They’re up.

I repeat: They are up. My fragile seeds have sprouted into tiny proto-herbs. Miniature leaves unfold by the hour; little stems reach toward the sun. It’s alive, I tell you! I have created life!

Forgive me for going a bit mad with power — I’m just so excited that my very first foray into growing from seed is actually working so far. Sure, I’ve managed to keep a series of windowsill plants alive in pots over the past few years (bless you, you affable succulents). But I bought all of them as hearty young plants, already strong and bushy and requiring little more than water from me. It’s like adopting a high-achieving college kid — with all the hard work already done, you can’t exactly call yourself parent of the year.

But my recent seed-bombing expedition awakened something in me. I haven’t yet seen any sprouts from the secret seed bomb I snuck into a corner of my backyard — my cue to check on the seed-filled clay capsules I lobbed into vacant lots (maybe the dry spell of the past few weeks is to blame?). So while I’m waiting for my guerrilla gardening luck to kick in, I decided to try growing herbs from seed for the first time. (I have done it hydroponically, as we’ll see, but that’s so easy it’s practically cheating.)

Seeds are intimidating. They’re so small, so vulnerable, so totally dependent on you. Too much or too little water will fell them; mess up their exposure to light or temperature, and they’re through. I just don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of responsibility. But I received a lovely set of herb seeds for Valentine’s Day, so I took a deep breath and went for it.

First method: the seed tray. A few gardening books informed me that no, you can’t just place seeds straight into the ground and expect them to grow. You have to gently raise them in a warm, safe, interior environment until they’re tough enough to go wild (not unlike teen queen Miley Cyrus and her time on the Disney Channel). You can get quite elaborate with this — think grow lights and custom-mixed “growing media” — but simple is usually a good place to start.

My base: a seed-starting tray that cost me three bucks (you can also use yogurt containers, milk cartons, and the like). My soil of choice: individual peat plugs from a local hydroponics store (more on that below). They promised to “jump-start” my garden with their “optimum water/air ratio” and “uniform wicking,” plus they cost less than a quarter each. My preparation: Soaking my seeds of choice — dill, thyme, chives, oregano, and sage — overnight in an ice-cube tray. Then it was planting time.

Here’s something I didn’t realize about some herb seeds: They’re really small. Maybe the size of a tick or even tinier. This made precision planting in my peat plugs rather difficult. Without the aid of a pair of seed tweezers (the existence of which I was unaware until I Googled it two minutes ago — who knew?), I instead used the Clumsy Fingertip Method: Swipe finger into ice-cube compartment until some seeds stick, awkwardly wipe finger on top of soil, hope at least some of the seeds took purchase, and repeat. Add labels, mist with a spray bottle, set the tray on the windowsill, and your seeds are on their way to greatness.

Oh, and seeds need extra heat and moisture to really take root. The garden store guy tried to sell me a bulky, plastic tray cover for this purpose, but I was on to him. I rigged my own cover by slipping a clear plastic produce bag over the end of the tray. Proof it works: After just a few days, delicate green shoots started poking their adorable heads up from the soil.

How thrilled am I about this early success? I check on the tray with my spray bottle in hand, cooing and making sure the tiny herbs are comfortable, approximately every 20 minutes. I’m considering sending out birth announcements.

And then there’s the hydroponic method, from the Greek hydro, water, and ponics, insert pot joke here. My parents sent me a countertop hydroponic pod a few years ago when I lived in a dark cave of a basement apartment. This seed method couldn’t be easier: Pop the included, preseeded soil cylinders in, turn on the grow light (it automatically turns on and off in a regular cycle), and add fertilizer every few weeks when the smart little pod tells you to. I’ve used it to grow bushels of basil, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, and mini geraniums in grand style.

This time, though, I wanted to break free from the preloaded seed kit monopoly. Why couldn’t I make my own, with seeds of my choosing? Hence my trip to the hydroponics store and my discovery of the peat plugs. Wouldn’t you know it: They fit perfectly in the pod. I planted a few more herbs, switched on the light, and am now checking for sprouts every 20 minutes, too. In fact, hold on … nope, nothing yet.

With three seed methods in the works (don’t forget about the seed bombs), surely I’ll find some measure of success. I’ll report back on what’s growing and what’s not — plus more exploration into the seedy (ha!) world of guerrilla gardening — as the spring progresses.

A little more than a month ago, I expanded Team Greenie Pig to four and set out on a month-long challenge to eliminate animal products from our diets. Would we discover an entirely new way of eating? Experience a miraculous increase in vitality? Or crash and burn spectacularly over an irresistible salumi plate? And would any of us end up converting wholly to veganism?

One thing we all agreed on: We learned a lot. Now it’s your turn: I encourage — nay, dare — you to try the vegan experiment yourself. It’s challenging, surprising, and utterly worthwhile. But before you do, here are some of those lessons we learned along the way.

It’s hard.

Surprise, surprise: Departing from the eating and cooking habits you’ve developed over decades — particularly if you developed them in contemporary, fast-food-lovin’, steak-and-potatoes-havin’, pizza-partyin’ America — is challenging. I normally eat meat sparingly and front-load my plate with veggies anyway, and still I found the strict vegan thing to be hard.

It’s the little things: I missed butter and cheese (way more than meat). A bunch of my favorite whole-grain products were blacklisted for their honey content. I struggled with suddenly becoming the “difficult” guest at dinner parties and evenings out. Convenience foods got a whole lot less convenient. And eating well requires research: “The real start-up cost to veganism is a massive increase in the amount of time it takes to evaluate, plan, and execute great food,” notes my fellow vegan-for-a-month, Matt.

I’m sure this gets easier with practice. But insisting that a paradigm shift in dietary habits isn’t hard is a real disservice to anyone who’s struggling to adjust to it.

But not that hard.

People generally reacted to our experiment in one of two ways. One, “Oh YAY! Being vegan is the best!” or two, “I could never be vegan.” As a former member of camp two, I can honestly say: Yes, you totally can. Sure, there are roadblocks. But the food can be sublime. And while I missed some taboo items, I didn’t miss them as much as I expected. More importantly, the requisite scrutiny of what you put in your belly is enlightening. Forcing yourself to think harder about what you’re eating and where it comes from is habit-forming. And that’s a very good thing.

Don’t do it all at once.

