In the nuttiness of this past week, I didn’t get a chance yet to post about my February pledge for the One Small Change Project.  (By the way, if you haven’t checked out the site, there is a lot of really amazing inspiration to be found by the over 200 participants!)

In January, I wanted to get cracking on some insulated curtains and draft snakes – and I did it!  I made two curtains (starting with the draftiest, north-facing windows in our most used rooms, kitchen and living room), and two draft snakes for the other living room windows, plus two almost-finished snakes for our bedroom.  I made the curtains with the outer layer of a thick, upholstery-weight fabric, wool quilt batting inside, and a pretty quilting-weight fabric for the inside (the side that faces the room). I have more to sew, for sure, but a good start.

(yeah, we really do need more insulation – this lazy Susan in our kitchen doubles as a root cellar!)

And now . . . February!  Goodbye to the grocery store. I actually hope to keep this going the whole year (and beyond!), but let’s start with a month.  I haven’t been to the store since we came home from Montreal in January.

First, why avoid the grocery store? There’s always the driving, which we obsessively try to avoid, other than our drive to work and back home (and that kills us – if you know of an affordable 30 acre farm biking distance to Wheatberry let me know!)  There’s the industrial food chain, which is our life’s work to avoid, and while our local coops do carry some local veggies, 90% of what’s inside comes from the factory system.

Also, lately, I had noticed a disturbing behavior developing with Ella in the store.  She was becoming obssessed with buying stuff.  Ack!  You may recall that we are not too keen on stuff. Walking through the grocery store with Ella, she was suddenly aware that everything there could, in theory, be purchased by us.  And she wanted it.  I was finding myself buying things I really didn’t want to buy (say, a juice box with a plastic straw wrapped in another plastic liner), because it was better than the candy bar she really wanted.  Ugh.  I was also finding myself buying things I didn’t really want or need.  Stores are, after all, set up to inspire these behaviors in us, and they do a good job.

Plus, now that we have locally grown grains, we actually don’t need anything from the store!

How are we doing it?  We have a winter (root vegetable) CSA share, we have a pantry bursting with our grain & bean CSA share, our local meat CSA, a pantry still heartily stocked with food we preserved from the summer (yay!  I am still humbled and amazed that we were able to do this), and we get milk and eggs from local farms.  What am I missing here?  We bring home supplies like baking soda, baking powder, vinegar, and recycled toilet paper from our bakery (although now I’m really contemplating the family cloth, thanks to Suzy).  We try to make our own vinegar, make or buy locally made soap, and we don’t really drink wine or beer except on very rare occasions.

I have certainly been tempted a few times already to go to the coop, to get some item that would be tasty (ice cream),  just to get out of the house, or to get something that seems like it would make dinner “easier.”  So far, I’ve resisted temptation, and each time, I’ve been relieved that I did.  Here’s wishing you luck with your own small changes in your lives!

Added on Feb 8:

I just wanted to say that I in no way mean this to seem as an attack on coops.  We love our local coop – we are, actually, dues-paying members.  If I didn’t have the option of ordering various goods bulk through the bakery, I would go the route of some of the families we know, who place bulk orders through the coop (a wonderful service they provide) every month or so.  It is the addictive nature of buying from stores that I am trying to break away from, and the purchasing of goods from the industrial system.

This week, I’m so grateful for a yoga class this morning – the grace, the joy that enters the body when we turn our breath, our attention to it tenderly.

Grateful for the light returning, returning.  Grateful for this corner, with new fabric on it.

Grateful for this story – Ella went to the library with a babysitter, built a cello out of legos, and proceeded to serenade the children’s room.  So last night we got out (what else?) my cello from storage – grateful for a chance to play it again.

Grateful for the creative juice that seems to pour out of us these days.

Grateful for Ella’s sudden delight in walking around in the snow (at last!), and pleasure in taking hay out to the animals in their paddock.  Hi girls, hi girls, she says to the ewes.

Grateful for friends old and new.

Grateful to have made it through a few particularly hairy days with Ella – reminding me of Catherine Newman comparing being with toddlers, sometimes, to being pecked to death by ducks.

Grateful for this space, and for the reminder to take photographs, which in turn, remind me to see beauty.

Wishing you a lovely weekend, friends.  I have more things to share here than I have time to share them, but I’m going to do my best!

On Tuesday, we celebrated Ben’s birthday.  As you may remember, we’re a big fan of birthday pies around here, and so at Ben’s request I made Pascal Rigo’s Caramel-Pecan Chocolate Tart, from our favorite American Boulangerie.  With the help of my, um, assistant pastry chef Ella (just don’t tell her she’s not the main chef), it wasn’t quite as beautiful as I’d hoped, but I was somewhat amazed I pulled it off at all, and once we cut into it, I didn’t hear any complaints.

