I whipped up a skirt on Saturday night that I've been dreaming about for weeks. I got a wonderful book from my stepsister last year called Sewing Green, with a lot of creative ideas for repurposing old things into new ones. One of the most intriguing ideas was making a skirt from a pillowcase, using the pillowcase's finished edge as the hemline. I'm sized out of fitting a pillowcase over my hips by about 2 inches, but smaller people could get away with it. Anyway, we have these sheets that we got for a wedding gift, all white with a beautiful embroidered eyelet border. They got a few small stains on them several years ago, and they're not as soft as some of our other sheets, so they've been put away for a while, but once I started thinking about making a skirt, I couldn’t get that gorgeous embroidery out of my head. So instead of a pillowcase, I used the bedsheet instead. It couldn't have been simpler: cutting a rectangle (hips plus 3" x desired length plus 1.5"), sewing it up the side to make a tube, then making an elastic casing and finishing the whole thing up. It was literally three seams. It took me more time to iron and cut the fabric than it took to sew, and the project was made even easier by Jack volunteering to take the boys to the library so I could get it done before dinner. It's not the most elegant skirt since it's just straight with an elastic waist, and since it's white and I didn't bother with a lining, I had to dig my old slip (not seen in about five years) out of the back of the closet. But it's comfy, and it was worth it anyway.


I just love the hemline of this skirt right above my boots. Every woman needs some boots to wear once in a while.

I've also pulled out my grandmother's scrapaholic quilt to work on — remember it from way back two years ago?? Well, I got it from her when I was still working on a dissertation, so I sewed a border on, basted it together with the batting and backing, then rolled it up and stuck it in a box. It sat in the box through dissertation, then dissertation abandonment was quickly followed by pregnancy, and a newborn... and all of those things precluded working seriously on a quilt. When Kent started school, I was determined to pull it out and begin quilting it, but I looked at it again and realized it would still take me years to hand quilt it like I had been planning.

My grandmother taught me to hand quilt. It’s one of those passed-down skills that I’m so grateful to have — it makes me feel connected to generations of women in my family whom I never even met. Machine quilting is sort of unreliable since the stitching can come out a lot more easily, and there’s something about it that’s not quite visceral enough for me. I love my sewing machine, but I feel the need to finger the fabrics on a quilt like this. I didn't want to cop out and do it on a machine. I took a long look at the quilt after having a timely reminder about another option, and I tried to imagine it as a tied quilt. Tied quilts are doable. I sheepishly asked my grandmother if it was alright for me to tie it instead of hand quilting, because I wanted to finish it and let her enjoy her handiwork. She worried that it was going to be a burden to me, but I assured her it wasn't, that I was thrilled to be able to do it. How could I not LOVE this opportunity? I mean, it's her life in fabric. Every scrap means something to her, either because she made something from it like an article of clothing or a quilt for one of us, or because it came from the stash of a friend, or a sister who recently passed away. As I've been tying the little knots of purple wool that seem to pick up the purple in the quilt beautifully, I've reminisced and dreamed a little about what all of these different fabrics mean. Most have meanings I'll never know. Every 10 or 15 squares, I find one that instantly becomes my new favorite. There's a lot of: "Okay, that's my favorite. No wait, this one is DEFINITELY my favorite."

It's nice to pull my head up out of the water of childrearing for a minute so I can do this kind of work again.

Labels: craftiness, family, greening, photography

• posted by erica 9/27/2010 03:39:00 PM
•  5 comments

Oh my. Pregnancy and an almost-2-year-old. And that almost-2-year-old's birthday party in two days. It's getting exciting, people.

Yesterday was a rotten day in terms of how I was feeling. It was my first throw-up day, and I just wanted my mommy. I think I only had about three of those days when I was pregnant with Kent (though I had my two and a half months of constant nausea and motion sickness), and all of the incidents occurred when I was rushing around and trying to get a lot done. My favorite memory is of being doubled over by the side of I-10 on the way to the airport at Christmas, then getting to the airport too late for our very early flight because I just couldn't get it together. While I was being sick yesterday morning, Kent was in his room playing, and for some reason he found the sound of it hilarious, so he was giggling the whole time. I thought, "Well, at least I'm entertaining him." It actually made it a little more bearable, surprisingly. Afterward, we got through a fun playgroup and made it home in one piece, but once I realized he wasn't going to take a nap when we got home, I completely ran out of energy and spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the sofa with movies in the DVD player. Every time I moved, I felt the nausea hit me again, so I tried to remain motionless except for cooking myself a potato in the oven. I managed to hold off on calling Jack until 3:30, when I begged him to come home an hour early. Yeck. I'm really thankful that I have that option, but I can't do it often, or he won't have any vacation time for travels or for when the baby comes.

