Life in Image

A true skinned knee!
Shredded Cabbage, getting ready for...
Me to ferment it!
The summer freckles.
Outside my latte window, pre-6am.

Chicken Tacos.

Last night we had a really fantastic meal. Homemade tortillas, raw milk cheese, shredded juicy chicken, a fresh salsa, a bit of yogurt and some arugula to top it. SO simple, and SO satisfying. The coolest part for me? Every single ingredient, but one was Maine made; so who was the culprit deemed so necessary we could not go without him? Limes of course! That needed lime juice flavor, I should try apple cider vinegar just once to see if it could work, but that's not today's story! The plan came into inception when I realized we had not eaten ANY cilantro this season, I was alarmed, horrified and looked to rectify the situation and was pleased to see the The Crown of Maine Cooperative had Cilantro available, so I ordered 5 bunches logically to compensate.

So what did I do with the cilantro? I added it to a hen. And what hen did I use? The hen that I used was one of our own from back in March, it's been sitting in the freezer for a long time now, waiting to be turned into a chicken pot pie; of course it was not a pie, but instead a delicious taco instead! The moment the cilantro came in on the COMOC van I got my crockpot out and I got my chicken out and the onions were already on the counter so I did not have to move them at all. I pieced that chicken, the piecing of an almost 2 year old hen is much stiffer than piecing a young broiler chicken, but I made do remembering that all the chicken would be shredded so it did not matter quite as much how elegantly I pieced our old layer. I put all of her pieces into the crockpot and mixed them up with 2 bunches of cilantro rough chopped as well as 2-3 onions rough chopped. I then put the crockpot on high and left it alone until the morning! That's right, I did NOTHING! Well actually I did fret a bit about there being enough liquid, but after a few hours all my worries were dispelled as the liquid was rapidly rising up the sides of the cooker. Around noon the next day I took all the meat off the bones of that old girl, sort of shredding it as I went, I also removed everything but the liquid from the cooker. I then put the meat back into the beautiful liquid, added half of one finely minced red onion and half a bunch of cilantro minced fine, put the cooker on high and left it until dinner time. Actually I stirred it a few times. THIS MEAT WAS DELICIOUS.

And the tortillas! I used Maine Grown Org. Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, salt and water to mix up a dough, rolled it into 8 even sized balls and then rolled them each out as thinly as I could between 2 pieces of wax paper. Before serving dinner I pan fried each tortilla and added grated Raw Milk Colby Cheese a big scoop of shredded chicken, some fresh salsa (tomatoes, red onion, hot pepper, cilantro, lime juice and salt), a schmear of Tide Mill Creamery Yogurt and some torn arugula from our garden. FEASTTTTTT-a-ROO!!!

The List Game.

I was considering the things I actually do in a day, and the lists I make for myself every morning. I was wondering how come the following things never make it on my to-do list as they are the things that fill my day...

-Talk on phone
-Clean up after baby
-Want a nap, but be unable to take one
-Go outside and look at chickens
-Feel lethargic
-Check email 26 times
-Restart computer 3 times
-Cook Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & 4 snacks
-etc etc etc

The Wife Of A Magician!

My husband is really talented. I mean he's incredible! He can BUILD things! And not just websites, but FRONT PORCHES! and CHICKEN COOPS! and WATER TURBINES! and BABIES! wait a second... back to our improving home!

This man has single-handedly (with a few pointers/helping hands from friends and family) temporarily supported our porch roof, removed the complete under-structure of it's dilapidated porch and "supports", dug and baled out 5 giant holes (several times due to rain), poured cement footers, poured sonatube footers atop that, JACKED UP THE ROOF OF THE PORCH BY HIMSELF, and put in strong, beautiful brand new 6x6 posts. All this while working full time and being a great father and doing the laundry and feeding all the animals and playing guitar; we do miss him on the weekends though....

Such is life in October when you're a young family with an old home that "you're breathing new life into". The projects sometimes feel endless this time of year, inhale, finish porch roof, install front steps, build back porch railing, build bulkhead, put clapboards on north side of house,, and shingles on east side of house, exhale, and somewhere in there figure out how to finance buying a new family car (we're looking at the Honda Fit, anyone have any feedback?). The nice/frustrating thing about working on a home in New England is there is such a definitive end-date, because while it's Indian Summer now, the cold winter air will slide in shortly and the snow will start falling and you can't really argue with ice and snow, unless you're inside a greenhouse, and then you can laugh at it whole-heartedly while you snack on spinach, but that's a dream for another year and for this year we have enough on our plate.

The Girl, Age Now.

This little lady will give you a hug or a kiss when you ask for one (mostly). She will help you unload the dishwasher. She will bring everyone in the house their own shoes in a plea to go outside. She will pull herself up onto your chair as you type your daily blog post. She can even point at the television to indicate that she is in fact ready to watch Sesame Street. She can hug kiss and play with Ramona our cat without Ramona a) running away or b) clawing her. She brings you book after book and actually sits, listens and watches as you read them. She will eat lobster, fermented cabbage, a whole pear, a small bag of potato chips, a whole bowl of popcorn, 3 bowls of berries, pieces of cheese, broccoli, cups of milk, many cups of cider, green beans out of the garden and crumbs out of the couch (yuck!). She will point to her ear, mouth, nose, eye, toes, belly button and yoni. She will say the words eye, nose and yoni. Yoni is Sanskrit for vagina if you didn't know. How cool is that?!? She knows where the crayons are and how to draw with them. She knows what to do with a kazoo. She constantly wants to go outside. She's just the coolest kid around!

Life in Image

First Cidering of the season (in tanktops!)
Oh, Hey.
My Fermentation Masterpiece: Dill Pickles.
Our Team, hard at work.
The Family Popcorn Bowl.

Throwbacks.

My new haircut.

Driving to and fro Bangor and listening to the same playlist the whole time and picking up Allison.

Going to breakfast with friends and drinking coffee.

Being organized.

Wearing earrings.

Being totally emotional!

Cleaning Closets.