Picky Eaters Anonymous
The diary of a lousy excuse for a mom who is also bad cook.

My kid won't eat this but I'm sure yours will.

I have just read an online article in The New York Times about picky eating. The article was interesting and if it turns out that research backs up the idea that picky eating may be largely genetic, then it will also be at least a small amount of salve for my bruised self image as a parent. The article didn't upset me but then I had to go and read 100 of the 311 comments left about it. That was a big mistake.

There are essentially two camps of thought on this issue of picking eating:

1. Those who have never had a picky eater for a child who believe in the tired mantra "a child will never choose to starve" and a thousand variations on the theme: there are no picky eaters just indulgent parents in a rich Western culture...you know, kids in the rain forest are NEVER picky. "I just made them eat their broccoli or I'd smack 'em around until they stopped complaining..." Good stuff people.

or 2. Those who've had picky eaters for kids and know that camp number one is full of people who, because they've never had to feed a picky eater, don't know shit about it.

Many of the commenters who have had to feed a picky eater had more than one child, at least one of whom was NOT a picky eater. The majority of people think that if a parent shows their kid how to eat and "doesn't let" them be picky eaters, they will learn from your example. The people who raised one picky eater and one non-picky eater all want to know how one kid learned from their example and the other one didn't? Step up to the plate people and come up with a really intelligent explanation for that phenomenon. We're all ready for it.

Some people were bringing up human history as though that would prove something. It's been suggested that all this picky eating is a modern indulgence. I think people miss the point that humans have not generally, in history, been able to sit down to huge plates of fresh vegetables day after day. Humans have been known to eat opportunistically, which means that they have not generally (except for the very rich, I suppose) had access to the amount of fruits and vegetables that we know are healthy to eat and that we are able to buy lots of, in these modern times, thanks to our oil based economy.

I was just reading a cottage gardening book the other day that was discussing the history of cottage gardens and pointing out that they weren't the great produce and herb utopias we often think of them as. The real cottage gardens didn't have a great variety of vegetables in them. Cottagers ate porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Porridge being (at least back then) predominately grains with meat if they could get any, or vegetables if they could get any. That is a very bland diet.

A lot like the diet of a picky eater.

If you want to go back further to when we were hunter-gatherer people you will notice that we hunted meat and ate it while we had it and foraged for whatever we could. We GRAZED (which is what my kid does). For thousands of years we didn't cultivate anything. We traveled our territory looking for things to eat. If we found a tasty root you better believe you just ate that root while you had it. We did not eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, nor grains either, as we expect our children to do now.

There is no documentation that suggests we were sitting in our caves with a balanced meal. I'm not saying that's the ideal way to eat, I'm just pointing out that having lots of fresh food available is a phenomenon that came along with this whole Western culture. People in the rain forest are not being told they need to eat five servings of vegetables a day. So I'm pretty sure they aren't sitting their kids down trying to force them to eat an assortment of produce every day in the same way we are.

I'm tired of every one's opinions about this issue, most notably from those who love to chirp up with gems like: "Why, my little Johnny eats absolutely everything I put on his plate...even chunks of raw beef with heaps of horseradish...". Just shut up already. The condescension is incredible from camp number one. Just overwhelmingly incredible. I have gotten it from friends and family and a neighbor even once suggested that perhaps I'm just not making good enough food. Mostly my friends and family, who know I'm a good cook, think it's because we've let Max rule the roost. We've heard the "Just tell him if he doesn't eat it he doesn't get any more food."

I'm going to tell you the tale. My kid breast fed for one year, which these days is considered the gold standard for creating disease free babies*. He started eating solid foods by the time he was four months. He was not picky. There were some things he didn't prefer but if we just kept feeding it to him he would usually come round. When he was one year old he ate almost everything. He liked all the green baby food and the orange baby food and the beige baby food. He also ate at least one whole banana a day. He started eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches. He started eating most of the food we ate except he would never eat pasta. He used to eat some of our pizza, our burritos, feta and avocado from our salads, tomatoes and peas from the garden. He would eat soups full of wonderful healthy things like swiss chard and lentils. He was not a picky baby.

Until he was about two. Slowly he began to reject foods. We would try again and again to reintroduce them but he objected violently. No more bananas. EVER. He has not eaten a banana since he was two years old. No more jam. No more soft foods like soup. No more melted cheese sandwiches and baked beans. No more foods with color. All along the way people have had suggestions and they are always offered up as though I have never tried doing anything about this picky eating thing. As though I have just been sitting here with my fingers up my nose wondering if there is such a thing as magic pills for picky eaters.

Here are some of the things we have tried over the last five years:

• Hiding more nutritious foods in the foods he likes. I've got to tell you that it is difficult to hide anything in wheat bread or Goldfish crackers. He doesn't actually eat anything that anything can be hidden in anymore. I think he caught onto us back when we were trying to sneak pureed carrots into his baked potatoes, because he has refused to have anything to do with any food that suspicious ingredients can be hidden in for five years now.

• Forcing him to eat foods we want him to eat. This is a fun one. Make them stay at the table until they eat it. This means a really long bad night for everyone and is as punishing to us as it was to him. Plus he would never give in. This also drove me to drink. Kids (especially when they're in the twos crowd) have a very potent way of dealing with food they dislike: spit it out, gag on it-then spit it out, throw it on the walls. Or the floor. Obviously I could punish my kid for such behaviors but this turns the whole thing into a very bad situation which makes child abuse very tempting.

• Making food look fun. Oh yeah, cause my kid won't notice I'm trying to get him to eat carrots if they are arranged in a smiley face on his plate. Sadly, my kid is difficult to amuse with food. Not only that, he's very hard to fool about anything because he's not in a coma. I tried this anyway. Oh yeah, lots of finger food with dipping condiments, making pictures with ketchup (this is the only one he liked, but he only ate it on toast. Ketchup toast. Very healthy.) I tried plates with separated sections.

• Change our own attitude. I have worked very hard to continually present new foods to him or old foods back again with a sprightly positive attitude not all revealing how deeply heartbroken I am that I am a mother who can't seem to feed her own child. I have learned to not act like I could give a shit if he'll eat the food or not. I have tried to divest myself of all negativity around food and my child. It's been suggested by people in camp number one that if you just have a good cheerful attitude when trying to feed your child the dreaded sauerkraut they will willingly put it in their mouths, trusting from your tone that they are going to be just fine. Perhaps this works with other people's children, but not mine. He couldn't care less. He still thinks that the texture of tomatoes is poison.

• Set a good example. I have two major dietary sins which are: too much beer; too much cheese. Other than that I exhibit all the behaviors a healthy non-picky adult with good habits such as eating an abundance of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and never eats at fast food places. I don't generally eat a lot of sweets (not at home anyway) and drink no soda. So for all those people saying that it's all a matter of setting the right example for your child, if you eat well then they will magically do the same, I suggest you take the stick out of your brain because you're bleeding nonsense.

• Talk to a pediatrician. We've talked to a few. You want to know what they said? You do, don't you? You want to know what actual pediatricians recommend? They recommend not making a huge fight out of it. All the pediatricians Max has seen have said that picky eating is pretty normal in young kids and they usually outgrow it, though in rare cases they don't. They told us that as long as he's healthy (which he almost** always is) then we should quit crying about it (I've wasted a lot of hours crying about this or pounding the wall behind closed doors) and just keep offering a healthy array of choices and don't get upset if all he eats until he leaves home is bread. They both suggested giving him a multi vitamin. Which we do irregularly.

I have come to the conclusion that people who have not had the special pleasure of raising a picky eater are just annoyed at my child for not liking pizza. Or anything that they could possibly offer him. I think it annoys them that I don't appear to be trying to punish him for his obvious willfulness. All you have to do is read all three hundred of those comments to see that this is the predominant attitude amongst people outside the ring: my child is a picky eater because I am a lousy weak mom and probably an unhealthy eater myself indulging my child's every whim because I live in the lap of luxury and choice.

