Dana Burland

I’m tomatoed out, yo. Not just tomatoed out, but CSA ’ed out. I didn’t anticipate saying this at the start, but yay . I stand by the idea that CSAs are great, with a newly added caveat that they’re not for everyone. Here are lessons from my 22-week experience: Location, location, location To be fair, this headache was an unexpected and self imposed one. The weekly pick up spot that was once on my way home from work became a completely out of the way hour-long drive when I switched jobs. No amount of fresh kale is worth dealing with that (in the made-up-words of my grandpa) ruzabuza. Culinary over-excitement I was so thrilled to learn how to love eggplant, beets and muskmelon—except for the minor detail that I in fact did not love them. I did get good mileage out of some new-to-me produce like the Swiss chard, bok choy and Chinese cabbage. I also, terribly enough, watched a lot of produce go bad. I varied between lacking the courage to work with something new and lacking the mo...

You know that scene from “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” when Cam tries to run his dad's sports car in reserve to undo the mileage from his secret mid-day joy ride? That is exactly how I feel after a run. I'm as happy running as Matthew Broderick is singing “Danke Schoen” on a parade float, but afterward I feel all old and achy and yes, my hip still hurts and yes, I'm still a little pissy about it. I'm trying to be more diligent about my form, and cross training, and stretching, and yoga and also flossing my teeth if you must know; but I still haven't found the magic solution to totally undo the stress running puts on my body. These stretches give me the most relief where I need it (and all the sudden this blog post is sounding like a prescription drug commercial). Stringing the poses together like a yoga workout feels even better. If you feel 26 going on 72 after a run like me, give this series a whirl: Pyramid Reach : Stand with legs apart, feet pointed f...

  We had buddies from the other side of the state in town this weekend and just about fit every fall activity into their visit. Pumpkin carving—check, cider drinking—check, coziness—major check. Saturday afternoon we picked up a few pumpkins from a nearby orchard. Their 50% off sale was perfectly timed for us, especially for the men who decided $.20/pound pumpkins meant they must pick out 20 pounders. Oh menz. Back at the apartment I threw together perhaps the fastest spiked apple cider recipe ever and we got to carving. There’s something about glowing gourds and roasted pumpkin seeds that make me happy to carve pumpkins every year. Hot Spiked Apple Cider Ingredients 8 ½ cups apple cider 2 cups dark rum 1 apple, sliced 1 orange, sliced 2 cinnamon sticks Directions 1. Heat the cider, apple, orange and cinnamon in a large pot for 5-8 minutes. 2. Remove the pot from heat and stir in the rum.

There's a small, 3-4 week period each year when our deck explodes in yellow. Sunrises and sunsets turn everything to gold. I think I've taken more photos of  blue skies, yellow leaves and various degrees of sunlight in the last week than I ever have actually used our deck for longer than a 5 minute mini-photo shoot.

Pardon this bathroom selfie, but my scarf! I made it! It's my third attempt at knitting and first successful one, which is not too terrible especially considering I'm 0-23 in cooking wild rice. So many burnt pots. What's harder to see than my small top knot is that this is actually a cowl scarf. I took the beginners way out and knit one extra, extra long regular scarf and stitched the ends together. Also not shown is the discrepancy in width from one end to another, a rookie mistake. I'm thinkin' my next scarf will be a little more even around the ends.

Weekend lessons: the best kind of nostalgia is nostalgia paired with something new. Saturday night Ben and I took our couple friends to my alma mater for their homecoming football game. Oh the sweet memories of walking around campus making fun of alumni that come back to campus to relive their college days. I hardly felt like a circle peg forcing my way into a square shaped memory, though. The best parts of Saturday night were all the new—the new-to-campus grilled wrap place we ate at (which, coincidentally was a familiar staple to the MSU alums I was with), being in the company of new-since-college friends, and the decision to tip back a few pre-game beers instead of downing a 7/11 Slurpee poisoned with several glugs of Burnett's. Also, we sat through two hail storms during the first half of the game. That certainly was special and new. I was seeking more of the familiar when I made this baked apple cider doughnut hole recipe. It sounded like the cousin to the apple cid...

All the cool bloggers write reviews of great music and movies. To be honest, I've preferred knitting and reading over movies and TV shows lately. At the rate I'm going, you can expect a post on hard ginger candies and denture adhesive cream comin' up real soon. In the meantime, enjoy a few reviews of my recent favorite things. Prisioners Yes, my similarly aged female coworker and I opted for this movie because of Jake Gyllenhaal. And yes, despite spending half of the film covering our eyes, it was worth it. Prisoners is about the abduction of two little girls and a father and detective's path to find them. It was a good movie—lots of twists and turns and good character depth. It was also dark and at points incredibly awesome yet hard to watch acting. Do yourself a favor and catch the matinee, you'll want a few hours of sunlight when you're done. The Light Between Oceans I heard extreme love and extreme hate for this book before I read it. I get it, too, b...

No, not a physical, human trainer; a bike trainer. With this puppy placed right in front of the TV, I hardly have an excuse for missing New Girl episodes—unfortunately Ben can say the same thing about football games.

Note to self: ArtPrize done on a weekday is ultimately better than ArtPrize done on a weekend. We hosted family the past two weekends and experienced all of ArtPrize we could stomach. It's amazing how lame an actually awesome hand carved stone Indian warrior face looks next to a two story, school bus and a half long real fire breathing dragon. ArtPrize has a magical way of enlightening the public while simultaneously creating thousands of meh-I-could-probably-do-that art snobs. In all honesty, I think this year was the worst ArtPrize year to date. Nothing seemed that stunning or fantastic; only about three entries in the top 10 seemed like they fit there. Good thing the last weekend of AP coincided with Pulaski Days . Nothing is lost when pierogies are involved.

It was so cute watching all the moms snap photos of their babies petting baby goats…with me fighting for petting space right next to them. Cute animals love knows no age! The farmer/cashier man said people try to pass off bags of you-pick Honeycrisps as inferior cheaper apples. You know, as if the man who keeps up those apple trees wouldn't know the difference. Screw skydiving, picking raspberries is a real extreme sport. The bees, the prickly bushes, the potential to pop a sour one in your mouth when you expected a sweet one. Good thing I brought B. There are lots of good ways to spend $18, but none better than on a peck of Honeycrisps. My fruit basket has never been so full or so happy.