And there's Kent's party. I'm excited, even though I feel like crap on toast most days. Party prep is going well so far, and things are mostly under control. We're going to have a sunny (read: ridiculously hot) morning at the sprayground with friends, lunchy foods and a cake, and a book swap for all the kids so that everyone gets to go home with a new book and nobody feels like they have to bring a gift for Kent. There are a few gazebos at the sprayground, and a friend of mine who lives nearby has offered to get there early to help claim a gazebo, so we should at least have some respite from the sun while we're eating and visiting. When I asked Kent about a cake several months ago, he informed me that he wanted a yellow cake with blue frosting. This quickly became a Nemo party in my mind, so we're having Nemo and fishy decorations. I'm trying this recipe and making blue cream cheese frosting instead of the whipped stuff it calls for, because I never get tired of cream cheese frosting. Also, I assembled all the little treat bags today, with stickers, Swedish fish, Goldfish crackers, Nemo splash balls (we have to have SOME kind of water toy), and a fun squiggly straw for each kid. Tomorrow's highlights will include grocery shopping for the remaining lunch items, and baking the cake. I'm also working in some rest time, since our wonderful friend Mary is taking Kent for part of the afternoon. I have really needed some rest time lately but have felt like a totally lame mom for popping him in front of a movie every day, even though I keep telling myself that it's only for the next month or so.

The reason we're not having enough rest time is that Kent's naps have been sporadic for the last couple of weeks, because we've weaned. Celebrate this new phase of his big-boyhood! I always had nursing until age 2 in the back of my mind because of the World Health Organization's recommendation about how long to breastfeed, so considering we made it to within a week of his second birthday, I'm pretty happy with how the whole thing went. I had an incredibly easy time nursing him from practically the first day and felt so lucky that our nursing relationship was so long and prosperous, but it was time to nudge him off of that one last naptime nursing each day so that I could have my boobs back for a few months. They were telling me how ready they were, and I strongly believe in listening to my pregnant body when it tells me that it would like to devote all its resources to growing a new baby. Kent doesn't seem upset to have given it up, because we (Jack, Kent and I) talked for a couple of months about how he's growing up and doesn't need to nurse all the time the way babies do, and we also told him that soon it would be time to say "Bye bye, ya ya" (his word for nursing). There was also lots of positive encouragement about all the things he can do now that he's getting bigger, just so he doesn't think that growing up only means giving up things he likes. I loved involving him in the process instead of just springing it on him, and I think that if he were a pacifier kid I would have wanted to do the same thing. It's good for both of us that he's weaned, and since he was only nursing once a day, I haven't felt any ill effects like engorgement; the only ill effect is that it's very difficult to convince him to take a nap without that cue he's so used to having. Some days, I'm able to get him to fall asleep in the car and then put him in his bed when we get home, but if he's been asleep in the car for longer than 15 minutes, it doesn't work and he's just awake for the rest of the day. No amount of naptime routine seems to be doing the trick, and I'm not sure whether we'll ever get him back on a predictable after-lunch nap the way he was before. Several of my friends here in town have kids slightly older than Kent who have given up napping, often around the time they weaned, so I guess I'm bracing myself for the possibility that he's just going to be awake all day, every day. I feel like he still needs that afternoon nap, but if I can't help him fall asleep, we're kind of stuck. Anyway, that's not for any of you to worry about — I just wanted to share it.

Kent has made great strides with potty training lately, starting to tell us when he needs to go (though so far, it's only a couple of times a day that it occurs to him). I'm so proud of him, and he seems to be getting that it's something he should be proud of, too — he gets especially excited when he makes a poop in the potty and I sing the poopy song I made up for him. Today, he pooped on the potty shortly after we finished watching A Bug's Life, and Kent looked down in the potty and remarked, "K have grasshopper poopoo." I guess it's because it was brown like the grasshoppers in the movie... he says all kinds of weird stuff these days, and I love it. I decided that once I kick this first trimester nonsense, we're going to shift potty training into a higher gear, perhaps taking the bare-bottom approach and certainly getting some training pants. It would be amazing if he were mostly done with training by the time the baby comes, though I'll certainly expect accidents and some regression when he and I are both faced with such a drastic change to our routine.

In other news, Jack has basically taken over the gardening duties for two reasons: (1) I *hate* going outside in this heat wave, and (2) fresh vegetables are really getting to me, a random and most unwelcomed consequence of the first trimester. The sight/thought/mention of fresh tomatoes actually makes me gag. How bizarre is that, given my usual adoration of them?? I don't like it.

