How to get to heaven...

How to get to heaven...

Here are step-by-step directions to heaven. If you have trouble locating the ingredients, let me know and I'll see what I can do to help.

1. Pick one hand full of fresh raspberries from the crop that is about to explode.
2. Place 1 double-chocolate brownie in a bowl and microwave for 15 seconds.
3. Remove from microwave and test temperature with finger.
4. Microwave for another 15 seconds.
5. Place 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream on top of brownie.
6. Scatter raspberries artistically over ice cream and brownie.
7. Eat after sunset under a clear summer evening sky, but before the mosquitoes come out.

Ahhhh...

Why should we wait 'till we're dead?

Uncomplicated pleasures...

Uncomplicated pleasures...

Eating

• Homemade pesto on linguine (thanks Ralph)
  
• A glass of Concha y Toro
  
• Homemade applesauce, and
  
• Green beans, fresh (I mean FRESH) from the garden
  
• Mozart quartets on the stereo
  
• After the thunderstorm
  

Sigh.

Slightly more complicated pleasures:

• 17 Quarts of homemade applesauce in the freezer
• Relaxing after my fourth week of yoga class

Maybe my sights are too low, but can it be any better than this?

Umm... maybe a little dish of ice cream when the wine is gone.

Tradition...

Tradition...

Today would have been my Dad's 92nd birthday. To bad he wasn't here to enjoy his tradition.

Strawberries come into season early in June, and every year on his birthday he wanted Strawberry Shortcake. Why would you have a birthday cake when you could have strawberry shortcake? Last night I was prepping for family dinner and I wanted to make a shortcake. Too late I realized that I was out of flour. So I called Mom and asked her if she could bring one. She was happy to. We cut and mashed up fresh berries (Ok, they weren't local, but they were still pretty good) and slathered them in white sugar.

Then I whipped up a half pint of cream. It made a big bowl (with more white sugar), and we laughed about how Pete could finally have all he wanted since Leena wasn't here to compete with him.

What a great tradition.

Supporting entrepreneurship...

Supporting entrepreneurship...

Tonight I had the wind to my back as I biked home. As I came screaming along the bike path east of 15th Street I was flagged down by Anna, Lydia and Esther. They had a wagon parked by the bike path, and I skidded to a stop, much to their delight. They had tricked out their wagon with little dandelion and creeping charlie bouquets tucked artfully in each corner bracket. The wagon was full of hand made crafts and art work. They had price lists, coupons, drawings... a pretty impressive display.

How could I pass them up? So I bought a hand-knit pouch from Anna and a picture frame from Lydia. Poor Esther - I hope she didn't feel left out.

They each gave me a 50-cent off coupon, so I got everything pictured for three bucks.

They were happy. I was happy. What a deal.

Then I came home and made my first meal out of the garden. My sage bush wintered over nicely, and has lots of new leaves. So I sauteed some up with a little garlic, and served it over pasta with a bunch of Parmesan, and a salad on the side. Yum.

Food event you shouldn't miss...

Food event you shouldn't miss...

I first heard of Joel Salatin when I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. This book radically changed my thinking about what I eat, and Salatin was a central character in the book. I'm going to be hard pressed to make it to this, but I urge everyone in the area to get there. Here is the announcement that was in the local CoC newsletter today:

Local Food to the Rescue: an Evening with Joel Salatin - Internationally renowned “local/sustainable food” advocate Joel Salatin presents “Local Food to the Rescue!” at the old Goshen Theater (216 S. Main St.) on Tuesday, at 6:30 pm. Salatin is a terrific speaker in the sustainable/local ag movement. His presentation will highlight "buy local" economic principles and is geared toward the food consumer, as well as the producer.www.millrace.org/Calendar

Lost and found...

Lost and found...

Look what I found when I downloaded a bunch of photos today:
I took this late last fall and left it neglected in my camera. That's my crop of raspberries just before the killer frost. Yum... can't wait until next season.

This is in contrast to the snow storm we Friday and Saturday. Today it cleared up and late in the afternoon I dug out my (x-country) skis, carried them across the street to the park and spent an hour or so breaking trails. We have six or eight inches of beautiful powder. Gorgeous conditions. Lots to see, like this ice sculpture down at the river.

This is the first time I've been out in years (took me a while to remember where I had left my boots and the wax.) Maybe three or four years ago I went out in very icy conditions and I thought "I hate this game." Today was different. I actually got some rhythm going: kick - glide - kick - glide... It felt great.

Except when I fell on my right knee - the same on I dented last Tuesday. Ouch.

