I am...

Feeling - So. Damn. Excited. to be moving! 6 days!

Writing - thank yous for many gorgeous and thoughtful "goodbye" gifts from friends.

Thinking - about the year to come and what it holds.

Knowing - that this time next week I will be wondering which box holds that very specific and immediately needed item I can't seem to find.

Listening - to bird song and crickets outside my windows.

Drinking - a not-small clutch of bottles that we simply can't take with us. End-of-summer Pimm's Cups seem very appropriate.

Savoring - the start of blanket weather.

Watching - enough Mad Men that I should be concerned about second-hand smoke. And those Pimm's Cups? They go perfectly with a Mad Men marathon.

Eating - the freezer's odds and ends. Homemade blintzes? Yes, please! Lamb chops lovingly raised by a local farmer? Oh my! The last of the blueberries? I like them still frozen, plain, and eaten with a spoon.

Hiding - my last, desperate purchases from my beloved Gabe's.

Resisting - the urge to let myself get too overwhelmed with my "to do" list.

Anticipating - seeing old friends, meeting new ones, missing the ones I have here.


*This post is inspired by SouleMama.

eggs

Brown = Redstar (sexlink)

White = Brown Leghorn

Today, I am...

...feeling the first whisper of fall.

...dying dingy whites to give them new life.


...bleaching faded sheets.

...taking down New Chicken's pen (for good!).

...marveling at the first egg laid by New Chicken!

(yes, that is a golf ball in the background. We had read that it's one way to get a chicken to stop eating eggs, which the new girl did the first time Sally laid with her around. So far, it has worked!)

...finishing up last year's homemade hard cider.

...making homemade bug spray.


...reading this year's farm school student bios.

...blocking knitting projects.


...enjoying kitty enjoying shoebox.


....hoping for some good news.

Today

Today, I am...

...Cleaning the house
...Reading Possession
...Watching Songcatcher
...Eating homemade food cooked for (not by) me
...Saying goodbye to my MIL who has been here since Thursday
...Thinking about Farm School
...Loving my little bald kitty
...Folding laundry
...Packaging the mint I dried for winter teas
...Knitting Christmas presents
...Basking in the fact that my semester is over

English Muffins and Eggs Aaron

Over the weekend, Aaron and I decided to try our hand at making homemade english muffins. We used Mark Bittman's recipe from this book, of course. I really only need one cookbook in my life and this is it. I have loved this book for well over 10 years and it is the go-to for things like this.


These were so easy and turned out beautifully. I highly doubt we'll be buying englishes anymore. They are hardier than store-bought muffins and pretty delicious, too. Sometimes working with yeast makes me nervous. It just seems so apt to fail. I need to get over that, though, because things like this are just too good to pass up.


Of course, we used the homemade english muffins as part of one of our favorite recipes: Eggs Aaron. Once in awhile Aaron will make this incredible, eggs benedict-like breakfast. He uses sun-dried tomatoes in the sauce, but that is all I know about his secret recipe!

Aaron has also become an expert egg poacher, which is such a gift. I have to admit that I am not there yet.

Local Meal

As we were sitting down to lunch recently, I realized that the meal we were eating was almost entirely made of local ingredients. I snapped a few pictures for an obligatory and probably boring "this is what I had for lunch" post.

The Menu:
Quiche
Roasted Radishes
Pickled Ramps

I'll admit that the crust on the quiche is not local. I have yet to find a local flour source. It is homemade, however, so that counts for something! The eggs, of course, are from our two favorite chickens on the block, so they are ultra-local. The quiche also contains some sausage that we got from a local farmer.

We bought the radishes at one of the first farmer's markets of the season. They were only $1.50 a bunch and so beautiful. We bought a few bunches and decided to experiment with some, so we roasted them. I know it sounds weird to roast radishes, but they are phenomenal. Just put them in a casserole dish, use a little butter, salt and pepper, and some balsamic vinegar and let them broil for a few minutes. They come out really caramelized and sweet, not at all strong like a raw radish.

I talk about the ramps here, but this meal was prepared a few weeks later, when our pickles had had enough time in the brine for us to try them. They were REALLY great! Wow! The coriander in the brine produced a nice lemony taste.

So, there you have it. A pretty quick and painless (mostly) local meal. If we all ate this once a week, we would save 1.1 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL PER WEEK. And it was all so delicious.

On the needles, on the nightstand: gnomes and goblins

I made this little gnome with some scrap cotton yarn and stuffed him with wool roving that I bought at a local farm. Here is the pattern. He was my first little knitted toy, really, and so much easier than I thought it would be. I will be making many more of these with all of my little scraps. I really want to knit one up in a pretty silvery colored wool to make a Gandalf the Grey.

Early in the morning
When the first cock crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

-Christina Rossetti

I recently read Rossetti's "Goblin Market," a long poem published in the 1860s. It's about two sisters who live a perfectly simple life until goblins attempt to sell them tempting fruit. It's one of those pieces that I somehow missed reading in college and always meant to pick up. It has been cropping up a lot in my research for the gingerbread paper, so I thought now might be a good time to take a look. Boy, is it good. I know that most say it is about feminism, but as I was reading it I couldn't help think about our current food situation in the U.S. (big shocker, huh? I'm always thinking about it). The sisters lead an idyllic life until the merchants tempt them with abundance and exoticism, altering the sisters forever. I think that parallels can be drawn between this and crop subsidies, GMO seeds, federal regulation, certain seed/poison producers, and what has become of the American diet. I always think of Poptarts. They are so cheap to buy and so easy to get...but what do they provide for you, really? Why can't fresh foods be as accessible and affordable as Poptarts?

I was really struck by some similarities between our current food problems and Rossetti's poem.

Their fruits like honey to the throat,
But poison in the blood