When I'm home on a mondaythroughfriday day, for whatever reason, I like to visualize myself at my desk now and then. Just so I get the full appreciation of being here and not there.
Jesse Helms died today. Yay. Finally. I can't believe such a racist, homophobic and anti-art bastard got to die on Fourth of July. (He now shares a death date with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. What a joke.)
We're having a quiet morning at home today, complete with trying to see who can longest ignore the fact that the baby in bed with us is awake and wanting attention. We play this game most mornings. Unfortunately, I have the magic milk makers, so I usually lose, knowing that we all win a little if I just feed her and we all doze off for awhile. Kolya got up and made some super yellow eggs with the last of the drying up mushrooms and some spinach leaves. Side by side with the rainier cherries and a not-local and not-sustainable, but organic and free trade banana, which I shared with Calamity. She really doesn't care about food, not at all. So she squashed it around on her belly and that was pretty much that.
Today is a day with no plan. I like it that way. So far I've recycled paper that was cluttering up the living room, and hope to continue the spontaneous tidying I've started. (Stopping to blog is not likely to help with that ...) then it's cookie-baking for DeShaz and La Suze and Tobey and new baby Wilkie.
Since this is a food NaBloPoMo (which I'm not officially signed up for, if that's even how it works), I'll say that I'm hurting for a farmers market today. We're nearly out of food, and even gave in and bought broccoli and bok choi at the supermarket yesterday. (hanging head in shame, as it's July and there's no call for that).
In other news, we've cooked seriously good meals all week. And there's still a frozen rabbit pie with spring vegetables from last week's market. I'm not sure whether to thaw it before cooking or just stick it in the oven. Advice?? (SHG, since you're my sole reader!)
Friday, July 4, 2008
Okay, but this counts
So it's after midnight. Whatever. I'm still up so it's my Day 3 post.
Tonight for dinner I made a thai green curry with broccoli and bok choi and carrots and chicken. It was lush. Then we ate some Rainier cherries.
Now I'm going to bed.
Tonight for dinner I made a thai green curry with broccoli and bok choi and carrots and chicken. It was lush. Then we ate some Rainier cherries.
Now I'm going to bed.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Day 2. I hear the crickets coming for me.
So, we had ourselves a 2 minute thunderstorm here this evening. Complete with two claps of thunder and that smell of rain on hot pavement I remember from Virginia.
I can count on one hand the number of thunderstorms I've seen here in Seattle. At home, they were how you knew it was summer--a thunderstorm every few days. Often dramatic. Quite sexy. Memories attached to thunderstorms don't fade for me the way other memories do ...
Anyway, this is food month, according to NaBloPoMe (read it with a southern accent, please).
Yeah, so I made a quick little pasta with the last of the season's asparagus and some morel mushrooms. This is one of the dishes I've made so many times over the past few weeks, while all the ingredients are in season, that I'm well satisfied and ready for them to move along into memory. Now if only the next season's treasures would find their way here. The weather here was miserable this spring, and everything's at least two weeks behind. Last year at this time I was bringing home flats of blueberries and scarfing them down. This year we've only just now hit strawberries. Luckily someone from across the mountains brought japanese cucumbers to the market this week, so we had some tzatziki with our falafel a couple of days ago (much better than the garlic lemon yogurt we have in the long no-cucumber months. And cucumbers and strawberries on a spinach salad are pretty perfect food.
But still, I'm ready for blueberries and peaches. I'm such a hoarder and so attached to certain foods that I could only bring myself to open the last jar of Italian plums in apple cider two days ago. I still have about a cup of frozen peaches, and 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries left, along with maybe 2 cups of frozen blackberries. I know I should have enjoyed them in the darkest winter, but there were still some apples then, so I was never desperate. And I have to be desperate to risk running out of plums and blueberries before the new ones arrive. So I guess the next hot day will be smoothies, and then there'd better be some fruit besides strawberries at the market. I've heard there'll be raspberries this week, so maybe I'll survive.
I forgot to take pictures of the asparagus and morel mushrooms. I'm a bit out of practice with this blogging thing. I'll get back in the swing of things soon.
By the way, Calamity wants to log her dinner here: two or so smushy bites of steamed carrot.
I can count on one hand the number of thunderstorms I've seen here in Seattle. At home, they were how you knew it was summer--a thunderstorm every few days. Often dramatic. Quite sexy. Memories attached to thunderstorms don't fade for me the way other memories do ...
Anyway, this is food month, according to NaBloPoMe (read it with a southern accent, please).
Yeah, so I made a quick little pasta with the last of the season's asparagus and some morel mushrooms. This is one of the dishes I've made so many times over the past few weeks, while all the ingredients are in season, that I'm well satisfied and ready for them to move along into memory. Now if only the next season's treasures would find their way here. The weather here was miserable this spring, and everything's at least two weeks behind. Last year at this time I was bringing home flats of blueberries and scarfing them down. This year we've only just now hit strawberries. Luckily someone from across the mountains brought japanese cucumbers to the market this week, so we had some tzatziki with our falafel a couple of days ago (much better than the garlic lemon yogurt we have in the long no-cucumber months. And cucumbers and strawberries on a spinach salad are pretty perfect food.