Enough. I have to live with this struggle every day. I believe I know something about it. To do honor to all those who have wanted to help and because I care deeply about my child and his health I have tried nearly every suggestion others have given, besides making him starve or smacking him around. Most of those suggestions come from people without actual experience of a real picky eater. I've heard enough from camp number one.

I have a message to other parents of picky eaters: set as many boundaries for healthy eating as you can enforce without making food a huge all day long battle ground. So what if your kid is different? Sometimes it's the picky eaters, the challenging kids, the ones who test you the most and know their own minds and are willing to fight for their right to make their own choices that make the shiniest most admirable adults. Just because they are picky doesn't mean that they are bad kids or that you're a bad parent. Don't listen to anyone who says or hints otherwise.




*Although I agree that breast milk is the optimal way to start your child's nutritional life, I think the great powers of breast milk have been greatly exaggerated.

**This past year he did have a slight case of anemia which I am almost certain is due to his diet. Lots of vitamins later he seems less pale and drawn but we have not had him retested yet.

Seven Super Happy Things

#1. Having almost enough quilt blocks done to put together my first full sized quilt. This is one block. I will use black fabric with white polka dots to border each block, creating a kind of frame. I think that's the only way you can unify a bunch of mismatched blocks into something cohesive.

#2. Getting small packages from good friends in the mail. Look what Bitter Betty sent me! She made one very like it for Alice last year and I coveted having a tiny smoking deer. It's part of a swap...uh, I guess I better get my ass back in my studio and make her the wish box I have all planned out in my head. Jesus, isn't it adorable?! (By the way, this is the first stuffie I have ever owned!)

#3. French girls named Clothilde. Don't worry, I haven't become a francophile lesbian. But how can anyone not be happy looking through such a wonderful little cookbook written by an insufferably cute French girl with one of the world's best names? I'm not supposed to buy any books for the rest of my life due to poverty, but I slipped two weeks ago. OOPS.

#4. Winter vegetables, most notably: potatoes and onions. There must be a thousand ways to cook these two fabulous foods. They make me think of dirt, winter, cozy kitchens, comfort, stamina, skiing, dry falling leaves, the smell of every one's evening meals wafting out onto the street where I can inhale deeply as I walk home from somewhere else. Doesn't every one's meals begin with sauteing onions in a pan?

#5. Winter squash from my own garden. This specimen is a gorgeous Buttercup squash that we baked and ate with butter, salt, and pepper last night. It was the first time I've ever had Buttercup squash and it was WONDERFUL. Rich, dry, orange (full of vitamin A), sweet meat. With the added bonus that I grew it myself. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't it make you feel happy that such pretty things can grow in our back yards?

#6. Brand new scrub sponges. I love the moment my old sponge becomes so yucky that I must throw it away and break open a fresh one. I admit that I am a bit sponge crazy. My sponges never get more than two weeks old. After that they become smelly and ragged and I can't bear the thought of them touching the dishes that will hold my food that I will put in my mouth. I'm not particularly germ-phobic, but in this one respect I may be a bit freakish. I also won't offer to wash your dishes when I'm at your house if your sponge is grey and smelly.

#7. Miracles make me happy too. Corn bread is the only thing I make that Max will eat. He doesn't request it very often, so when he does I don't let flies settle on the request. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been out of white flour and last night Max asked for cornbread. My favorite tried and true recipe calls for white flour, not wheat. But whole wheat is what I had. I made the recipe anyway. It did turn out a little bit more dense than I like it, but moist and pretty tasty with butter and honey.

When I got home from the store (where I purchased some locally grown and ground white flour) and I asked Max if he liked the cornbread he said: "I didn't really like it very much, I LOVED it. It wasn't very good mama, it was SO GOOD I had THREE pieces!" Oh my. Coming from him that was pretty much the happiest thing I could hear.

The only thing that made it even happier is that it had whole wheat in it which means that it was even healthier for him than I could have hoped.

Piccalilli
(not a place where clowns go to die)

In spite of what you might think, piccalilli is not a place where clowns go to die. Nor is it a wonderful street in London where all manner of thrifty buys may be found (though that may, in fact, be the case). The piccalilli I'm referring to is a strange "traditional" mustard pickle concoction that grannies on both sides of the pond have been known to gleefully subject their unwitting relatives to.

I didn't always like mustard but I have come to really love my Gulden's (not allowed to buy it for a year...that is a huge hardship) and other mustards that have a real tangy whip to them so I thought this recipe sounded promising. I thought this one was a great recipe to end the canning season with; bright and colorful; great use of cauliflower; mustard tang.

Unfortunately I am scared of it. The cauliflower completely fell apart in the cooking process and the sauce smells like raw flour. (There's flour in the recipe, as a thickener.) Does it smell like raw flour because I used whole wheat instead of unbleached white? (I didn't have any white on hand.) I have ten pints of bright yellow wheaty vegetables. I know I should try them. Even though I'm sure the turmeric will dye my liver. I know that eventually I will have to try them. Because I made them and they will sit on my shelves taunting me.

So if anyone out there has tried piccalilli I beg you to report your opinions here. I was always suspicious of this recipe in the past because it has one of those quaint names that hides a hideous assortment of ingredients very much like "chow chow" which sounds a lot like dog treats but is, in fact, a relish that utilizes all of what's left over in the garden when the weather turns.

I have just discovered part of my difficulty. The recipe I really wanted to try was in a British preserving book called "Preserves" by Catherine Atkinson and Maggie Mayhew. I looked for something similar in the Ball Blue Book of Canning because most of the recipes in the "Preserves" book aren't processed in a boiling water bath at all. Something I'm a little afraid to do yet. So I made the mustard pickles from the Ball book which are very similar. However, it uses twice the flour and half the flavorings.

Damn. That makes me want to try one more time. British people all over the place are not dying from their own canning recipes and practices and I'm pretty sure that their recipes aren't secretly formulated to make only Americans sick.

Sometimes you just have to wait for things. I'm done canning for the year. I've tried lots of new recipes and have (so far) liked most of them. Perhaps my bright yellow flour soup will improve with time? Time to hang up the jar grabbers and plan for next year.

Would someone who's tried the real piccalilli please step up and tell me all about it so I can either dream about making it next year or just consign the whole piccalilli business back to my imagination where it is a strange place full of circus folk.

Preserving Comes To A Close

Now that I am done with my canning season...(no, really, I'm done now)... I can finally cook like a regular person. The funniest thing about putting up so much food is that you really don't have time to cook regular meals. Your entire kitchen gets taken over by huge boiling pots of blanching vegetables and your bowls all fill up with fruit for peeling. Although putting food up starts in mid summer, it really doesn't pick up until harvest time when all the best produce is piling high on the farm wagons. This is also the best time to be eating fresh produce. So it's funny to have been putting up so much good food but to have eaten so little of it fresh, right now, while it's the best time to eat it all.

This week I intend to cook broccoli in every way possible: steamed, cream of broccoli soup, stir fry, and quiche. I want to make swiss chard quiche too while we still have our own fresh eggs. Hens often stop laying in the darker months when the light hours are at their shortest. They also tend to stop laying when molting which all of them are bound to do soon. Though I have to say their timing isn't so hot what with the nights getting so flipping cold already. Not a good time to be naked poultry.

Yesterday I spent some time back on the ice pack and heating pad. My back is still feeling weak. Wouldn't it be amazing if some day I didn't have back problems? I don't think you ever go back though, once it's started going to pots. Since I didn't think lifting things in the garage was a smart thing to do I ended up doing some hand stitching while in bed and then felt I needed to give my quilt project a HUGE boost, so I spent a couple of hours machine piecing. I love hand stitching but it's got to be said that machine piecing goes a hell of a lot faster and seeing as I've got a limited amount of time to do home projects, it's a relief to see blocks come together fast.

