eating weeds for breakfast?

At the beginning of the summer, I was able to have a nice, small patch of soil next to my patio to use as my wildflower and honeybee garden. And for my first flower garden, it turned out pretty darn beautiful! But like any garden, occasionally my flower garden gets riddled with pesky weeds.

However, I remembered reading an article a long time ago that some of these common weeds were actually edible! One of those edible weeds is a plant called purslane, portulaca oleracea. Apparently, not only was this weed edible, it was packed with omega-3s and other vitamins and minerals! So I weeded my flower garden and brought in a nice bundle of purslane to try in my breakfast.

After a quick google search, (and making sure that the weeds that I picked was definitely purslane and not its poisonous doppelganger) I found out that purslane was used similarly to how spinach and arugula are used. So I thought, why not add it to my regular kitchen sink omelette? After rinsing off the purslane and picking off the stalks into bite sized pieces I lightly sauteed them with a bit of chopped onions, mushrooms, and garlic.

I love making omelettes because it's so simple and a tasty vehicle to stuff with random veggies. And sometimes I like to think that beating the hell out of two eggs until they are light and frothy can substitute as my morning arm workout. Ha ha ha. I like adding a bit of sugar and a pinch of salt to my omelettes? Sugar in omelettes sounds a little off-putting but I really love how it tastes. 

Overall, I think that purslane tasted pretty damn good for something that would usually go into my compost pile. It has a very acidic aftertaste and tastes a lot better raw than sauteed. Even though I only sauteed the purslane for literally seven or eight seconds, they cooked really quickly and could get a tad bit slimy when overcooked. Next time, I'll just toss them in at the very last second after I'm done sauteing my veggies. Nonetheless, it was a very delicious omelette!

Hopefully I won't die or anything by eating weeds.

Anyway, continuing on the botanic theme, a week ago, I picked some flowers and other various foliage and pressed them between old sheets of newspaper. When they were all dried out and ready to use, I collected them in this old stamp tin that I thrifted a while ago for a measly fifty cents.

I don't know most of the names of the flowers except for queen anne's lace which is the delicate white flower at the bottom left corner.

There was also this leaf that I pressed that had a fuzzy underside! I thought it was very cute.

And I really liked how translucent this leaf turned out to be. 

If anyone knows the name of any of these plants it'd be really cool if you could let me know! 

Biking to the post office

Over the past couple of days wrote a good handful of letters and put together some parcels to mail out!

One of those letters was to Laura, who is doing a postal exchange project where if you mail something to her, she will mail you back a little handful of things that she makes for the month. 

I wrote her a strange letter because inspiration struck to put together something at 3 am. Inside I included some ephemera. The ones pictured below are vintage advertisements cut out from a 1958 January issue of National Geographic.

I also included a photo transparency of Canada in 1957

After I finished Laura's letter, I had a good stack of things to mail out!

So I got out my trusty little town bicycle and headed off to the post office.

This week's incoming mail was from my penpal Coutney who lives in Sweden. The envelope was very creative and made with a clear plastic. 

I also cut out this cute stamp from a package that my dad ordered from Japan. I think it's so pretty!

Updated Penpal Map

Today I got around updating that ol' penpal map that I created when I first made this blog. After I updated it, I realized that I had sent mail now to 60 different individuals! Only 40 more different individuals to go before the end of the year to reach my goal of sending snail mail to 100 different individuals this year (or was it just sending out 100 different things? eh I'll just say that both are goals that I want to reach.)

Here's a quick snapshot of what my new penpal map looks like at the moment. You can always just go to the actual map and zoom in look around and stuff!

 

Incoming Mail June-July

Although I promised to become a more active snail mailer, I have to admit, I have been slacking off. My days these days consists almost exclusively of napping and playing League of Legends. I have become a slobby nerd. I don't completely mind though.

But I've been trying to ~disconnect~ myself these days. I also finally found my card reader again so I can finally upload the photos of the wonderful mail I've received throughout the summer.

The first one is a wonderful mail from a French old man from swap-bot. It was a mail-art swap and I received an exquisite number of gorgeous stamps! He was so generous in sending the used stamps and I am so lucky to have had him as a partner for a swap. Here's a couple of my favorite stamps from the large pile of stamps that he sent me.

The second amazing piece of snail mail I received was a Postal Society Monthly Tea Swap for June 2014 from Arielle. When I found this gem of a parcel in my mailbox I was actually speechless at how gorgeous it was. 

What Arielle included inside was even more amazing! This was probably one of my top favorite things I received in the mail.

Inside was a stuffed booklet filled with ephemera, deco tape, and lots and lots of great tea!

This was the first page of the booklet. Absolutely gorgeous!

This is the first sachet of tea that Arielle included. A delicious peppermint tea. I actually brewed this up while editing these photos today, it was possibly the best peppermint tea I've ever had.

Every page of the booklet was so cute!

The little satchel had loose leaf tea (violet coquette) which was very aromatic and pleasant to drink. Possibly my favorite of the teas that Arielle included.

At the last page of the booklet was a handful of different tea satchels. You can't really see it clearly in this photo but the background to the last page was a starry sky with tissue paper clouds (so creative)!

After receiving such an extravagant parcel, I wanted to put together something great for Arielle.

I don't want to spoil anything for her, but here's a sneak peak at what I sent her.

Inside I included a vintage transparency of the Fraser River Canyon circa 1956.

The third amazing piece of mail that I received thus far was a letter from Pattie. I connected with Pattie through instagram when she left me a lovely comment about my snail mail photos and a lot of notifications of hearts. She showed interest in becoming penpals and looking at Pattie's admirable snail mail photos in her instagram profile I agreed in a heartbeat.

A couple weeks later, I was greeted with this adorable little envelope in my mailbox

Inside was a packet of ephemera and goodies.

There were pages from an old book (the kind that has that lovely old book texture and smell) in a language that I do not understand but admire at the same time. A lovely pressed daisy!!!!!!! And a beautiful illustration that Pattie drew.

Pattie also included a letter that was very creative. (Very TF-esque AHAHAHAHAH I made a LoL funny)

For that lovely letter, I also put a letter of my own to send to Pattie. I've been trying to work on jazzing up my letters a bit. And I really like using white ink on craft paper (it's great but such a pain to do because I have zero calligraphy skills). I got a bit lazy and typed the rest of the letter on my typewriter.

I also put together more stuff for her but I will only show this handmade patch I made for her. (In the background is a business card for one of my favorite donut shop Glazed & Infused)