Do you wanna hear the good news or the bad news first?

I wanna end on a good note, so let’s get the unpleasantries out of the way, shall we?

I got my hair cut yesterday for the first time in a year.  Before……….

My hair was just past the bra strap. I am not quite 5’2″, so when my hair is that long it drags me down and makes me look even shorter. Not only was it getting hard to manage but now that the temps are getting warmer out I needed to lighten it up a bit.

Fun fact: When I was in high school my hair was long enough for me to sit on, and it was curly, so you can imagine how much longer it would have been if it were straight! (I have no way of scanning photos right now or I’d show you, it really was ridiculous.)

So anyway, I got it cut yesterday and I’m really disappointed. The girl who cut my hair seemed like she had never cut bangs before, I was really kind of confused watching her cut it. Well…here’s the after…..

This is what I asked for, I even brought this picture with me….

Yeah…um…not even close. It’s fine though, I’m gonna let it grow out a bit and try again.

Ok, let’s talk about good news!

So do you remember that Jeff got in an accident a few weeks ago? His car is out of the shop!

Here’s the before…

And after!

Ahhh! It looks brand new! 😀

I was all upset about my haircut and then I heard the news that Jeff’s car was all better and that snapped me right out of it!

Hair will grow back, but a car is harder to replace. All it took was a little perspective to make me feel better. Now, on to the weekend!

April 9, 2011 Alayna Discussion 7 comments

First of all, THANK YOU, to everyone that checked out RipeTrack and left such wonderful feedback!

This project has been on my mind for a long time now and it feels so good to finally get to share it with everyone. Based on comments, it seems like we’re going in the right direction with how to take this site to the next level.

And it’s just in time too. Spring has sprung and so many fruits and vegetables are coming into season right now. Lettuces, avocados, and even pineapple are all on my radar for the end of this month.

And right now, all I can think about are salads! Normally, I’m not a big salad person, but for some reason nothing else will do right now.

I had this amazing Thai salad with marinated tofu at Raging Burrito over the weekend…

And yeah, maybe a margarita or two was involved. 😉

Yesterday I made a salad of mixed lettuces, broccoli, dulse, pistachios, Annie’s roasted red pepper dressing, and sesame seeds. Served it up with some Pacific creamy tomato soup.

And today I wanted that same salad, but I jazzed it up with some dried cranberries and had a sliced asian pear with cinnamon on the side.

I’ll probably want another tomorrow, I gobbled all those up like they were brownies.

So now that fresh spring produce is bountiful, I’ll be sure to fill my plate with it and keep using RipeTrack to anticipate all the new and delicious fruits and vegetables as they come into season.

Know how else you can tell spring is here?

Gross! I think we lost half a cat on that one!

April 6, 2011 Alayna Discussion 7 comments

I am so excited to present something to you today that is the product of many months of hard work on the part of my husband and I.

Introducing: RipeTrack –  A searchable produce seasonality calendar to help you keep track of when your favorite fruits and vegetables are in season and at the peak of ripeness!

We’ve been working on this site for several months, but the real catalyst came several years ago. Allow me to tell you a little story about me and sour strawberries…

For years, I had the bad luck of buying carton after carton of gorgeous red strawberries that would all inevitably turn out to be sour and unripe. Strawberries are one of my very favorite fruits, favorite foods even, and I hadn’t had a sweet one in years. Not to mention that berries are notoriously expensive, so I was even more angry that not only was I not getting the experience I wanted from those finicky little fruits, but I was throwing money away as well.

Last year I made the decision that I was going to try my hardest to not buy some of the more sensitive fruits and vegetables out of season. I ran into one major problem with my shift toward more seasonal eating though, I had a very hard time finding out just when I could expect each item to become ripe in a typical year.

Searching online would often turn up vague seasonality information if at all and usually the answer was hidden deep within a lengthy article. I wished that there was a faster way for me to find out when the best time was to buy my beloved strawberries, and really, the best time to buy all of our produce.

Jeff had been asking me to come up with a project to work on together in our spare time (he’s a programmer/web developer,) and suddenly it hit me that together we could build a database of the seasonal ripeness information for every fruit and vegetable imaginable and make it available on the web!

And so, RipeTrack was born!…

There are 3 ways to use RipeTrack: You can search by the individual item you’re looking for, you can search by month to view everything that’s ripe during that time, or you can search by keyword to view everything of a certain topic.

For example, here I’ve searched for “berry.”

The results are displayed for all berries in the database, neat huh!?

To read the graphs, just move your cursor over the graph and up pops a grid showing the months of the year. The bracketed area represents what part of the year we’re in now.

See, I took this shot on the last day of March, and that’s the bracketed area.

The yellow and green areas show when the item is ripe. For the strawberry shown above, you can expect it to be considered ripe from late April to early November. But to insure that you get the sweetest and juiciest strawberries, purchasing during the green “peak season” is more likely to get you the best berry for your buck.

The red areas correspond to when the item is not ripe. You will still probably be able to find the item in stores, but you can bet that it was either grown in a greenhouse or shipped from across the world. For some items, you won’t notice a diminished quality during the off-season, but for others like the tomato, they just won’t be nearly as good in October as they will be in June.

The really cool thing about RipeTrack though is that it’s interactive. If you come upon an item that doesn’t have any information on it yet, and you think you know when it will be ripe, just submit a feedback form and we’ll add your input to the site!

We’re hoping that over time, the information on RipeTrack will get more and more accurate with user feedback to become the most complete and reliable source for seasonal shopping on the web!

So, I really hope that you guys are as excited about this website as I am. I know that it’s something that did not exist on the web previously and that it’s something that I have really needed.

We have many more features planned for RipeTrack in the future including how to choose a ripe fruit or vegetable at the store, a monthly newsletter of what’s in season and what’s not, and even a way for you to save your favorite produce and compare lists with other users!

If you have a moment, please visit the site today and experiment with searching for items, months, or keywords. I would love to hear your ideas on how we could improve the site or any other suggestions or comments you may have. I may link to a short online survey about it soon to get some of your opinions anonymously as well.

That’s the big announcement. NO, I’m not pregnant, sorry everyone. 😉 But RipeTrack has been my little baby for the last few months and I’m as proud of it as a new mom. Please tell me what you think!

April 4, 2011 Alayna Discussion 24 comments