I'm going to share pictures of the blocks I have so far, of course. But all my real quilting friends out there need to understand that quilting is the one craft I let myself have fun with without making myself feel I must apply museum quality skills to. My corners often don't match up. Things go wonky. I don't let myself do this because of a failure to respect quilting as an art, I have the deepest respect for quilters like Monica and my Aunt Lin who make the most amazing pieces of art and whose points always match, whose stitching is gorgeous every inch of the way. No professional quilter is going to entreat me to help them with projects as they do Pam who not only works on other people's projects like Elizebeth's booth projects for quilt shows she shows her work in. It takes great skill with a needle to achieve such meticulous and gorgeous results.

I could apply such skill. I could. But I'm not going to. I choose to save quilting as a craft I can let my hair down for. I choose to approach quilting from a haphazard angle, see how it all comes together. Enjoy the wonkiness that inevitably ensues when you don't plan it all out ahead of time. It's play time without restrictions. I like the organic mistakes that occur when you play it all by ear (or eye, as the case may be).

I'm getting excited because I have never wrapped myself up in a quilt I've made on my own. Three babies out there in the world have been wrapped in my stitches, but I want to curl up in my chair with a full size quilt made by me. I may just tie the first two full size quilts off for expediency. Winter is coming and it's getting cold in our house. Making blankets is one of the oldest and most important homesteading skills. Sarah has a cabinet full of quilts she's collected and I want that too. If someone is cold just send them to the cabinet for a quilt.

I suppose I ought to have just put a picture of my quilt on this post. But I haven't taken them yet and didn't plan to talk so much about quilts.

I have an idea to do a food quilt. All fabrics with food on them. Before that I need to do a Scottish quilt for Philip. I haven't got the idea very clear in my head yet but obviously it will involve plaid. We love plaid. I want to make a quilt that reminds us of the time we've spent in Scotland. Possibly the best time in our lives. We walked the ragged wet icy hills in the highlands and were never so happy! I love traditional Scottish symbols such as thistles. I don't actually know if I like them because they're Scottish or if I like Scottish things because they celebrate plaid, fresh scones, thistles and ale. All things I loved before I ever set foot on the highland hills. Does it matter?

Time to go start my day with a brief and innocent trip to the quilt shop.

Note: The absolute most crazy thing is to have not included my friend Angela in the skilled quilters line up because she is another lady with some fierce needle skills and you can just bet all her points match. The problem is that we actually rarely talk about quilting and a lot more about writing. So I've come to think of her in such a different context. Sorry Angela!!!!.

Raggedy Patches And Feathers For All

This week-end Philip mucked out the chicken run. This is a big job we only do every few months. We add new hay every couple of weeks which freshens up their run and the old hay and droppings compact themselves underneath. Eventually you have got to remove it all and give them all fresh hay and clean out all those old droppings. Philip piled them into our raised beds to age. By springtime the chicken manure should be mellow enough for plants to grow well in it.

This is Flower-bud. She has lots of pin feathers developing on her bare patches. Pin feathers are the hard sheaths that the new feathers emerge from. They look like thick porcupine needles and just about as comfortable. I want to wrap her in a down comforter until she is no longer so bare bottomed. But these urges are human and she's a bird. She has no need of comforters. The cold air on her body will prompt her body to get on with making new feathers.

And, hello?!, how sick is it of me to wish to cover her in a blanket made from dead bird's feathers? That's like wanting to feed a sick calf beef stock.

One thing our girls love is getting a bunch of fresh hay to kick around. It rustles and flies satisfyingly under their foraging claws. Philip found a rich cache of snails for them too. Always a culinary treasure for both birds and French people. Our hens would find it sacrilegious and mystifying to cover the snails with butter sauce.

Lots of hay for the hen house too. Perhaps they'll start laying in here again. If it weren't for the bird feces in there I'd want to crawl into that little house and sleep all winter with the winds howling around me.

Even though David Bowie's music was the back drop for most of my teen years, what I might call the real voice of my breaking out and sharpening my independence, I would have to say that if there is one singer who's music, lyrics, and voice can capture what my spirit is really all about it would have to be Bob Dylan. If I was to try to tell you who I am underneath all the layers, the B.S.; stripped down to the essentials, it would always be Bob. There are a thousand brilliant voices whose songs I love, whose notes speak to who I am, but Dylan gets it all in one breathless collection of stories.

It's no surprise that I have been hungry for Dylan's music in the last week. When the weather turns in the fall and I start hearing the wheels of winter moving, I come back to where I started. Always back to the beginning. I was born in midwinter and it's where I come to roost. Heading back to winter always makes me feel happy. Sometimes in that childish way where I feel an uplifting inside so steep and bright it catches my breath and exhales in spontaneous laughter. Pure joy for no special reason.

Sometimes in that bittersweet way that melancholic people can be happy within life's vicissitudes, it's known evils and laments. Happy that though life always brings with it a banquet of experiences not all joyous, all of them are worth knowing. Happy that it always comes down to the simplest movements; making the beds with fresh sheets, standing over a hot stove stirring soup, sitting under a blanket with the people you love best in the world.

Dylan's voice is, for me, like the sharp bite in the autumn air that tells birds to start their migration south. Except that I'm always pointed north. I only go south to visit friends and the past. So isn't it appropriate that I'm listening to "Girl From The North Country" right now? I do wish it was the version he recorded with Johnny Cash which has to be one of the most amazing recordings ever. Two of the United States best story tellers. They write about the true spirit of Americans better than anyone else.* They have told our stories and made an imprint so deep we won't forget.

I am a political, earthy, independent, folksy, brash, brave, ordinary, boot-wearing, new, and hearty individual. If Americans were to shed their mansions, their lust for the biggest cars, the cheapest food, and have a look in the mirror, perhaps they would see what I see. What Bob saw. What Johnny saw. I think Americans have always been about newness and the big broad sweep which I suppose is why we love big cars and homes. Back when we were a bunch of German and British immigrants we were a bunch of misfits looking for the new frontier. Everything here was bigger than in England and Germany. It's too bad we had to kill off so many of the people who were already here. But they are also part of the legacy of who we have become. Native Americans are part of this whole mesh of who we are.

Although I am pretty intensely ashamed of my country right now, Bob always reminds me that Americans have a wonderful spirit that I'm proud to be a part of. But like children who have yet to learn that the world does not revolve around them, Americans are busy stepping on everyone and obscenely ignoring other people's needs and human rights.

I will never be a flag waving American. I am too worldly to believe the myth of our great (ever shrinking) freedoms or the myth of our forefathers' great plan for us all...because what they wanted for us is definitely not what we have created and I think they would all be pretty shaken to see how we have interpreted their declarations. A few of them were slave owning people which automatically makes them ineligible for any honest hero worship.

I'm not waving any one else's flag either. There is no country on this earth that has not, at some point in their history, done all the things my country is doing now. The only flag I will ever wave is one of peace. I know humans too well to believe there will ever be a time of complete peace, I am not that naive, but I will never stop hoping for it.

Isn't it funny how one thought leads to another until you find yourself where you had no intention of going?

There was a possible on-line job opportunity that I had to take a test for. I failed it last night. I feel let down a little that I couldn't pass it even though the truth is that I don't think I would have really liked that work. I looked at the local job situation after that and I've got to say it's quite depressing. A dampener on my happy. The truth is, I haven't cultivated the proper good attitude about my necessity to go out of my house to look for low paying full time work that will necessitate my child being in day care. I'm going to need to change that attitude. Life throws us these curve balls and your eyes have to learn to follow them.