Since Ben’s birthday was on Candlemas, we waited and did our Candlemas celebration on Wednesday.  Neither of us had ever done one before, but I was tickled when I first read about it in Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions, and then when I read this post on The Parenting Passageway, I knew it was meant to be.  First, I love breakfast for dinner, and pancakes are traditional for Candlemas/St. Brigid’s Day.  Secondly, in addition to celebrating the half-way mark from Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox with candles, it is also a traditional time to bless your seeds for the coming year.  I brought that big beautiful jar of Tiger Eye Beans to the table, we lit some new red beeswax candles, and we said blessings and good wishes for the season to come.

My other favorite Candlemas tradition?  The beginning of spring cleaning.  Ben and I have definitely being going on a bit of a spring purge around here, and I am very excited about it.  On Sunday, Ben took Ella to the bakery for a few hours since she and I were driving each other nuts, and I suddenly had to move my sewing room from its tiny, dark room upstairs to a big, bright room downstairs.  This room has been rented to housemates in the past, and housed WOOFers, but it was standing empty.  No longer!  I got my sewing table set up, some of my fabric in, and took 10-year old inspirations off my inspiration board and made room for the new. It feels great to be moving into a fresh space, with great light.  Soon – shelves going up, fabric organizing, yarn organizing, space for projects, a bigger table for cutting out patterns.  I am just a little bit excited.

That night, I stumbled across this:

Yes, yes, and yes.  That totally sums up how I feel – we started really trying to de-clutter our home (and therefore life) last summer, and we’re now entering round 2.  Bring it on.

(as one of our young friends at Fair Winds Farmcalls him.  “Hey, Ben the grain grower!”)

Today is this handsome, hardworking, talented fellow’s birthday.  We are so lucky to have him – father,

(Ben, baby Ella, and Ben’s mom Peggy)

baker,

farmer,

teacher, teamster, musician, community organizer,entrepreneur, trail blazer, inspiration. . .

Did I mention handsome?

If you see Ben today, he’ll be terribly embarrassed I’m sure, but tell him Happy Birthday anyway!

(my current favorite tote)

Cloth Bag It, that is.  I imagine many of you, dear readers, already bring your trusty cloth bags to the grocery store.  Mad props to you (er, congrats).  That is super good news, because not only are plastic bags and even paper bags for groceries ugly and wasteful, they could pretty much single-handedly destroy the earth if we keep using them like there’s an endless supply.  As in: the trash circle in the Pacific that’s bigger than Texas. As in:  every year, according to the Worldwatch Institute, we throw away some 4 to 5 trillion plastic bags.  They leach chemicals into our groundwater, fill our landfills, kill wildlife and sealife, and use precious resources (trees and oil).  As Colin Beaven points out, why is something meant to be used for only minutes made out of material that will never biodegrade?

As a shopowner, I can testify that very, very few of us (yup, I’m including myself here), have taken the leap from reusing a big cloth bag for groceries to reusing other bags (mugs, napkins, etc) for other items.  We sell Ecobags and SnackTaxis at the bakery, with the original hope that customers would use them for their breads and pastries.  That has happened twice in the past 2 1/2 years.  I serve maybe one cup of coffee a day to someone who has brought a reusable mug.  Why don’t we take these simple steps?  Is it really so hard? Why does it seem easy to bring trash into our lives, when we have to live with it, throw it “away,” and then live with the consequences?

I started using Ecobags a few years back at the grocery store, for produce or bulk bin items (flour, grains, nuts, etc) – anything to stop the ridiculous bag waste.  They’re awesome, and you can also make your own in about 10 minutes, using our grain bag tutorial.  I keep some silverware and cloth napkins in the car to use when we’re out, and I try to remember my own mug.  I try to do all of these – and I’m certainly not perfect.  But if you tried to do them too, and you, and you .  . . how sweet it could be.

Oh, and how could I forget?  Buy bulk baby!  Save yourself time, temper tantrums (yours and theirs), gas, money . . . the list goes on.  Consolidate your trips (think once a month) – buy dry goods (flour, beans, grains, nuts, seeds, nut butter) in bulk, buy meat, butter, and cheese (preferably in big pieces also) and freeze it.  It might seem silly, but think for a moment about all those tiny containers of peanut butter, all those tiny, plastic wrapped juiceboxes, bundled together and wrapped in – you got it – more plastic.  Now imagine if you and all your friends didn’t buy (and therefore didn’t say to the system, “Make more of those”) all those tiny, wrapped packages.  Happy day.

