Fresh Rosemary

It is cold and rainy out today with short blasts of sun through the clouds. I'm feeling tired and am fighting off a big panic attack which doesn't seem to have stemmed from any particular provocation or obsessive thoughts. So I put on some opera really loud, cut some fresh rosemary, and made soup.

That was right after cleaning out everything fuzzy and frightening from the fridge. It really bothers me when I waste food so I'm trying to keep the fridge cleaned out more frequently and eat what's in there. Never the less I found some hairy black beans, quite a few bags of liquefied vegetable matter (can no longer identify the victims), and a black spotted jar of dipping sauce.

Today all I really have for produce is cauliflower, potatoes, onions, and some little baby carrots that I try to keep around for Max just in case he'll get interested in them. While I really wanted to make some Aloo Gobi, I needed to make something I've made many times before that would use rosemary because that's what I wanted to smell and taste. I wanted soup. So I made my favorite rosemary chickpea soup with cauliflower, potatoes, chopped up baby carrots, and garlic in a tomato base. I used a jar of my diced tomatoes for it.

The kitchen smells great.

I'm drinking a cup of tea and imagining that I am in an asphyxiating awesome cloud of zen calm.

I do believe that everyone should grow rosemary in either their garden (or their window if they have no garden). Unless they hate it or are allergic to it. I never loved rosemary before I had a bowl of buttery rosemary garlic polenta at an Italian restaurant on Powell Street called Kuleto's. The rosemary they used was fresh, tender, and fragrant- everything fresh herbs should be whenever possible. I've been hooked on it ever since. Dried rosemary is only fit for making a tea bath to soak yourself in.

I am fully aware how bossy that sounds.

I'm too busy being zen to care.

(much)

Come to my house and I'll make you food with fresh rosemary that will cause you to agree with me.

Excuse me, I need to go rub my fingers on the extra rosemary stem I cut so I can keep my zen.

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.

When The Skies Weep With You

A lot of my titles come to me the way poetry used to. In fact, I think that instead of writing poetry now, I channel all those disconnected sentences that might begin or end a poem and I just put them at the top. Sometimes it's the titles that I put on a post that direct the flow of thoughts. If I don't know where to start, it gives me a place. I was thinking I might someday sit down with my headphones on, and a list of all my post titles, and just see if I can't continue all those floating threads into more developed poems.

The truth is, if the sky is weeping, it weeps without me today. I looked out my bedroom window and felt so calm and happy to see the maple tree bending with the force of wind and rain. I was planning on making a wet trip to Bernards farm to pick some tomatoes to make a huge batch of roasted tomato soup. Isn't this the perfect day for it? Instead I realized that today is the deadline for applying to be included in the Crafty Wonderland Holiday Craft Show. Since no mail runs on Sunday, and even if it did, it surly wouldn't get there today anyway, a trip to Portland is called for. I am going to take my application to the address given and hope to god there's a mailbox I can slip my application into. It's worth a shot, anyway.

We get to drop Max off at Lisa E.'s house so he can play with his friend Rex who he's been missing quite a bit lately. Lisa K. has decided to just stay home today and read. So Philip and I will go out to lunch together in Portland without our child (a very rare event) and pick up some tomatoes at the farmer's market which we hear is open both Saturday and Sunday today and then make tomato soup at Lisa E.'s house. It really sounds like a great day to me.

My original plan was to simply make food here at home. Lay low. Enjoy the rainy view. But sometimes a day shapes up how it wants to regardless of your original thoughts. That's fine with me. A rainy adventure sounds great. I finished the apron that was ordered and will be able to ship out four orders on Monday. That will feel good. Why not run off for some fun?