But so yeah… two Sundays ago this happened:

Lila had to be in on the fun. She’s fast with her little hands.

and she’s an excellent pasta machine technician.

but then she went to play at the neighbor’s and I got to fold and slice the Tagliatele.

and foolishly piled the nearly two pounds of noodles all in one giant lump, then had to toss them so they wouldn’t stick together while the water came to a boil. The noodles stretched and twisted and became a big mass of awkward.

That tasted like heaven anyway. Most delicious noodles I have ever eaten. Ever.

Note to self: buy some studio lights, fer feck sake. Enough with the yellow-glowing food shots. Jeeze.

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Dumb. Hiney.

I have missed my Bread and Butter pickles so much. The last batch I made was the summer of 2003. That year, my 50-foot fence row in the garden put out enough cukes to make 64 quarts of Bread and Butter, 24 quarts of garlic dills, 24 quarts of spicy dills, 24 pints of relish, over $250 worth of cukes to sell at market, an entire giant crock of half-sours that went bad and got dumped in the compost, bags of them given to friends and neighbors, and who knows how many left to bloat and rot on the vine. Can you say prolific?

Since we moved into this house, I have not managed to harvest a single cucumber from my gardens. Blight, mildew, vine borers, beetles, and now this year we can add a family of piggish woodchucks to the litany of problems keeping me from making pickles with my own blamdam cucumbers. It’s just not in the cards here (yet), so I ordered a bushel of organic pickling cukes from Sandy at Elizabeth Telling Farm for $30. I just refuse to go through another year without my own pickles and the sound of Tyler groaning with happiness every time he makes a sandwich.

Oh, how he’s going to hate my rationing.

My mom made Bread and Butter pickles when I was little. I can’t recall if she did it every year, or just a few times, but I do remember spreading mustard on two slices of bread, slapping thick slices of bologna on the bread, then covering that with a slick layer of super-thin-but-crisp, sweet pickles. Oh, sense-memory. Dang. These jars will be ready in a few weeks, I must put bologna on the shopping list.

But, as I mentioned before, it was blazing hot on Sunday, and the idea of canning that whole bushel made me want to pack up my things (my laptop, my iPhone and a few beers) and move into the freezer in the basement. So I got my step-dad’s half-sour recipe and made up a bucket that will be ready to taste-test tomorrow.

TO! MOR! ROW! (squeee)

Of course, that still left about eleventyseven cucumbers to deal with, so I also made up a four-quart container of dill chips using Martha Stewart’s Dill-Pickle Chips recipe because it looked quick and painless and did not involve boiling ten gallons of water on the stove top.

These will be ready to sample on Sunday.

I think these are going to be incredibly crunchy pickles. Five days later and I’m eating some of the cukes I left out for nibbling with hummus, and jiminey they’re SO crispy and I never even put them in the fridge.

OK. How about some recipes?

I have no idea where I got this one…

Bread and Butter Pickles (yield approx 6 quarts)

4 quarts sliced pickling cukes
2 chopped green peppers
1/3 cup canning or other coarse salt
1 1/2 tsp tumeric
2 tbsp mustard seed
1 1/2 tsp celery seed
6 chopped medium onions (I use sweet onions)
3 whole cloves garlic
5 cups sugar
3 cups white vinegar

In large bowl, mix together cukes, peppers, onions and garlic. Toss with salt and cover with crushed or cracked ice. Let stand for 3 hours (in fridge if it fits, but my bowl won’t, so I just leave it on the counter and that’s worked fine).

Drain and pack in jars while you bring the vinegar, sugar and spices to a boil in a large pan. This time, I cut my cukes on the thick side for some unknown reason, and they didn’t pack into the jars as well. You can see some of the jars in the photo above have a huge amount of pickleless brine at the bottom. Oh, well. Pour the hot brine over the pickles in the jars. Run a butter knife around the inside edge of the jar to work out any air bubbles. You’ll probably have to top off the brine. Wipe the rims, top with lids and rings. Process in water bath 15 minutes. Let them sit for a few weeks before you sit down one hot night with the jar between your knees and a beer in hand. Trust me, the flavor gets better with age.

Half-Sour Pickles

Place 3-4 grape leaves in the bottom of a 6-8 quart food grade plastic container or crock, and then top with 24-30 small, washed, whole pickling cukes.

add 1 stalk celery (optional)
1 bunch dill
1 tbsp pickling spices (I didn’t have the pre-made, so just used mustard seed, dill seed and celery seed
3-4 whole cloves garlic
3 tbsp kosher salt
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp alum if you don’t have any grape leaves.
If you like ‘em spicy like I do, then add 1 tsp (or more to taste) hot red pepper flakes (homemade if you have).