I was thinking yesterday about all this sickness and how I thought when I was pregnant with Kent that maybe we'd just have one kid, because it would be very hard for me to gear myself up for feeling this way again. Of course, I did it again anyway, and I don't think it's because I forgot how it felt. I think it's analogous to the 20-some-hour flight to Australia. If you want to see Australia, you just have to take that incredibly long flight. But then you're there, and you see Australia, and you think it was totally worth it even though the flight was obnoxious. This is all idle speculation, since I've never been anywhere in the Southern hemisphere, but I'm guessing that's what it feels like. So I get through it, because I love my son more than anything and I want him to have a sibling, and I want us to have another child to share our lives with.

And I'm still happy, even in the midst of feeling like crap on toast.

Labels: belly, Beta, Dean, flora, greening, Kent, kitchen adventures, LLL

• posted by erica 7/01/2009 08:41:00 PM
•  5 comments

Everything in the garden is still growing well, but while we were gone this past weekend, the tomatoes went nuts and decided to pull their cages over. The weight of all the branches and new tomatoes is too much for the tiny cages, apparently, and there's no way for me to prop them up unless I put a bunch of stakes all over the place. I decided just to leave them all crazy, in true "experiment" fashion.


Here's a close-up shot of the Superfantastic plant, which is attempting to pull its cage completely over the edge of the bed. We got our first reddish tomato from this plant a couple of days ago, and it's ripening happily on the counter with a handful of cherry tomatoes.


I can't get over how different the Brandywine tomatoes look, all squatty, with their very pointy leaves at the top of each fruit. There are about 15 of various sizes all over the plant at this point. Yay!


Kent's still having a lovely time helping. He only picks the tomatoes that aren't green anymore, but today, that meant he picked one that was a slightly greenish shade of yellow. Eh, it'll still ripen on the counter.


Check out the sunflower. It opened up on our arrival back home, and Kent is thrilled to pieces. He keeps saying, "K eat SUNFLAAAAAHHHHHHH!" I guess since we're eating everything else in the garden, he thinks this is edible too. I wonder what he'll do if it makes it to seeds and I hand him a pile of sunflower seeds.

Some of the eggplants are getting really big, but we still only have the one pepper, which my grandmother informs me is NOT a bell pepper, as I suspected. Her best guess is a banana pepper. Oh well. We can still eat it, and our CSA has no shortage of bell peppers for us for June and July. I also picked the first okra a couple of days ago but I still haven't eaten it yet. Soon, I think. Maybe tonight.

Labels: flora, greening, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 6/10/2009 09:20:00 AM
•  4 comments

I heard an interesting interview on our local public radio station this morning: it was with former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, who's just come out with a book about overcoming our (largely American) tendencies to eat way too much horrible food that's bad for us. He talked about studies in neuroimaging that have been done recently, wherein participants have eaten sugar, fat, and salt, and had brain scans taken to see how their brains and bodies responded. Apparently, when we eat foods that are high in these substances, it doesn't actually satiate our hunger; rather, it stimulates it, so that we just want to eat more and more. Think buttered popcorn. He also talked about how eating these foods creates pleasurable memories in our brains that we then seek to replicate, and since makers of fast and processed foods are catching onto this, they're figuring out any way they can of triggering the pleasant memories to make us want more of their foodish substances. Even high-end restaurants load their food down with fat, salt, and sugar, though it really doesn't have to be like that. Kessler suggests that the real way to combat one's overeating is to recognize what's making us crave certain foods at the moment we start to crave them, and to create positive memories around eating healthfully that will cancel out the positive memories of eating a bunch of crap (my word, not his). He also said that exercising, even a bit, is key, because once a person gets into a habit of exercising, that desire to do good things for their body and overall health spills over into eating. I can personally attest to craving really healthful foods like turkey, avocado, tomatoes and sprouts after working out, so I know that's true.

As I was driving home, contemplating the interview, I saw a billboard with a tall soda cup with ice and fizz at the top, a Coca-Cola logo, and a McDonald's logo: a triple whammy of triggers to make me think I needed to go to the drive-thru and buy a cup full of sugar. Incidentally, I decided a few years ago that it's no accident that the golden arches look a bit like McDonald's french fries, and their logo is so ubiquitous that it would be hard to drive/walk around a city without thinking you need fries at some point. And then I thought about the green Starbucks logo and green awning that somehow make me think I need a caffe mocha every time I see it, even though I don't actually need it and could make one at home for about 50 cents even if I did. They have the coffeehouse mentality working to their complete advantage. And then there are all those ads for indulgent foods that tell you to "treat yourself" or that "you deserve it". Well, Person Who Created the Ad, I think what I deserve is to be happier about the food I put in my body and to cancel out some of the bad food choices I've been making lately. So there.