So I must turn back to my plan which is to get my house to a place of better order and to do some of the things I need to do that will make it easier to leave it every day and happier to come back to. Like painting my living room, dining room, and "family" room. Like making some curtains to frame the gorgeous storms coming. Like duvet covers to brighten the rooms we dream in. Like a couple of big quilts to snuggle up in when we all come home grumpy and tired from our unhappy situation. Home should always be a place we feel good coming back to. Especially if we must leave it every day unwillingly.

Our finances will allow me a couple of months to do this. Then it's all over. This long happy homesteading dream. I wonder if we've made the right choices. Should Philip have kept looking for work that would pay him enough to live on? But he's happy with where he is, no commute, working for people he likes, and doing work he's good at doing. Would anything else have been available to him? No other opportunities seemed likely to crop up.

This is what life has thrown us. Time to catch it and keep moving.



*My personal opinion which it is not necessary for anyone else to agree with.

Congenital Misfits

It is only the beginning of the school year and already we are proving to be Max's teacher's challenging family. Not only is Max slower than all the other kids at doing pretty much everything, but his parents aren't alarmed by this fact and have actually admitted that they were the same way as kids. What can she do with that? What's worse is that Max comes to school mostly exactly on time or a little bit late but NEVER a minute early. EVER. Since he takes forever to do his morning tasks she has asked us to get him there early.

We are tardy slow people.

The crimes against us don't stop there though. Max took a spelling test that he failed and his teacher sent the offending test home to us with a note that informed us that all of the words on the test are ones that all second graders should already know and could we please practice with him until he learns them?

We are tardy slow stupid people.

This teacher is a six foot tall gorgeous amazon with the most startlingly white straight teeth, is fresh out of college, and has the fire of idealism burning in her breast. If there is any child that can dampen those fires and chill that idealism, it's Max. Something tells me she's not going to enjoy his special brand of charm and is going to insist on trying to squish him into the mold of student she wants to be teaching.

I do actually feel bad to be the one with the kid who's going to give her trouble all year long. I will actually try to help Max get along a little better by setting the alarm clock earlier and work on those words. I respect his teacher's desire to get the best education for the kids in her class and to expect them to keep up. But I also know that nothing I can possibly do is going to make Max into a kid he isn't. I'm different, perhaps, than many other parents in that I don't have a desire to force him to become someone he isn't just to satisfy other people's need for comfort.

My dad certainly tried to make me shape into someone I wasn't. Both my parents were driven witless by my own pace about things. You can't rush me. Even now. You just can't pressure me into becoming a comfortable known entity that I most certainly am not. I'm not going to like hazelnuts no matter how much everyone else does or how classic and universally pleasing the chocolate/hazelnut combo is. I don't like it.

That isn't to say I won't ever like it, but if I change it will have to be on my own terms, in my own time and way. Philip is no different. Max is like a little reflection of us. So it's hard to rustle up the proper amount of concern about our transgressions against the educational institution.

We are CONGENITAL MISFITS.

Something that's been kind of nagging at my brain in a very insignificant manner is the fact that I cannot explain how come I like watching medical shows like "ER" and "House" and how it is that I can watch really creepy British mystery shows like "Prime Suspect", when at the same time I find the show "The Office" excruciatingly depressing, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" quite depressing as well, and "The Sopranos" too violent and coarse. All I can really boil it down to is that the shows I like have strong sympathetic* characters in them and/or there is a pleasing balance of things gone wrong and things made right. But honestly, I really can't say.

I've discovered that there is only one brand of bedding that I like: Charter Club's "Damask Stripe" sheet sets. I have two duvet covers and one sheet set of it and it is the very best in my closet and stained from old bloody nose incidents and worn from lots of use. They are not cheap and I wish they were. Trying to save money last year I bought a few sets of much cheaper sheets from J.C. Penny's and you know what? TOTAL CRAP. The sheets don't fit very well on our mattress even though they say they should. One of the fitted sheets is already shredding at the elastic corners. Oh, for the money to have a few more sets of the good ones. Does that make me a materialistic luxury seeking mistress of commerce? Is it too much to want sheets that fit even after four hundred washings?

Incidentally, Macy's socks pretty much kick ass too. I've had the same socks from them for about three years that are only now getting to the point where I'm going to have to retire them due to having worn really thin at the heels and balls of my feet. I have bought socks from a number of other sources that wore out in six months.

So I'm a fan of Macy's. So what? Does that make me a bad bad girl?

I'm sitting here at my computer writing and I keep staring out the window at the row of maple trees in my view that are changing colors-I keep soaking up the bright flecks of red on one and the completely fiery canopy of leaves on the one right next to it, waiting for more things to say because I don't really want to start my day. I'm in my pyjamas and it's almost 11 am.

Isn't that what Sundays are for? Besides fire and brimstone, obviously. For the record, Sunday has been my least favorite day for almost my whole life. That reminds me that someone (probably someone I know very well) stuck a little tiny wind chimey thingy in the planter box by my front door. I just want to say (for the record) that I AM NOT AMUSED. I keep meaning to toss it away or put it in someone else's yard. But it seems so cruel to do that. What if the person who left it there isn't aware of my very deep unbudgeable HATRED for wind-chimes of all kinds and meant only to be sweet? I don't want to be the curmudgeon that squashes the kindness in others.

If I give it to a little child will I be absolved of the crime of getting the willies every time the tiny tinkles reach my ears?

Well, I must pry myself from this desk and do something. I don't know what, but something. Maybe I should make those twelve jars of mustard pickles I was planning on making? With those vegetables that have been brining for 36 hours now...

Have a great Sunday wherever you are!








*To make matters more obscure than ever, what is "sympathetic" is extremely subjective and personal so we may never all agree on the definition of a "sympathetic character".

Urban Homesteading
(an unexpected discourse)

This is the tidy way we recycle our things. Yamhill County is really behind the eight ball when it comes to their recycling program...only plastic that is a "bottle" may be recycled which means that things like yogurt containers cannot be recycled. They also won't pick up glass. While this is all true, I am only telling you so you will be distracted from the evidence that we rarely take our recycling to the outside bin unless it's threatening to get up and crawl away on it's own.

Yes, that is a night time commode you see there. We still have all the post surgery gear needed to help my mom recover. The garage is unbelievably messy. I have begun to organize, to actually make use of empty shelf space in favor of stacking stuff on the floor, and getting ready to make a Good Will run as well as calling for details about two different local-ish E-bay consignment companies. I said it was time to clean up my house and I wasn't kidding.

Holy Moses with Mustard In His Beard...it makes me feel suffocated just looking at this awful mess. It's difficult to navigate the interior of the garage. There will always be a mess in here. I have to be realistic. Philip is an artist and you can't catalog an artist's stuff and keep it eternally tidy...most artists need a certain amount of chaos to spark the creative engine. However, that doesn't mean I can't get everything else all tidied up.

I started working on it yesterday. I had to stop before I wanted to because my back is newly recovered and I don't want to send myself back to bed with a heating pad. So I got started by cleaning up my recycling area. I actually got a nice basket to put in the kitchen for paper, cans, and plastic (bottles). This way we can easily whisk it to the big bin outside when it gets full. I got it months ago and never put it to use. Totally typical of me.

I also unpacked all of my herbs and salts and other witchy things and put them back on the green shelving unit we used to have in the store that makes Capello swoon and want to rub things on her naked body. It's my mini apothecary shop in the garage. I always wanted some cool herbal center of activity. Herbs need to be kept in a dark place in order to maintain their quality. My garage is generally pretty dark, even with the lights on. It also stays cooler than any other spot in the house which is also good. When I have completed organizing my pantry and garage, I will be able to post a few herbal how-tos...right in time for the holidays.

