Golden leaves make coffee taste better

Late season calendula and yarrow harvest

THankful on a Thursday

Today I am grateful for a gift of time.  For the dropped-in-my-lap chance to take my own teachings to heart.

I am grateful for a husband who will let my over-tired, under-rested, rather anxious self lecture him ad infinitum about tropes and character types in historical romance novels ... and still look me in the eye and tell me I'm amazing and he loves me.

I am grateful for the best sort of friends...  both far and near.

I'm so grateful.  so overwhelmingly, full-of-awe, grateful for the manifesting of a vision I've been holding for a long time. 

I'm grateful for dreams.

Kitchen Living: Stock Scraps

I'm writing this in front of the first fire of the season.  We had an anniversary bonfire the other night.  But the parts for the woodstove arrived : a new cast-iron top to replace the one that cracked last winter, a new baffle – interestingly made of some sort of pearlite crazy wonderfulness-, and a new layer of internal insulation.  So we have our first fire in the woodstove, and my back basks in the gorgeous heat.  We've had a  frost that killed the squash, but the calendula and peas are still strong, the potatoes thriving despite frost-bitten upper leaves.  This fire feels like the harbinger of the inward-turning time of the year.  The time of the year that is about pulling out of the freezer and pantry, rather than manically filling them.  The time of year when warmth, and the fire that makes it, becomes the most important thing, that which life revolves around.  We are considering replaceing the propane with a wood cookstove – one which as a hot water reservoir in addition to an oven. 

Which brings me to the kitchen.  And my love for themed blog post "series."  As the CSA winds down, so will CSA Cooking.  Homestead Eating will likely come back, but I find myself drawn to a new one as well.  I notice, increasingly that this blog is primarily about food, interspersed with life and occasionally art.  (Speaking of which!  My loom is dressed again!)  In this reflection, i realize just how much of my life is lived in the kitchen.  And so I give you, Kitchen Living.

For me the kitchen is a living space.  It is about more than the (ever-expanding) corner of the kitchen holding various crocks and jars of fermenting kraut, pickles, kefir and kombucha.  It is about the way that meal flows to meal, the way that habits support habits, and the way that food is rarely wasted.  It means tailoring meals to what happens to be in the fridge (massive amounts of cheese?  I'm all about it!).

Today I was chopping up the parsley from the CSA for tomorrow's tabouleh making, while the bulgur simmered on the stove.  I took the parsley stems –something others might toss – and tucked them into a very special gallon Ziploc in the freezer.  There it met celery leaves, carrot ends, and other herb stems.  And the next time I make stock, I'll empty the bag on top of my chicken carcass.  This way, stock is something that truly evolves out of the daily doings in the kitchen.  It is flavored with the memory of meals past.  And none of the precious vitamin and nutrient wealth of the scraps goes to waste.  It is a habit that takes barely any longer than it would to toss the scraps.  All it requires is the mindfulness.  The appreciation.  The love.  

Brie and Potatoes? I call it dinner.

Its been a while since I've spent time here, but loyal readers will be pleased to know that thoughts are once more swirling in my head...

Its been a crazy couple of weeks, and I'm just now beginning to feel landed again, after a whirlwind week of hosting an all-out romance novel themed Bridalette party (the bunting!  the tea! the cookies!), writing a wedding ceremony, officiating at said ceremony, and crafting decorations and event-managing the potluck reception.  So much joy.  So much love.  I'll post about it all in the not-too-very-distant future.

In the meanwhile, the late-season shares keep rolling in from the CSA, and I keep cooking soups, vegetable sautés, and freezing as much as I can manage to blanch.  This week we got carrots, getting sweeter with the falling temperatures. a cauliflower twice the size of my head, braising greens, zucchini, turnips, portugese kale, onions, parsley and the first potatoes of the season.

I've dug maybe a third of my potatoes already, and eaten them in borschts.  Today for dinner we had boiled potatoes (quicker than baking and just as tender!) with butter – a little-, brie – a lot -, and salt and pepper.  And the portugese kale, also sweet with the coming frosts, in balsamic.  The brie demanded a bit of red wine to go with it, and then there was Silver Gulch root beer for dessert. 

Brie and potatoes.  Brie baked potatoes?  Potato gratin with brie?  I say yes.  The combination is divine.  And when you have an abundance of brie, left over from festivities, that demands to be eaten...  well, one must eat it!

"chien-chien!"

Wedded Tree

The Wedded Tree

Four years ago today, I married the love of my life.  A day or two later, we came home to find a little twinned birch sapling on our driveway.  A gift from a dear friend.  Our wedded tree.  We planted the wedded tree, two young sapling trunks twining around one another, in the clay-y silt above the alternately soupy and frozen ground that once was permafrost in the muskeg at the cabin.  Despite the odds, despite the cold cold roots, despite the lack of soil, the tree survived, and even grew.  Doubled?

A few years passed, and we moved onto the homestead.  We dug up the now-very-large sapling, drove it 20 miles, the upper branches brushing against telephone wires, and planted it on the lower slope at the homestead.

 As more years pass, with learning and growing and loving and so much joy, these two trunks will grow ever more entwined, coming to share one circumference.  

Here's to four more years, and then to forty, to four and forty, and then four more.  I love you, Darlin'Man.

twinned birch sapling

Gratitude. Or, thankful on a Thursday

I am grateful. so grateful.  I just am.

I'm grateful for the man, patiently waiting for me.

I'm grateful for love.  For the many paths and ways the universe opens for me to share, support, hold, cherish, nourish, cultivate and experience love.

I'm grateful for rainy cool days.  I'm grateful for a summer of sun.

I'm grateful for the art of others.

I'm grateful for my own, sadly neglected, art.

I'm grateful for teaching.  So so grateful for teaching.  Grateful to be able to give the world what is sitting in my heart and longing to be shared.