Enter our first CSA basket and today's lunch.

We picked up our CSA basket yesterday, so we have bags and piles of fresh produce in the house that we have to eat up or freeze within a few days. It's like a challenge: "What can YOU do with 3 pounds of tomatoes, two bags of field peas, a bag of yellow wax beans, two eggplants, three zucchinis, two enormous green bell peppers, arugula, and tarragon? Tell us: what IS your strategy? Okay, GO!"

My lunchtime strategy ended up being a made-up wax bean and pasta dish, which I paired with a salmon fillet that I just picked up at the store this morning. I marinated the salmon in orange juice and balsamic vinegar, then cooked it in the toaster oven while I made the bean pasta dish. I boiled some yellow wax beans for a few minutes, then added some rigatoni noodles (about a 2:1 ratio of beans:noodles) and cooked them until the pasta was tender and beans were done, about ten more minutes. I drained them and tossed them with a touch of olive oil, some grated parmesan, some cherry tomatoes from the farm, and some fresh basil from my garden. Kent got his beans and pasta without basil or tomatoes, since I actually wanted him to attempt to *eat* it, and I knew he wouldn't be impressed by the tomatoes or by something green. He liked the noodles and at least tasted the beans, and shock of shocks, he absolutely loved the salmon. I had been worried that the fillet was a little bit too big for one person, but Kent must have sensed my worry and used it as an opportunity for growth. I haven't fed him much fish since he's generally been pretty unimpressed with it, but he did enjoy it today. Probably means he won't the next time I make it for him.

Tonight's dinner furthered the mission of using up good vegetables: I made ratatouille and served it over grits with a baguette on the side. My recipe suggested serving it with polenta, but I'm from North Carolina, so I made grits. It was good, but I think I might deconstruct it a bit next time, roasting the vegetables and then putting it all together instead of making it in just one pot, to help with the texture of the eggplant in particular and to give everything a nice roasty flavor.

I've been thinking a lot today about making more positive memories around fresh, healthful foods. Being part of this CSA and growing some of my own veggies and herbs are both huge aspects of this, especially since Kent is part of both experiences and is really living up his inaugural gardening days. Grilling and eating on our patio, or enjoying sushi and edamame outside on a pleasant day, or remembering how it felt to eat fresh nectarines and cherries on the pebble beach in Nice — these are all the kind of things I want to focus more on.

So enough with the gross food. I've done a pretty good job in the last few years about cutting out highly processed foods, but I'm now declaring a moratorium (probably only temporary, but you guys can help hold me to it) on fast food going into my tummy. I can make food that's SO much better.

Labels: eating out, greening, kitchen adventures, listening miscellany, photography, what to read

• posted by erica 6/08/2009 08:13:00 PM
•  7 comments

In garden news this week, I resorted to getting ant spray. That's right, my garden is no longer organic, if it ever really was. It seems to have worked somewhat, though I think I need to do another treatment, because one of the eggplant plants has ants going into its stem now, and I think they're taking refuge in there. Nasty business, the whole thing. If they were just crawling around on the plant, I wouldn't really care, but they can destroy the roots and eat the plant from the inside out, and I'm feeling very defensive about my first gardening foray here.

Anyway, photos:


The coleus in our side yard is really shooting toward the sky now. Most of the plants have a long stem of flowers between 4 and 6 inches long, and they look really cool with all the different colors of foliage, and the pink and white dianthus in the background. Such a fun little garden patch.


The so-called bell pepper is doing great, but now I'm starting to wonder if it's a different kind of pepper because of this shape. Maybe it really is a bell pepper and it'll fill out and get rounder soon. Anyone have experience with these?


I've realized that even though the nice plant people at the farmer's market *said* they were selling me two Japanese eggplants, they actually gave me one Japanese and one of a different variety. I think. Here's the Japanese one, which is obviously long and skinny just like Japanese eggplant ought to be,


and here's the other eggplant, much squattier and bigger around, with green stems instead of reddish-purple (sorry for the lack of focus). There's nothing wrong with having two kinds of eggplant; I'm just surprised that they're turning out to be different.


The dwarf okra has produced one vegetable that looks like I could eat it soon. I think they stay red, and I read that they're supposed to be about 3 inches long when you pick them, so I might pick this one today or tomorrow and cook it up. It's kind of funny to just have one okra, but I only have the one small plant. It's like how the cherry tomato plant produces about one tomato every 2 days that we can eat, so we never quite get enough to make anything, just enough for a little snack. But man, those cherry tomatoes are delicious, so I don't mind.


I finally have Brandywines! There are several small and medium tomatoes on the plant at this point. I can't WAIT to eat them.