Bring a teakettle of water to boil and pour it on top of everything in the container until just covered. Place a plate on top of the pickles to weigh them down and keep them submerged in the brine. Cover with a clean dish cloth and leave on the counter 5-6 days. Taste. If they’re good, start eating and put the rest in the fridge. You can cut them up into spears and pack in jars with the brine.

I doubt mine will last long enough for all of that.

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I pulled weeds and transplanted broccoli and lettuce starts, seeded some more greens, watered the transplants. The day flowed and the intermittent sun warmed my back and I didn’t have to fight to stay with the feeling of my feet on the land.

I planned a dinner of fish tacos, Spanish rice, spinach and arugula salad (from the garden!) with blue cheese, sauteed broccoli raab with green garlic. Chris snapped this shot of me with my first bouquet of broccoli raab and I wish I could also share the fragrant, sharp and sweet mustardy air that surrounded me.

The rhubarb ignited my dessert passions with just enough ruby stalks to bake a cobbler. I had starred Deb at Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for rhubarb cobbler earlier in the week, but knew I wouldn’t have quite enough mature rhubarb, so also picked up some decent looking strawberries (from CA, I know, sigh).

This is seriously the most scrumptious cobbler I have ever eaten. I made a few adjustments as follows:

• Half rhubarb, half strawberries due to low yield in the rhubarb patch.
• Recipe calls for 2 hard boiled egg yolks in the dough, but I didn’t read the recipe all the way through until I started to make it, so I just added 2 raw egg yolks…two bright orange egg yolks. I don’t think I’ll bother trying it with the hard-boiled eggs, even if I’m wrong in thinking it will make the biscuit dough sandy. I love the texture just the way I made it.
• Calls for 6 T unsalted butter, but I just threw in the whole stick because really, what’s two extra tablespoons of butter in a birthday dessert? Heaven, that’s what.
• Again, because I hadn’t read the recipe in advance, I didn’t buy enough whipping cream for the dough and for whipped topping, so I used half and half in the biscuit dough.
• I didn’t have the Turbinado sugar for the topping, so used the Demerara I had for a cookie recipe a while back, and that made a wonderful light crust on top of the biscuit dough.
• Used homemade whipped cream with honey instead of ice cream on top.

OK, so my sister and I were talking last week about rhubarb cobbler and cornstarch and how gross and milky it makes the sauce, but I couldn’t remember what she said she did instead of the cornstarch, so I tossed it in. I really don’t like the look of it, and wish for a sauce that’s bright and clear and better complements the gem-like fruit inside. But believe me, I got over it. This is by far the most incredible cobbler I have ever eaten and I can’t wait to try the biscuit dough with other fruits as they come into season. Oh, peaches! And sour cherries, too!

The fresh food season has begun and my garden is beginning to fill the table. I don’t even have the words to properly express how happy this makes me. See photo above…the smile says it all.

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I meant to take the camera out this weekend. The yard is spilling over with lush green and I’m sure the light in the afternoons had that gold-filter quality that makes the world feel this close to sepia. But I squinted a lot due to headaches and couldn’t get over feeling sorry for myself, so didn’t do very many of the things that I know would feel fulfilling. Now I have no eye candy to illustrate this post.

I think it’s allergies, but I’m not positive. It’s showing up differently than it has in springs past in that my body is throwing off histamine reactions all over the place. My tongue swelled and I bit it in the middle of the night. My eyes are rattling around dry in their sockets. I’m coughing and only sleeping because of the wonder that is NyQuil.

It’s much worse when I’m outside, so I moved between the house and small garden projects for days, stopping to rest often because my breath isn’t properly oxygenating my body. How can I feel so winded just bending over to pull a few weeds? Let me pull up a chair so I can sit to finish the job. What am I eighty?

Spinach and arugula are nearly ready to pick and the peas have begun to grasp the trellis strings with their bright, curly tendrils. I made a new patch for the raspberry canes on the southeast corner of the front porch, tucked in a sunny alcove so I can easily run some wires to support them once they shoot up.

The front porch is now one of the fruit areas in my permaculture quest. I dug out most of the mallow to move to an area around some trees by the driveway, and now will be able to tuck some broccoli, chard, baby bok choi and leeks in around the berries and pear trees. I’ll start a few more medicinal herb perennials in those beds, as well, so we can have a little bit of color and height variation. The real visual splashes will come from the cut-and-come-again bounty of the rainbow chard and zinnias.

