OK, so it's been 5 months since my last post...I'll admit that that is sort of ridiculous. But, I'll catch you up. I've been working a lot on getting the farm at Uncommon Ground going. We've been working with the Waldorf School, planting, harvesting, winterizing, and planning and planning and planning for this next season to come about. It's been a long 5 months, but now that spring is on the horizon all that work will be worth it. Don't forget to link over to eatthisgrowthat.blogspot.com and follow along in the progress of the farm!

September: M and I travelled to Portland, OR to check out the scene there, but first stopped in San Francisco and visited my cousin and ate at Dottie's True Blue. Yum. They have the fast pancake flipper working for them, I was in awe. One day, I told myself, one day I can flip pancakes with the speed and agility that he can. Well, maybe not, but I sure will eat them. We toured around the Mission, ate breakfast at Tartine, saw a lot of incredible murals, ate fantastic burritos and then shopped our hearts out at Paxton Gate, where we aquirred a lovely beaver skull and some Japanese gardening scissors. After taking the streetcars everywhere we could we hopped a train to Portland. Everyone should take the chance to travel by train through the Pacific Northwest, it's stunning. Although, M will argue that I slept most of the way, I actually saw a lot and took some pictures. He worked on the table design for the Deceptive Design show that he was in in October.

Portland was fantastic, somewhere we both want to move to, just not quite yet. The music, the beer, the insane farmers market (complete with a biscuits and gravy stand!), all of it was perfect. We stayed at the Ace Hotel, which was amazing and we ate the Clyde Commons, which was also amazing. The food was perfectly seasoned and the wine paired nicely. We spent our days riding bikes and bookstore hopping and getting new haircuts in fancy barber chairs. What's not to love? One of the days we drove out to the coast and hung out on the misty beach watching the birds and the waves. We stopped at a roadside stand and bought salmon jerky and then fell in love with the place all over again. One day we will live there, I know it.

October brought a roadtrip to Austin with my dear friend Tim, he moved there, I drove the U-Haul. It was quick but fun and we had some fantastic cupcakes at an Airstream trailer, which is maybe the best idea ever. There is some nice architecture happening in Austin and the warm weather can't be beat. We also got a chance to see a fantastic burlesque-ish bluegrass-ish band called the White Ghost Shivers, which rocked our socks off.

November...hmmm...it was mellow comparitively, but lots of work....

December came with holidays spent in Wisconsin, skiing in Wisconsin (what a trip) and ENGAGEMENT!!! M proposed in the snow on a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere with a hand crafted procelain ring. What more could a girl ask for? It was dreamy and perfect and made me cry. He's a keeper for sure...

January, too, passed fairly quick and now we are at February. It is raining out (so strange) and I am loving it. I just switched positions at the restaurant and am now going to be the Farm Director. It's really nice to know I'll have my hands in dirt all summer and that I'm contributing to sustainable food systems in a really positive and real way. More on that at my other blog eatthisgrowthat.blogspot.com

Stay tuned...it won't be another 5 months before I post again, I promise.

jumbles of words

there are summer days that are meant for running and then there are some that are meant for lounging in the cool grass. these photos are from a running around day of enjoying new friends at the Chicago Honey Co-op tomato potluck dinner fundraiser for Terra Madre. a beautiful slice of apiary heaven on Chicago's less than perfect west side.

also the lounging summer fare, a game of scrabble. m only beat me by five points on this one. but i spelled ai, which is a three-toed sloth, in case you're wondering. and vrouw, which is a dutch woman. i picture her with a white hat on, but do what you will in your own mind with such a fun yet reasonable word.

I have taken akin to this line of poetry from Before the Storm by Louise Gluck, so I thought I'd share it outloud:

The mountain stands like a beacon, to remind the night that the earth exists,

that it mustn’t be forgotten.

it's a lovely summary of thought.

my own small urban farmstead

So it's been a few weeks since the last post and a lot has happened! To start with, I went on an amazing tour of City Farm here in Chicago. The farm is situated on a city lot that is in a residential and commercial area that borders Cabrini Green. They have all kinds of goodies growing there, from tomatoes and basil to squash and many varieties of peppers and even honeybees! The tour was put on by Angelic Organics Farm and went from City Farm to the Green City Market and concluded with lectures by the farmer coordinator of the market and then a book reading from Holley Bishop and her book, Robbing the Bees. (which of course I am now reading!) It was a lovely day and we were able to enjoy the full summer sun and the products it helps produce!

