A few of our favorite things

I spent the afternoon in the throes of what I believe to have been my first official migraine, and thus my posting ambitions are a little low right now. So I'll start with what comes easily: talking about food. The picture to the right is of Matt and a dish of puerco pibil, also known as conchinita pibil, the one and only meat dish we ever cook and the reason Matt claims he couldn't ever be fully vegetarian again. We first discovered it as a bonus feature on the DVD "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," after which we painstakingly recreated and loved it, and were thrilled to find it was an option for our rehearsal dinner (in Mexico). We were even more delighted to discover that our homemade version was surprisingly authentic in comparison. It's a little labor-intensive but well worth the effort; to find and grind the individual spices, to blend the marinade, to slow-cook for four hours, to scrub the remnants off the bottom of your oven if you forgot to put down a drip pan. It's shown here with a side of fried plaintains and homemade corn tortillas.

Something else we tried recently that was a singular success was cold-brewing coffee. We already use a French press for making hot coffee (because we love the flavor, the speed, and the savings of not having to buy coffee filters), and this was even easier: we just ground the beans, dumped them in with some cold water, let them sit overnight, and pressed them down in the morning. The ultimate make-ahead, instant (after 8-12 hours, anyway) coffee beverage! Coffee is supposedly much lower in acid and higher in caffeine when prepared this way (tailor-made for night nurses with ulcers!), and we found that it had a much smoother, almost chocolatey-sweet taste when combined with a generous amount of milk.

Another of our household adventures which actually has very little to do with food relates to a recent shift in how we think about cleaning supplies. I think the combination of getting a little older (and thus thinking about the kind of impact we'd like to ultimately have on our bodies and the planet) and each of us marrying somebody whose hippie idealism serves as a catalyst to our own has nudged us both into making a series of small but sustainable changes in the way we live our daily lives. Matt has switched almost exclusively to biking where he needs to go; I've been experimenting with eradicating unnecessary chemicals from our household. It's amazing how much you really don't need substances like bleach in the kitchen when you a) rarely cook meat; b) clean up messes as soon as they happen; c) use plenty of hot water; and d) where that fails, employ a generous amount of baking soda and a rag. We've really cut down on the amount of money we used to spend on kitchen and bathroom cleansers, paper towels, and other cleaning supplies when we switched to simpler ingredients like baking soda, vinegar, and rags we made ourselves (anything from boxer shorts to t-shirts works, although we seem to like old thermal shirts the best). It's empowering to find ways to save money that are also beneficial to us and the environment; it's gratifying to live with someone who responds enthusiastically even to your more outside-the-box suggestions. Are tampons and toilet paper the next industrialized products to go the way of the dinosaur? Only time will tell.