Urban homesteading isn't just about gardening and preserving food, it's about all the small things you can make for yourself. All the things we have grown accustomed to letting other people make for us: cleaning supplies, soaps, small building projects (or large), sewing household goods, sewing clothes, making medicines**, beauty products like shampoos and lotions, keeping hens, and rediscovering resourcefulness. It's important to remember that anyone can be a part of urban homesteading.

The point of it is that you can try your hand at any of those things and what doesn't work for you, don't do. Every little thing that does work for you, that you can incorporate into your urban or suburban existence, is a little inch of personal freedom regained from the corporate commercial America. The freedom to have soaps without perfumes, or soaps with only natural ingredients. The freedom to eat food that is organic and picked at the peak of ripeness rather than ripened with gases in a warehouse. You have the freedom to make clothes that fit you and suit your style better than you can find out there in the stores. You can buy all those things, but when you make them yourself you have the ultimate power over your own life and often it is cheaper when you do it yourself.

The best part about it is the pleasure it affords you in navigating life's necessary details. The first time I built something, (our first chicken coop), left me giddy with pride. It was pretty wonky and not exactly the kind of artisan work you would show a contractor, but I made it from scratch for pretty cheap. I learned to make a door and use a circular saw. It was so much fun! Even though quilting has become respected as an art, it is actually one of the most important urban homesteading skills...to make blankets to keep ourselves warm. First and foremost, a quilt is a practical item.

What happens when people make a lot of their own things is that they can't help but play with design and color and style. Women had to make quilts for their families, but why not make a pattern from your scraps? When you take a hand in making things for yourself what happens is that you create the most personal world for yourself. No one will have the same quilt, the same wonky (but rainproof) chicken coop, the same shirt made from an old pretty sheet, or the same recipe for canned pears.

There are few things as beautiful as people reclaiming their independence from others. Americans are always shouting out about their freedoms, their choices, their INDEPENDENCE. Yet I would wager that Americans are more dependent on commerce than any other nation in the world. We go to Walmart. Don't know how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch. Don't know how to kill a chicken (I don't.). We need Safeway to sell us our tortillas and cheese and China to make our clothes and Johnson and Johnson to make our shampoos and lotions and salves.

That's not entirely fair, city people all over the world have lost touch with all of these things. But that's what's great about the urban homesteading movement. People in small city apartments are putting up small batches of jam, making quilts, shopping the farmer's markets, making things for themselves. Every inch you take back is empowerment. Every inch you take back from Walmart and Safeway is strength the corporations are losing in their vice-grip on us.

Some people may find it all a little overwhelming. So, don't try to do everything. Just try to do one thing for yourself this month that you've never done before. Make one thing you usually buy pre-made. Even if you aren't totally happy with the results, chances are you'll have a lot of fun doing it.





*I am a firm believer in using some herbal medicines, but I have come to greatly value modern western medicine as well. No home remedy has ever been able to balance my brain out the way modern psychiatric meds have been able to do and I have tried almost all natural solutions, so I do know the difference. Philip also has serious asthma and there is no way I would ever try to treat that herbally. So I opt for a combination of natural and man-made solutions to health. Nothing can beat comfrey salve for cuts and bruises and I plan to learn to make some and if you want to make some too I'll share what I learn with you here.

The Local Food Challenge Report
(Day 4)

Not full enough yet. I have freezer food greed.

So the first thing Philip did on October first was buy some beer from Washington. Oops. It isn't as easy as you would think to remember to always be looking at the label of origin on the things you are buying. You say you're going to only buy local and only eat seasonal "next month" but when next month finally arrives, after tons of careful and scientific research, (obviously) you go to the store and it looks like a great big woolly universe of forbidden road-traveled treats.

I went shopping yesterday at Winco, our local bargain shopping store and had a fun time scouting out what is local and what isn't. Most of the produce personnel look prepubescent and I was worried that their information about the origin of their produce might be less than accurate so I devised a way to get the answer myself. I was the lady pulling and prodding at the tightly packed produce boxes to uncover the information which is usually printed on the box the produce comes in. In this way (with not just a couple of suspicious stares from others) I was able to find three kinds of onions from Hermiston (a local farm) and potatoes from both Hermiston and Sherwood. But best of all? I discovered, to my great surprise, that the cilantro at Winco comes from Aurora Farms. What a choice piece of luck!!

I may have already mentioned that I have about 125 lbs of dried beans in my pantry (most of them grown locally- from Azure Standard's farm) and there is nothing I love more than a black bean stew with jalapenos, diced tomatoes, tons of cilantro, and lime juice.

Sadly, I will have to do without lime. Extra sad because my friend Angeleen, a farm chick over at Lucky Seven Cat Ranch, suggested that lime juice might be a better liquid in which to freeze cilantro than oil, which is what I was thinking of doing. My mouth is watering at the thought and my mind keeps whispering "one more thing on the list of acceptable non-local foods isn't going to hurt...just one more...who will notice?" It's a slippery slope though. I have already been trying to convince myself that perhaps I should allow yams, and garlic, and why the hell not add peanut butter chips too? And coconut milk...

That's the whole point of this exercise though, isn't it? To actually go without those things and discover what I can do with local fare. Yes, my diet will change a little. Yes my cooking will have to adjust. The whole point is to remember how to do that, like people have done for hundreds of years without gasoline. No one is going to say that it's ideal to only eat salt pork all winter, or fermented fish, but there's no need to be so extreme.

So, I was buying up more fresh (local!) basil at Harvest Fresh, the best most beautiful basil I have ever seen and tasted, to make more pesto for freezing. I asked the cashier if she could find out for me what state the bulk pine nuts came from. I explained that I was taking on a local/seasonal food challenge for a year and was going to run out of pine nuts soon. She asked me what state I wanted them to be from.

That's not the kind of question you want asked...are they going to tell me what I want to hear? I told her anyway. I figure no one in Oregon produces pine nuts. She told me that no one in Oregon, to her knowledge produces pine nuts. Then she did what all people do because I'm not wearing a sign on my forehead that says "I HATE HAZELNUTS" and suggested I use hazelnuts in my pesto. As everyone around here knows, it is like state treason not to like hazelnuts. You have to like them because they are covering the Oregon tilth like a disease.

I have decided that when the dire moment comes that I run out of pine nuts I will use walnuts instead. Pesto with walnuts isn't bad. Not as good as it is with pine nuts, but these are exactly the kind of adjustments that must be made in order to slow the world's trucking miles down.

The cashier went on to let me know that it was pretty DIRE to go the whole winter eating only seasonal food. "You won't be able to eat anything fresh for months. What about vitamin C? You can't eat oranges. What will you do? You'll have to take vitamins."

Nice optimism.

This is a question deserving an answer. What will I do about vitamin C? I'm used to questions like this because my mom raised three kids as vegetarians and she thought out all the nutrition factors and fed us accordingly and so I have never really had to examine how the hell I will get enough protein. (A major concern amongst non-vegetarians.) The beauty in a diet that includes a wide variety of grains, fruits, vegetables, as well as dairy and eggs is that it's actually quite hard to develop a deficiency in protein. We ate beans, grains, tofu, cheese, and eggs which are all high in protein. In addition to this we ate bread which most Americans don't think of as having protein, but it does. So do bananas and avocados. If you eat a lot of all of these things you will never waste away.

The same is true for vitamin C. While it is certainly much easier to get a huge hit of vitamin C from eating an orange, and this is desirable for anyone who doesn't eat anything else with vitamin C in it, there is vitamin C in a lot of fruits and vegetables in smaller amounts. Potatoes have it, tomatoes have it (even after canning), and gooseberries (which grow very well here, by the way) all have significant amounts of it. But listen to this: 1 cup of cooked cauliflower has 69 mgs vitamin C, 1 cup of cooked Kale has 100 mgs of vitamin C, 1 raw sweet green pepper has 94 mgs of it, and best of all... 1 medium stalk of broccoli has 160 mgs of vitamin C.*

1 medium orange has 85 mgs of vitamin C in it.

