I’m reposting a excerpt from a blog I wrote last year about Valentine’s Day. Partly because it got a good response and I like praise and partly because the holiday is a loser holiday for Jesse as I am never materially satisfied. Either it’s too much or not enough.

In the next few days I plan to come up with gift suggestions to make Jesse’s life easier like fair trade organic chocolate or bath and body products I might actually use or maybe a Prius limo. Honestly, I think I might like a composter even though I have no clue what I’d do with good dirt out here in the desert. Maybe one of you will see something to put on your list.

And now for old news…

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February 12, 2007

Please don’t go out on Valentine’s Day and drop a chunk of change on flowers that were coated in pesticides, kept in a green house, and shipped across the country. What is that supposed to say? “I love you so muchly that I’m giving you something unnaturally begotten. Also, in its making a part of the world was poisoned. Lastly, even with the aspirin dissolving in the water, it’s doomed to die leaving nothing to show for the cash. THIS is the symbol of my love for you.” Please. Save your money. Buy a plant. I hear that bamboo palm is good for taking formaldehyde out of the air.

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I am compelled to request that you forget the expensive roses! Instead, share this recipe for Garbage Soup, from a Sonoran Desert cookbook (with editorial from me). It would be good for your wallet, the environment, and an honest statement about the longevity of love.

INGREDIENTS:
water (the elixir of life)
vegetable waste (eggplant sounds like elegant fare for a Valentine dinner, but gack!)
coffee grounds (from the pot you shared over morning breath)
eggshells (you already walked on them so they are nicely crushed)
other similar kitchen waste (so not the shit you sling at each other like monkeys after the kids are in bed)
not grease (this is about living plants not the yummy goodness of slaughtered lambs)

DIRECTIONS: Chop waste in food processor or blender with equal parts water. Mix it up until it’s as convoluted as your fights. Bury soup around outer edges of plants along side the hatchet.

Commercial fertilizers can kill beneficial microorganisms in the soil. This recipe for plants can be used in lieu of those fertilizers. Can you feel the love?