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 the miracle of Amazon I have a replacement beater, but it seemed that a breakdown after all this time was something worth commemorating. And I’m really hoping that I’m just imagining that my elderly KitchenAid is beginning to sound a little sluggish. Since there’s no one left…
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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 found a handful of morels this weekend, I found probably 20 pounds of oysters — the small and tender ones I sauteed in lots of butter, some garlic, thyme and a little alleppo pepper, then finished with some wine and cream. Then I froze them in…
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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 — he was pretty sore that first night after they took the apparatus off, but he bounced right back. Yesterday my local vet cut it off to change the bandages underneath and as we were lying on the couch watching dopey TV, I realized that the cotton…
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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 I was also living in a very watery landscape — travelling by canoe from lake to lake, often camping in weather like we’re having today in Montana — 45 degrees and rain. Drought wasn’t something I understood growing up in the Midwest. One year when I…
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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 time coming, there are finally things coming up in the garden. This morning, my breakfast omelette/tortilla contained a green onion (from the garden), a handful of wild arugula, a big sprig of lovage, some parsley and a handful of chives. This is the thing about…
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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 “yellow” ones show up in woodsy copses along the river, then later, the black ones emerge in the mountains. I didn’t find very many yesterday — this is maybe a pound or a pound and a half — but I only hit one spot. Ray and…
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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 allowed in the street. O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness, Not born, not destroyed, Not stained, not pure, Without loss, without gain. So, in emptiness there is no form, No sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness, No eye,…
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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 fine, but as the plants grew up through it, it became a pain in the neck. So this year, I went for more drastic measures. I ordered this fabulous sprinkler scarecrow from Amazon. You hook it up to the hose, and set the sensitivity level,…
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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 six bucks a pound. And she’s really cool — we had a nice little chat about my urban farming — turns out she used to live on the next block over. It’s one of the things I really love about living in this particular rural place.…