Baby Animal Day

My crazy dream: to move from "passively surviving winter" to "actively enjoying spring."
(Look at that "r" by the way! And that "et" in the ampersand!)

What better way to roar into spring than by attending Baby Animal Day at Billings Farm & Museum? Although its location in Woodstock, Vermont, is over 90 minutes from our house, it all turned out OK. (Spoiler: packing a picnic was a good idea.)

This little lamb in the sunshine inspired many visitor comments.
It is the day before Easter after all.

Sheep may safely graze

Mommy cows chillin. We learned that 2/3 of cows at the farm are
pregnant at any given time. It keeps them giving milk.

Older calves having a hay snack.

We had to wait in a huge line to see calves ranging from born
that very day (cute!) to 4 months old (also cute!)

The farm also has informational exhibits. I guess the exhibits
are for people who don't have children and therefore have time to read.
I took a picture of these olde tyme milke bottles for you.

Not a baby animal. Though maybe it's a baby lichen? Fungus composite things are amazing.
This was in the parking lot.

I can't visit Woodstock without hitting Gillingham's. It's your average general store, if your average general store includes EVERYTHING (wine, games, snacks, Quimper pottery, odd tableware, triscuits divided into fifty cent baggies, dog collars. I could go on...)

How is your Easter/Passover/Ostara/Whatnot weekend shaping up? Saturday stories??

Hearts of Palm & Avocado: A Light Salad

We had a birthday-lunch potluck at work! People brought delicious stuff. The theme was Slow Food from Costa Rica. I haven't been to Costa Rica, but I did some mad Googling and discovered that hearts of palm might be an authentic offering. With inspiration from Kalyn's Kitchen: Vegan Heart of Palm & Avocado Salad with Lime, Green Onion, and Cilantro, here's my version of a simple, light mix of hearts of palm with avocado.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans hearts of palm
• 3 ripe avocados
• 1 lemon
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• pinch smoked paprika
• pinch smoked serrano chile powder
• large pinch of salt

Assembly:

Please note that this salad starts to deliquesce if not eaten within about 4 hours, though it's nice to marinate it a little bit. I'd say make it 1-2 hours before serving.

First, cut hearts of palm into generous disks. Next, cut avocados into chunks. Below is my lemon juicer apparatus (blue item) and the lemon that I ROLLED vigorously into the board before cutting... to theoretically make it juicier.



Squeeze the lemon--this one yielded about 1/4 cup of juice. Add an equal amount of olive oil. Because it seemed too simple not to, I added pinches of paprika and smoked serrano chile powder. Also add salt. Then, WHISK.



Dress the hearts of palm. Because they're sturdier, I recommend stirring them around (or close container and gently shake) to get everything dressed before adding the delicate avocado.



Add the avocado chunks and gently fold in so everything is well dressed.



Here's my first plate of potluck food! My salad is lower left at 8 o'clock. I need to get the recipe for the amazing coconut-chicken stew seen at about 4 o'clock. Getting more of that was my second plate. It was SO GOOD.


Happy birthday JH and iP@!!! Thanks to everybody for the inspiring lunch!

Recipe or riff? Parsnip cakes

I blogged about riffing in the kitchen last summer when a quinoa salad just evolved (riffing is kind of the opposite of following a recipe I think). Here's another great invention that never would have happened without a certain odd confluence of leftovers. I can't even recommend trying to make this because it just has to be freestyle, but maybe the story is of interest! Let me tell the long tale of Parsnip Cakes.

My older child is five and when we go grocery shopping I sometimes try the trick of having her pick out a vegetable to try, thus investing her in the idea of actually eating it later. Once she picked an artichoke. Once she picked baby bok choy. Last week she chose parsnips, which I promised were kind of like mashed potatoes (totally beloved), but sweeter and... different.

Saturday was parsnip day. I boiled the heck out of our 3 parsnips so they'd be soft enough for my Foley Food Mill. I milled and milled to get about 2 tablespoons of gorgeous parsnip puree. I had also planned to serve mini farfalle, but our dinner still needed protein. The freezer came to the rescue as I thawed and sautéed a few handfuls of cooked shrimp. Complete meal served to children? Accomplished!