You can do it, friends!  What tips do you have for reducing packaging in your life?

(a peek inside – knitting, bank deposit)

Today, I’m grateful for

all your wonderful emails and comments.

Grateful that I got to visit my grandmother last winter, and that she got a chance to meet Ella before passing away yesterday.  Grateful for her long life and many blessings.

Tiger Beans – saving seed to plant for next year’s shares

snowy fun at the Granary

Our new houseguest Blizzard.  His mission – make babies with Molly and Curly!

And the other new arrival at our house, a huge, beautiful John Deere 720.  His mission: plant grains.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!  Stop by soon for Step Five: Bring Your Own Bag.

It’s recipe time folks.  Now that most of you who are shareholders have your shares in your kitchens (yay!), I’ll definitely be making more effort to share grain and bean recipes here.  Today, I want to first point you back to this baked beans recipe, which I really recommend for those of you who got Boston Favorite Beans.  Yum!  (It can be made with navy beans or other white beans as well.)

Today, I’d like to share this delicious recipe for Cholent, which uses beans and barley.  I’ve been interested to try Cholent for a while – it’s a traditional Jewish dish, a slow cooked one-pot stew assembled the day before the Sabbath so that no work is done on the Sabbath, but a hot meal can still be enjoyed.

I am a big fan of dishes that can be made ahead, and which only get better with time.  Cholent definitely scores big on both those.  This recipe is adapted from the book Real Stew by Clifford A. Wright, which is a great book.  I find that it’s a flexible recipe – if you don’t have one or two of the ingredients, you can substitute or leave them out, and still have a great stew.  It also lends itself easily to a vegetarian conversion.Traditionally, it’s served with dumplings or challah.

(sorry for no photo of our Cholent – we have precious little inside light these days, and it does not make for good dinner pictures!)

Cholent

2 pounds beef marrow bones (shank bones – optional)

2 large onions, cut into chunks

2 pounds beef brisket or flank (for veg. version, sub mushrooms, such as button or portabella)

1 pound potatoes (Yukon Gold work well), peeled

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

1/4 pound schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), chopped (if you don’t have any schmaltz lying around – and why not? – or for the veg. version, sub a hearty drizzle of walnut oil or olive oil)

1/2 cup dried red kidney beans (or Boston Favorite Beans), soaked overnight in cold water, drained

1/2 cup dried white navy beans, soaked overnight in cold water, drained

1 cup barley (hulled, but not pearled, if you’re buying from the store), soaked overnight in cold water, drained

1 1/2 – 2 qts water, as needed

1/4 cup honey

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.  Lay the beef marrow bones and onions on the bottom of a large, heavy ovenproof casserole dish or Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid.  Then, layer the beef (or mushrooms) and potatoes on top and season with salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle in the garlic.  Sprinkle the schmaltz over the meat and potatoes.  Distribute the beans and barley over the top, season again with salt and pepper to taste, and add enough of the water to just barely cover the ingredients.  Drizzle the honey on top.

Place in the oven about 6 p.m., and leave until noon the next day.  (Mine was actually ready to eat after only 6 hours.)  Serve immediately.  Bon Appetit!

(Ben’s preserved lemons-in-process: quartered, salted, smooshed into a jar, fermented 5-10 days at room temp, then put into the fridge.  The best part is you can use the whole lemon after it’s preserved, rind and all.)

It’s always incredible to me how hard the world can be, and also, how incredibly beautiful.  How thoughtless we can be, and how kind.

This week has been filled with a broken tractor, broken huller, farm land negotiations, the mill getting stuck (but not, thankfully, actually broken!), scrambles to finish this year’s distributions and prepare for the coming season. .  .

On the other hand, one of our generous CSA members (and blog readers) left us a really sweet card and this amazing gift – a wonderful handmade bowl.

(and look what I found under all the melted snow – crisp green parsley!)

She said, “I figured if anyone would love a handmade, lopsided bowl, it would be you,” and I do.  It says to me “fill me with hot chocolate.”  And I say, Sure.  Also, we’ve been so touched by all your recent comments and emails – it is a true blessing to feel that we touch so many lives.  Thank you!

I managed to get these gifts in the mail for my mother (lucky for me sending late gifts is a family tradition).  I think she was maybe a little jealous of all the handmade aprons – so now she has her own, from this fun funky Alexander Henry fabric.  I got it at a local quilt shop that was closing, and at the time had no idea how I would use it.  There was just enough to make her requested apron and matching potholders, plus matching aprons for myself and Ella.  I winged the patterns – that’s one of my favorite things about making aprons.  They’re quick, easy, and wide open to interpretation.

