I've Been Thinking....

It's time for a New Beginning...

Around My Home

The beer is dressed for the cold.
We're shopping for cars.
The knitting nest is just as cozy as can be.
Eggs keep piling up faster than we can eat them.
Feeling grateful for supportive friendship.
The seedling on the windowsill have displaced many other plants.
Thinking about drinking more water.
Trying to push through lazy inclinations and work hard instead.

A New Beginning

I got my ass back to yoga yesterday and by the end of the hour I felt more like a butt again. The kind of butt that has strong flexible muscles in it, that can take oxygen into each cell and expel waste. My belly began to feel like a stomach once again and my back, oh my back! And my shoulders, oh my shoulders! Strong, straight, relaxed, comfortable. The integrity came rushing back in and there I was waking up from my little closed in retreat and began opening up once again. Oh and it felt great. I didn't need to cry or rest or tune out, I could just be present and breathe and balance and center.

My Kitchen Cooks Food:

Like oatmeal, lunches for 16, homemade butter and macaroons.

It was a busy day in this kitchen yesterday, and today seems no less busy with braised short ribs in the making, a sink moderately full of dishes and the second round of butter completed.

Perhaps tomorrow will be a slow one, but come Thursday we're off to the Eat Local Eastport Buying Club Pick-Up day and that makes one busy kitchen, with 30 families coming through in a few hours!

Favorites:

and eating out with this man:




There's something about our relationship that really shines when we get to sit back, relax and eat some yummy, yummy ramen, pork buns & share each others beers. There's a quietness, an observance. Some teasing and laughter. A bit of hand holding, and a whole lot of reaching across to the other person's bowl. We talk to the waitress, we discuss the rest of our day and discuss the rest of our lives as well. We scheme and plan on the future. In these quiet moments of enjoyment is when the creation of our lives happens.

the difference in a few days.

Little green sprouts, a kiddie pool out on the lawn again. Freckled and tan overnight. That sweaty wake up from sleep feeling. However it's March, not July and I will soon be wearing a chamois shirt again.

Superhero Powers

When becoming a parent you suddenly start learning superhero powers. You can suddenly move very quickly. You have the ability to be patient, loving and concerned at 3am. You can function with limited amounts of sleep, and yet also have the ability to sleep through anything. You can hear the tiniest of cries and know whether it's pain, sadness, anger or joy.

Being a parent makes a superhero out of you. You suddenly become invincible to another person. Somehow you've developed the ability to have magical powers over any malady. You know everything.

You also have developed superhuman strength. You can lift whole people, for extended periods of time. You can even carry them. You also develop the ability to multi-task, talk on the phone, cook a meal, and mind a child. Or shovel manure, sing and help someone ride a bike. Pay the bills, draw a picture and distribute snacks. You get the idea.

Just like a superhero your work is never, ever done.

Enter: Spring.

The sun does feel so spectaular on the skin.
I pitchforked manure all day.
The lilacs are bit thinner now.
The chickens are producing 7 eggs a day.
The lawnmowers haven't started their buzz yet.
Ce can explore and I can trust her now.
There are peas in the ground, I'm trying my luck with some old seed.
Popcorn in the sun.
Family walk.
Family conversations.
Shoulders back, chin up, fingers crossed....

I've Been Thinking....

that it's really all about the company that we keep.

Birthday Sweater

Snow fell last night, 29 years after I came into the world. 3:38 am and out I came! My mum said it was a short labor, an easy labor; and there we were, mother and daughter. I was imagining how hard today would be all week, imagining the pain, the sadness, the longing, the awareness that she would not be there. I was imagining missing giving her thanks for carrying me in her womb and birthing me and breastfeeding me. I knew it would be hard to not have a silly care package from her. And her check-in phone call. All of these things I knew would be hard.

However I woke up and it snowed, there is a thin layer of crisp, clean white across the whole island this morning. Who do you think sent that snow? My wonderful sleeping Mumma. And there were sweet snuggles this morning from my family and birthday oatmeal and lattes. Cards, a package and a clean kitchen waiting for me, cheese and chocolate and more from my husband. We had a family dance party to my favorite song. Then we got out of our nightgowns and into our handknits and went outside to enjoy the snow and the season and my first sweater.

So here it is, the flourescent salmon raglan sweater we've all been waiting for is here, and what better backdrop than crisp white snow, freshly painted clapboards and our messy yard? Cecilia is sporting a garter stitch cardigan made by her Mimi. Rafi's hat is the Marsan Watchcap made by yours truly, with Quince & Co. So cozy and so warm.







So Happy Birthday to me!

Sometimes....

you have to let the camera use it's flash...

go out with your girlfriends...

dance, dance, dance...

and drink a volcano bowl!

I've Been Thinking....

I'm still waiting... (for winter)

Current Projects

Working on a logotype for Eat Local Eastport Buying Club to spur a new wave of PR. Also our cookbooks waiting patiently for a new home...