That's all?

The recommended daily allowance of vitamin C is 75 for women, and 90 for men.

Suddenly I have a hankering to eat some fresh broccoli which I just saw, (and didn't buy), at the farmer's market. I'm also kind of thinking I better start thinking of putting some up in the freezer. So now I understand why every one's always pushing broccoli around as this uber-healthy vegetable. Turns out it kind of kicks dark leafy greens in the butt.

Has all this talk made you realize what a serious and scientific experiment I am conducting on myself? I think you should be very impressed by now.

To tell you the truth, I had no doubts that I would be able to get the nutrition needed through the fall and winter, even with my SUPER STRICT** challenge. My mom knew all this stuff when I was growing up and she took it seriously enough to teach me how to eat well. It's just too bad I learned to love cheese so much, but that's not her fault. I don't have exact nutritional values constantly floating through my head. So if you suddenly said:

"Quick! Angelina-tell me how much vitamin A is in a cup of butternut squash?!"

I would look at you with that distantly pleasant stare that a moose has while chewing cud. And I'd probably say:

"Uh, dunno. Maybe 1,000 IUs?"***

I would be wrong by 12,000.

But the point is that I only need to take in about 700 IUs of vitamin A a day. My mama already taught me that eating a helping of winter squash with butter is really good for me. When you grow up knowing this stuff you don't know the precise numbers, but you can look at what you've been eating lately and have a pretty good idea if you are going to get scurvy or not.

And seriously, everyone should be concerned about landing themselves in scurvyville.

So the verdict for today is that eating locally and seasonally, even if that means consuming lots of home canned and frozen goods****, is not automatically going to make you wither up like a dried apple, which is literally every one's worst nightmare, is it not?






*All of this nutritional information has been taken from Laurel's Kitchen (the 1978 copyright), the hippie cookbook that helped people understand how to be healthy vegetarians. They got all of their information through Standford and Berkeley. I have never once made one of their recipes but their nutrition charts for all basic fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy have been thoroughly thumbed by me over the course of the last ten years. It is an invaluable guide.

**That is not laughter you hear in the background.

***Vitamin A is measured in IUs which I am too lazy to look up and explain. You should consume 700 if you're female and 900 if you're male. Check the USDA charts for yourself. These charts are more current than the Laurel's Kitchen RDA charts are. The USDA has since decided we need more vitamins and minerals in our diets.

****The USDA says that home canning and freezing is likely to retain more nutrients than commercially canned goods because the produce is usually put up when at it's peak and eaten sooner than commercially canned goods usually are. There really is a difference.

This Isn't Deneuve's Life, Is It?

Your Grief

Your grief is like a broken stopwatch
tarnished gold filigree
ticking the same
minute to death.

The thought that just flitted through my brain two minutes ago is "What would Deneuve have done in my place?". I wonder if she has conducted all her relationships with as much class as I imagine? The thought that is going through my head right this very second like a hot poker is "Did mother Theresa ever have a toxic friendship in her life, and if so, what the hell did she do about it?" I thought this because I strive to be a person with both class and grace. I think "class" is a misleading word though because it smacks of social order which is where the expression "having class" comes from. The idea of me having grace is a bit hard to swallow too, because there is nothing bumbling about it, nothing out of bounce, out of rhythm, or silly.

I am at least three of those things.

But I won't say which ones.

I believe that even the craziest and goofiest individual is capable of having spiritual grace. To me this has absolutely nothing to do with a person's relationship with God (though if one is religious it certainly would apply). Grace, as I perceive it is a state of being in which your spirit has a quiet flow and flexibility. It's about not needing to seek retribution. It's about healing. It's about walking softly and loving loudly. It's about being pliant without being weak. It's about allowing every person you meet a chance to impress the crap out of you and not minding if they don't.

I have not been a completely brave girl. Even now I am frightened of the shadows of the past. How long can they possibly nick me in the heels? When I keep so few secrets, what power does it hold over me? Things come rushing back to me tonight. Not my own grief or sorrow. Other people's. First cups of coffee. I am remembering my first cup of coffee and the hundredth crush I ever felt. Sixteen and still alive. Like a miracle I ought to have lit a candle for in the Notre Dame. I smell clove cigarettes, (not mine). I smell rice powder for Kabuki faces.

Did I see myself in the mirror or not? Was there any part of me then that knew I would be looking back through time at who I was, did we send each other glances in that ever elastic mental world from which we both sprang? What would I tell my old self now if she could hear me? Some sweet letter of love and nostalgic ultimatums to enjoy youth while I have it and not to squander it on sorrow or madness or another pack of cigarettes? Would I suggest that I have sex a little more often like everyone else? Would I tell myself to relax, that I'm just fine sitting here at my desk in 2007, not yet dead? See how it all worked out? See how much time you waste on investing in death?

I think I used to know who I was going to become back when I was sixteen, saw myself aged in the mirror, how much lighter I was with life in my eyes in the reflection, and I think I didn't recognize myself at the exact same time. Who, looking into the future, recognizes their own corpse?

I would like to dine with Dylan and Deneuve tonight. I have questions that I imagine only they can answer. The poet and the grace. Both of them with the kind of cheekbones that make people fall over themselves to touch. To consume. I don't know which one of them is more beautiful to me. Which one is more deliciously iconic.

Metal edges come naturally to me. Like my skin is magnetic. Attracting all the metal shop shavings. They come and I didn't always walk away.

Sometimes I am my own secretary, secretary to the crazy boss upstairs who dictates while my pen screeches across imaginary pages. I am my own Girl Friday. Where's my pencil skirt and scarlet lips? You are present on my tablet. A rare glimpse of a mind in full motion. Evaluating itself in real time.

Is there a ship sailing out there on the high seas full of every person I've cut loose? Do they sit around eating maggoty bread while setting their hair afire with gin like voodoo demons throwing darts at my likeness against the moon? Am I on someone else's ship of cut loose souls? Are we all organized according to whose ship of demons we are scouring with our metal brushes and our locks full of crows?

Has someone cut Deneuve loose? Will we pass each other under dark waves and white froth? Will she still be wearing her lipstick? Will her hair still be perfect? Will we throw each other biscuits across the planks?

I know plenty of people have cut Dylan loose. You can't write like that, sing like that, live like that, without ending up on some one's ship of cut loose souls. I love him for his words. Because he said what no one else was saying until he was saying it.

Sometimes you have to ask yourself who you really want to be: Dylan or Deneuve? And then you have to know who you really are. I have always wanted to be Deneuve. I have always been like Dylan, only without the cheekbones or a voice that reaches Viet Nam from here. If I crawl down the barrel of someone else's gun, please tell Dylan to write my eulogy. He's the only one who can do it. He'll tell you how it really was. He never lets the common man fade into anonymity.

I used to ask the universe what was waiting for me on the other side of youth. What the hell was the point in staying alive when soul-ache threatened to eviscerate me anyway? Why walk across that great big wasteland of my nightmare to the boundary where I can't see past? What makes all the pain worth enduring? I no longer ask this question. The answer is in the living. The answer is breathtakingly simple. You walk across the wasteland of your nightmare because on the other side you will find wine, bread, and pesto. You traverse those dark distances because the most simple joys will heal. Because everyone has love to put out there, if they choose, and if you put love out there you will taste the world as though it was all inside of you.