There were a few small issues however. It turns out that parsnips are very fibrous and there was a ton left in the upper part of the food mill, ostensibly rubbish but looking pretty edible. Plus (of course) my children did not eat much of their shrimp, so I had a good handful of chopped-up shrimp left over. Never mind what happened to the parsnips and pasta (one of these was dispatched quickly, not the other).

Parsnips and chopped shrimp reminded me a lot of dim sum--chopped shrimp is a prime ingredient in a lot of delicious fillings, and parsnips are kind of like turnips, which are used for turnip cakes. Hmmm.

The next day at lunchtime, I was ready to riff. Here's how it went down:

I combined the fibrous bits of 3 parsnips, 5-10 chopped leftover shrimps, a bit of red onion I was chopping anyway for a quinoa salad, a dab of kim chi because I didn't have any ginger, some garlic-chili paste, and some tamari. I mushed everything together. Then I heated peanut oil to very hot and formed 3 cakes, browning them on both sides. I served them to myself with a tamari + rice wine vinegar dip and a flourish.

Oh my goodness parsnip cakes are so good! I almost want to replicate them on purpose, but that wouldn't be right. But it is a very happy accident to come across a meltingly sweet, piping hot, super spicy, almost-dim-sum lunch on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

There is also something about the particular fibrousness of the parsnips plus
the seaside taste of shrimp that makes this very Faux Crab Cake. Delicious!!

So what's your riff? What have you made or eaten that wouldn't have happened without Fate or Leftovers making things possible?

Find the Castle!

Source: maybole.org via K. on Pinterest

I fell in love with this cute little castle in Maybole, Scotland. Then I took it a step further by visiting Maybole VIRTUALLY to poke around! It is perpetually spring there--frozen in April 2009 courtesy of Google Street View. My game is to play Find the Castle. It's easy.

1. Go to this page. http://www.maybole.org/guides/googlestreetview/index.htm

2. Use the directional cursors on your keyboard to navigate the town. If possible, just look at the Google Street View photos at the top of the screen, not the map below. (It seems possible to cheat.)

3. See how quickly you can find adorable Maybole Castle suddenly looming up in front of you! It is a very satisfying feeling.

After finding the castle, I tool around the Maybole streets and countryside. I found daffodils blooming on a roadside south of town. There's a cute little common by the railway station. It gets sunny on Drumellan Street, right by The Corner Pocket Snooker Hall. Just now I played again and, after finding the castle, I went down Kirkwynd and found an old ruined church just nestled among the blocks of flats. Oh Scotland!

Have you explored someplace with Google Street View, especially someplace you've never been? I want to go to Maybole now! (You can even get inside the Metropolitan Museum with Google Street View, I discovered.)

St. Valentine's lament

A long time ago there was a bookstore in our town called Collected Works. They had a great author program, and we saw people from local to national celebrities read there: Donald Hall, Colum McCann, Frances Moore Lappé, Verandah Porche, Wynn Cooper. The Colum McCann reading in particular was memorable because later that night I saw him stumbling into a bar declaiming Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse." That's exactly what I thought published authors should be doing.

Anyway, at the height of their literary influence, Collected Works held a "Valentine's Poem" contest. I'm thinking for Valentine's Day 1996. I knew that I wanted to write a poem called "The Moon Over Birge Street," but the words didn't come to me until 2011. Collected Works was long gone, and I'd just heard a Gillian Welch interview on "Fresh Air." At that moment, my 1996 Valentine's Day poem finally coalesced in my mind. I like to sing it as a twangy folk number.

The Moon Over Birge Street

If I was pregnant when we parted
We would have a child
Two years of age
Four months five days
If I was pregnant when we parted
We would have a child by now.

He would not know you
And I wouldn't too
I don't know you now
Or I would know how
We could have parted
We could have parted at all.

