About

I should start by saying I’m endlessly curious and easily enthused about, well, everything.  I love learning, and throwing myself into whatever activity or project comes my way. Thus, when I moved to join my partner seven years ago and embedded myself with him in our 250-person town in the foothills of Mt. Rainier, I threw myself into our 5-acre parcel of soil and trees, and found myself somewhat surprisingly barefoot in the kitchen, happily concocting meals of all sorts to sustain us for weeks at a time before reluctantly heading for groceries in the city, an hour away.

This site perhaps should have been called “Honey and Apple-Cider Vinegar,” on account of our household’s two primary outputs.  I’ve gradually phased out most processed sugar in favor of using our own honey in recipes, and apple-cider vinegar has become a mild-obsession: I use it to wash my hair, clean the house, flavor food, and I often drink it in the morning with water and – you guessed it – honey.

This blog has been born of friend-requests for food and DIY housecleaning/lotion recipes, and my own search for ways to naturally boost my immune system and alleviate suffering from minor ailments. Aside from my own avid gardening, kitchen food and skin care experimentation, and amateur apothecarianism, my partner is a carpenter, fanatical fruit-tree planter, savvy seed-saver, alternative-energy aficionado, and a damn fine apiarist – bringing our combined skills and interests into one energetic, sustainably-oriented homestead.

When my fingers aren’t dug deep in the dirt, sticky with honey, or covered with flour, I’m a high-school English teacher – sipping my kombucha or eating granola with goat’s milk from a mason jar, enthusiastically demonstrating figurative language, revising thesis statements, and pontificating on themes while my students laugh and question my jarred delicacies. Remaining spare time finds me hiking or riding the nearby mountains, kayaking rivers, paddle-boarding lakes, traveling foreign lands, or reading and painting (while guiltily thinking of the yard work I should be doing).