The Superfantastic has several big clusters that are on the verge of ripening. It's taking a great deal of restraint not to pick these and make fried green tomatoes, but I feel like I need to wait for the first one to ripen all the way just to make it official, and then I'll start picking some of the others when they're green.


Overall, the raised bed is starting to look like a jungle. The tomato plants are engulfing their cages, but they seem to be doing fine, so I'm not too worried. I know the plants grow better if they're not resting on the ground, but this is what I have at this point, so I'm just going with it. I think I'll have Jack build a shorter bed next year for the tomatoes and the sunflowers and whatever other plants are supposed to get ginormous, so that I'll be able to get bigger cages and let them grow higher while still being able to reach them. The sunflower is almost completely out of reach at this point (it's at the right of this picture, and is so tall it's out of the frame), but I still tip it downward each morning so that Kent can look at it. He'll be pretty surprised when it opens up and he realizes there's been a bright yellow flower in there the whole time.

Labels: flora, greening, photography

• posted by erica 6/03/2009 09:16:00 AM
•  2 comments

Bell peppers are starting to pop out. Aren't they adorable?


Cherry tomatoes! Kent is so excited to pick them when they turn red. Right now, they're only ripening one at a time, and he can't wait to pick them. I'm kind of torn about something, though — he keeps saying, "K eat tomatoes!" but he doesn't actually like the taste. Every time he gets one, he takes a bite and then spits out the rest. So I'm not really keen on giving him all our yummy veggies, but I would love for him to eat them enough that he gets used to the taste and starts to like them, the way I trained myself to like tomatoes when I was younger. It's not a big deal, I guess, but I talk to him a lot about not wasting things, and this seems to fall into that category. I suppose he needs a reward for his patience with gardening, so if he wants to eat a tomato, I should probably just let him eat it, even if I know that it would actually make it to my stomach if *I* ate it. Maybe I'll cut them in half and we can share them.

Related to the wasting thing is something else that makes me crazy: Kent sometimes picks the plant buds when I'm not looking. I try to take deep breaths and remind myself that he's too young to understand, but it makes me really frustrated that the things he plucks off will never have a chance to become vegetables we can eat. Patience. This is supposed to be an experiment, after all.


The Superfantastic is doing superfantastically. I cannot WAIT for one of these to ripen. Still no tomato activity from the Brandywine plant, but it has to be soon.


The sunflower taunts us with its incredibly slow opening process.


And here's my Little Lucy okra plant, generally a container plant but doing quite well in the garden so far. I saw several pointy things on it that I thought were tiny okras and that I figured would ripen and get bigger.


Turns out they're flowers, which I guess will become okras next. The flowers are such a beautiful, sunny shade of pale yellow that compliments the dark red and green foliage so well. I see now why people keep these as container plants, and not just for the food.

The only other piece of news is that a couple of ant colonies have moved onto the eggplants and have built little hills at the base of each eggplant plant. I actually called our local gardening show on public radio this past Saturday, and the host, Louis Miller, told me I could disturb the hills every day and they'd eventually move, or pour soapy water on them and effectively disintegrate the part of their bodies that helps them float so that they drown, or buy ant killer that's safe to use around vegetables. I tried the soapy water thing and tried not to think about drowning Flik and Princess Atta from A Bug's Life, though they built up another hill the next day, so I assume it didn't work. I've been poking the hill or knocking it over every day as well, and so far, that hasn't moved them, either. I'm kind of reluctant to use a chemical, even though he assured me I could find something safe, but that might be in the future, since I really don't want the ants to destroy the root system and kill my eggplants before they've had a chance to produce anything edible. Advice is always appreciated.

Labels: flora, greening, photography

• posted by erica 5/27/2009 09:25:00 AM
•  6 comments

We officially handed over our form and our check this morning to become members of the Port Hudson Organic Farm CSA. The weekly bushel distribution officially begins on June 6, but since we'll be gone one weekend in late June, we decided to go ahead and get some stuff today that would count against the week we're missing. We brought home 4 pounds of baby red potatoes and 2 dozen (well, baker's dozen) ears of corn! We also got to take a nice stroll around the farm to see all the ripening vegetables. The green beans looked beautiful, the tomato plants were staked and were bursting with green tomatoes just waiting for me to eat all of them, and the rest of the plants were just beginning their forays into fruit- and veggie-making.

Kent got to sit on their parked John Deere tractor for a minute, which was the highlight of his day and the thing he wanted to keep reminding us about when we got home. He has a John Deere tractor book, and I've learned that making things in his books come alive to him is one of the most fun things we can do with him right now.

