I've been absent for a few weeks but it was because I was out doing bad ass stuff. First off, me and my homegirl Sarah took a mother's weekend off and drove 12 hours to Cookeville, TN on the heels of "hurricane" Isaac to camp out and have a blast at the 3rd annual Muddy Roots Festival. A full weekend of camping, lounging, partying and listening to the sounds of every type of roots music you can imagine. Everything from old timers like Robert "Wolfman" Belfour and Ralph Stanley to more modern old time acts like the Pine Hill Haints and crustabilly bands (which is an interstesting category) like the Goddamn Gallows. I dunno, something like 50 acts, or more? Too many to count. And all of em a lot of fun.
Either way, it was an awesome weekend spent reconnecting with friends from Michigan, meeting new people, dancing, playing music and relaxing. Away from the kids. Will definately be going again next year. For more info check out Muddy Roots.
Here's a picture of me and my homegirls at our little camp/home away from home.
And a daytime crowd shot.
The weekend after I got back we took Luella to her grandma's for a much needed date night and went to check out a set by Austin TX's awesome soul/rocknroll act Black Joe Lewis. We randomly ran into the guys from Sourvein who were in town to practice for an upcoming tour with St. Vitus. Awesome band with members of other great bands like Hail Hornet and Dystopia. Spent the next week having awesome conversations over tasty meals with these guys and sent them off on tour with a farewell pizza party at our house. Here's a picture of us and some other local band nerds at an impromtu BBQ out at the storage sheds we all use to practice in out in the boonies. Great night.
After all that died down, got a little work done in the garden. Weeded and pulled up dead veg plants from our garden and let our chickens do a little roaming, while Luella endlessly chased them around the yard. We are 18 weeks into our family backyard chicken endeavor, should be getting eggs soon. Will eventually fill a whole post about those chickens and our adventure. Love em. I think Lu loves em the most though. Here is a picture of our happy pack of chickens peckin around.
And one of Shane posing with his chicken Rosie. Just so you know he just looks serious cause he's trying to look like this cool old pic we have of his great great so and so posing with his chicken.
My homegirl Maddy drove down from Jackson, MS this past weekend for a healing touch seminar. Love that lady. We spent some time on the road together in our younger years and much more time lounging around creating a universe centered around how many laughs we could squeeze out of conversations about Corey Feldman.. we got quite a few out of it.. everyone else.. not so much. Here's a picture of me and Maddy last year at another much needed reuniting. I forgot to take pictures this time around.
And then back to life. I've been nerding out on vegan food blogs the last few days. I've been vegan/vegetarian for the bulk of my adult life, but I flip flop with meat sometimes as I've spent a lot of time cooking in standard carnivorous restaurants and well sometimes it's hard to avoid when you live south of I-10.
Our 16 year old is working at vegetarianism right now though, so it's a good excuse to return to my veggie roots. As if I need more of an excuse then the unnecessary and inhumane slaughter of millions of animals.. hmm.. anyways. Ian is learning how to cook under my guidance and tonight he made his first attempt at home made vegan italian sausage (from the PPK blog-love Isa's recipes) for a dressed up spaghetti with sauteed kale and mushrooms. He wante to do something simple and it was a total success. So proud of our little future veggie chef. And he was proud of himself as well.
Here's a picture of Ian beaming over one of his finished snausages.
And one of our happy little family eating it up. Lu had 3 bowls!