And the moon over Birge Street
It just bears down
And the moon over Birge Street
In the slow frozen night
And the moon over Birge Street
It just bears down on me.

I heard she has given you
Two of your own
Two of your own
And one is two years old
Is it true she has given you
Two of your own by now.

Drinking in the kitchen
Smoking in the yard
Singing this song
It still seems hard
That we should be parted
That we should be parted at all.

And the moon over Birge Street
Bears down on me
And the moon over Birge Street
On Valentine's Day
And the moon over Birge Street
It just bears down on me.

Avocado toast and other simple breakfasts

When my brother-in-law J (who is the cooking part of Fresh from the Fridge) comes to visit, I know I'm going to try some new foods. Maybe I'll even be encouraged to eat fruit. That's cool, because he lives in California and brings exotic items like persimmons and kumquats and Reed avocados. This past holiday season one of the latter was perfectly ripe, and avocado toast was born late one post-Christmas evening. It's so darn good, it also works as a delicious breakfast. Feel like a nice greasy egg sandwich? Try avocado toast, man. I think it's even vegan!

Recipe: Slather ripe avocado on your favorite toasted bread. Drizzle with olive oil. Top with generous sprinkles of Magic Salt. (Magic salt was my DIY holiday gift. Basically it's the most delicious salt ever, made by blending salt, garlic and herbs in a food processor and letting the mixture dry out.)


While I'm at it, here's another simple breakfast I had back on Thanksgiving morning. Thinly sliced cucumber, thinly sliced daikon radish. Rye bread. Tea. Getting ready for a big day of eating ahead, this was light, cool, and crisp.



Simple breakfasts--what do you think?

Haggis Stew (Slow Cooker Lamb 'n Oats)

It has been years since I had haggis, "Great chieftain o' the puddin-race." It was in Scotland on my honeymoon--we had haggis several times and I thought it was great. I would like some right now.

With Robbie Burns Day in the recent past (January 25) and steel-cut oats in the cupboard, the least I could do was invent a slow-cooker recipe with haggis-y overtones. Mainly, it contains sheep bits and lots of oats. Note that steel-cut oats are key, with rolled oats this would just be mush.

Ingredients

• 1 cup steel-cut oats, soaked overnight in lots of water and then drained
• 2-3 carrots, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced (include leaves if you like)
• 1 potato, diced
• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 lamb shoulder chop (cheaper than stew meat, just cut out the bone and cube)
• 1 small can chicken broth (or water, or lots of broth, or bouillon)
• 1 bay leaf
• pinch of rosemary, crushed
• salt & pepper to taste

Assembly

1. First, note this is a trick recipe where you have to do something at least 8 hours beforehand (soak the oats). If you do this the night before, you can assemble the stew in the morning and have it for dinner.
2. Place the vegetables (carrot, celery, potato) and drained oats in your slow cooker.
   
3. Sauté the onion on olive oil. When it becomes glassy, add the lamb cubes. Brown. Deglaze with the chicken stock (or water or whatever you're using). Add all to slow cooker.
4. Add bay leaf and rosemary. Make sure there is enough liquid to fully cover because the oats will expand quite a bit. That means add some extra stock/water if your deglazing liquid does not seem adequate.
   
5. Turn to low and cook for 8 hours. If possible, stir during the day and add more liquid if things look too gummy. You can add liquid even at the last minute to get it to the right texture to serve. Add salt & pepper.
   

Serve with a side of oatmeal! Just kidding. A beer would be nice though.

Clubs with Me as a Member

Clubs have the promise of consistency. You don't accomplish things just once, but regularly and with help and support (unless you're the only member...). However, I am also pretty fussy and impatient and do not usually do well with other people's agendas. That's why I like to start my own clubs. Here are some clubs I've founded or joined at the very beginning.

The ALS: Animal Lover's Society. I think I was the only member though I may have issued memberships to my parents. I was about 10. From what I recall, the club's main purpose was to cut out and keep pictures of animals from catalogs and flyers received in the mail. Also I did chores to raise money to send to various organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. I liked to send $5 to $10 at a time, and would get my parents to write the checks.