I have also been in the kitchen, just a little. I made a few rustic nectarine and blueberry tarts that turned out quite beautiful. But, how could they not, both the nectarines and blueberries have been nothing short of divine this year! I've also been slightly addicted to sun tea. It is that time of year I suppose. The cat however, not so sure about the tea. (ha!)

And, in the garden, I have harvested my first round of peppers, continue to eat the sugar snack tomatoes and am about to take in the first eggplants! All of the plants have new flowers and babies on them, which means they must like the fire escape methods I've been employing. Maybe I'm onto something here!

good, clean, fair

A few nights ago I attended a dinner event at Uncommon Ground here in Chicago. The event was entirely based on local farms and products, with Seedling Farm being the main producer. I cannot express how excited I am about how gorgeous this dinner was, how amazing their roof top garden is (complete with honey bees!) or how much I stand behind their decisions of how to do business. The evening started with a tour of their garden on the roof, custom built boxes line the edges and then fill the center of a very large space and contain everything from Pruden's Purple Tomatoes to Chocolate Peppers to a Chicago Fig tree (which is built for our nasty winters!). They served sangria with some sort of beautiful gingerale in it and passed mini crostinis with proscuitto and cherries, lettuce wraps with fresh veggies and some sort of croquetta made with pork. After letting the sun soak into our skin and the plant beds, we went downstairs to the dining room and began the four course dinner.

I've scanned the menu in for you to see, the salmon was out of this world and came out on planks of cherry or pear wood! The first pairing was a house-made melon infused North Shore Vodka with a proscuitto rim, so perfect and lovely.

More so even than the food, what I enjoyed the most was the passion that Helen and Michael Cameron have for their restaurant and for sustainability. It was inspiring to see all the chefs come out from the kitchen to be introduced to the diners and appreciated for their amazing work. Seeing the gardeners and farmers enjoying dinner with everyone, the community made at this dinner, was refreshing. There was really good food, without any of the pretension that sometimes accompanies this type of event. The attention to practices that they can stand behind and speak elegantly about made it worth it for me to be there. I thoroughly recommend dining at either of the Uncommon Ground restaurants in the city and supporting the kind food we all should be eating, the kind that is good, clean and fair.

things that make us feel big and those that remind us we are small

It's been almost a week since my last post and my how the garden grows! My eggplants look like they are off to join the circus, they have become contortionists and I have my first harvest of baby tomatoes ~ all 10 of them! Which I will be incorporating into supper tonite with the patty-pan squash I bought at the farmer's market today and some of my rapid certainly responded to it with a great bounty of product, returning the thanks I suppose growing basil. Last week I put worm poop on the soil of all the veggies and they have.

My friend Karen and I have decided to start a new blog book club so we can read and converse on the on-line long distance (she's headed to Milwaukee!). I purchased our first book today for a penny, which I was thrilled with, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 edition. I think it'll be a particularly good summer read due to the fact that there are a lot of goodies in it that are shorter. I find that my summer attention gets grabbed easily into watching the bees and trees and that I read like I eat, lighter and with attention on whats fresh. I am super excited! Right now I am reading Montessori Today by Paula Polk Lillard. It focuses on the basic approaches to Montessori education and has been really interesting. I'll share a few quotes that led me into a few of those 'hmmmm, I need to think more about this'/watch the bees/daydream about honey locust trees moments;
"Adults work to change the environment; children use the environment to change themselves."

I love this. I think we need to remember that in order to change our world we need to let it change us a little too, we can't be out of balance with it or it just won't work. Don't you think so?

"The formation of imagination is rooted in sensorial experience. it is the ability to picture material objects or real experiences in their absence, to see in the mind what we no longer see, to hear what we no longer hear. We take these images and make new mental creations from them. However, in order to do this we need to have had previous experience of these images."