For the sake of this experiment, we quit animal products … precipitously. (Ha! You thought I was going to say “cold Tofurky,” didn’t you?) If you’re serious about veganism sticking, don’t do this. You need time to learn new recipes, stake out the best vegan restaurant options, spread the word so your friends won’t tempt you with pork burritos, and allow for the occasional indulgence (all the better if it’s a local, organic, and humane one). Dip a toe, maybe wade in and splash around a bit before you do that cannonball.

Vegan does not necessarily = healthy.

Fries, fake fried chicken, Oreos, straight-up shots of coconut oil: all vegan. If you’re looking to eliminate saturated fat or processed foods, veganism isn’t foolproof. But I don’t point this out as a deterrent. On the contrary, it’s wonderful. Everyone needs a treat now and then — perhaps never more than when the majority of your diet consists of squeaky-clean, nutrient-dense, health-halo components. Rest easy: You can eat vegan and still chow down on fatty junk food. May I suggest coconut non-dairy frozen dessert? It’ll keep you sane.

The food can be delicious.

All four of us already appreciated a good crisped chickpea salad or the simple union of black beans and guacamole. But being forced to seek out still more magical combinations was one of our favorite parts of this quest. Without it, I’m not sure we would have hunted down this pizza. Or these grits with “creamed” cashews and mustard greens. Or this mushroom soup …

You’d better like cooking.

Going out to eat is fraught with peril: lack of inspiring options at your typical restaurant, saturation with the limited number of places that do have options (Thai is great, but it’s not every-night great), and the smell of non-vegan foods promiscuously wafting about. Plus, you might have to get demanding: Ted’s low point of the whole endeavor was “masquerading as an actual vegan and bending a restaurant to my iron will. I wanted to bury my face in sunchoke.”

Easier and better is to cook at home most of the time, and host those dinner parties yourself.

Don’t expect any miracles.

Perhaps you need more than a month to fully reap the purported benefits of the vegan diet — amazing skin, hair, energy levels, etc. But none of us experienced noticeable improvements in any of the above. “Have you noticed any changes?” my friend, Heather, asked over Lebanese food during week four. When I said no, she took another bite of her beef kebab with visible relief.

There is one side effect you should be aware of (reported by two of the four of us). Let me put it this way: Say you’re a zookeeper, and you’re accustomed to cleaning the antelope cage. You’ve just been promoted to elephant duty, my friend.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Yeah, yeah, great lessons. What you really want to know is: Are we vegans now or what?

No.

Before you can say, “I told you so,” dear readers, let’s unpack this. Four out of four of us declined to continue the experiment when the 31 days were up. “The relevant issues for me are sustainability, nutrition, and the enjoyment of food,” Matt mused. “Although veganism has useful things to say about all of them, completely eradicating animal products seems an overreaction to a complex problem.” Laura agreed: “Eggs from your neighbor’s chicken seem far more animal-conscious and environmentally friendly than tofu made from vast fields of soybeans and processed who knows where.”

But: Four out of four of us also realized we wanted to raise the bar for the animal products we did eat. “I pay attention to foods in a way I never have before,” Ted reported. Matt and Laura dedicated themselves to finding local meats and cheeses. We all understand now that we can survive perfectly well without animal products — so why wouldn’t we consume less of them, and make sure the ones we do eat come from ethical sources?

So we all went off the vegan wagon. But on night 33, Laura texted me: “We totally just ate a vegan dinner anyway.” Last night, Ted and I had roasted veggies over lentils. “Oh, hey, this is vegan,” we said, halfway through preparing it. I’d picked the recipe simply because it sounded good — and I’ve only gotten to a fraction of the vegan meals I’ve earmarked to try so far. We’re keeping up the vegan dinner parties; hey, they’re fun.

In the end, it turned out just as I expected: I’m not going to be a vegan, but I will be more vegan than I was before. The problem with all-or-nothing thinking — especially in a country where 98 percent of people are not vegan — is that if you demand all vegan all the time, you’ll probably just get nothing. During the course of this experiment, I heard from and spoke with many more people who are “mostly vegan” (i.e., cop to eating cheese once in a while, or eat vegan at home but not necessarily with friends) than who are “really vegan.”

So my challenge to you: Be more vegan than you are. Even if you don’t want to take me up on the month-long experiment, maybe you can eat a vegan dinner three times a week. Or do like New York Times food writer Mark Bittman and be vegan until 6 p.m. every day. Or hell, keep eating meat, but make it ethical meat. Whatever you’re doing, try doing it a little better. Who knows where it’ll lead you?

There comes a time in every would-be vegan’s life when the question arises: to fake it or not to fake it? I’m talking about meat, and not meat meat, you guys — fake meat: various slurries concocted from beans, soy, mushrooms, and vital wheat gluten and shaped to resemble burgers, hot dogs, meat loaves, and sausages. And we mustn’t forget the other substitutes, either: vegan mayonnaises, butters, eggs, milks, and (shudder) cheeses.

So, to fake it or not to fake it? Do I need them as a protein source? Do they taste remotely like my ham ‘n’ eggs from the days of yore? Or is that missing the point of these convenience foods entirely?

Before I set out with three friends to eat a strictly vegan diet for a month, my position on fake animal products was mixed at best. I’ve been known to order a veggie burger just because I didn’t feel like beef that day, and I actually like pretty much every variety of milk substitute out there. But imposter hot dogs? Tofurky? What’s the point? I’d rather just enjoy the essence of grains, beans, and fungi for themselves. Otherwise, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, then also putting that pig in a pair of Spanx and a sequined dress and making her trot around on Dancing with the Stars. Is it any wonder if she doesn’t make the final round?

Why not just stick to tofu, that agreeable slab that soaks up coconut curry and barbecue sauce with equal aplomb and cannot be mistaken for anything other than what it is? As my fiancé, Ted, put it: “It’s kind of like the uncanny valley. The closer these foods get to the real thing, the creepier they seem.”

But then we jumped into vegan month, and I started to appreciate the place of the imitation meat slab. As much as I was enjoying the newfound prominence of plant-based proteins on my plate, something was just … missing. A certain texture, maybe, or that umami savory flavor so central to meats. I found myself wanting something more than lentils and quinoa. Something familiar. Something like sausage. Maybe this desire goes away after a longer stay in Veganville, but at 3.5 weeks in, I was still feeling it.

