Weather was the main news this month. Hubby claims the words "polar vortex" didn't exist before this month. If anyone runs across an earlier usage, let me know!
All I know for sure is everyone nearly froze their nipples off this month. Here in central PA, the cold has continued, with very few days hitting above freezing. I have no hope of pulling a leek out of my garden! And my chickens, now five months old, haven't free-ranged in weeks. (By the way, the roosters LOOK like roosters now, though no crowing has yet occurred. Keeping fingers crossed for eggs soon!)
The cold was EVERYWHERE; early in the month, a Nor'easter killed 13 folks in the eastern US; mid-month the Kỳ Sơn district in Vietnam had it's first recorded snowfall EVAH; and at the end of the month the Carolinas through Texas were bracing for ridiculous cold and snowfall, perhaps we can call this a Sou'easter.
The cold wasn't quite everywhere; Australia had a record-breaking heatwave; it would've hit 110 if they used sensible degrees, but due to metric it was only 44.
Other notable events in January 2014:
- Winter Soups was on sale for only $3.97 through February 4th. You missed the sale; but it's still available and remains an awesome deal for $9.97 here. WATCH THIS SPACE! We will have a new cookbook soon; "Naturally Sweetened Sweets".
- Steve and I had a bad flu here; likely the H1N1 going around. Alberta confirmed cases of H5N1. But China had a REALLY bad bird flu: sales of live poultry were banned in eastern China after 19 people died from H7N9; Hong Kong destroyed 20,000 birds imported from the mainland.
- My daughter was hospitalized repeatedly with an abdominal infection; one of the antibiotics they gave her said on the pharmaceutical insert it is effective against plague. Meanwhile, DNA analysis revealed that the Plague of Justinian that killed half the people in Europe in the 500s was caused by a variant of plague, the same bacterium that caused the Black Death. Cynthia has been cleared for time travel to those periods.
- 33 couples got married during a performance of "Same Love" during the Grammy's. Go love!
- Pete Seeger, composer of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!", died. :(
- Much social media hatred was spewed when some Canadian kid was arrested for drunken driving and resisting arrest. More importantly; recreational marijuana stores open in Colorado. Go Colorado!
- Northern Republicans are so adorable with their escapades given that female-bashing doesn't play well up here; hence "Bridgegate" happened in NJ. Apparently, you can just close down a few lanes and cause massive traffic fsckups on the GWB and not bother telling emergency services or local residents or anyone if the mayor of the city effected pisses you off. Who knew?
- The NSA was naughty and everyone thinks something should be done about it.
- There were some hockey and cricket games that people thought were important and apparently a football game coming up in February.
- There were kittehs on the interwebs.
And now for the monthly link love!
| The SEXY SECRET in Your Kitchen... from LittleOwlCrunchyMomma - I just wish I'd found this post before I did my coconut oil post! Nothing like naughty uses for coconut oil. ;) | |
| Creamy Broccoli Turmeric Soup from A Harmony Healing is a broccoli soup recipe using avocado instead of cream to make it dairy-free, and includes ginger as well as turmeric. The resulting winter soup is chockful of anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatories and anti-winter! Note that this is one of the awesome recipes included in Winter Soups which you can buy here. | |
| What Paleo Means to Me (a non-dogmatic view) from They Call Me Oyster Girl is a thoughtful essay on the Paleo/Primal/Price movements, quite an interesting take on paleo philosophy. My favorite bit: "I don’t think we need science or religion or modern fad diets or factory-model educational systems to tell us how to live or eat or exercise or think or feel or believe. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Humans lived and thrived for a long time before disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the earth so much that we needed to be told how to live and thrive." | |
| Caraway Sauerkraut: Why Add Caraway Seeds? from Nourishing Time was ironically timely for me, as I had just made a small batch of sauerkraut the day before I read it and now wish I'd made caraway sauerkraut! Oh well, next time I will definitely put caraway seeds in sauerkraut! (Note to self: a small head of cabbage, 2 tsp caraway seed and 8 tsp UNground sea salt should make a quart). | |
| How to Use Turmeric - 6 Ways to Get the Benefits from Health Extremist includes a lot of ways to add turmeric to my diet beyond adding fresh root to my daily juice. I'm absolutely going to start adding the powder to carmelized onions, scrambled eggs and rice from now on! | |
| Spinach Strawberry Salad from The Skinny Pear is a deceptively simple paleo dish composed primarily of spinach and strawberries; it's the maple/olive/sesame seed/poppy seed dressing that makes it so scrumptious. | |
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Kewlest thing I saw this month...