The accomplishment of yesterday: Bookshelf moved! Also organized, Ce finally has a shelf all to her own, as do our reference books, art books and holistic books.

Trying to make sense of Farmland Preservation from the meeting yesterday with John Piotti of Maine Farmland Trust and feeling really positive about my involvement in Maine agriculture. The work I'm doing gives so little money to the middle man (like none, just food trade here) that it helps the farmer get paid as much as possible for their work.

My sleeve is 2 inches too long and I have to rip out about 5 inches....

Tonight's Dinner: Baked Beans with Cornbread, slow cooking all day, makes me long for this day in October.

The Unsung Heroes

It's a quieter, drier kind of bounty. One requiring fats and broths and long cook times. It's the type of ingredients that begins with some rough chopping and then low heat. It's time that I'm thankful for, the reminder that eating seasonally is FULL of wonderful flavors, textures and colors. We're just a bit more subdued come March, and thankful for the layers of lovelies in our fridge, our basement and our cupboards. So feast well tonight, knowing seedlings are just around the corner and your stomach will be plenty full till then!

family tradition

This picture may make you think it's the middle of the night, but it's not! It's simply before 6am. The only way I could convince Cecilia to stop whining in bed this morning was with the promise of pancakes. Recently Ce has decided that she very much enjoys baking and mixing batter. She's actually surprisingly helpful, if not controlling (much like the generations which precede her) when it comes to this particular endeavor.

See? Extra helpful.

But seriously, this is a fun thing that we can do together, she likes being involved in the whole process, and she's a good companion for it. I'm imagining all the fun we'll be having as she becomes more and more competent. It's certainly something I did with my mother and Grandma, it's part of the lineage of intuitive cooks in my family. And, yes, part of that is the female lineage. I remember learning I was pregnant with Ce and just knowing that she must be a girl because I had to continue the female line in my family. Isn't that interesting, we hear so much more about male descendents, however there was a real need within me to carry on the spirit of women throughout our family.

A huge part of that is our family recipes, from the Yankees we have Apple Pie, Meatloaf, Biscuits and from the Greeks we have Roast Lamb, Vasilopita (Holiday Bread), Kourabiedes (Sugar Cookies), Loukoumades ("Doughnuts") and Spanakopita. These are the traditions in my family, how we share our heritage and culture, through culinary traditions. I'm certain it will be interesting to see how each generation changes and adapts these recipes, depending on availability of ingredients or if one person is a scientific or intuitive cook, a traditionalist or an interpreter.

I see myself adapting recipes in my generation to take into consideration health and seasonality. I have adapted my grandmother's meatloaf recipe for example to not include cream of mushroom soup, instead I now make a gravy with seasonally available veggies and bacon fat and smother the inside and out of the meatloaf with that. Or my mother added to Loukoumades, a "honey puff" doughnut that we have Christmas morning and serves maple syrup with them, and that seems like a adaption coming form living in New England. These are the stories of these recipes.

Of course there are many fantastic male cooks in my family who have added to this lineage, and in fact some of the best cooks amongst my elders are male. My father has certainly run with my grandmother's biscuit recipe and markedly improved on their moist, flakiness by adding cream cheese as the fat. And I have further changed the recipe by going back to using lard instead of butter or cream cheese, and I'm certain that 50 years ago Miss Janet, my Grandmother Grant kept a bucket of lard beneath her counter.

It seems it's all adding and subtracting, these family stories of cooking. These family traditions are really all about the bloodlines running though our muscles. It's about the touch, the grace, the atmosphere in the kitchen, the intensity, the stories told, the hustle, the bustle. There are times that I've been baking and I can literally feel Miss Janet coming through my fingers. Coming through my shoulders and doing the work for me. It feels innate, like part of our chemistry to fill the kitchen with delicious smells and cover the table with dinner every night. We get to see the joy in our families eyes and hear it in their voices as they fill their bellies to overfull. And then the greatest tradition of all, apple pie for breakfast the morning after the party.

A "New" Room

I've reclaimed the music room once again. I moved the baby grand piano by myself. I also removed about 70% of the musical instrument storage. Very suddenly there is this wide swath of e-m-p-t-y s-p-a-c-e in our home and it feels wonderful. There are 3 amazingly huge windows in this room, they comprise a bay window in our old townhouse and though they are on the north side of the house, there is a lot of light. A huge amount of light is pouring through these windows, across the bare wood floor and finds me at my computer desk. It calls to all of us to take a seat at the piano, create a lick on the guitar, or just sit quietly with a stuffed monkey in your rocking chair. Though it's a cold room (those 3 windows aren't exactly "tight") the added sunlight seems to add a different wind of warmth to our home. It's a magnificent improvement to our lives. Yet another example of when less is in fact more!