So, for a closer look, I took a spin around the Field Roast Grain Meats headquarters, which happens to be right here in Seattle. Field Roast’s meat-free sausages, roasts, frankfurters, lunchmeats, and gravies have so routinely cropped up in the raves of other non-carnivores this month, I figured that if anyone has this fake-meat stuff down, it’s these guys.

Malcolm Lee, the company’s vice president of operations (and son of its founder, David Lee) cheerfully suited me up in a white jacket and hairnet for a closer look at the whole endeavor. We stepped into the main processing chamber: It was clean, bright, sweet-smelling, and nothing at all like a set from an ’80s-era slasher flick called Slaughterhouse II: Return of the Meat Hook. That day was sausage day. In one corner, machines mixed a huge batch of vital wheat gluten (the plant protein behind seitan as well as many of Field Roast’s products); in another, a hot tub-sized vat churned a mixture of apple chunks, sage, and Yukon gold potatoes. An employee walked by and tossed in a bowlful of aromatic chopped garlic. Yum.

“We’re really half meat plant, half bakery,” Lee told me as we moved on to another vat containing the union of the previous two containers. From there, the, er, meat-dough gets squeezed through an extruder (tee-hee) and into plastic sausage casings, then cooked, cooled off in a gentle shower, and packed up for shipment. On a good day, about 86,400 grain meat sausages are born right here and distributed to the vegan population at large (and plenty of non-card-carrying vegans, too).

I asked Lee why the company opted to imitate common meat products rather than striking out in its own bold direction (Gluten Bites®? Chewy Not-Meat Nuggets®?). “I think people are just more familiar with them,” he said thoughtfully, noting that sometimes, hey, you just want to cook a hot dog. Customers already know how to deal with meat loaf and roast and sausage. If you’ve grown up eating meat, like so many of us have, these pinch-hitters slip right into the brain space we’ve already reserved for, say, when and how to make a Bolognese sauce.

OK, OK, but how does it taste? That night was our last dinner/support group with our friends Matt and Laura, so I decided to serve a few fake meat samples along with our regularly scheduled main dish, baked ratatouille. First up: vegan pate, made from a base of walnuts, mushrooms, and wheat gluten. The consensus: “Rich,” “Smoky,” and “Pretty good!” The chunk disappeared fast. Second: the hazelnut cranberry roast wrapped in a puff pastry, seemingly designed to make vegans feel less left out around a festive holiday table. Again, “Pretty good!” I don’t know if I’d ever crave something like this, but then again, I don’t usually go for meat wrapped in pastry anyway.

And those sausages: They’re certainly greasy. Chewy and crumbly, the texture is about right. “Field Roast comes very close to satisfying that deep savory craving,” said Ted — “and they avoid the quivering, squishy artificiality of a lot of fake meats by playing up the innate strengths of their ingredients.”

Still, he added, “Without the pop of the casing, the complex interplay of fatty-meaty textures? It ain’t sausage.”

Alas, it’s true. But for newbie vegans, I’m coming down on the side with more protein options.

Today is day 29 of the 31-day vegan experiment. Tune in next week for lessons learned, highs and lows, and most importantly, what happens next?

Over the past 20 days, my vegan challenge team and I have had a fantastic time. Everything is great. Everyone’s feeling fine. No worries. OK, I’ll check back in next week.

Ha! Not so fast. Did you really think four people doing the vegan equivalent of zero to 60 in six seconds wouldn’t run into a few potholes? Week three of our monthlong vegan experiment brought frustration, temptation, and outright rebellion for Laura, Matt, Ted, and me. Deep-seated weaknesses were exposed. Closely held beliefs were tested. In other words: Things got real.

Not that the exercise has been all struggle — far from it. Among the top benefits for all four of us: the expansion of our cooking and dining horizons. Who knew cheeseless pizza could be so satisfying? It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to try it without being compelled to, but yum. Laura and Matt found vegan enlightenment in a pine-nut spread. “Thinking of it as a cheese replacement is no good,” Laura warned us. “But as a pine-nut spread that’s delicious on everything, très wonderful.” Other surprises: portobello burgers with guacamole, non-dairy chocolate shakes, and vegan carrot cake that was pronounced “the best I’ve ever had” by four out of four samplers.

At a happy hour the other day, after I explained why I wouldn’t be joining the group in an oyster slurp, an acquaintance asked if I felt any different after 20 days off the animal train. “You know, not really,” I told her — a sentiment Ted, Laura, and Matt generally echo. Our energy levels are pretty much the same; the shiny vitality of our hair remains stable (although skin clarity has dipped noticeably for two of us since this shindig began — who knew?).

But that’s the sunny side of the story. Four of us pledged to eat vegan for 30 days, but only one — just one proud, lonely paragon of discipline — remains pure. What brought the rest of us down?

INATTENTION

The most forgivable offense: Laura’s lack of vigilance on day 20. The story, just as we heard it, in a series of text messages:

Laura: The mighty have fallen L
9:37 pm

Laura: It was an Andes mint. I bit into it before I even realized what I was doing.
9:37 pm

Laura: It came with the check at a Thai place.
9:38 pm

Laura: Then I ate the second half because, fuck it, it was amazing.
9:40 pm

EXASPERATION

It pains me to report this, but I, too, faltered, after withstanding some of the most difficult temptations to date. I spent last week visiting my parents, who, though more than accommodating to my little experiment, also made me watch them devour cheesy pizza and accidentally put chicken in a tomato-polenta dish (it was supposed to go on the side).

But the worst came on Sunday morning, when I woke to the aroma of buckwheat pancakes on the griddle — pancakes full of off-limits ingredients like milk and eggs. It wasn’t a craving so much as the memory that got to me: The smell brought me back to countless lazy mornings of childhood, lounging around with nothing to do but read the comics and snarf mounds of buckwheat swimming in maple syrup.

I found myself thinking, Is it really so bad if I have a few pancakes for old times’ sake with Mom and Dad? Why pass up this rare chance to share a traditional weekend ritual? After all, food is so much more than a convenient package of calories to keep our bodies humming. It’s history, community, connection, a tie to the past, and a bond in the present. And damn if it wasn’t making me drool.

I went downstairs, almost ready to surrender. But my dad said, “You’re more than halfway done. Seems like a shame to give up now.” And then I realized I could probably veganize the pancakes with almond milk and a mashed chunk of banana instead of egg. So I whipped up another batch: delectable. The Sunday morning ritual, saved.