And now – potholders!  These were super fun.  I started using Millie’s Pot Holders from Handmade Home, but found myself compelled to make square ones, and to use four layers of batting (two was too thin).  So I switched to a super easy version – sew three sides, flip right-side out, insert batting, sew up final seam, machine quilt.  I had never machine quilted before either, but it was fun (even if it’s a little wonky – I like it that way, gosh durn it).  Potholders are also a great way to use scraps of fabric you love, but only have a wee bit of.

It feels very full circle to me, to make kitchen accoutrements for the woman who first taught me how to cook.  And soon, hopefully, we’ll get a photo of three generations of us in the kitchen, with funky aprons for all.

” I recently saw a video recorded secretly by a Humane Society investigator . . .that sparked the country’s largest-ever beef recall . . . as part of the USDA inspection process, cows must be able to walk under their own steam to slaughter as a precaution against their having, for example, mad cow disease and thus introducing tainted meat into the food stream.

The Humane Society video showed slaughterhouse workers doing anything they could to get downed cows to walk.  They sprayed hoses of water into their nostrils to try to get them to stand.  They tied chains to their legs and dragged them through the mud with trucks.  They used bulldozers to try to force the cows to their feet.  And throughout the video, you can hear the sounds of the cows – they are screaming.”

-from No Impact Man by Colin Beaven, pgs. 134-135

Sorry to surprise you with this.  Most of the time, Ben and I try to walk on the sunny side of the street – or at least to recruit from there.  We work hard to tell people how delicious, fun, joyful the sustainable life is.  But sometimes, it is important to be reminded just how bad our current system really is.  I read this passage on Saturday, hours after visiting the cows at the farm where we drive to pick up raw milk, and it has been haunting me ever since.  They tied chains to their legs and dragged them through the mud.  The cows are screaming.

(all photos are from our meat farmers, Chestnut Farms)

Our life’s work is sustainable food, community food, and I while I have done a ton of research into this, I still find myself, as I did last Saturday, holding a book and crying.  For the cows, for the workers, for all the families out there who think they are getting such a great deal when they eat a 99 cent hamburger.  We are all responsible for this (unless you’ve been a vegetarian/vegan your whole life).  Our family, as I said, is not vegetarian.  We do take a lot of care to know our farmers and how they raise and slaughter their animals, and we have greatly reduced our meat consumption.

There is a reason that some of the world’s oldest religions (Judaism and Islam come to mind) have strict rules about slaughtering and eating meat.  If you do not respect, give gratitude, and make sure that you are killing a healthy animal, you are simply playing Russian roulette.  And Americans pay with their lives all the time, not to mention their on-going health.

I know that the next time I find myself in a restaurant, tempted by an industrial steak which is so easy to order, and might taste so yummy, this is what I’ll remember.  The cows, screaming.  We can do so much better than this.

First, I just want to say welcome to all the readers who came over from my interview swap with Heather of Shivaya Naturals.  I’m so glad you stopped by!  Usually I do a Gratitude Friday post, but since we had the fun interviews yesterday, let’s go for Gratitude Saturday.  Shall we?

Grateful for Solstice Bulbs still blooming, and that sweet horse outside my kitchen window, munching his hay in the snow storm.

Grateful to have renewed my commitment to a daily yoga practice (even if it’s only ten minutes, with Ella beside me saying, “Now let’s do this pose, Mama!  No, this one!”)

Grateful to have finished at least one sweater for Ella this winter – my first ever!  (It’s the Baby Sophisticate pattern, with added pockets.)  Why I chose to make my first sweater with a pattern I had to fudge for a bigger size the whole way through is anybody’s guess, but I am so thankful it worked!

Grateful for Ben’s burst of deep winter cleaning, which purged (among other things) the pile of junk behind Ella in these photos!  Hoorah.

Grateful for hope in dark times, and feeling blessed in adversity.  Remembering this:

The Fox

Of course I thought of you
when I saw him-
the blue-grey fox waiting in the frosted grass
for my car to move on
so that he could cross the road.
I thought how greedy I am-
I want and want-
and, amazingly, I have been given everything
I ever wanted.

The fox and I watched each other,
and when I passed he ran across
to the next field of corn stumps.
I thought of him all day,
holding him behind my eyes
until I could tell him to you,
could say that somehow
I am given even
what I have not thought
to ask for.

(c) Adrie Lester, 2004