And you can still crack wildly inappropriate jokes. If you really love not only yourself, (and first yourself), and then as many people as you can. Love being the most open smile you can flash at a complete stranger. Love being able to look in any human being's eyes and see what is human in them and see that even if they are unlovable now they weren't always that way and may not always be that way. Love being a great walk in the pouring rain and a face turned to the prettiest angle of the sun. It's everywhere when you cross that wasteland. If you keep your expectations low but your hopes high you will find it everywhere. How can you not find it everywhere if you are throwing it into the air yourself like a flock of magic doves?

At the end of all these thoughts is this last one:

This isn't Deneuve's life, is it?

Let The Fur Fly

First of all: what's up with all the designers in the world falling in love with fur pelts again? And if they feel they absolutely have to use fur, which I don't care for, why the hell are they designing such distinctly ugly things with them. It seems all the fur designs are being influenced by cave man attire in the form of raggedy vests with swaths of dull hide bisected by tufts of mangy fur. For quite a while fur has been mostly absent from big fashion and now it's having a resurgence. Have the designers just figured we'd all forget the objections to it that were raised in the late nineties? Well, I suppose many women have. Women with more money than style.

I don't think fur is glamorous or pretty or even particularly practical. Fake fur, though, I happen to adore! Although it isn't particularly practical either.

My hens are moulting. The first one to start is Flower-Bud who you see hiding from the camera in the picture above. Normally she comes right out with the rest of them to say hello. She so skillfully evaded me today that for a horrible moment there I thought I would find her dead under the hen house or else missing altogether with drippings to show that she had been snatched. Instead she was hiding because she didn't care for me to see her almost bare fanny. Poor birdie. They lose a lot of their feathers and grow new ones. Usually they stop laying when they do this. Now all the other girls are showing signs of moulting too.

You know how sometimes you know a thing needs to be done but you can't bring yourself to do it? And the longer you wait the harder it gets? What's the longest you've put off doing something distasteful that really needs doing? Days? Months? There is something I should have done ten years ago that I just realized yesterday has been a tremendous weight on my shoulders. Most of the time I insist of myself that I rip band-aids off. That I take care of necessary unpleasantness. However, I loath hurting others and this something I need to do will hurt someone else.

That's life though, isn't it? By the way, I'm not getting a divorce, in case you were worried. There's just a very old tie that has been waiting to be cut and I couldn't bring myself to do it. A tie that has no place in my life. A tie that has worried me, held me back, and stressed me out. The longer I waited the more impossible to do it. I think I kept waiting for life to intervene, to set this tie adrift from me naturally. But the tide kept washing it back to my shore.

Now I have to put this tie in a neat little package and send it off to the place where letters get lost. It is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do and ever since I realized it had to be done, now, I have had the worst heart palpitations. I almost went into a full panic yesterday.

I suppose it has come to me that there are all kinds of house cleaning chores I need to do. Life cleaning chores. I've done so much to heal myself over the years. I've come so far. Yet no matter how healed you are you still have to do a little spirit clean-ups once in a while which also include cleaning out the things in your life that are not working. That are preventing you from moving forward. I've come so far but certain voices can snap me right back to where I started from. Those are not good voices. Whether they come from inside my own head or out of someone else's.

I can't fit anything else on the surfaces in my house. I must clean out the garage including the space that is going to become my new pantry. I can't do anything particularly fast because of my back (which is already on the mend...yay!!). In some ways I actually think my back went out from the stress of this unresolved mess in my life. I had to slow down to a stop and deal with it. It's so easy to put things off when there are so many more fun things to do like make applesauce.

So I am sitting down today to prepare a package to send away from the shores of my life and that carries in it a whole lot of negativity not my own.

I have to admit that I fear retribution just a tiny bit.

This fear creates it's own tiny little stab of fear that I am having a prophetic moment.

Please let that not be true.

Frozen Basil and Garlic Cubes

Basil is one of the most ephemeral herbs, one that you can only use fresh for a couple of months of the year. It can be dried with some satisfying results, but I never do. I prefer it frozen in pesto or like this: frozen in cubes with olive oil. It will stay green this way and retain more of it's summery flavor. It's dreadfully easy to make.

The exact same thing can be done with garlic. Although garlic is available throughout most of the year, there are times when you buy a head of garlic and it sprouts almost immediately. My main motivation for freezing cubes of chopped garlic is that if you are relying on local sources, you are more likely going to have difficulty in finding it at times. I am not one of those people that worships garlic like a deity and smothers my food with it...yet I almost never cook without it. Soup without garlic? Pasta without garlic? While I may not kill my food with it, I do use it very steadily throughout the year. So putting some by in the freezer seemed like great insurance against any time I might not be able to find some locally grown.

It's easy. You need a food processor for the basil, but you can pretty easily hand chop the garlic if it pleases you to do so.

For the basil:

2 cups basil
1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil

You put the basil (washed if necessary) in the bowl of the food processor. Pulse the processor a little bit first and then add 1/4 cup olive oil. The amount you need will vary. What you want is a basil paste. You need enough oil to really cover and mix with all of the basil, you don't want so much that your basil has turned into oil soup. You will have to count on yourself to find the optimal amount. Now pulse the processor until all the basil is well chopped. Scrape down the sides of the bowl if you need to with a rubber spatula.

Now spoon it into an empty ice cube tray. (I probably didn't need to specify that it be empty, huh?) When you've used up all the basil put the tray in the freezer immediately. If you leave the basil puree out at all it will begin to darken.

Easy peasy.

For the garlic you need:

1 cup garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil

Peel all the garlic and put the peeled cloves in the bowl of your food processor. Pulse the processor a few times to roughly chop the garlic. Now pour in the olive oil. Pulse again until the garlic is the consistency you want it to be. If you want it to be chopped, not pureed, be very careful how long to run your processor. I pureed mine quite by accident. Pureed garlic is still very useful for soups, but less useful for many past applications.

There you go. No salt. No pepper. Just plain garlic and basil cubes to be used in many ways when you can't get your hands on fresh.

Leave them in the freezer for one day. When they are frozen, pop them out of the ice cube tray and put them into a zip lock freezer bag. They will last longer if you put them in a vacuum sealed bag, but this is a waste if you're going to use them within a month or two. Personally, I could look at these pretty cubes all day long.

One cube is the perfect amount of garlic for most applications. You can always cut a cube in half if you don't want a big garlic punch.

I didn't label and date my baggies because I still have a pretty good memory and if I still have any left next summer I won't be confused about how old they are. However, labeling and dating the contents of your freezer isn't a bad idea, especially if you make multiple batches of the same item on different days. It will help you figure out which to consume first. I do label and date most things I freeze.

I wanted to get these instructions done today so that any of you in need of ideas for what to do with an abundance of garlic or basil would not be left hanging. However, my back is still out and I plan to lay in bed for the next few hours on a heating pad... so happy homesteading people!

Roasted Vegetable Pasta

This recipe uses the slow oven roasted tomatoes recipe I posted previously.

This pasta was inspired by both Chelsea and Lisa E. The only way to improve on this recipe is to make the pasta from scratch. If you want to do that but haven't done it before, I wrote out some instructions on how to make pasta here.

First you will need to make a dressing/marinade for roasting the vegetables:

1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsp stone ground mustard
1 tbsp fresh finely chopped rosemary*
1 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic
freshly ground pepper to taste

*you can use 1 tsp of any dried herb you like or 1 tbsp of any fresh herb you like

You put all of these ingredients into a tall bowl or immersion blender container. Then you blend the crap out of it. It should become thick and smooth. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender or a food processor. Presto, you're done with your marinade.

Next, assemble all of your vegetables for grilling:

1 medium to large sized eggplant of the globe variety or 6 Japanese style eggplants
2 onions (red is especially good grilled)
2 good sized zucchinis

Warm your grill up. It should be on a very low setting or your vegetables will scorch without actually getting cooked enough. If you have a temperature gauge it should be around 300 degrees or 350 degrees at the most.

