The American Prairie, Part 2: Adventures in camping with a dog

The thing with the prairie is that there is very little shade. Cooling off in the grass with a drink of water.



can I just say that I love hikes that provide snacks along the way? These raspberries were so sweet. They tasted like jam. No jamming required.

Yes. The dog has a backpack.

This toad posed for his picture then decided he needed to cool off. So Berteau licked him and then he hopped away to find a cooler place than the path to hang out.


Steak, pototoes, peas, dog food, grahams and mallows for s'mores, cookwear and utensils. I like how the bug spray is also in this picture. It is a seasoning unique to camping.

The mosquitoes finally started to get to Berteau. So he was sent to isolation in the tent. Which he was happy about.

Not that I can blame him.

We cleaned up and then played cards and drank our contraband liquor until we were too tired to stay awake anymore. We vowed to wake each other up if we woke up in the middle of the night so we could go look at the stars but that didn't happen. We planned to get up real early so we could watch the sunrise before breakfast. That didn't happen either. I think we forgot to set an alarm. We did get up early enough to get in some canoeing before we headed out.

Berteau kept sticking his head over the side to drink the water and turning around which lead me to sing a round of "Sit down, You're rocking the boat" from Guys and Dolls. He did eventually lay down and chill out and then glared at me every time I swtitched sides with my oar and dripped water on him.


A house on and island in the middle of a lake with a bar right next door? Yes, please!

The finger in the photo only adds authenticity.

Sleeping in the car on the way home.

The American Prairie, Part One: Adventures in Botanical Photography

San Francisco: Take one, the countryside.

After the Hazon Conference B and I spent a few days in San Francisco visiting his aunt, famous restaurants and intersections, and hugging redwoods.



The Painted Ladies. You can see the slope of the street.

The hippie in me had to, even though this is a horrible picture. We went shopping here and checked out a bunch of vintage shops. There is also a really awesome sock store where I found turquoise merino wool tights by hue. I decided not to buy them because I thought I could find them at home. I have had zero luck finding them online and haven't had time to go shopping in actual stores. :(

Dutch Windmills! There are two but the other one is under restoration.

the Botanic Garden. Can you see the awesome sunclock?

Bison! There have been Bison kept in Golden Gate Park for many years. I think it started around the turn of the century but I don't remember.


California Academy of Science is located in Golden Gate Park and is a natural history museum, a planetarium and an aquarium. It is huge! It was also packed being over Christmas holidays the kids were out of school and it was therefore crazy. Note to self do not go to museums over school breaks. I LOVE taking pictures at aquariums. I always get images that are extremely beautiful, graceful, colorful and serene (in contrast to the actual environment of the aquarium). I have a ton of aquarium pictures and I want to do a separate post of them so the extreme beauty can be fully enjoyed.

The are some kind of eel. I don't remember what they are called but they pop out of the sand at the bottom to feed and they are very small.

I love this guy. He posed for me and was very patient with me as I took a lot of pictures because I couldn't get him in focus.

Jellyfish are the epitome of photgoraphic beauty.


Sea dragons are my favorite. They are also everyone else's favorite too. They are very light sensitive and their tanks had a no photography sign on them. I think because people use their flash too much (a pet peeve of mine) I never use a flash anyway so I went ahead a took pictures. All the other people around the tank were making comments about me.



I have become interested in taxidermy. Weird, I know. I don't want to be a taxidermist I have just been interested in looking at it and in related objects. Like those frames of different species of butterflies pinned to a board. I think my fascination with Jan Svankmajer's Alice started it and Sleep No More fueled it. The jar and the skulls are from the naturalist's center. They have all kinds of stuff on display and they have a great library where you can do research. Members of the museum are also able to check out the books. I found a few titles I would like to read there. The leopard is from the old part of the natural history museum.

The Eco-roof. It is created in hills to imitate the hills of the local landscape. Circular windows are part of a computerized heating and cooling system. The air from outside is circulated within the museum. They also keep beehives and have botany studies on the roof.

"Eating is an agricultural act"

That's Wendell Berry. For those of you who have never read any Wendell Berry, you should. I have mostly read his agricultural essays. He wrote about what I now consider to be mainstream foodie topics (Thanks to Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters) 30 years ago. He is also a farmer who doesn't own a tractor. He has a team of draft horses and a collection of "archaic" non-motorized iron tools. Wendell Berry is my hero. if I could invite 5 "famous" people to my dinner table he would be one of them.

About a month ago I was privileged to travel to Monterey, CA for the Hazon Food Conference. Hazon is the largest environmental organization within the Jewish Community. I had never heard of them until I applied to receive a grant to attend the food conference. They are a worthy organization and worth checking out and getting involved with. I had never heard of them because most of their activity is based on the coasts, NY and LA, because their is an infinitely larger Jewish population there than in Chicago. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to connect with some wonderful like-minded people including my new friend Aaron Lerman, whose review of the conference you can read at the Jew and the Carrot, here. Other notable people worth checking out and supporting are:
Julie Negrin, a cooking teacher with a cookbook coming out in the spring. She lead the first of the sessions I attended and I am super excited about her book.
Abbe Turner, dairy goat farmer and cheesemaker extrodinaire. Her farm, Lucky Penny Farm, is located in Ohio. read LOCAL. A truly amazing person and I want to help her find a Chicago market and go visit her and the goats when it is a bit warmer out.
Anna Hanau, Farm manager at Adamah farm. This girl is intense when it comes to farming. in a really awesome way. She told us the best tractor story ever. I wish I could tell it but it will definitely lose something. I would like to be able to apply and work at Adamah this summer. We will see about that though there is lots going on at the moment.
Jonathan Silverman, farmer in the Bay area with lots of creative projects going on. My birthday fell during the conference and he sang happy birthday to me and presented me with a fancy chocolate bar for my cake/present.
Pesach Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer, husband and wife founders of the Eden Village Camp near NYC, Pesach taught a session on permaculture and incorporating it into your everyday life and was a wonderful teacher. Vivian moderated a Vegetable monologues panel of female farmers that included Anna Hanau and Abbe Turner. Eden Village Camp is in its inaugural year this coming summer and seems like a truly unique and dynamic opportunity for children. There are some discounts and scholarships available so if you know of some children who like to play in the dirt check them out!

I am still weeding through all the materials that I brought home and will probably say more as I do that. There is a group of us here in Chicago trying to get some projects off the ground for the community here and I also have a person project that I am going to use this blog as a platform for in the coming months as I start researching. i will tell you more about that in another post as this one has lots of info already!