You know me and my books.  I've got hang-ups about reading my books in the order that I get them.  It's just a thing.  I don't know why but it's my thing.  My BFF KT tells me that I read serious books a lot.  History, Politics, Environmental whathaveyou. For the record, I do read fun books sometimes too.  I've read all the Harry Potter books.  I've read 'Game of Thrones'.  Among some of my recent 'fun book' favourites is this series.  The accents read perfectly and Vish Puri is a fantastic character.
However, I've also been reading this book recently.  It's quite light in comparison to this book which made me want to build a bunker in the woods and wait for impending doom.  Joel's book, though light, has an edge.  This is no slouch.  This is a man who is a farmer as a vocation.  It's a calling.  He loves farming.  He loves the soil.  He loves the animals and he loves the life it provides him.  You feel that love in each page he writes.  You can also feel the depth of his frustration and his desperation to see the system, the system that we now call 'the food industry', change.


One chapter that has challenged me more than any other yet (I'm not finished reading it of course) is the one about energy.  He writes in depth about how cheap oil has changed how we think about expended energy.  When you can afford to pay for gas or oil.  When you don't have to think about where to get that gas or oil.  When you don't have to wonder if your horses can make it up that hill with their load or through the snow or whatever it is... well, that changes how we feel about energy in general.  We don't wonder about the energy that it takes to get from here to there, to make those plastic containers, to make our garbage disappear, to feed cattle in a factory farm all that shipped in grain... etc.
I decided that I'm going to make an even deeper effort to stop using the car.  Now I don't use it for much but I know that there are quite a few instances over the course of say a month where I could easily hop on my bike to run that errand or get the kids wherever.  We've got a bike trailer and Kid #1 is old enough now to keep up with me on her own bike.  So... off we go.


Our first trip of the year together on our bikes is downtown.  We're going to the bookstore and then to my BFF's house to watch the Olympic opening ceremony... and bring her some belated birthday cupcakes.  Just in case you were wondering, bike trailers don't have shocks per se.  They don't absorb the bumps like a car would so when you want to transport the lovely cupcakes with fresh raspberry cream icing you might also want to consider a better mode of carrying them than your tupperware cupcake holder.
FYI -  it doesn't work.  And you get very stressed out.
FYI #2 - your cupcakes will be completely sideways and/or upside down before you are anywhere near your destination.
FYI #3 - if you put them in the fridge after that the icing will stick to the tupperware and not back on the upside down cupcake.
FYI #4 - just go ahead and listen to your gut in the first place and carry the icing separately and ice them when you get there
FYI #5 - fortunately none of this affects the taste of the icing one little bit.
Another life lessons learned.


Raspberry Buttercream Icing adapted from 'SweetSavoryLife'
makes about 3 1/2 cups

1 cup butter (the higher the fat content the better) at room temperature
3 - 4 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup(ish) fresh raspberries, roughly mashed.

Beat the butter until it's a cream glob (just a minute or so).
Slowly add the icing sugar (if using a mixer turn down to 'low' speed) and once it's all added then mix more vigorously.
Add in the mashed raspberries.
Mix until everything is creamy, there are no lumps, and spreadable.
Spread or Pipe over a completely cooled cake or cupcakes.
Freeze whatever is leftover.