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choices

We spent the last two weeks with my family, and many conversations came up over food—the choices we’ve made in our small partnership about what to eat and what not to eat, how we’ve come down this path, and why we’ve decided to embark on this journey in the first place.  The old adage of “ignorance is bliss” certainly has some truth to it, but knowing where one’s food comes from has much greater significance for me, and I would very willing give up any sense of bliss when eating for the sake of knowing where my food comes from, who grew it, and its “life” along the way.  Somewhere along the way we’ve lost a lot of the skills about growing and eating food that has made it so that it really isn’t much of a choice any more what we eat.  Relatively few corporations control our meat and produce production, and plastic-covered meat and shiny out of season produce is what we’ve come to expect when we go to the supermarket.  But in these conversations with my family, I realized we do have a choice.  As soon as we ask the question “where did this food come from?” we have begun to make a choice, an informed choice, about what we put in our mouths.  So we have chosen to embark on the journey of relearning all we can about food because choice is an important part of our humanity, and choice is a legacy we want for our children.

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harvest dinner (or an alternative thanksgiving)

Because we’ll be traveling to Montreal this year for Thanksgiving, we decided to host a harvest dinner, or an alternative Thanksgiving feast before Thanksgiving so we could visit and eat delicious food with the other part of my family.  I spent much time at the farmers market selecting our food for the evening, and we all pitched in to set the table and cook the food.  Here was our menu: curried butternut squash soup—spinach, feta and Israeli couscous salad with red wine vinaigrette—homemade honey oatmeal bread—garlic mashed potatoes—roasted acorn squash with sage butter—steamed green beans—french silk chocolate pie—apple raspberry pie.

photos:

1 paper garland

2 place setting

3 found natural materials

4 table

5 pie crust weaving

6 couscous salad

7 full plates

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in the fall

music: “the girl” by city and colour

We spent the past week in Indiana visiting my family, and although it was an adventure getting up there, we greatly appreciated the drop in temperatures, the changing colors of the leaves, and the time spent with loved ones.  After spending evenings outside on the porch drinking wine and eating delicious home-cooked, often locally produced food, I want to instill that sense of calm in our own home in the evenings: even with graduate school, working full time, and other stresses, we should strive to sit down and enjoy the cooler temperatures together, with nothing but our thoughts to keep each other company.  What is your resolution for this fall?

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from the week

I thought a lot this week about simplicity.  Given the recent stresses at work, I’ve tried my best to return to the small things in life that make each day memorable rather than another source of exasperation.  In a world surrounded by the new, the “must haves,” and the ever growing temptation to surround oneself with things, it can be difficult to wade in the sea and come up with a single, smooth rock, a piece of polished glass, or a white, unadorned shell.  And yet, in spite of all those voices seen and unseen encouraging me to give in to my desires for more, I find myself seeking the simplest things in life.  I look forward to those mornings when it’s time to start the next batch of bread: when I fit mixing the simple ingredients of salt, sugar, flour, yeast, and ice water into a bowl into my daily morning routine.

or when I find the tiniest tomato just ready to be plucked from the vine, after returning home from a busy day at work.

And then there are the amazingly beautiful things discovered, built by nature, that never cease to inspire: have you ever thought just how simple it is to build one’s home where you currently are, as the spider does, rather than moving along some imagined trajectory of success? As someone who moved nearly every 3 years growing up, I am finding the quiet joy in living in a place and letting myself settle into this life.

But I have found that no matter what each day brings, at the end of the day, there’s always a good book to curl up to, and that is just enough for me.

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small hurdles

These past few weeks have been really difficult at work.  There are so many hurdles in the public school system, that it’s hard to remember sometimes how much we teachers make a difference in the lives of the children we teach, especially when many are in a state of mind where teachers are the villains perpetuating a broken system.  I try not to fall into the trap of pessimism, but after weeks of feeling like you’re not making any progress, it can be tough to see any change at all.  So to try and work through these feelings of being stuck, I spent this past week documenting things in my life for which I am grateful, and for which I don’t have to explain myself or justify why I do it.  Like going to the farmers market today—this is how food is meant to be bought and consumed—with a simple greeting to a local farmer, a conversation about slaughtering practices, about a pig’s diet and life on the farm, and by a conscious choice of what your money buys and which you subsequently put in your mouth.

I have been a vegetarian for years, but over the summer, I decided I needed to learn all the things I could about meat, which included eating it.  As I like to know where my food comes from in general, and I am deeply concerned about slaughtering and other practices related to the meat industry, my exploration into all things meat has consisted of only one actual eating experience.  Today, however, I moved that count up to two after an in-depth conversation with a local farmer about raising pigs for meat.  Kevin and I ended up buying a sea-salt and celery cured German sausage, which I cut up later that morning and sauteed in a little olive oil for breakfast.  We paired the sausage with poached eggs topped with parmesan and slices of Arkansas Black apples, picked that morning.  Food grown with care, cooked with love, and eaten with vigor: this is something I am grateful for.

Week 4 or 5 (I can’t remember) of not buying bread but making our own: this is something I am grateful for.

Good, hard rain in intermittent spurts throughout an entire week so our weary plants can finally not have to work so hard to get the water they need: this is something I am grateful for.

Hours on the city bus and curled under a blanket in the mornings reading a book about a love of farming, of life, and of relearning all those forgotten skills—it helps to know that even though we are not yet able to live on our own parcel of land, that we will some day.  We can have chickens and bees, pigs and goats, and all those other wonderful aspects of simple life spent growing that I spend just about every moment dreaming and thinking of.  Oh how beautiful words can make everything right again, and how a single memoir can reinvigorate you to rethink and rethink: this is something I am grateful for.

And while we might not yet be able to grow the kind of life we want to in our apartment, we have evidence everywhere of things growing: from the little succulent garden transplanted earlier in the week, to the hot peppers that prolifically fill their containers, to the homemade food that graces our table almost every night of the week.  I look forward every day after work to coming home, where we have created such a peaceful and welcoming space: for this, I am grateful.

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a wedding gift

This weekend, Kevin and I are headed to Maryland for a wedding.  Yesterday, as I was finishing up work, I realized in our preparations for the trip, we had forgotten about a wedding gift.  Fortunately I was able to find their registry online, and when I saw a set of linen napkins, I immediately thought of making some simple table linens.  I have an entire bolt of unbleached linen, which was a gift years ago, so, using a cloth napkin of our own as a template, I cut out four squares from the linen.

I sewed a simple rolled hem to keep the edges of the linen from fraying.  Then, while at a meeting, I carved a linoleum block stamp.  Using textile printing ink and a brush, I stamped the linoleum block print onto the edge of the linen hem.

As the couple getting married had specified on their registry that they did not want any gift wrapping, Kevin had the brilliant idea of rolling the napkins up, and I fastened them with vintage lace and a piece of twine.  The simple wedding gift is now tucked away in our suitcase.