One Local Summer week 3

This week was a bit of a rushed meal, as in we started cooking hungry but chose to make something that took too long so we ended up eating the main dish really quickly and only slowing down when it came to dessert.

Pasta with Chard and Basil Pesto

Flour: 80 miles Champlain Valley
Eggs: 7 miles MDC Poultry, free range eggs
water, local
Basil: 7 miles Mighty Food Farm CSA
Chard: 7 Miles Mighty Food Farm CSA
Maggie's Round (young cheddar): 17 Miles Cricket Creek Farm
Olive Oil: not local

Maple Pudding

Eggs: 7 miles MDC Poultry, free range eggs
Milk (raw): 17 Miles Cricket Creek Farm
Maple Syrup: VT local (can't remember where from)
Cornstarch: not local
Sugar: not local

Rosemary Quiche Bread Recipe

First off I want to apoligize about the lack of pictures on the blog. I am doing my blogging at the library which doesn't permit the use of any disks. Usually I can go over to a friends to load pictures but the last time I was their her router was sluggish (understatement). So for now I'm going to stick to words. When I finally get to loading pictures we can all do a happy dance, especially you Alder fans.

Nicole asked for the Rosemary Bread Quiche recipe [I improvised in the making the first time so all of this is approximation]

1 round loaf of bread (I chose Rosemary bread you could do it with anything although I would avoid using anything too dense like a black bread since in won't absorb the liquids as well.)

4 or 5 eggs depending on size, we had one short guy and one really skinny one so we went with 5.

1 cup or so of milk.

1/2 lbs of komatsuna (or other hard green like kale or collards)

1/2 cup goat impasta (again approximation)

a pinch of salt

butter, enough to spread on inside of bread (I'll explain in a bit)

Directions: [preheat oven 425]

1. In a bowl mix together the milk and eggs until uniform in color but not foamy.

2. Add impasta to liquids, set aside.

3. Cut off the top of the bread and dig out the innards, like making a bread bowl for soup. note:save the rest for stuffing or croutons)

4. Roughly chop up komatsuna and add to liquids.

5. Butter the bottom of the loaf of bread and the insides.

6. Put bread in a baking pan (I like glass or cast iron since they heat more evenly than the thin metal cake pans)

7. Pour egg mixture into bread.

8. Cook for approx 30 minutes, although I start checking at 20 minutes. You want the insides set on the edges but still liquid in the middle, a little, since it continues to cook after you take it out.

Unfortunately while this is great the first time round it didn't make for the greatest leftovers, so come with a big appetite or have friends over.

Enjoy!

OSL Week 2

One Local Summer week 2 (I'm behind by a week, at some point here there will be two, if I can mange to get to a computer that often) note that this meal was made away from home so the milage is from both our house and the place that we had the meal. The two houses are 40 miles apart.

Rosemary Bread Quiche

1 loaf of Rosemary Bread 4 miles Olde Creamery, Cummington MA
komatsuna (collard greens like veggie) 4 miles Mighty Food Farm , Pownal VT
eggs 3 miles, Hawley MA
milk, regional Western Massachusetts Cooperative Dairy
goat cheese impasta, Guilford VT, 50 miles (but 18 from where Kevin works)
salt, not local.

Sauteed Kolrabi

kolrabi 4 miles Mighty Food Farm, Pownal VT
garlic, not local
salt, not local
chives, 0 miles kitchen garden.

Strawberry Shortcake

strawberries 2 miles, The Apple Barn, Bennington VT
cream 22 miles, Hadley MA
flour 70 miles aprox, King Aurthur Flour.
butter, regional, Cabot creamery (VT coop)
salt, not local
baking powder, not local
baking soda, not local

OLS week 1

This week's One Local Summer

I only got a picture I only got a picture of the bread.

Meal:

Salad
Lettuce - 7 miles Mighty Food Farm CSA, Pownal VT
Radishes - 7 miles Mighty Food Farm CSA Pownal VT
Onion- aprox 25 miles Local farm from Western Mass.