Which is why it’s so frustrating to confess that, after withstanding all of that, I put a splash of half and half in my coffee last Tuesday morning. I tried not to, I really did.

INTERIOR: AIRPORT, EARLY MORNING.

We open on a frantic sea of travelers rushing to their flights. Our heroine, laden down with a duffel bag and messenger bag, buys a coffee. She’s wearing a down jacket because she couldn’t fit it in her carry-on.

She heads to the counter for sugar and soy milk. But an employee beats her to it and whisks away the soy carafe for refilling. She waits. Minutes tick by. She glances at her watch. Her flight is boarding soon, and she still has to pick up some vegan snacks for the ride, because those Lorna Doone packets sure won’t cut it.

She rushes over to another coffee shop to see if they have soy milk. It’s crowded. She’s sweating, thanks to the jacket. As she peers around the other customers to see the counter, her duffel falls off her shoulder, jouncing her arm and splashing coffee all over her bag, sleeve, and floor. Time is running out. She frantically cleans up, then runs back to the original coffeeshop. Still no soy milk. No employee in sight.

I hit the same wall Laura did: Oh, fuck it. I’ve had enough. I hate black coffee. Half and half it is.

GRATITUDE

The third domino to fall: Ted. He was on tour with his band last week, and had amazingly managed to stay vegan on the road (thanks to a lot of Subway Veggie Delights). But then, before a show … well, I’ll let him tell it.

“Knowing we were hungry, our bassist showed up with smothered pork burritos as a surprise. Upholding my vegan values would mean 1) refusing his kindness and 2) wasting food. Sorry, I just can’t be that kind of dick.”

Ted accepted the burrito graciously in the spirit in which it was given (the bassist hadn’t been briefed on the vegan experiment). He ate the burrito. (“Pork is much more filling than I remember it,” he reported.)

So there you have it: the unvarnished truth. At the outset, I promised to faithfully reveal the triumphs and pitfalls of our vegan experiment, no matter how embarrassing or silly. I was curious to find out exactly where and how we’d be tempted, and why we’d make the choices we did. I never would have anticipated the way things shook out, but I do find them revealing. And we’re all rededicated to rounding out the month; one setback does not a total failure make.

And can we get a round of applause for Matt, the last man standing? Somebody get this guy a broccoli crown!

Day 1: The month-long vegan experiment — wherein I, my fiancé, and two friends try to strip all animal products from our diets (for several reasons, primary among them “just to see what it’s like”) — is off to a running start with a three-bean salad (green, kidney, cannellini) from my new vegan cookbook for dinner. Yum!

Days 2 & 3: Strange side effect of the new diet: dramatic hunger spikes. Usually, my desire to feed unfolds like this: Hmm, I’m sort of hungry. I guess I could eat anytime. OK, now the ole stomach is really rumbling. This process typically unfolds over several hours.

Now? On a Hunger Scale of 1 to 10, I go from a 3 to OH MY GOD I WILL CHEW OFF MY OWN ARM IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME THAT CARROT RIGHT THIS SECOND in about 10 minutes. I’ve been trying to get enough calories and pay attention to protein, but clearly something is off.

Ted and I also sample a few local veg joints. At the first, we try vegan pizza (read: no cheese) and a dense, tomato-saucy pasta. At the second, we feast on Thai curry and stir-fry, both starring tofu. “Best Thai I’ve had in the city,” Ted declares.

Good thing, too, because he’s off to a rougher start than I am. He suffered a major blow on morning 2 when he realized his favorite meat alternative, MorningStar Farms Sausage Links, contain eggs and therefore couldn’t shepherd him through the month. “Vegetarians always ask if you’d be willing to kill your own meat,” he mused. “I’d say, hell yes! Right now, I’d wrestle a deer to the ground and stab it to death with its own antler.”

Day 4: Morale skyrockets at our first dinner/support group with Laura and Matt, fellow explorers of Veganville. We kick things off with bread, quince, and tapenade for an appetizer, then a main dish I picked mostly for its fancy presentation: a bed of French green lentils, topped with a tower of polenta, in turn topped with a sauté of mixed mushrooms, hazelnuts, and figs, and crowned with arugula and pomegranate dressing. Consensus: damn good.

Matt finishes us off with bananas foster cooked in vegan butter substitute and soaked in a healthy dash of rum. The meal could go toe-to-toe with our finest animal-product offerings.

We compare notes: no uncontrollable cravings or digestive hurdles worth mentioning. We’re riding so high, in fact, that nobody thinks to check if the Guinness is vegan. Dammit, apparently not. Our first slip.

Day 6: I successfully brave a social outing with the non-vegan crowd: book club. Luckily, our host finds my experiment intriguing and serves lentils with slow-cooked squash; I add a mango salad to the mix and only have to skip the naan (offender: buttermilk). Once again, no one at the table missed the meat. Energy and mood remain at normal levels.

Day 7: It was bound to happen, I suppose: my first strong craving for a verboten foodstuff. The temptress isn’t bacon, nor cheese, nor even bacon covered in cheese, as I thought it might be. Instead, I catch myself staring longingly at a bakery case full of flaky, butter- and egg-infested pastries. But luckily, finding vegan cookies and donuts in Seattle is as easy as running into a skinny-jeaned hipster with a vinyl collection. And there’s always dark chocolate, tea biscuits, and my ironic tub of vegan animal crackers to help with the sweet tooth.

Day 8: OK, OK, this vegan thing has been great, but today, I’m overcome. Not with fiber-fueled gaseous emissions, not with a vitamin B12 deficiency, not even with the slavering lust for a ham sandwich at all costs. It’s just … boredom. I open the pantry to take stock: lentils, beans, tofu again? I’ve heartily enjoyed all our vegan dishes so far, but it feels like my culinary world has gone from Technicolor to black and white. Ted feels the same way (though he’s registering much higher on the Ham Sandwich Lust Index).

We make one of our old standbys, a noodle bowl that’s mostly vegan already, depending on your protein source. And I realize we’ve got to try harder. There’s no way we’ve exhausted the vegan smorgasbord after just eight days. It’s time to think outside of the box.

Day 10: Our stiffest challenge to date: going out to dinner with a group of new friends. Oblivious to our experiment, they squirreled reservations at a fantastic place with a chef who’s just won a Food & Wine The People’s Best New Chef award — a place renowned for morsels like mussels, collar of salmon, pork chops, and duck terrine. I just can’t bring myself to ask everyone to change their plans on account of my little “experiment.” “I don’t know if I can do this,” Ted warns as he looked at the menu.