So much going on in the background. Our renters are moving out and we’re back to trying to unload the other house at the same time Chris isn’t collecting any pay for his 12 hour days at his business (probably for a couple more months). Interesting times. I confess to struggling with keeping a positive attitude, but am satisfied to report that I have not sunk into despair or allowed the drama to pull me out of my life as it would have in the past. Feeling so ill on top if it all has sucked for sure, especially because my normal response would be to go out and work in the gardens until exhausted, and I haven’t had the energy to do that this week.

Life will have her way with me. No use fighting it, right? I can only point myself in a certain direction and take the steps as they appear. One at a time. Sometimes backwards. Sometimes forwards. Always leading me where I most need to go.

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Chatting with Debra about the comfort and dependability of a good pot of potato soup, she told me she’s been making hers baked recently. We had to sign off so I never got a chance to ask her for a recipe, but the idea of baked potato soup knocked around in my mind for days and yesterday I fired up the oven to roast a pastured chicken and thought I’d make double use of the hot oven with some baked potato soup.

To my thinking, a baked potato is at its best when salty, cheesy, lavishly dusted with cracked pepper, sprinkled with crisp bacon and fresh, bright green scallions. How to turn that vision into soup?

Like this:

Set a large oven-proof pot or enameled Dutch oven on the burner, over medium heat. Cut 6 slices of bacon into one inch pieces and cook in the pot until crisp and dark.

While the bacon cooks, cut one medium sweet onion and two celery stalks into small dice. Peel a dozen or so potatoes, cut into one inch pieces. Don’t let that bacon burn or your house will smell as if a teenager made bacon and eggs for all of his Dungeons and Dragons buddies last Sunday morning. I’m just saying, because my hair still stinks.

Scoop out and set aside the bacon bits for the garnish and remove all but about two tablespoons of the drippings. Add the onion and celery to the hot drippings and cook over medium heat until transparent (about ten minutes), scraping up the crispy bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the potatoes and continue cooking and stirring occasionally for another ten minutes. Now’s the time to add the cracked pepper to taste. I like a lot, but you know your own taste buds so I won’t suggest a measurement. You’d probably think I’m crazy. Oh, and some salt too. I use Kosher salt for most of my cooking unless I’ve splurged on some Maldon, which is phenomenal in soups like this, but I didn’t have any on hand today, so Kosher, at about 2 teaspoons.

Add enough water or stock (vegetable or chicken) to just cover the potatoes, turn up the heat and bring to a boil. Now’s the time to pull the roasting chicken out of the oven and give it a turn because if you’re like me, you put it in upside down, about an hour ago after giving it a vigorous massage with herbed and salted butter. Now you’ll flip it so it’s tits up — hopefully much moister tits than they would have been if you’d cooked it that way from the start — and put it back in, but long-wise so you have room to slide the Dutch oven in next to the old girl.

While it cooks, grate 1.5 cups of extra sharp cheddar, chop 1/2 cup fresh Parsley and slice 4-5 scallions into thin rounds.

I don’t think you can overcook this soup. Mine stayed in for 2.5 hours (it was a really big chicken) and when I pulled it out and lifted the lid, it was a creamy, bubbling cauldron of yum.

If you’ve got an immersion blender (and if you don’t, just go get one already, they make cooking so much easier) whirl it up for a few minutes, but leave about half of the potatoes big. Or puree half of the soup in a blender or food processor and add it back to the pot. Now add the milk. I use evaporated milk (as does Debra) and depending on how thick you like it use 1-2 cans, or 1.5-3 cups of milk, or half and half, or heavy cream, or some combination thereof. Stir gently. Taste. Add more salt and pepper (you know you want to) but remember you’ve got a bunch of salty cheddar to mix in, and all of those bacon crumbles and scallions for the top so don’t over-do it.

Sprinkle the cheese and parsley over the surface of the hot soup and mix it in until the cheese is well-melted. Ladle into BIG bowls and sprinkle the homemade bacon bits and scallions on top.

When you’re done eating, I want to hear all about it. Seriously. Is this or is this not the best potato soup ever?

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Aaack. I really need to remember the sunscreen. I’m only 41 and looking at the age spots on my face is giving me nervous nelly hives on my ass.

It’s remarkable that my brain isn’t getting fat and overspilling my ears because all I think about these days is food. Planting it, harvesting it, preparing it, eating it, putting it up for the winter. Buying it at greater and greater cost. I spent $270 at the grocery yesterday, $35 of which was for wine (yeah, lush, we have parties coming up and it’s not polite to go empty handed and then drink someone else’s wine). I’m still buying some produce because my garden is about 15 days behind and only producing greens and herbs right now. Yummy, but not enough to round out a decent menu.