Dressing
Olive oil- not local
Vinegar- 170 aprox made by my aunt, Woburn MA
Mustard- not local

Bread (NO Knead Bread):

White bread flour- 75 miles Champlain Valley Flour
Kosher Salt- not local
Yeast- not local
Water- from tap

Goat Cheese Impasta- (farm name to be added later) Gilford VT 75 miles

Now now now

I am a planner. I spend hours of my day thinking about what we are going to do tomorrow, next week, five years from now. Lately it's been almost obsessive. I was constantly thinking about things I wanted to do with Alder when he gets older. I was thinking about what our life would be like once we're settled. The list went on and on. All of this focusing on the future means that I have been sort of miserable with the now. The future is always perfect since it isn't corrupted by reality of things like dishes, bills, or grumpiness.
April 2008 June 2008

Then yesterday I took Alder out for lunch at a restaurant that we hadn't been to for months. Sitting there looking at him eating the same meal I was hit by how much I had missed out in the last few months because I was not focused on what we are doing now. Where had I been while he changed so rapidly? what was I doing while we were taking walks and playing?

Well, I had been preparing reading books and more books I had been waiting for a certain start to things. I must be a dolt or something because it has taken me 22 months to really get that right now is what I should be excited about. Yes I should be planning tomorrow and possibly next week but I should be doing these things to be living with the world I am in now. With the risk of sounding like a new-age book I need to focus more on living in the now.

To that end I am starting to make more immediate plans. It is summer and we live in Vermont, there are farms to visit, trails to hike, festivals to enjoy. On that note I plan on filling this space with more activities and less ponderings, at least for a while.

Becoming Native to This Place

I just started to reread Wes Jackson's Becoming Native to This Place it is about "integrating food production with nature in a way that sustains both." It's fairly farming focused but the concepts are broader how do we live with the land we are on, not impose upon it.

However this isn't about his book, except the title. I am having to learn to become native to this place. This place is having a toddler, being a mother and being a parent with someone else. All of these are the things you don't plan for. People talk constantly about the changes having a baby bring about. But for us a baby was only sort of a change, Alder was easy, other than bars and concerts our life didn't change too much. He just came along happy to be part of our world, looking out from his perch in the Baby Bjorn. Even as he got heavier the switch to the stroller and backpack were smooth.

Since New Years my sweet happy to come along with me little boy has become a person in his own right. He is still sweet and lovable as ever but now he has opinions about everything. About what he wants to do, and when. About what music we should listen to, and when we should not listen to music. All of this is amazing to watch happen but it changes things. So we struggle sometimes with his wants and ours. If he had his way he would be outside every moment of the day until bath time.


In the mornings he still curls up in bed with me to cuddle and talk. We name everything we can see from the bed, in the room and out the window. We sing songs and rhymes. We tickle and snuggle. But now the hour of welcoming the world has been cut to a half hour then he slides down the stairs to papa who will give him some food and take him OUT (his newest word). So I rush to get up to get my brief moments of alone time before Kevin is off to work (this is a rare treat to be at the coffee shop blogging).

Our day is full of the pulls and pushes of two personalities going through the day, getting the must dos done and leaving as much time for just going for walks or playing in the pile of dirt in our yard as possible. But this isn't easy for me, I feel trapped, both by the limits he puts on what we do and by the lack of a car. There is only so much we can do in walking distance from our home. When it rains we are even more limited to our scope of adventure. By the time Kevin comes home I am desperate to have a real conversation, to go to the bathroom by myself.

But being us, the three of us isn't always smooth either. We haven't quite learned how to spend time all together without turning it into tag team Alder watching. We've seemed to have forgotten how to be together. So now we try, we stay together in rooms, not always but less of one of us fleeing. It isn't fleeing from him more trying to find our own little moments. We've realized that while Kevin may need 14 hours a day to work on his business our weekend time is precious that we need to spend it all together as much as possible.

It is all learning how to be together as family, as three people with likes dislikes needs and wants. It isn't easy but everyday we seemed to be able to do it a little more naturally. But there are still blowouts as we become native to this place of being three.