Archive for May, 2008

It’s a little hard to see in this photo — but two weeks ago, when I was making a cake for a party, my KitchenAid beater sprung a sproing! It broke! Now, to be fair, this beater is at least 35 years old (I’ve written before about my heirloom KitchenAid), and thanks to...
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Here they are — the first preserves of the season — pickled oyster mushrooms (just writing that makes me feel like someone in a Tolstoy novel — they’re always eating pickled mushrooms in Tolstoy). It’s been unremittingly cold and rainy, which is terrible for just about everything except the oyster mushrooms. While I only...
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Here’s my boy, back from getting his scary apparatus removed. He has a slick little lightweight cast and he’s stumping around like a champ. Poor guy, I didn’t realize those pins went all the way through his leg bones! The vet wanted to give me the pins as a souvenir but I passed...
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When I first read Encounters with the Archdruid as an undergraduate doing summer field biology work in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, I couldn’t begin to fathom how Floyd Dominy and his generation thought that the best thing to do with a river was to dam it. I was young, for one thing, but...
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I’ve written before about the egg-scallion-tortilla thing I love for breakfast — all winter I have to make do with store scallions. They’re fine. Sometimes I add my own frozen blanched greens. But it’s hard — one of the things I hate most about winter. But now it’s spring! And although it’s been a long...
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I keep hearing the headline in my head to the tune of “The First Noel” — but here they are, the first morels of the season. It got hot here this weekend — into the eighties — and after our long cold wet spring, I just knew there must be mushrooms out there. These...
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Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita, Clearly saw emptiness of all five skandhas, Ray! What are you doing? Get over here! Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain. O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, Emptiness no other than form; Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form. Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness, Are likewise like this. Whoa! What are you doing? You’re not...
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So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh. Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was...
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My latest piece is up over at Culinate. Go take a look! And Michael Ruhlman has an interesting post about chefs and farmers that contains a whole bunch of links to a number of interesting pieces that have been floating around the blogosphere lately.
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I just had a terrific little visit with Barb Marshall of CrazyWoman Farm. She brought me 18 pounds of lamb — about half a lamb — a nice big bag that included a whole leg, a whole shoulder, a bunch of chops, some kebab meat and some ground lamb. She delivered even, all for...
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