her able hands

My burst of wild productivity last week came to a screeching halt mid-week when I started to feel the effects of the insanely productive pollen-makers in the area. My throat got scratchy and my head filled up with a puffy, thick cloud of green-smelling vapor. I went from thinking Oh, joyous spring, how I love you and your winter-rescuing ways! — to — Oh, spring! Kiss my ass and die you poison-generating bastard of the earth! Within two days it moved into my chest and has settled there with a deep, barking cough and a garbagy, green expectorating that has me thinking maybe a visit to the Dr. is in order.

Meanwhile, the potatoes wait impatiently on the piano bench.

Maybe tonight after work. I tried yesterday but just walking around the yard left me wheezing like an 85 year-old asthmatic. We went down to the old house to deal with a few things and I brought along my digging fork so I could raid the garlic patch that I knew would have re-seeded after my shoddy harvests the last two years. There wasn’t quite as much as I thought there’d be, but the grass has grown up around it pretty thick, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

While there, I also dug up the 3 beautiful ferns that Debra let me gank from her gorgeous property a few years ago. I had stuck them in a terrible spot in the northeast corner of the garden and they were knee-deep in standing water, but the fiddleheads are breaking the surface of the root clump. I’m hopeful they’ll be thrilled to find a new home in our little wood lot here in Kent with its shady, rich soil and plenty of other shade-loving plants around to talk to. Yes. I think they talk to one another. What of it?

We’ll probably head down again next weekend to take care of a few more things in preparation of either the sale or the rent-to-own situation that’s hopefully imminent. Two offers on the table, and we’re just weighing the loss (either way we end up eating a large chunk of change and having to float a loan to finish paying the mortgage on a house we don’t live in, good times!)

So next weekend I’ll dig up some more perennials out of the front bed, and some more comfrey which has taken over the little back kitchen garden. I also saw some Dame’s Rocket that I’d like to move over here, and I think I’d like to populate the edge line of the woods with some wild garlic mustard, which for some reason doesn’t seem to grow here. It makes great spring greens for salad and soup, and I hear it’s a nice pesto, too.

I’ll also make another stop at the farm stand, where I bought 5 lbs. of freshly picked asparagus yesterday. Oh my. Just look at this.

They had a massive shallow pan with at least 100, 1 lb. bunches standing in an inch of water. It had just been picked that morning and the cuts on the bottom where they had snapped them off were still raw. I couldn’t believe they were selling it for $2.99 a bunch. The smaller farm stand closer to me had them last year for $5 a bunch. I’m definitely going back to buy more, but will enjoy the hell out of the 5 lbs. I bought for this week, starting with green garlic linguini with Romano cheese and grilled asparagus for supper.

It smelled like heaven (or Little Italy) in my house and even out in the yard while the garlic simmered in butter. You can sort of see the last hunk of local Amish butter in the background there sitting on the wax paper. I’d already used close to an entire stick, but then figured why bother saving back just a couple of tablespoons of the last of the 2 lb. roll? I threw it into the pan and cackled as my arteries hardened just watching it melt. Hello, Paula Deen!

Excellent spring meal. And bonus, there’s leftovers so guess what I’m having for lunch?

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Thank you all for your encouraging words and for pointing out bits and pieces that I just might be glossing over. I spent quite a lot of time yesterday talking with several people, including Cheril, and writing down a list of my requirements and of what I’m looking for the next big adventure in my life to entail. When I got home I sat down with my neighbor for a bit and told him this:

We’re interested, but don’t like the space. We also feel that in order to open strong and memorably, we would want to have the menu focus on a few things and do them really well, and then leave room to add in other experimental items over time. We want as much organic as possible and to find a way into that niche. We recognize that it will be very challenging to develop a franchise using locally produced food, but still want to make that at least a tiny corner of the plan, where a monthly special uses a local, seasonal food item.

If he wants to do the sub shop in conjunction with the organic foods, we feel that’s just a marketing nightmare (healthy, whole foods and uh…submarine sandwiches!) and we’re not philosophically down with that. We’re two women in our forties who have worked hard to make other people wealthy over the years. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re ready to dive into work that is meaningful for us, and will be much more willing to put extra time into a project that aligns with our values.

I also said I’d done quite a lot of asking around (thanks Becca!) and using my own restaurant experience and my own fuzzy logic, I knew for a fact that his goal of opening his doors in three weeks (or his revised four) is absolutely unrealistic and way optimistic and is a recipe for disaster. And that his idea to have us hand over a menu and he take care of getting it all set up and just have us start when the store opens is crazy because we are the ones who know the food and would need to set up the line process, figure out the timing on everything and then train the staff to do what we do and to do it even better.

So if that’s his plan, he’ll need to find somebody else to help him with that, but we will joyfully provide him with cupcakes and cookies via our SugarBuzz home catering gig (our business cards arrived yesterday).