We walked past the strawberry patch, and I knew it was just about the end of the season so I asked whether we could pick some and take them off their hands, hoping to get a bargain. Will, one of the owners, told us we were welcomed to try but that a lot of them were rotten already, but he said we could have them for free if we managed to find any, since he was about ready to pull the plants out. His wife, Thais, got us a basket to pick with, and Kent, Jack, and I hunted through the strawberry patch and managed to find a couple of pints' worth of delicious, sweet, perfect strawberries.






Here's a sign of how far I've come since my gardening has begun: there were bugs and worms all over the place, including crawling out of some of the berries as I turned them over, and I didn't freak out or shriek or anything. This is a major step for the woman who won't even pick up a dead cockroach off the floor, instead covering it up with something and waiting for her brave husband to get home. I sort of forgot about the bug factor when I signed on to help out and eat food from an organic farm, but it turns out not to matter quite so much as I would have thought.

I washed the berries as soon as we got home and stuck them in the fridge, knowing how quickly they can become overripe at this point in the season. After a nice lunch out with our engaged friends Jennifer and Brett, we all came back to our house so that Kent could nap, and we shared our berries with them over ice cream. There are still a bunch in the fridge that will be devoured tomorrow morning. I wish Kent would eat more than one berry at a time, but someday, he'll eat more normal food. Right?

Taking care of the corn has been a multi-stage process today that still isn't quite complete. I cut off the ends, soaked them, roasted them in batches of 8 (all that would comfortably fit in the oven at once), and am now about to go slice the cooked corn off the cob, some for freezing and the rest for some sort of corn salad that will be gracing us this weekend. Jack gets the special job of shucking, which is so easy when the corn is already cooked and the silks just fall right off.




Another sign of my progress: when I was shucking the ears that we ate for dinner, I found a tiny worm at the top of one of them (yes, a cooked worm — eww), and Jack found another. Again, I didn't freak out, and I had warned Jack about it so he didn't freak out, either. Worms are a natural part of growing things, and I get that now. Once I cut off the end where the worm had been, everything was just fine.

Kent, Corn Fiend Extraordinaire, dispatched two ears of corn by himself. He adores this stuff, and he does a great job of getting all the kernels.

I'm not sure yet what we'll do with the potatoes. My favorite way to cook potatoes is to dice them and roast them with olive oil, salt, and herbs, but I'm not sure whether we'll eat all four pounds that way or end up doing something different with the rest. Potato salad might be called for, since it is Memorial Day weekend and something inside me wants to have summer picnic/cookout food.

Off to take care of the corn before I fall asleep. 5:30 wake-up calls are not fun, and I need to catch up.

Labels: flora, greening, kitchen adventures, photography

• posted by erica 5/23/2009 09:08:00 PM
•  8 comments

Yogurt is good.

Yogurt with fresh berries is better.

And yogurt with local blueberries AND homemade granola? THE BEST!!

I used Alton's granola recipe here and was thrilled with the results, though be warned that it takes only about an hour to cook, instead of the hour and fifteen minutes he calls for. I pulled mine out of the oven just as it was on the verge of burning. Despite being a little darker than I would have liked, it's still delicious. Kent loves it, and I'm already thinking that yogurt, berries, and this sweet granola is going to be our go-to summer dessert. If only we could get Kent to eat yogurt again, like he did when he was a baby... alas.

I also used one pint of blueberries to make blueberry jam from the Joy of Cooking recipe, lest you people think I only use Food Network recipes. I can't wait to spread it on toast tomorrow. I think it might be way too sweet, but maybe it won't be. I just love that book, though, and I don't feel bad writing notes to myself in the margins, like to use less sugar next time.

In even more exciting food news, we're in the CSA! I know, I know — you've followed the saga, you've hoped and prayed for us... and today, I got an email from the farmer saying that they had a family unexpectedly move to Oklahoma (!) and that they had an opening for us. We're going to turn in our form and our money on Saturday morning, and in return, we get to take home all the corn and potatoes we could possibly eat, plus whatever else is ready by then. Yum. And huzzah!

I'm already pumped about finding new ways to use common ingredients, and each year, I get a little better at making sure most of our produce is seasonal. For example, we hardly ever buy strawberries unless they're from around here, which means January through June and supplementing with frozen ones from our local produce place, because California strawberries waste too much gas getting here and don't taste anywhere near as good when they've been picked early and ripened on a truck. This is pretty much my problem with all produce that's had to travel too far, though I do make an exception for avocados, because I love them. I make exceptions for all kinds of other stuff, too — I'm definitely not an ideal "eat local" person. I just think it's important for us to be aware of where our food is coming from and the resources used in getting it to us, because man, that's a lot of gasoline and manpower that could be used for better things.

