chunk of my life. Recipes, exercise journals, articles on health and food, etc. Let me know what you think. Besides, my blog is called "The Feeding Trough." Although referencing something entirely different in my life, the feeding trough can be taken quite literally for now. I got excited about this new blog idea by a vegan upside down peach cake I will be making tonight and how much I want to take pictures of it when it is done.

You Didn't Know It

It has been a while. I've been busy adjusting to life in Missoula and getting myself back in school. I am finally in a house, I'm taking 17 credits and becoming a physics/math nerd in the process, and I am currently looking for a job. Life is good. I'm back in the swing of things. I went on a morning run today and I'm about to go measure the height of the Clapp Building (science building) with a protractor I made out of wood, string, and paper. I've been taking a literary studies class and getting into some amazing poetry in the midst of it all. Because I don't have much time, but feel like I should stimulate some folks, I'm going to end this with a couple of poems... Enjoy.

Digging

--Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.



Wuthering Heights

--Sylvia Plath

The horizons ring me like faggots,
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.

There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.

The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds,
Grey as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, marbly baas.

I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among the horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.

A Ball Just Turns

My friend Casey, Doug, and I got a Vegan Mezza for three at a restaurant in Portland.  So large and so good!

Russel and I sitting outside of Philz Coffee in San Fran before I left that morning.

View of residential San Francisco from a hill I found while walking through the neighborhoods.

My friend Danny Bobbe on his roof in LA.

I've been on the road for the past week, seeing friends and new spots.  I booked it on Friday and found myself in Holbrook, Arizona on Friday after thirteen hours of driving through the southwest.  I don't think I have ever seen the sun so blazing red before.  I was blinded at sunset.

On Saturday I roughed another long day and got myself and my car to Los Angeles.  I stayed there for a day and a half spending time with a friend I haven't seen for two years.  He lives in the heart of downtown LA in a rundown apartment that used to be a hotel many years ago.  We hung out on his roof, in Hollywood, on the buses, in the hipster part of town, and on Santa Monica and Venice Beach.  LA was fun.  I saw a big part of it and know enough never to move there.  My friend is making it, though, and that is all I care about.

On Monday I drove to San Francisco, where my friend, Russel, is interning for the AP Photo Agency.  San Francisco is an incredible city.  Russel and I walked around the Mission District, where he lives, talked, and ate some very delicious Asian food.  The second day I was there he had to work so I walked for most of the day stopping at parks and hiking up hills to see the city from above.  At sunset when he was off work we met up with his fine arts photographer friend, John-Paul, and got up to another hill to take pictures of the sunset hitting the buildings as the lights began to pop on at night.  It was beautiful.

I took off the next day and made it to Coos Bay, Oregon, a quaint, conservative coastal town along Highway 101.  The coastal drive from northern California through southern Oregon is quite possibly one of the most beautiful areas I have ever seen.  It's indescribably gorgeous.  My friend Casey met me in Coos Bay where we stayed in a hotel and caught up on our lives.  We drove to Portland the next day where I am now sitting in a coffee shop, drinking coffee and surfing the web.  I love Oregon.  It is definitely in the top three states of my state rate book.  It goes 1. Montana 2. Vermont  3.  Oregon .....  I think you will find Oklahoma somewhere near the bottom!  

I am going to stay in Portland until I feel like leaving.  At that point I will probably make my way to Sandpoint, Idaho, where my old roommate and friend Sam is living with his family for the summer.  It is about an hour north of Coeur d'Alene and, so I've heard, a community above all other communities.  I said I wanted to check it out so I think it will be a good cap to my road trip before I make it back to Missoula. 

This road trip has been unbelievably refreshing and inspiring.  I'm slowly gaining myself back.  Oklahoma took a lot out of me.  You don't realize these things when they are happening so it takes something like this to gain your own reality back.  I have missed culture and life.  Yeaah, I'm going to put Oklahoma in a special box somewhere, probably somewhere under the 'What's Wrong With America' section of my library.  Right on top.

Summer in Oklahoma

My road trip starts today. I thought I was leaving Saturday, but because my editor didn't sign me up for any photo assignments I think it will be best for me to try to make some ground on the pavement. Originally I planned on going to Flagstaff, AZ on Saturday and to San Francisco, CA on Sunday, but it looks like things are changing a little due to my early start. I will be driving to Holbrook, AZ tomorrow which is an hour short of Flagstaff. I want to stay at a KOA I found around the area. If I can't find a spot I will risk sleeping in my car at a rest stop and just get myself up and go for a walk or hit up a coffee shop to get my body and mind going a little. On Saturday I will be driving to Los Angeles. I didn't think I was going to do it because my friend, Danny Bobbe (some of you fine people know of this fine man), is heading up to Missoula on the 5th and he works most of the day so I thought it was going to be too much extra driving to visit him for only a couple of hours.

The idea of pushing myself and my car incredibly hard for two days straight is not sitting well in my tum, so I was looking at google maps this evening trying to reroute my trip or look at other options. It turns out Holbrook to LA is only around 8 hours. I called up Bobbe and he said he didn't have to work this weekend so it looks like I will be seeing a pastime friend in fast-paced place. This way my trip to San Francisco and all of my other destination points will not be outrageously far apart. I can see another friend and save myself from getting into an accident from being too paranoid and hyped up on coffee or falling asleep at the wheel.

Oklahoma has been an adventure. It has been a nice time away, a great experience, a massive reconstruction to my portfolio, and it has given me a chance to grow and figure out more of what I want and I don't want. But, alas, I never fell in love with it here. I'm ready to hit the road and get some more experiences, *cough*, behind my belt! So long Oklahoma! You'll always be remembered as 'that time I spent in Oklahoma.' I know you will not be forgotten. Onward and upward! Hichaw! See you soon, friends!

Never Underestimate A Vegan

Here I am with about half of the photographers from The Oklahoman after the cook-off. A variety of ages and looks. We are a unique bunch.

Jim, an Oklahoman photographer, and I have close birthdays so we celebrated at his house with a cook-off. Here we are cheersing one another. A margarita for him and an empty glass once filled with water for me. Oh how the times are a changing.

This is my photo editor, Doug Hoke. He is a hoot and I am very happy he attended the party.

Jesse and me with our food. He made the lasagna sitting on top of the frying pan. Everything else is mine.

The cook-off was a success! I swept my competition with an 18 to 4 vote. Unfortunately for my competitor, he only made a meat and cheese lasagna which I heard was great, but it's hard to compete with only one dish, and such a typical dish at that. I'm happy to say that I wowed the omnivores and I'm one step closer to making McDonald's America a thing of the past. :)