AAE: Americans Against Executives. I founded this with my friend Annie when I was 15. Basically we didn't like corporations and chose to express it with our logo of a fellow in a trenchcoat and hat carrying a briefcase, with a big slash over him. We believed in the free distribution of capital and goods, or something like that. We'd been reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe at the time.

STOP: Save Trees or Perish. This had something to do with hiding in trees and then jumping out at people who might want to cut them down. They weren't even endangered Redwoods or clearcutting, just average trees around the neighborhood. I have since reversed some of my feelings on this--I think it's OK to remove some trees sometimes, especially if they're not well, or if they're IN MY WAY.

Plant Club: As a grownup, my friend Erica and I went on Field Guide expeditions to explore wild plants in our area. We had 2-3 meetings that involved lying in fields with our books, taking notes, and discussing things like Brassicas and sepals.

Sewing Club: This was probably my most successful club. My friend Traci and I met a fair number of times to do sewing projects. We alternated houses. We made diaper covers, boxer shorts, quilts, placemats, gifts, languishing projects that are still not finished... We managed to keep it up even after we had children, until she moved to the other end of the state. I miss you Traci!

Book Club: This seemed like a great idea--4 smart fun women get together every month to talk about books. Except we had very different ideas about what we wanted to read. I wanted best-sellers, the "popular" books I would never pick up otherwise. Others wanted to get some classics under their belts. As an English major I had zero interest in reading Dickens ever again. Actually I didn't want to read anything published before 1990.

Mix-Tape Club: Some clever people got together via email and organized a mix-tape exchange... except everything was on CD of course. We would choose a theme, then half of us would create CDs on that theme. The best thing to come out of it was the song "Beef & Broccoli" by Immortal Technique that showed up during our fruits & veggies round. (Thanks Chad!)

Running Club: Another great idea that was not exactly a failure! I and another mommy succeeded in getting up at 6 am and running 2 miles on several occasions! However, we were not able to keep this up for long.

Winter meadow

Source: angielewin.co.uk via K. on Pinterest

A few years ago, even though I had no money to spare at the time, I could not resist buying this Angie Lewin card because the design was so beautiful. I hung it at my desk and it made me happy.

Now that I'm trying out Pinterest, I'm discovering more and more Angie Lewin images, and also that I really love the look of dead Queen Anne's Lace, and dried up leathery milkweed, and prickly crunchy teasels, and tall faded meadow plants like that. At the same time, I've decided I would like to try to get back into rug hooking (I made 1.5 rugs in 2003 and then never picked it up again). Perfect rug subject: My own version of an Angie Lewin weed scene--dead weeds. I made a draft rug sketch and had a discussion about the whole idea with my daughter. Today, on a still-snowless clear blue January day, we decided to make a special expedition to find some of these beauties for ourselves, and maybe get some rug inspiration on the way. Here are some photos from our winter meadow research.

Stalks with round wasp galls might be a cool motif.

I'd love to have milkweed somehow coming right out of the rug.

Queen Anne's Lace, you gorgeous old thing

Some more old ladies in profile

Mullein stalks! Another interesting idea. They're like the saguaros of Vermont. Kind of.

Mullein close up. These must have been about 8 feet tall. Super fabulous.

Favorite Songs of 2011

Nuclear Seasons: Charli xcx

I haven't ranked these songs, but "Nuclear Seasons" is pretty far up there for me this year. British electro-pop sensation Charli xcx nails this one with a dark late 80s sound reminiscent of the days when good, strange music could only be found through someone who knew someone who was on college radio.

CharliXCX - Nuclear Seasons by charlixcx


Hey Sparrow: Peaking Lights

Slow and wispy, this is a little like "Heart & Soul" played on a kalimba--there's a nice plinky, repetitive thing going on. Breathy background music.

Hey Sparrow by Peaking Lights


Better Off Without You: Summer Camp

This song makes me laugh. It has the boppy throwback sound that seems to be going around (like the Dum dum girls). Also it's a breakup celebration song. I'm so happy you're gone! Stop calling! Tee hee.