I'm looking at our freezer space and thinking it might be about time to get a small chest freezer to hold stuff we want to store for later, like the pesto I'm going to make from our garden, and all this corn we're about to find ourselves swimming in. I guess I can make do for now, since I managed to find places to store all the cubes of baby food I was making this time last year.

One more bit of news: to replace the cilantro plant that was just taking up space in our garden and being annoying with its flowers and lack of edible leaves, I bought a Little Lucy okra plant (a dwarf variety). I get to be an okra farmer now!

Yes, I am totally geeking out on farming and produce.

Labels: flora, greening, kitchen adventures

• posted by erica 5/21/2009 05:13:00 PM
•  3 comments

The sunflower is ready to pop open any day. I can barely reach it now — I actually had to stand up on the corners of the bed (which is two feet high) to take this photo. Kent has sort of forgotten that this is his plant, but I'm sure that once the flower pops open and he sees all the sunny yellowness, he'll remember to be excited again. Something I want to figure out: when the sunflower opens up and starts making seeds, how do I harvest some seeds to plant next year? I'm guessing that if we want to eat some, we just roast them with some salt, but I need to know how to preserve some of the others so that we can have a whole cluster of them next year.

The cherry tomato plant has several green clusters, with more to come. The Superfantastic tomato (seen here) has a few tiny tomatoes and one huge one that gets bigger each day. The Brandywine has yet to produce any fruit, but it has flowers all over the place, so I'm hoping they'll start coming out soon.

The flat-leaf parsley and basil are doing incredibly well. I've already harvested a giant pesto recipe's worth of herbs and put some of it in the freezer (I like Tyler Florence's recipe here), and I'm thinking it's about time to strip more leaves so that I can make another recipe. I just need more pine nuts, which I'll get when we go to Whole Foods in a couple of days.

I haven't talked much about the potted herbs, but I am absolutely loving the curly mint. The taste of fresh mint can't be replicated by anything else, and I hate spending $3 or $4 on a tiny package of fresh herbs at the store, so this is the first time that I've really been able to make a lot of stuff with mint. We made mojitos a couple of weeks ago, but they didn't quite turn out right. I couldn't figure out if they were too sweet, or not limey enough, or what, but they were sort of nauseating and they made me less excited about trying again. I'm excited to make Giada's dessert ravioli with orange-mint dipping sauce tonight. And now that we can get peaches, strawberries, blueberries, and watermelon from local farmers, I think we have a lot of minty fruit salad in our immediate future.




The onion stems are getting taller each week, leading me to wonder how I'm supposed to know when they're done. Do I just dig one up and taste it, or wait until they've reached a certain size? I put them in the ground a month and a half ago, and I think they were supposed to take about 2 months to mature, but of course I didn't save the package so I can't remember for sure.

Eggplant and bell peppers are still growing and making flowers. No vegetable-like activity yet, but I'm optimistic.

The one disappointment of the growing experiment is my poor cilantro. I pinch or clip all the flowers off every few days, but it seems to be putting all its energy into producing more flowers and has yet to grow any leaves that are worth eating. All the leaves are really thin and spindly and have never filled out. I've started thinking that maybe I should just let it make flowers and harvest some coriander (the seeds) instead... but I'm sort of giving up on it.

I also bought a dill plant at the market last week that has already turned brown, but I think it was the plant, not me. I've bought most of my plants from the nice plant people at the market, but I had to buy dill from the not-nice people because the nice people didn't have any, so I'm blaming the not-nice people. That's right, I'm shifting the blame.

We're definitely going to need more lumber to make a second raised bed next year. I'm already full of ideas.

Labels: flora, greening, kitchen adventures, photography

• posted by erica 5/20/2009 09:45:00 AM
•  4 comments

We've been embracing summer today with a productive trip to the farmer's market. (Yes, it's summer here already — pay no attention to the calendar.) I just made gazpacho out of some farmer's market yummies, and we had fresh corn roasted in the oven and some deviled eggs. Kent is becoming a corn on the cob fiend, and I have a wonderfully foolproof method of preparing and cooking it that I wish my parents had known about when I was little. I don't remove any of the husks or silks, I just soak whole ears in a pot of water or a 13 x 9 pan of water for a while, putting a plate on top to hold the ears down so they don't float, then either grill it until tender (about 20 minutes) or cook it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. The water helps to steam it inside its own husks, and when it's done cooking, I peel back the husks and the silks just fall right off. I think about all the time I spent with ears of corn and a paper bag when I was a kid, meticulously picking off all the silks before the ears were boiled, and I'm thankful Kent will never have to undergo that trauma. I'll put him in front of a bowl of snap beans instead so his time can be put to better use.