To make matters worse, we worked up a righteous appetite snowshoeing all afternoon; gnawing hunger teams up with the delectable scents coming from this rock-star chef’s kitchen to weaken our resolve to critical levels. Still harder: The group wants to do the tasting menu — of course, who wouldn’t?  — and the whole table is supposed to sign up. “Can just the four of us do the tasting menu?” our dinner companion asks. “Unfortunately, it’s got to be the whole table,” our server replies.

Moment of truth: Will I cave, overcome by peer pressure and my embarrassment at being the kind of fussy, look-at-me diner who goes to a decidedly non-vegan restaurant and demands special vegan food? What are we even doing here? This is a disaster! We’re not even real vegans!

I take a deep breath and say, as politely as I can, “We were actually hoping to do a vegan tasting. Is that okay?” The server checks with the chef, who immediately agrees to serve two versions of the menu. Everyone is happy (except Ted, who I catch absentmindedly buttering his bread as he stares at the specialty dishes floating by en route to other tables).

And the food? Fantastic. Off the top of his head, the chef presents us with two delicate miner’s lettuce salads, rapini with preserved tomatoes, a kimchi-like soup, and a main course featuring fried chickpeas and smoky sunchokes. “And this one is for our ‘special guests,’” he says at one point, coming out of the kitchen to serve a course himself. I couldn’t be more impressed, not even if he’d wrestled that rapini to the ground out back and strangled it with its own leaves.

Ten days, four people. No cheating, no lapses of willpower, four inadvertent consumptions of fish bladder. I’d say we’re doing all right.

I’ve got the home improvement bug. See, we’re moving — nothing major, just across town — but our new place finally boasts some shared garden space in the backyard. After years of yearning for an outlet for my green thumb, I’ll finally be able to dig into the soil and call forth a cornucopia of vegetables. In fact, I thought, why don’t I celebrate my first real garden with a nice building project?

I’m not much of a carpenter, true. But isn’t that what community is for? Seattle has several tool libraries where you can borrow drills and saws and all kinds of stuff more immediately recognizable to me as horror-movie torture devices than whatever they’re actually meant to be. And this town is bursting with eco-friendly gardeners. Surely someone can give me some tips. I can totally build something cool — I just need to pick a project.

Luckily, I discovered just the ticket: a volunteer-led, community-based skills workshop right here in town. Among tutorials as diverse as soapmaking, backyard goat care, and mushroom cultivation, I found the perfect class: how to build a cold frame from recycled materials. A cold frame, for those of you who don’t know, is kind of like a mini greenhouse — a glass-topped, open-bottom box that shelters tender seedlings or allows you to start cold-tolerant plants, like cabbage or kale, early in the season.

A DIY garden accessory! Recycled! Perfect! So last weekend, I attended the workshop, taught by a local farmer who wore an air of assured experience in organic plant cultivation and a hemp necklace. After witnessing him whip up the cold frame in less than an hour, I’d like to pass along the lessons I learned. (Actual results may vary.)

How to build a cold frame from recycled materials

Step 1: Gather your materials: some scrap lumber you found lying around the farm (or at a salvage shop or Habitat for Humanity worksite, that’s OK too), an old window with hinges, and deck screws …

Step 2: Take your two 2 x 10 boards and attach them by screwing on a post. This forms the back wall of your cold frame. Use self-tapping deck screws, because they’re easier to screw. Oh, and you should have already sawed the top edge of one of the boards and the posts to a 30-degree angle.

Step 2b: Wait — you have to pre-angle the wood? How did you do that? A saw?

Step 2c: Realize that you don’t have a saw. In fact, you haven’t worked with any type of saw since building a mousetrap car in seventh-grade woodshop. You got an A on that mousetrap car, you recall. So you should be able to handle a cold frame. You got this.

Step 3: Next, attach two long, skinny pieces of wood to the back wall; drill two short leg posts to the skinny pieces to form the front of your cold frame. (Oh, didn’t you remember to prep those, too?)

Step 4: Now you screw on the plywood side panels, which of course you’ve already measured and cut to fit exactly. Try not to think about how geometry was your toughest subject, and how you really hate to perpetuate gender stereotypes, but spatial reasoning has always been challenging, to the point where your younger brother used to beat you at Tetris — which was really embarrassing — but it’s fine because we’re all gifted in different ways, right?

Step 5: Attach the old window to the top of the back wall with the hinges. Put sticky weatherstripping all around the top of the frame to cushion the window, which is really heavy. At some point you should have added insulation to the cold frame in the form of Styrofoam wrapped in duct tape, too. Oh, and a piece of wood for the front. Don’t use particleboard.

Step 5b: Don’t panic when the instructor tells you he used a window for simplicity here, but really you should use an old sliding glass door, because who wants a tiny cold frame that only holds a few plants?

Step 6: Stare at the completed demo cold frame with fear and awe.

OK, so maybe this building experiment didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped. But it’s not all disappointment: At the end of the workshop, our instructor let it slip that there are easier ways to construct a cold frame. They’re more crude, but still. Turns out you can do something as simple as arranging straw bales in a rectangle and laying an old glass door over them– no screws, no cutting. You can even toss an old apple box, minus its bottom, on your garden soil and top it with a salvaged window. Now that sounds attainable.

In the end, the workshop was hardly a waste of time. It was a valuable reminder that a woman must walk before she can run, and perhaps a woman should put the cold frame building project on hold until she sharpens her carpentry skills. Further research has already turned up a plan for a much easier rectangular raised bed, so I’m going to tackle that one first.

And even before I get going on the raised bed, I plan to employ some repurposed planters — I love the look of an old drawer overflowing with fresh garden herbs. All you need to do there is drill a few drainage holes in the bottom. And yes, even I can manage a drill. What a glorious start.

Readers: Ever gotten in over your head on a DIY project? Do tell …

Dear treehugging friends: If only you guys had an ounce of marketing savvy. You could have tuned me into a green practice, plus saved me years of too-flat, uninspiring hair, and buckets of cash to boot. I know some of you have been washing your hair with baking soda and finishing it with a vinegar rinse for years, yet the only pitch I’ve ever heard on this practice is a limp, “It’s good for the environment!” Well, next time, try this instead:

Want to know the secret to shiny, voluminous, all-around gorgeous hair? It’s a specially formulated treatment guaranteed to take your coif to entirely new levels of excellence. We’re talking cascading waves of Penelope Cruz-level excellence. Try the BSV Treatment — you’d pay upwards of $20 for it at a salon — and see for yourself.