Summer Camp - Better Off Without You by Webzine Obstacle


Thankless Thing: Wild Beasts

This is mostly on my list because I love Wild Beasts and their forays into the falsetto-sphere. This song is quite mellow for my taste, but also gorgeous and pretty irresistible. Find them on Facebook!

Wild Beasts - Thankless Thing by DominoRecordCo


Yellow Missing Signs: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

I posted about this on Facebook and it was pointed out to me that it seems to be about justice for serial murder victims. Which is not a bad thing, but I'd only been listening to the music, some excellent raw synth pop straight out of 1985.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Yellow Missing Signs by Polyvinyl Records


100 Other Lovers: DeVotchKa

DeVotchKa have a lovely happy gypsy-ish sound. Apparently they came to fame on the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack. This song is quietly propulsive.

DeVotchKa - 100 Other Lovers by antirecords


Beat and the Pulse: Austra

Toronto's Katie Stelmanis seems just amazing. Super-talented, the unplugged piano sessions released in the fall prove she can make awesome electro-pop without even needing the electro. This song is another big 2011 favorite.

Austra - Beat And The Pulse by bluepumpkin aka antennica


Bunhill Fields: Amor de Dias

Bunhill Fields is a London cemetery for dissenters apparently. The song seems appropriately pensive and atmospheric, with the occasional sweeping cello and piano statement. It's lovely pop.

Amor De Días - "Bunhill Fields" by OctopusWindmill


Don't Stop: The Dodos

These two guys worked with Neko Case on their album, though this song is just them. And it's great! They have some interesting percussion things going on... drumsticks? Don't Stop has a lot of layers and noise and energy, appropriate for the name.

The Dodos 'Don't Stop' by Wichita Recordings


Let's Go: Mike & Cody

Every best-songs list has to have a big club banger, right? This song makes me want to jump up and down and drink gin & tonics made fluorescent by the club black lights. Let's Go!!

Let's Go! by mikeandcody

Christmas Playlist

Maybe I get kind of fanatical about Christmas music. I'll admit it. Growing up, our rule was that Christmas music could be played from after Thanksgiving dinner until the end of Christmas Day. Such a short window makes Christmas music extra special. Nowadays I impose this rule with gusto, listening almost exclusively to Christmas music all month long until other family members start making remarks. My favorites change with the years--here are some I'm enjoying now!

Corelli's Christmas concerto. It's only about 15 minutes long and instrumental, but sounds totally like Christmas to me. Just look for Corelli's Concerto Grosso in G minor Op. 6/8 on your average baroque mixtape.

Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols. I like the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers version found on their Angels on High CD. The rest of the CD is great too.



A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio. What a classic. This year I also bought the piano music to learn.



Klingende Weihnacht. My father spent time in Germany in the 60s and I think this record came out of that experience. It has been part of my Christmases as long as I can remember, and the sound of the little German children singing ROCKS my every December.



Noels Celtiques: Celtic Christmas Music from Brittany, Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde. This album is so beautiful it sometimes makes me cry. The northern tippy-top part of France has Scottish connections, and they can be heard in these transfiguring songs that sometimes include bagpipes.



Christmas with the Rat Pack. Frank, Dean-o and Sammy take turns belting 'em out on this swinging collection.



Verve Presents: The Very Best of Christmas Jazz. John Coltrane Quartet, Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn, Dinah Washington... in a word: awesomesauce. Jimmy Smith's drawbar organ version of "Jingle Bells" is a total treat.



Christmas Album, Nat "King" Cole. This guy's voice is like buttah. A perennial favorite.



A Very Siúcra Christmas. This is a recent find at a used CD store, apparently from around 2002. A folky-Celtic trio, Siúcra is quickly growing on us as a new Christmas staple. There are some new Christmas songs I've never heard before, like the "Cherry Tree Carol" that makes new sense of the miracle plays I had to read in college. (Why DID the baby have cherries in his hand at the end of the play? This song answers the question.) The talented lead singer Beth Leachman got an adorable Vows wedding writeup in the NYT in 2009: click here to read.