So it turns out he had a difficult afternoon with the man who owns the building, trying to iron out a lease that has quite a lot wrong with it. He’s having second thoughts and took in all I had to say and more. He said he loves our ideas but doesn’t know enough about the market and wants to do more research to see what the numbers are for health food restaurants. He also said that several other people have mentioned that it’s a bad location (a strip plaza with zero personality and a lease that states you can’t do anything to the outside of the building to make your store stand out from the others). He said “If I look for a place in downtown on Main St., would you be interested? If I found that space and turned you two loose in it to run with your ideas?”

Uh…yes. Yes, we would be very interested in a project like that.

So he went off to thinkthinkthink, and I went home to stop thinking and worrying about it for the night. And that felt so bloody good. It only took two days to go from white hot excitement to really seeing what is true for me. Phew.

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I’ve got nothing. Camera still sitting in bag with uncharged battery. The three photos I took last week came out too dark because it was so close to dusk and in the back yard. Things are moving fast around here and I’m sitting with a huge life-changing decision for probably one more day and then I have to give an answer. Yes, I’ll stop working here and come to work there, as long as it’s not a drop in pay—but understanding that I’ll likely be working more at least in the beginning. Or no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing for a little while longer.

See, my neighbor is starting a small restaurant in an old sub shop, a turnkey operation, and he’s looking for someone to help manage it. Two someone’s actually (Cheril and I are in talks and both weighing the load against our lives to see if we can carry it comfortably). It’s daunting because the desired goal for startup is fast (3 weeks!) and we have some requirements for what we are willing to put our energies into: healthy food (at least half vegetarian, fresh, seasonal/local on the menu, organic whenever possible, sustainable waste management and meaningful interaction with the community — beyond mere profit.

Those are all things much easier to do with a restaurant but his idea is to use this space as a testing ground and to build a blueprint that can be franchised. That’s a major challenge implementing even half of our philosophical requirements, but he seems to think we can make it work. We have to make our decision today and if its yes begin immediately working on a simple menu.

I’m at 99% yes even though I have some reservations about certain details. I think this will be an incredible opportunity for me to learn how to and how not to do things in preparation for me starting my own kitchen garden catering business in the future.

My biggest question this morning? Can I deal with likely having even less time to work in my gardens this year? And if that’s my most pressing concern, well, I suppose I’m ready to move on.

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This is the new playground, set up in the spot where the rickety old death-trap once stood. You can see him just slouching over there in the yard all sad and rejected and looking even more dangerous than before now that the new kid’s in town.

You know that phrase, NIMBY (not in my backyard) that people toss around in regards to building that they don’t want to look at, or high tension wires, or landfills, or nuclear power plants? When we decided to buy this house, we had to consciously let go of a bit of NIMBY-tude. I mean because we moved from acreage to city and gave up the view of many trees and open sky to look at the back of a McMiniMansion type home. The houses aren’t very attractive and are the first thing you notice when you go in our backyard, especially when the leaves are off the trees. Of course, if that house ever sells, those poor people have to look at our toy-littered, trash-day furniture covered back yard. But if they have little kids, they’ll be happy enough to let go of their own NIMBY attitude because my backyard has become the epicenter for fun and adventure in the neighborhood, as well as for growth and renewal. I’ve been walking around for days, giggling like a little girl and shouting, “Yes, please! Bring it to my backyard!”

You can sort of see the open land behind us, to the left of that house. That’s the west edge of the five acres that are going to be turned into a gated senior village. There’s no way to stop that plan now (and it looks like a fairly sane plan), but other things are swirling around in the atmosphere here. Big things, but smaller than my initial ideas, more manageable scale things, more of a scale that I can take my time, learn and then expand. I don’t mean to be cryptic, I’m just not supposed to talk details with anyone until it’s finalized. But I do think it’s safe for me to say that if it goes through the way it sounds like it will, (I’m told it’s 99% a done deal), I’m going to have a half acre of open land on which to plant and teach and hopefully make some dollars. Half an acre of open, sunny land, in sight of my own home.

Needless to say, I’m trying not to count my chickens and all that, but I do think the last two weeks have been a trip in the river of life, and for once I have completely surrendered to the current. I’ve asked many questions, stated what I want, listened to stories and advice, taken action where it felt right, and otherwise waited and envisioned this scenario (or one very close to it) with all of me, in every free moment. New people have come into my life, people who might turn out to be excellent partners in whatever this venture turns into. Other people who might need my help in a part time, paid capacity. Things are lining up to make it possible for me to be at home.

I feel like magic has been going on under the surface of that river where I can’t see it, but I can feel it gently move me in new directions. Sometimes it’s so scary to feel that tug out in to the middle where the water moves faster and my instinct is to start paddling for shore. But then I remind myself that shore isn’t working anymore. That living in the relative safety of the shallows is making me sick and unhappy. That I’m ready. I’m ready to live my life and earn my living in a meaningful way.

The guy who wants to do a land contract for the house contacted Chris yesterday and they hammered out the terms. Chris goes to see Titus, The Octogenarian Barrister today to get the contract drawn up. They want to move in two weeks from now. We’ll be holding the mortgage for three more years, but they’ll be paying most of it this year, a little more next, and then full the third year. See what I’m talking about?