That’s a little more like it, eh? If I’d heard that, I wouldn’t have brushed off the idea of baking soda-vinegaring my hair so easily. The reasoning is sound: desire to avoid the chemicals packed into everyday commercial toiletries*, reduce plastic-bottle purchases, and old-fashioned thriftiness. Still, to a populace raised on the importance of lather-rinse-repeat, it sounds weird. When an old friend from grad school mentioned over lunch that lately she’d been cleansing with nothing but the baking soda-vinegar combo, I thought, What a nut. What’s next, homemade lemon-juice deodorant? Except her hair did look pretty sleek and luxurious.

So when I ran across yet another reference to the BSV hair-care regimen in a book about ecologically friendly home practices, I knew I had to try it. Advocates swear that baking soda naturally strips oil, softens, and removes weird buildup from whatever other crap you’ve been putting in your hair. The vinegar rinse is credited with adding shine, detangling, and clarifying. I’ve already learned firsthand about the magic that good old sodium bicarbonate can work on your kitchen counter and laundry basket. Why not on my head, too?

Still, it was with some level of trepidation that I stepped into the shower a couple of weeks ago armed with a Tupperware dish of baking soda paste and some diluted apple cider vinegar in a cup. Just how bad would it make my fine hair look? Dull? Lifeless? Greasy? It didn’t really occur to me that it might actually work.

My research had uncovered several exotic-sounding shampoo recipes, some incorporating olive oil, honey, and coconut milk, but I’d decided to keep it simple to start. My shampoo was a concoction made of a tablespoon or so of baking soda and enough water to render it workable. For the conditioner, I’d mixed about a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of water. (Why apple cider vinegar over the usual stuff? No idea — but every reference I found to this practice stressed that the apple cider variety was The One.)

I turned on the water, took a deep breath, and poured the proto-shampoo over my head. Hmm. Unlike the usual pearlescent goop we’re all used to, the gritty paste doesn’t lather up into easy-to-distribute suds. I tentatively scrubbed it into my scalp, attempting to move the stuff throughout my hair and adding more water when it felt necessary. I rinsed, then felt a few strands. It didn’t really feel clean — what kind of scam was this?

Still, I pressed on to the vinegar rinse. This would be much easier to apply via spray bottle, but the only bottle I have was otherwise engaged holding a DIY all-purpose cleaner. So I tilted my head back and poured the cup’s contents over my head, trying (and only marginally succeeding) to keep it out of my eyes. The Easter-egg aroma was, uh, potent, but hey … it did seem to have a detangling effect.

I hopped out of the shower and toweled off, ready for the moment of truth. To avoid introducing variables to the process, I skipped all other hair products and let my mop air-dry. And after about 30 minutes … well, hey, would you look at that? My hair had dried with more body than normal, and had a certain sheen. It looked fine — no, better than fine. Could it actually look a touch better?

Intrigued, I continued the experiment. Baking soda advocates usually recommend that you use it every other day or even less, so I alternated between just-water rinses and my new paste-and-pour routine. I tried it after sweaty workouts. I put products in my hair post-BSV and styled it. I attempted a few days with daily treatments. No matter what, the emerging result was clear: My head actually looked better. More volume, easier to style, manageable waves.

Like a high school sophomore reading Camus for the first time, I felt like my eyes had been opened to a startling new reality. Why oh why had I let myself be fleeced by the military-industrial-shampoo complex for so many years? Treachery, thy name is Herbal Essences!

Not quite ready to accept my own success, I badgered friends and family to try it, too. Would this miracle work for styles and textures different from my own? My mom, who rocks a casual bob, reported: “It’s like a clarifying rinse that strips all the gunk out of your hair.” My friend Tinaz, who gamely tried it on her enviably thick mane, said, “My hair looks and feels the exact same as when I use my usual Pantene Pro-Chemicals — and the vinegar was a treat for my shower drain, too.” My boyfriend, Ted, whose hair is short and medium-thick, didn’t argue with the resulting body and stylability, but couldn’t resist quipping, “If you’re not careful, you’ll come out of the shower smelling like a side salad at Olive Garden.”

It’s true, you do have to undertake an extra-long rinse to get all the vinegar stink out, and it takes maybe 60 seconds longer to prepare preshower than the store-bought stuff, but that’s all I’ve got in terms of downsides. The kicker came when, after a week of BSV-ing, I went back to the commercial ’poo. Get this: My hair looked noticeably worse. Flat. Lifeless. No pop. This stuff actually works.

Try it! I’m willing to bet you’ll love it. If it helps, just think of it as a secret, high-class hair-care formula used by stylists to the stars. If you really want, you can even send me the 20  bucks you would’ve spent at the salon.

*There’s no scientific consensus about the dangers of regular shampoo, but like many cleaning products, they inspire concern in certain quarters about the safety of their unpronounceable chemical ingredients.

Each year, the New Year’s holiday brings us more than just a gingerbread hangover and a metric ton of empty champagne bottles — it serves up a natural opportunity to pause and take stock of our lives. It’s that special time of year when we look back at where we’ve been and make plans for a brighter future. And it’s no different for the Greenie Pig.

You see, I’ve learned a thing or two from this year’s worth of green living challenges — lessons that I’ve boiled down into five simple guidelines for a cleaner, more sustainable 2013. I think they’ll help me as I embark on another year of eco-experimentation — and I hope they’ll help you on your own green lifestyle quests. (What? You’re not on such a quest? What are you doing here? Perhaps you’d like something like this instead.)

1. Keep an open mind.

Some sustainability steps are easy — CFL bulbs? Why not? But others sound tough, gross, or just plain crazy. Some, you fear, will exile you to the island of misfit, hemp-clad fruitarians. I beg you, don’t be so quick to judge.

First off, you can pull off the hard ones. After I clocked a dismal 10-minute time on my shower, a few simple tweaks got me down to a three-minute suds session.

And the gross ones? Not really that bad. I cringed at the thought of dumpster diving at first: Surely, all that awaited me at the bottom of the big green bin was rotting, castaway chard and mold-speckled dinner rolls. But then I took a deep breath and dove, and came up with some fresh, sweet-smelling, perfectly good food (for free).