You should slice the globe eggplants in 1/2" rounds and immediately brush with the marinade on both sides. Next slice the onions in the same thickness in rounds and skewer them if you have any skewers for grilling. Brush the onions with the dressing. Now you need to cut your zucchini in slices length-wise. If they are on the small side you may want to simply cut them in half. If they are larger then cut them into thirds. Slather both sides with the dressing.

Lay all your vegetables out on your grill. Onions take the longest to get tender and it helps to brush them with more dressing a couple of times as you turn them.

After you've turned over all your vegetables on the grill is a great time to stoke up a big pot of salted pasta water. You can use any pasta you prefer with this recipe, I've used many, but I think penne pasta is the best for this application.

When you're pasta is cooked and drained, return it to the big pot and put a few tablespoons of your dressing on it and stir it around. Your grilled vegetables should be ready by now and when they've cooled off enough to not give you third degree burns, you can cut them all into 1" pieces. Add them to your pasta. Now is when you will cut up your oven roasted tomatoes and add them to the pot as well. A cup of 1" pieces is enough, but if you like going over the top with everything, you can put in as many roasted tomatoes as you like, that is one thing no government can control. Stir the pasta up and if it looks too dry, add more dressing.

When you serve it, crumble a lot a little bit of sharp feta or goat cheese on the top. Now that I have begun my local and seasonal eating challenge I won't be able to use feta unless I make it myself or splurge on the locally made feta which is good but a little pricey. This dish deserves the zing. By the way, the dressing above is the one I use when grilling all vegetables. I change the herbs in it according to whim. Rosemary is one of my favorites, but only if I have some fresh from the garden, I NEVER use dried rosemary. It's a waste of time. If I was the ruler of the universe I would outlaw the use of dried rosemary. You know, right after I imposed some world peace on all our sorry fighting asses.

If you think this pasta sounds good and you want to try it out, it's not too late. But don't hang out here too long, the season for all the ingredients besides the onion is almost over. Go little speed-nut...GO LIKE THE WIND!!!

At The Starting Gate...
Day one of my local/seasonal eating challenge.

Pink Banana Squash from the garden.

This is the first day of my year of eating seasonally and locally. There have been some more discoveries in the last couple of days which have seemingly complicated my challenge. While there is a plethora of dairy activity here in Oregon, most of the stores around here sell milk that comes from Washington. ??? Philip tells me I will have to go to Safeway or Harvest Fresh to find the one company he knows of that makes milk locally. Which I know is going to be expensive because both those stores have inflated prices. It's kind of funny because we have, less than a half a mile from our house, a huge creamery. They make butter. So a ton of cream goes through there but you can't buy milk from them.

I have a tremendous urge to make some roasted tomato soup. Tomatoes are almost finished here because of the rains and cold weather which causes tomatoes to split and then rot. I am trying to convince Lisa K. to take me to Bernards farm today for one last bucket of tomatoes. I'm trying to lure her because she desperately wants me to make some delicious eggplant sandwiches for her but I've explained that the only local source for eggplant is at Bernards. I feel like I might wither and die if I can't have (and freeze) some tomato soup. OK, that's a bit dramatic, I admit. Lisa K. feels that being dragged to one farm on her vacation is quite enough. I told her that if she wants to avoid farms, she needs to plan her visits to me between November and May. How can anyone not love visiting farms????????

Alright, alright...I know. It would be the same as if she took me to a boating convention. Or a scuba diving club. I get that we're all different. Lots of people don't find farm visiting all that exciting and can't for the life of them understand why I would. Takes all types.

I'll have to provide a very strong lure. I can't take my scooter out there in this stormy weather. I do ride it in the rain, but I won't take it on a fast highway in these conditions. Tomato soup...tomato soup...can't you feel the warm sunshine of it in your body just thinking about it?

So, about citrus. I can live without oranges or tangerines for one year. But lemons? This is not something I have thought a lot about. I'm thinking about it now because I don't think there's a local source for them. Growing lemons here is possible, but most people don't because they require serious winter protection. What I realized is that all the teas I make in the winter to help stave off colds or to soothe myself when I've already got them require lemon. I don't think they would be quite as effective without the lemon. If I can find a local source then I need to get a GIANT bag of lemons and freeze them in ice cube trays. This is what I'll do. So if anyone around here knows of a local source for lemons...please speak up.

All day yesterday I was thinking about a drink my mom used to make us sometimes as kids. I have to admit that she made us fast once a week and this was supposed to sustain us. She used to heat up lemonade and sprinkle cayenne pepper into it. Very warming. I mean, this can kick the pants off of a cold. All day yesterday I was kind of wishing I had some.

If not? Well, this is one of those things experiments like this teach us, right? Taking on a challenge like this helps us really understand just how much we've come to depend on oil to fulfill our every desire. What I try to think of is how it was for people back when only things that could really travel dusty bumpy roads well, for months at a time, would be available from outside your area. Spices, for example. We often think that our quality of life depends on being able to get our hands on absolutely everything from everywhere. Modern shipping did improve our lives quite a bit, especially for areas with extremely short growing seasons. But I think many of us, myself included, have failed to recognize that the overall price for this kind of global grocery store is much greater than any of us thought it could be, and the consequences are pretty dire.

Oil spills from ocean liners, pollution from airplanes which carry much of our exotic produce to us in the winter, pollution from trucks, and decreased quality of goods due to picking them unripe, or growing varieties strictly for their traveling abilities... all of this means that every one's quality of life is actually deteriorating. Not enough clean air and water are very serious problems. So, if I look at it like this, and turn my appetite to the things that grow well here, where I am, I think I will be able to adjust to a more locally focused life.

I think I should mention here, though, that I fully intend to plant lemon trees in my yard this year. I don't have room in my house to bring them inside in the winter, but I think they should be alright if I make really large coverings for them for the coldest parts of the season. I've seen such coverings in Northern California where it does actually get as cold as it does here, sometimes, killing off unprotected citrus plants.

A couple of nights ago I finally watched "Babette's Feast" which many MANY people have told me I would love. It's foreign so I did have my reservations. Foreign films are often quite depressing, except for British films. I have to say that everyone who recommended it was right. I loved it. I loved the bleak landscape* in it (I told Philip that I would like to take a little retreat to that pretend village, for a little alone time) but in spite of a bleak landscape it wasn't at all depressing. I loved the food preparations in it. It was marvelous. I will admit that it really made me wish I was knitting again so I can knit myself some cozy shawls. However, we all have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe in another year or two I can take it up again. Oh, but I can make myself a wool cape!! I want to wear puritan style clothes from the eighteen hundreds. Yes I do. Watching that film made me realize that I need to get a new pair of boots.

Boot love.

Portland is such a lovely city. It was raining most of the time we were there and I thought it was such an inviting place to be in such weather. It did make me think of you Violette Crumble! I was thinking about how the grey rainy weather gets to you and I was thinking about how you are in a better overall climate for your spirit now. Still, I was thinking about how you lived there for quite a while and I wished I could have met up with you.

I need to go get dressed so I can package up all of the orders that need to ship out today. Then I need to go and pluck all the winter squashes from my yard that are laying around in mud now. Then I will bend my mind to the job of convincing Lisa K. that it's in her best interests to take me to the farm.

An Update: My Back Went Out. Shit.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Part of the reason it is so difficult to figure out what films I would like is that what depresses me is not easy to know. A bleak landscape actually makes me feel scoured clean, it makes me feel weirdly happy. Like rocky cold beaches or rugged unfriendly looking hills. What depresses me most are bad relationships between people. Or people who are small minded and mean. Or people who have lost all hope. I find relationships difficult to watch. But give me a cold grey windy rainy landscape and I come alive. Oh it feels so good!