Also, I attended the second (my first) Akron E4S (Entrepreneurs for Sustainability) event last night. The topic was building a sustainable local food network and industry, and was very well attended. I met beekeepers, CSA owners, landscape designers, writers, large scale farmers, two guys who are starting a distribution program to get local food from the grower to restaurants, the man who runs the Countryside Conservancy, people who work from grant foundations, a woman who manages a Cleveland farmers’ market and is starting a beautiful new glossy magazine on local foods, a chef who uses a lot of locally grown food, and many, many more. My head hurt when I got home, from the hundreds of ideas ringing in the space between my ears.

I forgot how much I hate driving at night, and a forty minute ride on the highway that’s mostly under construction, with my head pounding and my night blindess made for a stressful journey back to Kent, and I slept like a coma patient last night. My dreams were all about organic food, interesting people, writing about gardening and farming and the people who make it all happen, and feeling connected and successful and alive. My headache is gone this morning, and the sun is shining. So we’re meant to get some snow on Sunday…okay, it’s April in Ohio. That’s not a big surprise. My tomatoes and peppers are almost all up, the broccoli and brussels sprouts need transplanted this weekend, and I need to get another half dozen flats of culinary herbs and medicinal herbs started.

Onward into the season!

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I splurged recently on some new cookbooks because I hit a wall with my cooking repertoire this winter, and am bored senseless with my cooking library. I’ve wanted to bring Deborah Madison’s book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone into my kitchen for years now, but never wanted to fork over the $40. I ganked it on Amazon for $26 and I am so happy to hold that book in my own two hands. Produce season is almost upon us and this is the kind of book that I’ll be able to reach for when I come back from the garden with a basket full of whatever, look in the index for an ingredient, then choose between several simple, delicious recipes.

I did this the other night when I came home too pooped from a day of proofreading and mindless filing to stop at the grocery for some vegetables, even though I knew the coffers were just this side of empty (which I sorely wish my mind was right about now). I had pulled a jar of red lentils out of the cabinet the night before while searching for something else jammed in way behind it—a can of black olives for the pizza, I think. In classic Kelly form, I never put the lentils back in the cabinet and so there they sat when I walked into the messy kitchen, both glowing and glowering at me, huddled up with a dozen dirty glasses courtesy of the teenager who must always use a new glass for every drink no matter what. Not that I’m bitter about that fact or anything. Oh, no. Far be it from me.

So yeah, lentils. I remembered seeing a recipe for red lentil soup with lime while perusing the book that first day when I pulled it out of the Amazon box waiting for me on the front porch. I looked that up and did a quick fridge check. Yep. I had most of what it called for, so I got the lentils started. But first I changed into my fat pants.

Then I tried to figure out what to do with the two vegetables I had in any quantity: cauliflower and turnips (they of the I’m going to make another batch of pickled turnips this weekend purchase a month and a half ago). While flipping through the gratin recipes, I saw one for turnip and leek gratin with blue cheese, and one for cauliflower gratin. I love cauliflower mashed with blue cheese and knew I had a partial wedge of of that stuffed in the cheese drawer. I modified the turnip recipe (no leeks, added cauliflower, used less cream and I did end up running it under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp it up a bit).

The half head of lettuce torn into pieces and tossed with the last carrot, shredded and some garlic vinaigrette, and we had supper. Took about an hour and a half all told, and thirty minutes of that was just me poking around in the fridge hoping for more green. The boon was that I had a decent bunch of cilantro in there from last week’s shop and it wasn’t all black and slimy. That cilantro totally rocked the soup up a notch. No spinach, but I had a chunk of napa cabbage in there and I sliced that into very thin slivers and fried it up in butter, then added it to the soup. Also, no plain yogurt, but sour cream, which worked fine, though I think yogurt would have melded just a leetle bit better. Chris thought the soup tasted like something he would order in some exotic restaurant that he imagines must exist in another dimension. Sublime, I think he said. Man likes to be fed and when he talks all sexy with big words, I love to feed him.

The kids? Not so much. They hated it all. Too many sharp, strong flavors, I guess—a meal to put on the back burner for adult company. The kids will get pizza.

I love the fact that I have reached this level of confidence in the kitchen. It’s taken years of experimentation and scraping unfinished meals into the compost bucket to get to this point of freedom (not regularly, but you know, often enough to be uh…notable). Having good cookbooks has made all the difference in the world. And even more important, having friendships with other people who like to cook and like to talk about what they’re doing with their food that’s different and exciting.

I still have occasional dud meals, more this winter than at any time in my life since I first moved away from home. Let Chris tell you the story about my first independent, low-budget, starving student meatloaf sometime. Hoo boy. Let’s just say two pounds of cheap ground beef really shrinks under heat. We hungrily pulled that loaf pan out of the oven to find one and three quarter pounds of orange fat with a little quarter pound turd of not-quite-meat bobbing up and down in the middle of it. He still enjoys telling that one twenty one years later.

And because I can never buy just one thing on Amazon, I threw in three other books for good measure. But this post is long enough already. I’ll waste even more of your time another day to justify these purchases:

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning

Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking

The Garden Primer Second Edition, by Barbara Damrosch

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