We just returned from a week vaca in MA where we had a giant family/friend reunion-party-celebration to mark birthdays and a graduation from college and a wedding. Happy Congratulations to everyone (Derek, Mom and Steve, Lila and Tyler). But can we talk about the food? One word comes to mind after gratitude, of course, and that word is excess. It was abundant in a way that had me worrying about costs and the future and priorities with the backdrop of mortgage lenders collapsing, of food prices soaring, of farms failing. I can’t help but wonder if a party like that will be possible in five years. Will there be anything on the shelves of the big box stores? Will cole slaw come in pre-shredded, ready-to-mix gallon bags? Will we still only blink a bit at the thought of so much corn on the cob gone to waste?

Speaking of waste, I just yanked out my pepper plants because they haven’t grown but an inch in the month they’ve been in the ground and they were squatting in prime, full-sun real estate in my garden — square footage that can be used to grow plenty of other things that are less shy about reaching their full potential. So now that space has two rows of spicy asian greens for stir fry and miso soup sown, and in about 45 days we’ll hopefully be enjoying those instead of scowling and cursing at the runty, stubborn little pepper plants that couldn’t. I’ll get my peppers at Hilgert’s u-pick like I did last year.

That’s been a big change for me in the garden, this ruthlessness. I’m no longer looking at each plant as deserving of the opportunity to at least try to make it to the end and produce something. Lagging behind? You’re slowing down my pantry, sparky and you’ve got to go. But I’m kind of feeling that way about everything in my life right now. Weeding out the distractions, like that whole restaurant thing. Oy, did that suck up the whole spring with its hours of research and questions and explorations, or what? I’m glad for it because I came out the other side of all that inquiry realizing that no, I do not wish to chain myself to the deck of a ship with inherent sinking tendencies. I mean, life is hard enough as it is, so why work 80 hours a week and make it even harder?

After all of that inward-looking I have come back around full-circle to the realization that I do, indeed wish to work with food and community, and that I am still intrigued and excited by the idea of starting an urban CSA or farm program. So the research continues. I don’t think anything but my attitude towards myself and my life will change this year, unless some awesome job lands in my lap. I need the paycheck and really don’t feel like I want to struggle with the freelance juggle right now on top of all of the other stresses. But seriously, one more year is my limit. Job? You’re on notice.

God. I feel like such a pussy. I was all blustery such a short time ago with my cocky one month and I’m outta there. But then we did the numbers. And yeah, let’s have an awkward segue right…here…back to food: we like to eat.

Aaaand, here’s another topic change. If you were in the room with me right now it would make sense, but you’re not so you’ll just have to roll with me or close the browser window if I’m making you dizzy.

I’ve been listening to the I’m Not There soundtrack a lot (and right at this very moment). Who knew Dylan was (is) such an amazing storyteller? Oh, you did? Well. OK. I can dig it. I’m always behind the times. And this has nothing to do with food, but much to do with nourishment. I watched the film with Chris a few months ago and he fell asleep and I had nobody to turn to in my confusion to ask, so is that supposed to be from his life? or from a song? I’ve never been a huge fan. The persona. I don’t know, it just gave me a good case of the eye-rolls. So we didn’t finish watching, but a bunch of the images stuck with me and I found myself humming the songs.

Then my brother came to stay with us and he’s a huge Dylan fan. HUGE. And he grabbed it at Blockbuster and after two weeks of it sitting on the coffee table, we finally sat down to watch it. Second time around I was able to let go of the need for a strong plot line and to just embrace the power of the performances and of the use of the vignette. To take it at face value.

Derek knows the music, so I’d turn to him with my scrunched up quizzical face and he’d say “well, you know, that’s based on the song that’s about such and such and it’s during the time that he was involved with so and so and this was going on in the world and so yeah…” and of course the details were way more specific and you know, detaily than that but my powers of retention are just shit anymore. Which is probably why I’m not a journalist. But that’s a whole other post. Upshot: I loved the film. Loved. It. Shut it off after the credits rolled and felt like I’d just taken a swim through some really deep water, man. All clean and mineralized and awake. You know?

We sang some Dylan tunes during harmony sing this month and Keyrist on a crusty stick, it made me happy. I go flat a lot still (sorry Cheril and Saunis), but on some non-thinky level I understand harmony and my voice always wants to reach for it. I drive the family nuts because I sing harmony to rock and roll in the car all the time. I don’t sing along to the melody ever any more, I just reach higher or lower and search for that vibration. I wonder if they know that’s what I’m doing, or if they just think I’m totally fucking tone deaf.