Baroque Christmas Music. I found this at the library. The name about says it all. My cup of tea.



The Little Drummer Boy, by the Harry Simeone Chorale. Let me just say that "The Little Drummer Boy" is the most hideous Christmas song ever, in my opinion. However this gospel-like album of medleys (that sounds terrible, but it's good!) gets really rollicking in places!


Tell me what Christmas music you like! You don't even have to be Christian to have a favorite song or two. Heck, I'm some sort of witchy pagan sun-worshiper myself.

Holiday Crafts

I'm always trying to simplify Christmas, I don't know why. I should probably just accept its complexities! One great year was when my mom and I didn't get a tree, but strung lights on the coffee table and put our gifts beneath that. Craziness! These days, with children and an extended family, I'm still trying to make things easy yet special. Last year my equation was that each person would get: one homemade thing, one purchased thing (modestly priced), and food. I collected ideas from blogs and my ancient stash of abandoned projects. Here are a few examples of DIY gifts from last year. I've been waiting since then to share them!

Project: Stuffed Ornaments
Sometime in the early 80s someone gave me fabric that had Christmas toys printed on it. You were supposed to cut them out and sew them together with ribbon to make cute stuffed ornaments. Fast forward about 30 years to when I rediscovered this fabric with my sewing stuff. Santa brought two for each child--stuffed toys are excellent stocking stuffers!



Project: Boxer Shorts
Is it too much information to share that I make all of a certain person's underwear for him from a worn and loved Butterick boxers pattern? The best part about homemade boxers is the mad fabric choices that are possible. One year I made boxers with adorable otters on them floating in a sea of blue. Another time I made boxers sporting multicolored jalapeños. Here, please note one pair has an idyllic village pattern with little houses and copses scattered about.


Project: Painted Spoons
Design Mom inspired me to encourage our older child to make her own presents for family members. One of our first (hopefully of many) projects was to paint these spoons with spots and stripes. We left the stirring part of the spoon plain so nobody would have to eat paint. We also sealed the painted section with a coat of non-toxic clear stuff. (I will have to dig around to figure out what it was called...)


Project: Road Rug
I'm not sure if I like how this turned out. It is just some traffic fabric from the quilting store that I backed with plain blue cloth and sewed together. Cool, except with our hardwood floors it slides around and is really hard to play on. But it could be a good roll-up road to use outside or where there's carpeting.


Project: Porcelain Pens
I am most proud of this one. I got the basic idea from Design Mom, who explains how to make monogrammed mugs using porcelain markers from Michael's and plain white china from the thrift store. I made my own trip to Michael's and sure enough, found these neat markers that are like thin sharpies for ceramic. The best part is: everything is totally adjustable and erasable until it's how you want it, then you bake it briefly to set.

For this mug for Grandpa, we decided to add his grandchildren's hands as part of the design. First I traced the hands and cut them out.

I taped the hand stencils to the mug.

We traced around them with black porcelain pen.

Here's the basic tracing. I may have been the main handler of the porcelain pens up until this point.

Then I handed the pens over to Miss Monkey, who did her own decorating (with some help when requested).

All three grandparent gifts. If you like the ancient Greek egg-and-dart motif on the bottom of the slim vase, I take all the credit.

Project: Embroidered Tea Towel
This was also a satisfying project, many many years in the making. I got these tea towels to embroider when I was about 10, and did not finish them until my second maternity leave.

Project: Homebrew
I posted a photo essay about this early in the year -- great gift for some special uncles.


Project: Baked Goods
We packed up a bunch of lovingly recycled Christmas tins with a selection of holiday treats baked by 3 generations of ladies, me being the middle generation. (Thanks mom!) We made:

• lebkuchen
• fruitcake
• shortbread
• my signature oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookie recipe
  

Thanks for reading! I have some more ideas for this year, though not being on maternity leave I will not be as prolific this time. What are your fave DIY gifts to make--or receive?