So important, I think, in the realm of design (of life!) and the experience with "things" or objects or cultures that we need in order to have a better understanding of how we function with those objects and how we can rethink their purpose or use for the better.

By the way, there are Eames postage stamps at the post office right now and they are lovely. I sent out some thank you notes with them a few days ago and they made my envelopes look fancy.

staked out

I have had to re-stake the tomato plants, their going wild! They certainly can have a mind of their own, but the wind is the real boss. It's been pushing them around, so I staked them higher and then tied them to the fire escape, no more blowing in the wind! The tomatoes have new baby blooms that hopefully will dawn new baby fruits and the peppers are getting huge. The eggplants are the most impressive so far.

ginger and lemongrass

Since returning from Japan I have been craving soups and rice. Generally speaking when I return from a trip I am so sick of the food from wherever it was that I won't eat it for months. This time all I want is fresh fish and beautiful broths with seaweed in it.
So, I've been creating in the kitchen and have come up with a tasty soup that reminds me of being there. This is the generally recipe for it, it's great on a slightly chilled rainy summer night.

Ginger and Lemongrass Soba Noodle Soup
1/2 a package of soba noodles
2 tsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. veggie oil
2 T. fresh minced ginger
2 T. chopped scallions (some for the soup, some for garnish)
a dozen or so Shitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps quartered
one stalk of lemongrass, chopped into 2-3 inch pieces and the bulb flattened with a knife
a healthy handful of spinach or cabbage, whatever you may fancy
4 cups chicken stock (you can use veggie stock too)
2 tsp. rice wine vinegar
3-4 tsp. soy sauce (I"ve been substituting Braggs Amino Acids, it's a little healthier)
a dash of sesame seeds, for garnish

Cook soba noodles according to the package, then drain and run cold water over them. Toss with sesame oil and let sit.

Heat veggie oil in deep pan or wok to a medium heat, add ginger and 2/3's of the scallions and cook until the ginger becomes slightly transparent. Add shitake mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes, allowing them to become slightly soft. Add chicken stock, rice wine vinegar and soy sauce. Cook for 5-7 minutes, until mushrooms become soft. Add spinach or cabbage and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, divide into bowls and then add a handful of the soba noodles. Top with remaining scallions and sesame seeds.
Enjoy your quick easy delicious soup!

folk and roots and sangria

a small group of friends went to the Folk&Roots Festival in Welles park yesterday. There was an invitational fiddle competition that was amazing! these people could play! the weather was perfect, super sunny (almost a little too sunny) and there is nothing better than laying on a picnic blanket with fresh summer fruits and veggies and absorbing all the rays. it defined summer for all of us. one of the best moments was dancing to White Mule, one of the fiddle bands in the dance tent. lots of dos-e-do's and ringing of the dishrag to be had by all. we indulged in a lot of beer and mussels at the Hopleaf afterwards and then enjoyed a long bike ride home in the warm summer evening.

some kyoto

i thought i would begin to share some images from my recent trip to Japan...i'll start with Kyoto [and a little bit of Nara]. so beautiful and thoughtful. every corner was a new experience. these include Todai-ji [the largest wood structure held together with only joinery, no nails!], and sushi.

also, a visit to Ryoan-ji, a rock garden and temple.
the wood floors at Ryoan-ji have been buttered by the oils of thousands of pairs of feet, the patina is amazing. the stone steps that lead to the temple allow an elegant amount of thinking space before you reach the demanding but soulful temple front, which immeadiately asks for your intention in entering. the rock garden is simple and to some it may be a let down, but if you sit and stare it follows a lovely narrative about the relationship of each rock to one another. the raked rocks emphasize this narrative path.

new fruits

i have three tomatoes! after a lot of dirt was spilled on the sidewalk out front, i have fruit box flower beds that are already producing goodies. the three peppers are all blooming into sexy sprouts of green and the eggplant is starting to drop into place too. my basil was so happy that i cut it back and had to give it away.
the cat is loving on the papyrus plant, strange, but who am i to judge.