And the super-hippie stuff, like homemade cleaning products? Hey, turns out the stuff works like a nontoxic, cheap, utterly effective charm. I won’t ever buy another bottle of all-purpose cleaner or laundry detergent. All this stuff works. I only know that ‘cause I tried it.

2. Take it one step at a time.

When you’re trying new stuff, though, don’t get too carried away. If you wanted to get in shape, you wouldn’t get up off the couch and run a marathon, right? It should be the same deal with lifestyle changes. If you average 85 miles of driving a day, don’t try to quit your car cold turkey; better to start with a smaller goal, like taking the bus three times a week, and scale up. (This goes double for any steps that include pee rags.)

Bite off more than you can chew, though, and you’re bound to get discouraged, mutter “f*#*@ this,” and give up. From there, it’s a slippery slope to buying a Hummer, tossing your empty Fritos bags on the ground, and actively voting against the interests of baby seals. So take it slow, k?

3. Add — don’t subtract.

Here’s the thing about green practices: They won’t stick unless they add something to your life. Your new product/habit/philosophy has to make something better, or it’ll fade like so many discarded New Year’s resolutions. Taking the train to work is totally awesome if it lets you bypass rush-hour traffic, save gas money, and eschew the circus that is urban parking. But if the only public transit in your area involves two buses and a shuttle and takes three times as long, well, who’s really going to embrace that one?

Living a more sustainable life is about making improvements — for you and for the planet — not adding needless inconveniences to your days. So let’s say public transit sucks in your town. Maybe taking the bus is out, but can you organize a carpool? Jump on a bike? Agitate politically for transit options that don’t suck?

Sustainable practices have to make sense for widespread adoption. That exhausting, time-sucking bathtub laundry gadget that didn’t really even clean my clothes? Yeah, not going to keep up with that one. But easily homemade laundry detergent, upcycled trash, lovingly handmade Christmas gifts, and plenty more brightened my life this year. Those are the improvements with staying power.

4. Don’t ban anything but bans themselves.

Surprise! Strict taboos — be they on processed food, fossil fuels, Faberge eggs, what have you — have the curious effect of making your desire for said object approximately 12 times more intense. You will obsess over this verboten treasure, and, unless you have superhuman willpower, ultimately give in, sending yourself into a shame spiral.

But, as I discovered on my two-mile challenge, a shift in attitude can make all the difference. You’re not banning car travel, you’re embracing every opportunity to walk instead. Don’t banish processed foods entirely; take up the challenge to eat fresh, healthy options whenever possible. Don’t say, “I’m not going to buy anything new, ever”; say, “Before I buy something new, can I fix, reuse, or borrow instead?”

Notice how this attitude can be interpreted as adding, not subtracting? Eh? What lovely synergy.

5. Don’t be a jerk (or, how to set a good example).

When you set off on a greening frenzy, your friends and family are bound to notice. They will probably have one of two reactions to this: “Wow, what a cool idea! I’m going to try it!” or “What an insufferable gasbag.” Which one it is depends entirely on you.

Sure, it’s natural to get excited when you adopt a great new habit. But lecturing your neighbors about their lack of a compost pile, or judging your sister-in-law harshly because she doesn’t stock her bathroom with recycled toilet paper, or rolling your eyes when your friend confesses he sometimes drives three blocks to the grocery store — these will not do much for your popularity. What’s worse, this judgmental attitude will probably turn people off of trying these changes themselves.

Lead by example, not by volume. Be encouraging, not a know-it-all.

There you have it. Five simple principles. What about you — got any green mantras to live by? What works for you? Tell us below. And here’s to a cleaner, better 2013, all.

Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember, my extended family has gathered ’round the tree for a grab bag gift exchange. And every year, competition for the year’s hottest items — garlic choppers, wine glasses, tasteful volumes of nude art photography — is fierce. In a cheerful nod to the season of selflessness and giving, when your turn comes up you can either open a new present or steal an opened one from someone else.

This year was no different, save one twist: This year, we’d decided, all the gifts would be homemade. Because aren’t gifts that involved someone accidentally bashing his thumb with a hammer just that much more meaningful?

Curiosity had reached fever pitch by the time we circled up last Monday night, rum punch in hand. Would this handmade decree bear fruit in the form of 12 packages of Christmas fudge — an easy-to-make option for pretty much everyone? Or would my relatives, inspired by this new challenge, reveal hidden talents and reach a level of DIY glory heretofore only seen in Martha Stewart publications?

Given the evidence at hand — some of the gifts piled in the center of our circle were impressively big and bulky — I suspected we all might be in for a treat. But I had no idea just how amazing it would be.

My cousin Liz kicked it off by opening a set of plates decorated with photos of and handprints by two of our baby cousins — promptly stolen by the boys’ grandpa, but really, that one was kind of a gimme. Next came a plush set of couch pillows sewn by Liz herself. Next, a mod concrete lamp constructed by my cousin Ryan.

OK, OK, Liz has mad thread skills, and Ryan’s a freakin’ artist. But the hits kept on coming, even from relatives I never knew harbored such talents. A three-dimensional, metal Christmas tree that looked like it involved soldering: “Wow, you made this?” A gorgeous quilt sewn by an aunt who, as far as I knew, had never wielded a sewing needle before: “Wow, you made this?” A recipe book illustrated with step-by-step demonstration photos of my little cousins in chef’s hats (that one came complete with a tray of cinnamon rolls — score!): “Wow, you made this?”

Some relatives got especially crafty. One aunt had somehow conjured up concrete votive holders, molded from a two-liter soda bottle and a Solo cup and decorated with colorful tile. Another cousin turned Corona bottles into drinking glasses (like this) with a string and a torch, then packaged them with mini bottles of tequila and a lime. The only thing missing was a decorative plaster mold of my seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant cousin’s belly, but sadly for all of us, Lindsey was celebrating with her husband’s family this year.

We only had a couple of cheaters, one of them only a semi-cheater. My mom contributed a lovely, leatherbound journal: “Wow, you made this?” the recipient asked. “Well … someone did,” she replied. A quick conference determined that handmade gifts made by other hands were still legal. And then there was the hulking, cubic box opened near the end. “A floating cooler shaped like a bobber?” said my cousin Laurie. “Um, nice work?” Hey, if you’re gonna flout the rules, might as well flout big.