Wow. This really is one ramblyassed post, isn’t it? So hey…let me share some photos, okay?

Oh! But first? Jim James’ voice on Goin’ to Acupulco is making me all weepy. My Morning Jacket. Sigh.

OK, so photos! And no more ridiculous topic changes. And apologies! I’m crazy! And Love is the Drug!

This was the highlight of the Middleborough, MA 4th of July Parade this year. It’s the parade our family went to every year when I was a kid, about a mile from our house where I always bought one of those three foot tall pixie stix full of flavored sugar and then tweaked my way through the holiday BBQ and wished Raymond, my Uncle’s wife’s younger brother would brush up against me in the pool.

Er…ah…aaaanyway... I was beyond pleased as punch to see this float pulling away from the town common, full of fresh produce.

Before we left for our vacation, I gave up most of my Flat Leaf Italian Parsley plants to these bastids:

but my Maude, how does one say no to these beauties? Just spectacular. They feasted for three days and were gone.

I shot this Swallowtail a few days before the caterpillars revealed themselves, so I can’t say they turned into this specifically… but I knew they were headed in that general direction: towards truth and beauty.

It’s been an interesting season of observing life happening. It’s giving me hope or something maybe even a little more powerful than hope… sight…insight (?) Or a window into a much bigger picture than the tiny drama of my own little life and its incessant troubles and trials and tribulations.

Hard to believe that something so beautiful, even with a big bite taken out of its wing, is able to find sustenance, take flight, and angle its way towards whatever destination its destiny binds it to — this fact amazes me with its simplicity. Watching it land on the dandelion, then soar away to a high branch on the locust tree until I back away enough for it to feel safe to land with ridiculous delicacy on the yellow blossom to feast again, makes me wonder why I fight so hard.

Really, just fly, eat, fly some more, stay under the radar, eat again, then fly.

and teach the children to do the same, just hopefully with a bit more grace than we manage.

Happiest birthdays to my two…one five…one sixteen (who wouldn’t appreciate my posting his photo, so I won’t). I love you with all the pieces of my broken little heart, and I will always try to help you stay well-fed in every way.

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Arugula is starting to throw flowers, so I’ll pull the rest of it tonight for a salad and re-seed the spot with some mesclun mix. The yard-long beans are poking up, as are the cocozelle zucchini, green-tint pattypan, and yellow crookneck. Just two patches remain un-planted in the bed behind the deck — about six square feet each. I’m thinking I’ll pop some bush bean seed in there.

Tonight I need to rake the sod out of the new bed, dump a dozen wheelbarrows full of manure into it and till it one more time. I still need to prune back the two pears and the pie cherry tree, too, and decide what method of espalier I want to do with the pears. They’ll become a living screen for our front porch.

The beds next door await and I’m torn. I have a bag of onion starts, as well as some onion and leek starts that should all go over there. Plus I haven’t seeded any beets yet, and I was also thinking rutebegas and turnips. But there’s something in the soil that’s gnawing on my root crops and making them look horrific. So I’m tempted to not plant anything over there except for some clover cover crop and just work on increasing the soil fertility. Maybe I’ll do that with half of the beds. I already have garlic, potatoes and peas planted in 2.5 of them.

Hey, does anybody know if it’s too late to put in strawberry plants? I had intended to start a bed, and just kind of spaced it out this spring. I’ve never grown them before, but if I’m going to start producing my own fruit, it seems kind of silly to not have a strawberry patch.

OK. Time to wake the kids and head off into our Monday. Here’s to not letting it eat me alive.

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Nothing decided, no direction clear. The only thing I know for sure is that working this job is squishing my spirit and making my body most unhappy. I should be in the shower right now, getting ready to go, but I can’t make myself get up off of the couch quite yet. Lila was awake in the middle of the night because she had an accident (second time in a week!) and that woke me up. After about two hours I fell back to sleep and dreamed about being late for a flight and wandering the halls of the terminal. O, stress, you suck.

But hey! I planted some things this weekend: lettuce starts, eggplant (long and round), basil, cabbage, collards, leeks, onion, zinnia, verbena, marjoram, tarragon, chamomile, red mustard, pak choi and yard-long beans. Much more to go, but will likely have to wait until the weekend.

Also! Look at what our girl realized she knew how to do this weekend:

She pretty much just grabbed the neighbor’s old bike off the ground, hopped on it and rode away. Now her pretty pink bike is training wheel free and she’s crippled from traversing that circle for ten hours in three days.

Bonus to long weekend=short week. C’mon Saturday.

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