But still, I'm ready for blueberries and peaches. I'm such a hoarder and so attached to certain foods that I could only bring myself to open the last jar of Italian plums in apple cider two days ago. I still have about a cup of frozen peaches, and 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries left, along with maybe 2 cups of frozen blackberries. I know I should have enjoyed them in the darkest winter, but there were still some apples then, so I was never desperate. And I have to be desperate to risk running out of plums and blueberries before the new ones arrive. So I guess the next hot day will be smoothies, and then there'd better be some fruit besides strawberries at the market. I've heard there'll be raspberries this week, so maybe I'll survive.
I forgot to take pictures of the asparagus and morel mushrooms. I'm a bit out of practice with this blogging thing. I'll get back in the swing of things soon.
By the way, Calamity wants to log her dinner here: two or so smushy bites of steamed carrot.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
I'll bite
So, this little half-assed attempt at a blog was outed by Starrhillgirl, in her post about friends. I was honored to be included in the list, and a little embarrassed that all she had to link to was this sad little start-up. So, I'm going to try to jump right in again. I'm sick today, with a sore throat fevery something, which is even less fun when it's 75 degrees.
So Nablopomo or whatever. Food. So yeah, I'm in. It's kinda like logging your lunch, right? I can handle that, I think.
Today was chicken fajitas made by my man Kolya.
that's all I have to say today. Sorry.
So Nablopomo or whatever. Food. So yeah, I'm in. It's kinda like logging your lunch, right? I can handle that, I think.
Today was chicken fajitas made by my man Kolya.
that's all I have to say today. Sorry.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Instant Pioneer Life
I once went away for several days and stayed by myself in a cabin by a lake in British Columbia. I had to carry water from the tap up the trail, and cook on a woodstove that required gathering wood and stoking the fire on a regular basis. The rest of my time was spent walking and reading. I've always remembered it fondly and remember thinking at the time that a certain kind of life requires most of every day just to live it. Not there, in what was essentially a rustic resort, but life along the lines of Thoreau's Walden, where I'd actually have to find or grow or mill the food I eat and cut the wood and tend the fire and maintain my cabin myself. I daydream about a self-sufficient life--tending chickens and preparing food would be my main occupations and I would never have to commute or sit in a cubicle.
I realized yesterday that working full time with a 4 month old baby at home is it's own version of 24 hour subsistence living. My day is chock full. I have two hours each workday morning before I go to work: feed baby, change baby, eat breakfast, check email, clean kitchen, wash bottles, pump breastmilk, feed baby and then out the door. This followed by a full day's work (at a job I love), then home for feeding, cooking a decently healthy and environmentally friendly dinner (interrupted by entertaining cranky baby who's dad needs a break after all-day caretaking), feed baby, get her to sleep, check email, waste an hour maybe, then bed. It's an all-day every day job. Sometimes we go on a family walk. Sometimes I read aloud to Kolya before we go to sleep. (We're reading Out Stealing Horses right now. It's a perfect read-aloud book: spare language, even tone, and slowly unfolding story.) Every now and then we go to the grocery store or farmers market. There's nothing pioneer about it, though my days are spent working to ensure long-term viability for small farms and hopefully to preserve some farmland for someone else to raise chickens and food for me. Mostly it's a busy urban life with a big dose of rural awareness.
Since I started work again a month or so ago, I seem to be accumulating tiredness. I'm satisfied with my work, enjoying my family, and getting tireder by the day.
I realized yesterday that working full time with a 4 month old baby at home is it's own version of 24 hour subsistence living. My day is chock full. I have two hours each workday morning before I go to work: feed baby, change baby, eat breakfast, check email, clean kitchen, wash bottles, pump breastmilk, feed baby and then out the door. This followed by a full day's work (at a job I love), then home for feeding, cooking a decently healthy and environmentally friendly dinner (interrupted by entertaining cranky baby who's dad needs a break after all-day caretaking), feed baby, get her to sleep, check email, waste an hour maybe, then bed. It's an all-day every day job. Sometimes we go on a family walk. Sometimes I read aloud to Kolya before we go to sleep. (We're reading Out Stealing Horses right now. It's a perfect read-aloud book: spare language, even tone, and slowly unfolding story.) Every now and then we go to the grocery store or farmers market. There's nothing pioneer about it, though my days are spent working to ensure long-term viability for small farms and hopefully to preserve some farmland for someone else to raise chickens and food for me. Mostly it's a busy urban life with a big dose of rural awareness.
Since I started work again a month or so ago, I seem to be accumulating tiredness. I'm satisfied with my work, enjoying my family, and getting tireder by the day.
Calamity Jane Is Not Your Darling
Go to this blog, and replace "Chuck Norris" with the real first and last name of my daughter, and pretend it's the blog I designed in my head this morning.
I was talking to Kolya about the hilarious blog we could create if we were willing to use our daughter's full name on the Internet, and it would all be about how tough she is, and people could add to it with all the "CK will kick your ... " sentences. It would become an internet sensation overnight.
And then he said, "You've seen the Chuck Norris blog, right?" And proceeded to run in the other room and read it to me. Curses, foiled again. It was a brilliant idea and a blog about my baby daughter the badass would have been funny. Oh well.
I was talking to Kolya about the hilarious blog we could create if we were willing to use our daughter's full name on the Internet, and it would all be about how tough she is, and people could add to it with all the "CK will kick your ... " sentences. It would become an internet sensation overnight.
And then he said, "You've seen the Chuck Norris blog, right?" And proceeded to run in the other room and read it to me. Curses, foiled again. It was a brilliant idea and a blog about my baby daughter the badass would have been funny. Oh well.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
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