Here’s the funny thing about this year’s exchange: While these things usually devolve into a gift-stealing frenzy, complete with cutthroat strategy and attempts to deceive would-be thieves by hiding one’s gift under the couch, this time around we only had a handful of swipes. Perhaps we were all extra-infused with the gift of gratitude this year. But more likely: We all genuinely loved what we’d opened. Who wouldn’t want to keep something uniquely handcrafted by an uncle, aunt, or cousin, after all? Especially if your gift included tequila.

And what of the fates of the gifts Ted and I brought? I’d contributed a collection of homemade jams, syrups, and cherry booze. My mom went straight for it early and held on throughout the rounds (and I don’t even think she did it to make me feel wanted, either!). That leaves Ted.

Last time, I asked you all for ideas for something he could craft for the grab bag. You responded with some excellent ideas — I especially liked the recipe book of his favorite dishes and the fancy infused olive oils, and I was pushing hard for the hand-tied hammock — but in the end, he remembered that homemade beef jerky is one of his specialties. So he whipped up a big batch in his dehydrator and packaged it in a tin shaped like a Christmas mailbox. My cousin Kristina ended up opening it. “Ooh, beef jerky is my favorite snack!” she said, gnawing on a chunk. And with that, Christmas Grab Bag 2012 came to a close.

The big question in the air now: Was this a one-time experiment, or a new tradition? An informal straw poll taken immediately after the exchange revealed a deeply divided family. Half of us wanted to go handmade again next year, while half lamented, “Hey, I just used up the one good idea I had.” I think it’ll work out just fine either way. The inspired ones among us can always make something, and the less craftily inclined can reap the benefits. If this experiment results in a 50 percent increase in handmade gifts next year, hey, that’s a pretty big win in my book.

Me, I’m already brainstorming something even more creative and exciting for next Christmas. It may require some practice with a chainsaw — and wait a sec, let me check my insurance policy for blowtorch-related exceptions — but it’s going to be so worth it. For now, a very merry, crafty Christmas to you all, and a DIY-inspired New Year.

This holiday season, talk of having a “minimalist Christmas” or participating in Buy Nothing Christmas seems to be all over the place (maybe it’s the economy? An attempted Scrooge coup?). And I’m happy to report that my family continues to be on-trend. Last year, we were all about un-wrapping gifts, a practice just poised on the brink of widespread adoption. And months ago, we decided to switch up our usual store-bought grab-bag presents for all homemade goodies instead.

Usually, our extended-family grab bag works thusly: Each participant brings a crowd-pleasing gift, typically under a predetermined price cap, to place ’neath the Christmas tree. We draw numbers, then, when your number is up, you choose between unwrapping a new present or stealing an opened one from a cousin or uncle (how festive!). If your present is stolen, you get to open or steal another, so in the end, everyone has something — and incidentally, you don’t age into this grab bag until you graduate from college, so the kids still get their toys.

This is a fun system, and we’ve always been able to count on a good haul of wine glasses, board games, tree ornaments, and kitchen gizmos. Last year, I got a salad bowl that looks like an alien.

This year will be a little different. In one small way, we decided to reduce the glut of Christmas consumerism — by making everything ourselves. This, we thought, would result in more thoughtful, meaningful gifts, gifts that have been labored over and loved, gifts that will mean so much more than a mini-blender ever could.

That, or we’ll all just get a shitload of Christmas cookies.

Some of my family members are truly gifted artists and craftspeople. The rest of us have our talents, but we aren’t exactly adept at knitting scarves, die-cutting scrapbooks, or whittling tiny animal figurines. Still, most everyone can cook. Food is the great equalizer among handmade items, so I’m guessing a lot of our offerings this year will be gustatory in nature. Mine sure will be.

SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU’RE RELATED TO ME, TURN BACK NOW!

I MEAN IT!

So about my gift: Last year, I gave a very well-received basket of homemade jams, so of course I’ve gravitated to that again. But I’ve stepped up my game this time around. There will still be hand-picked blackberry jam, but I’ve added a chutney made from backyard plums, a blueberry jam sourced from a local farm’s berries, and a huckleberry syrup made from tart little fruits plucked by hand from a slope in the Cascades. Eh? Nice? (That syrup was actually supposed to be a jam, but it didn’t quite set. Don’t tell anyone.)

Then, for my pièce de résistance, I decided to get behind the bar to offer a homemade liqueur, too. So last June, I stocked up when Washington’s delectable cherries were in season, sliced them up and dunked ’em in vodka for a few weeks, then strained the deep-red liquid into tiny bottles. The result: Cherry Bounce, an old-school libation dating back to George Washington’s heyday. According to some recipes, to gift this stuff is akin to giving the essence of summer in a bottle. (See the recipe I used below.)

I sound like I’ve got it all figured out, but there is still one problem: My boyfriend, Ted, will be joining my family Christmas party for the first time this year. Not only does the poor fellow have to adjust to all that this would normally entail — political catfighting, tiny cousins knocking over lit candles, Jägerbomb-offs — but just because he’s a first-timer doesn’t mean he’s exempt from the new handmade clause. Now we’re scrambling to come up with a suitable DIY present from him, too — and we need your help. Any ideas for what a very-talented-but-not-so-crafty guy could do?

Ted cannot knit, sew, crochet, weave, carve, or make more jam. He is an excellent cook, something of a survival expert (with all the fire-starting and knot-tying expertise that implies), and a great musician. Then again, if I seriously suggest that he arrive, guitar in hand, to bring the gift of song to the Hefferan grab bag, I can pretty much guarantee he will never, ever, ever, attend again.

I’d love your suggestions. And if not? I guess we can always contribute to the mound of lumpy bon-bons and misshapen Santa cookies.

Cherry Bounce

Adapted from Northwest Essentials by Greg Atkinson

Makes 2 cups.

4 cups cherries, rinsed and pitted (traditionally sour cherries, but any sort will do)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups vodka (or brandy)

Combine cherries, sugar, cinnamon stick, and vodka in a one-quart jar with a lid. Every day for two weeks, turn and gently shake or swirl the jar. Strain liqueur into receptacle of choice (i.e., a clean, dry pint jar or four-ounce bottles with screw tops) and discard solids. Keep in a cool, dark place until Christmas. Note: Many other recipes call for soaking the cherries for months, not weeks, and using bourbon instead of vodka. Go with what works.

Check back after Christmas for a report on how the handmade grab bag went down.