Somehow, we're working peaches and strawberries in for dessert. Tomorrow, we'll eat our fairy tale eggplant (even smaller than Japanese, it's so cute!) and green beans. I love the farmers, and early summer is such an exciting time to visit the market because we're never sure what wonderful thing will be there each week. The corn this morning, for example, was a complete surprise. We got there an hour after the market opened, not knowing that this would be the first week of blueberries, and all their blueberries were already gone. Next Saturday, we shall arrive earlier and with a lot of cash, and we shall be triumphant.

After I finish Cry, the Beloved Country, I might finally check out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle from the library. I already feel indoctrinated into the "eat local" movement, so I think I'd enjoy it if I ever got around to reading it.

We're on the short waiting list for a CSA — Community Supported Agriculture, that is, buying a share of a farm for the season to ensure a steady stream of fresh produce — that's starting up in our area, because our stupid domain name always gets caught in spam filters and they didn't get my original email when I requested to be added to their list. They needed 20 families to commit, and if they had gotten the email I sent the day after they announced their CSA, we would be in. I contacted them from a different email address a couple of days ago since I hadn't heard anything about whether they had enough families or not, and they told me they had never gotten my first email. Stupid stupid stupid. As it is, we have to wait and see whether anyone else will drop out in the next couple of weeks, and I'm not hopeful about our chances of getting in at this point. It's an organic u-pick farm, so we could still visit them this summer if they have extra produce one week (we're on the email list for those sort of announcements), but we probably won't be getting our basket of stuff each week that I was so looking forward to. I'm sad, but we'll still support local agriculture at the market and by going to pick blueberries in a few weeks if we can go early one morning before the temp reaches 80. Ha.

Also, my car hit 111,111 miles this week, but my camera was nowhere in sight, nor was my camera phone. The bedside organizer, while fabulous, keeps obscuring my phone from me, so I still need to get in the habit of taking it out of there each morning. You'll have to settle for seeing the blurry photo of my odometer reaching 100,000 back in October, the day we were driving to NC for Lauren's dad's memorial service. Yes, I have driven 11,111 miles since Halloween. Lots of road trips.



I was away for a good bit of the day today at a fun church event for younger women, and as a result, Kent elected not to take a nap. He almost nodded off during dinner (after he had gobbled down all his corn), so he's having an early bath and will be in bed before the sun has even set. He might be up even earlier tomorrow as a result, but it's a chance we're willing to take. Strawberry pancakes, bacon, and coffee will see us through.

Labels: car issues, greening, kitchen adventures, photography, what to read

• posted by erica 5/16/2009 06:32:00 PM
•  5 comments

Superfantastic!


The cherry tomatoes take off, and Kent hopes every day that they'll start turning red. Every day before we go outside to water the plants, he says, "Go see! Tomatoes turn REEEEEDDDDD!"


Who knew Japanese eggplants made such gorgeous flowers?


Not to be outdone, the bell pepper produces a flower as well.


What was that about the tomatoes outgrowing their cages?


Kent's sunflower is even outgrowing the tomato cages.


The orange flowers I planted in the little garden are doing really well — I just love them, but I can't seem to remember what they're called. The coleus and dianthus in this garden are thriving as well, and Kent and I *both* know the names of those. At least I'm not a total loser.

I am so excited about how this is going, and I'm already scheming for next year. I think we're going to have to buy more lumber so our raised bed can have a twin, because there are a lot of vegetables (and watermelons!) that are calling out to me...

Labels: flora, greening, photography

• posted by erica 5/13/2009 09:43:00 AM
•  4 comments

Wide shot. See how big the tomatoes are getting? Lauren was right about them outgrowing their cages soon.


Bell peppers and onions


Parsley and Japanese eggplants


The tomatoes I took a photo of last week (turns out they *are* the cherry tomatoes)


More cherry tomatoes


Kent and his sunflower


The row of onions (18 out of 21 sprouted), and someone eager to pick them. Too eager, really. He poses a great hazard to the tomatoes as well.


Coleus in the little garden on the side of the house. I didn't know it was going to make flowers, so they're even more beautiful than I thought!

Labels: flora, greening, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 5/06/2009 09:39:00 AM
•  3 comments

Kent amuses himself by chasing pill bugs around the patio while I tend the garden. Seriously, whatever works.


Full view of the garden this morning


Ladies and gentlemen, we have tomatoes. I forget whether this is the Superfantastic plant or the cherry... time will tell, I feel certain.


The Brandywine tomato plant is actually producing flowers and fruit! I'm pumped!


One of Kent's sunflowers is taking off. The other (at the left of the photo) is kind of struggling, but hey, we got one great plant from a 99 cent dixie cup garden, so I'm pretty pleased.

Labels: flora, greening, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 4/29/2009 10:14:00 AM
•  4 comments