Nothing Green To Eat

(a local eating update)

As I've been running ass over tit through crystalized molasses to rectify the imbalance in my head that is now causing me to eyeball dried up Christmas trees with the kind of panic and aggressive suspicion I normally reserve for black widows, I have been thinking a lot about all the components it takes to live a good healthy life. And I just know that any day now I'm going to go on and on about it. But not tonight.

There are invisible weights on my whole body and brain that are preventing it from moving more than one inch an hour. If I was a mime this would be my coma skit.

I wrestled the dried up Christmas tree to get the lights off and came to this conclusion:

• Whoever put the lights on this year must never be allowed to put them on again.

• I am 99% sure that it was Philip and my mom who wrapped the string of lights with no end and no beginning all around that tree as though they planned to keep them on there for the rest of our natural lives.

• Apparently I have gotten so edgy now that wrestling with Christmas lights is the only thing that can make me say "Mother #%cker" (Normally I NEVER say it because I'm a gentle fairy-person)

In spite of my leaden limbs, I managed to make a wonderful mushroom soup tonight using some left over wild rice. All local. So good. Is there another word besides "earthy" that aptly describes the mushroom's innate mushroomy-ness?

So here's what fresh vegetables I have to work with this week:

3 leeks
1/2 rancid turnip
potatoes
onions
carrots
celeriac
mushrooms

(Of that list, only potatoes, onions, and mushrooms are in ready supply at stores.)

The Brussels sprouts I bought did not store well in the garage and I had to process and freeze what was left of them. We've eaten all the chard but never got to the kale before it went bad. I ought to have just blanched and frozen it right away. There is nothing green to buy that is local right now. I have my hopes pinned on the Hillsdale Farmer's market this coming week-end. Please let someone have chard, spinach, and lettuce!!!

Wait, I do have some winter squash.

Which isn't green, but at least it isn't an earthy beige hue.

The big debate is whether or not to start making real dents in the freezer stash. Is this the hardest part of the year to get through if you're only eating local produce or is the spring the hardest part? This is what I'm trying to figure out now, before I've eaten through my whole pantry.

I'm finding that having a constant supply of fresh green food in winter is pretty important to me. Which is why this year I will make sure to plant plenty of greens in the late summer so they'll be established and producing by winter.

In spite of the scarcity greens, this whole local thing really isn't a big hardship. In case anyone was wondering.

I can't tell if my chickens are trying to play games with me or not, but it would seem that the hens are stashing their eggs in the hay where they think I won't find them. Eggs are fairly scarce in the hen house these days, but I got five of them today. All of them hidden deep in the nest.

Before I put you all to sleep with the soporific rhythm of my dulcet voice, how about I sign off and fold laundry? I hope none of you have a passive aggressive dying Christmas tree to wrangle to the ground, and if you do? May the mother #@cking force be with you.

In The Mood

For the first time, ever, we have managed to put up our Christmas tree at the same time that most other people do it, rather than one week before Christmas. While I do truly loathe Christmas music that isn't Handel's Messiah or Pachabel's Canon, and all Christmas movies besides "Love Actually", I'm not a total Grinch. I really love decorated Christmas trees. I love sitting in my living room doing-whatever-and having the lights sparkling up the dark. I love the smell of them too. I love pulling out the old ornaments, especially the ones Max has made himself, and hanging them up.

We don't do an elegant tree or themed tree (though we did notice that there's an unintentional but unsurprising food theme on our tree) nor do we do a particular color story. The tree is a free for all. Maybe some day I will get two trees, one for the family and one just for me to do up in whatever quirky way I please, though it seems awfully excessive. I realized when Max was in preschool bringing home his first funny little hand made ornaments that you can't have a themed tree if you have a kid. You can't go all Martha on the tree because then you would have to exclude these little foil and glittered stars, or the funky traffic cone orange "foamie" gingerbread cutouts liberally and creatively smeared with glitter glue.

In our house the tree isn't an expression of our decorating style so much as it is a collection of Christmases past. Made more poignant by the fact that we had to start all over a few years ago after our attic fire destroyed all of our previous and very thoughtfully collected assortment of ornaments. I would love to collect vintage ornaments and perhaps I will start that next year.

Today we are having a couple of kids over all day long. What to with three kids for an eight or nine hour stretch? Well, I have more sewing to do than I can even allow my brain to comprehend so mostly it will be Philip watching them. He's done it before and is actually quite good at dealing with them, though at the end of it he will have dark circles under his glazed eyes, his skin will be a pale shade of grey, and he will no longer be capable of speech since he will have given himself a lobotomy by 3pm. I've decided to let them make gingerbread houses. This is a huge endeavor and I am wishing right now I hadn't set this idiotic ball in motion. However, the second I get done with this post I am going to shower and then make the dough which will then have to chill.

Then we have to bake the darn things. Then I think we'll have to construct them ourselves and let them set before handing them over to the kids to decorate. I suspect it's going to be a bit of a nightmare. But hopefully all will be well because I know the kids will, at the very least, love eating some candy.

See? I'm not a Grinch even though I think Santa is stupid. We also got some big colorful festive Christmas lights hung on the eve of our house. See how cheery a people we are?! And we managed to get them up when the neighbors across the street did. The neighbors who do everything when you're supposed to and keep their lawn emerald green and minutely trimmed all year long.

I will, of course, shrivel up and die if anyone makes me watch "It's a Wonderful Life" though. As much as I love Jimmy Stewart, this is not his best film and why on earth would I waste time watching him get his ass kicked by life when I could watch "Rear Window" instead? Christmas movies are almost always sanctimonious vehicles for toting morals around in and the feel-good endings are not natural happy endings* as I would probably enjoy, but contrived and doused in fake magic (like elves and reindeer) and smeared with Velveeta smiles.

But no, really, you go ahead and enjoy them, OK? I'll just sit here in my dark corner and listen to Laibach's version of "Let It Be" over and over and over...

Oh, but back to the cheer... lots of cheer around here. I'm now avoiding ending this post so I don't have to go start this very long day. Which will be punctuated by a two hour working stint down at the Holiday Market where I have been listening to Christmas music for two and a half solid weeks.

So, have you all gotten in the mood yet? Incidentally, have any of you made your coffee liqueur yet? You need to get cracking on that right away! I still have the Farmer's Market tote tutorial to do but it will have to wait until a little bit later in the week.

Have a restful Sunday. If you can. You know, if you don't have any kids.

*But remember, I am a big fan of happy endings. It would seriously bum me out if Elizabeth didn't get Mr. Darcy at the end of "Pride and Prejudice". I just don't like my happy endings to be full of shmaltz and farting fuzz.