I admit it, I love Martha Stewart. I love her drive. I love her insane love of crafts. She had Nathan Lane on the other day making plaster of paris bunnies — it was insane. She had these plastic molds she’d clamped together with binder clips and as she was making Nathan Lane file off the rough edges he looked at her and said “Martha! People aren’t going to do this! They have lives …” and her response was “Oh yes they will.” As though she was going to come over to each and every one of our houses and…
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Here’s what I woke up to this morning — welcome to spring! It’s prettier than you can see in this photo (must invest in new camera) — that pretty spring snow that clings to each little twig. It’s still snowing as I write — nice wet spring snow that will nourish all those bulbs that are just starting to poke their little heads up.
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Take one pint mason jar of leftover lentil/lamb/mushroom soup (made from leftover lamb braised with mushrooms), one pyrex half-pint dish of leftover braised cabbage/onion/carrot/tomato, and one of Matt’s Meat’s good homemade German sausages. Dump them all in a pot, stir, add enough water to bring to a soupy consistency and simmer until the frozen sausage is cooked. Chop up the sausage into smaller pieces, make some toast, and you have a delicious lunch that will last for several days. When we were kids, Monday was Garbage Dinner night, a name we found hilarious in that way that kids love a…
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During my blogging hiatus, I did a lot of little projects — and one of them was cleaning out the vegetable beds in prep for planting. I still need to order compost but I’m waiting for my new fence to go in because I want to build a new raised bed. But I spent a glorious warm Saturday cleaning out the dead stuff. I’ve learned the last couple of years that although it looks messy all winter, it makes more sense to clean up in the spring instead. If you also plan to clean your whole house, these quality home…
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It’s that time of year again! Time to start the seeds. This is the fourth year I’m set up to start seeds in my oh-so-fancy basement seed starting lair — I have two germination mats — they’re the 2-flat size. Because it’s chilly in my basement, without them, I don’t think I’d get much action. You can’t see it here, because I hiked it up so I could work on the bench, but there’s a cheap shop light with full-spectrum tubes hanging from a ceiling beam. Once the little guys sprout, I’ll lower it — they do best when the…
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I seem to have momentarily lost my blogging mojo — but with the sunshine returning to Montana, I expect to be back next week, refreshed and re-invigorated by this weekend’s chore: seed starting!
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We’re having a real winter this year — four inches of new snow yesterday, 25 degrees and grey skies today (but at least the wind isn’t blowing). This is the first winter since I’ve lived in Montana that I’ve really wanted to jet off someplace warm for a shot of sunshine (or is it the first winter since I’ve been here that I haven’t gone to California for work?). My bulbs are just barely starting to peek up out of the ground — the last couple of winters have been so warm that they all bloomed early. The silver lining…
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Bookslut picked up on the indelible image of Wendell Berry mucking out his composting privvy by pointing out this really interesting interview over at Mother Earth News. Some of his points seem a teeny bit dated (Green Acres? Who has watched Green Acres in 25 years?) but as always, it’s the way Wendell Berry champions those old, unsexy values of work and fidelity and discipline and the hard work of learning a craft. Which sounds very grim, but like the monastic rules, it’s the idea that through discipline comes joy. For instance: BERRY: It’s like having a milk cow. Having…
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Funny the way synchronicity works — I’ve been thinking a lot about how skills like learning to knit, or sew, or garden, or cook — skills some of our mothers (or in my case, my grandmother) discounted as being the kinds of skills that keep a girl tied to a domestic existence that stifles other opportunity — are for me a fulfilling way of refusing to cede control of my basic lifeskills to the corporate behemoths that seem to have taken over our lives. If I can sew a skirt, I’m not entirely beholden to clothes made in factories. If…
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Here it is — my first sweater. It only took me four years — well, it really only took about a month of actual knitting — I started it a couple of times and had to pull it out a couple of times but finally, it’s done. I’m wearing it now. It’s cozy and heavy and although the sleeves are a little long, it actually fits and the proportions are right — I’m going to do another one in this same pattern but using Becky Weed’s gorgeous wool she mills over at 13 Mile Ranch. This will be my locavore…