Yesterday during the storm I made up a batch of homemade hand lotion. Sometimes in winter I get painful cracks in my thumbs, and my skin seems to react to most of the commercial lotions I've tried. Once upon a time I had some lanolin lotion that I liked, and I can't find anything like it now. When I found this recipe online for a lanolin and beeswax based cream I remembered that I had a chunk of beeswax sitting with my wood finishing supplies. I had purchased it years ago from a bee keeper at the Kitchener Farmer's Market to make furniture polish. I found the rest of the ingredients I needed locally. Here is the recipe.

3 Tbsp. lanolin
3 Tbsp. distilled water
3 Tbsp. grated beeswax
1/2 cup almond oil
3 Tbsp. witch hazel
1/8 tsp. borax powder

Mix the beeswax, lanolin and almond oil in an oven-safe dish and set the dish in a pan containing about an inch and a half of water. Place them in the oven and heat until the beeswax and lanolin have melted.

Mix the witch hazel, borax powder and distilled water in a saucepan. Heat the solution until just boiling and then slowly pour it into the melted beeswax/lanolin/almond oil mixture. Stir thoroughly and leave to cool.

When the mixture is completely cooled, you'll have a thick white cream to soften your skin.

Extra notes: I have everything I need now for several batches of this stuff. Actually I had to buy a 4 lb box of Borax (20 Mule Team), so I have enough of it for about a thousand batches. I made mine in a double boiler instead of the oven. The biggest trick is to stir it vigorously while it cools so that it doesn't separate out. I had to reheat mine because it didn't blend well the first time. This makes a great lotion, but it does feel oily when you apply it. Use it very sparingly.

Politics & Religion...

Politics & Religion...

In the last few years there has been a stream of more thoughtful conversation about the role of religion in politics and the role of politics in religion. A friend passed along this link to a speech at the Call to Renewal. An exerpt:

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

The fact that this speech was given by the new President-elect back in 2006 gives me hope that we're on the right track.

In other news, I went for a walk last night at dusk down the mill race. They've lowered the water level, presumably for some repairs. In addition to the normal clusters of ducks and a few geese, I came upon two blue herons hunting in the shallows. Thanks to the weather I was the only walker on the race, and while they kept one eye on me as I passed they didn't fly. I could learn something about patience from watching them hunt.

Then when I got to the dam I spied seven swans a swimming. I am not making this up.

Back home I found that my garden is still able to contribute some swiss chard and rosemary to an omelet for supper. Homegrown food always cheers me up.

Surprise...

Surprise...

I came home from work in a bad mood tonight. My front yard was beginning to look like Occupant had moved away. I really needed to get the lawn mowed and the sidewalk edged. Plus I was hungry and didn't feel like I had time to fix a decent meal and get all the yard work done.

I decided to get the work done first,and as I worked I found myself grumbling way more than I wanted. By the time I got the front cleaned up so it looked a little like someone lives here, and the back yard cut back to size it was just about 8pm. And I hadn't even started supper.

So after I washed up I put a pot of water on the stove and a Mark O'Connor CD in the machine, and picked up a scissors and went out to my garden. I snipped off a couple branches of sage, and that's when I noticed the bean.

There was a single burgundy bean hanging low over the edge of my garden. I picked it because it was just about as big as you want to let them get, and as I did I noticed another one tucked in beside it. And then another. And another. And another. It was like an Easter Egg hunt. By the end I had a nice big handful of beans. When I got back to the kitchen I slipped some thin spaghetti into the now boiling water. Then I snipped the beans and put them in a pot to steam, stir fried a clove of minced garlic with the sage in olive oil until the sage got nice and crisp, and sliced up a mid-sized heirloom tomato out of my garden.

The sage and garlic went on top of the spaghetti, topped by heaps of fresh-grated parmesan cheese. The other stuff filled in the corners of the plate - except for the fresh carrot that I dug up after cleaning out the bean bushes; it turned out to be a nice appetizer. By the end of the third tune I was sitting down to a feast that you cannot buy in any restaurant. What with topping it all with the piece of mom's leftover apple (made with the early tart apples) my mood had turned 180 degrees: positively content.

Local food...

Local food...

Tonight I had salad all from my own greens, with an omelet of eggs from my neighbor's chickens, and bread from Rachel's. (Yes, my neighbor has chickens. Often you can hear the one of the roosters crowing from my front porch. Their eggs make a very stiff omelet.)

Green stuff is popping up all over the place. This is my first ever garden, so I find it pretty amazing.

I'm having to learn a new way to be patient.