Category Archives: Flowers in a Frothing Green

To Have Fun With Anyone

Posted by Tata on

Here in the Northeast, a chill is in the air. I’m relieved to say so, since it’s late October and last week it was inexplicably over 80 degrees for a few days. You know what autumn for realz means: leaves will fall and you will eat soup. This is not a recipe, but it plays one on TV.

First: go to a farm, a farmstand or a farmers market. Talk to a farmer! Farmers are so interesting! Pick out your favorite soup vegetables, even better if they’re organic. Which vegetables? Well, ask yourself this tricky question: Hey, you, what things are delicious? Then buy those. The farmer wins!

Prepare your vegetables for roasting. You may peel things. Here, I peeled a butternut squash and a passel of apples. I chopped up the peels and fed them to the chickens. The chickens win! I quartered onions and saved the tops and peels for stock. Future Me wins! Then I added spices I like, salt, pepper, bay leaves, a cinnamon stick and fennel seeds to my vegetables, swished them all with olive oil and roasted them at 350 until the squash was fork tender. My house smelled great, so again: I win!

Oh fennel seeds, you complete me.

Dewy glam shot of roasted vegetables. Everyone loves an ensemble cast.

I let these cool, pulled out the bay leaves and cinnamon stick, then I pureed my vegetables with an immersion blender. Those are fun to play with, so I win again! Then I simmered my velvety puree, added some apple juice until I was happy with the texture and seasoned until I was super happy. Happiness is good, so I win again!

 

Seriously, this is so pretty I'm almost embarrassed.

I added matchsticks of swiss cheese and a chiffonade of basil, which means I chopped them up with a sharp knife, which you can do! Everyone wins!

To summarize:

  • the farmer wins
  • the chickens win
  • future Me wins
  • I win
  • I continue to win
  • I win again
  • you win
  • everyone wins!

Finally, Pete, who is a chef and sometimes is sick of cooking, had a fine meal without having to lift a hand. Pete wins!

So: this isn’t a recipe, it’s a method. You can make yourself really good food for truly next to nothing, and besides you, a whole lot of people and critters win. Go, you!

The Docks Are All Swarming

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Unabashed eavesdropping! Unabashed!

Siobhan’s laid up in the local hospital. Pete had errands to run and hates hospitals, so he dropped me off, barely slowing the car enough for me to make a heroic leap. I brought her coffee and flirted with the occupational therapist. Afterward, Pete and I got to have lunch together like two people who do that. At the next table, a man I couldn’t see told his companions about the time his house was burglarized. “It was a long time ago,” he said.

They're talking about me. I just know it.

SO GREEN!

He and his wife were upstairs when someone broke in and they caught him. The burglar got away.

“Did you ever get your property back?” a voice asked.

“No, he didn’t get much. A computer, part of my wallet, some credit cards. I didn’t get that back.”

But the story took a remarkable turn: the burglar came back the next night. The man’s wife was folding laundry and saw the burglar trying to get break in, right in front of her. They called the police and the burglar was arrested. He did five years.

I dig the fringe.

Come here often, sailor?

 

I’m thinking the burglar could’ve benefitted from some vocational training. Obviously, he was really bad at crime. And locksmithing. Perhaps he could have become a fine plumber.

 

 

He Turns Down the Street

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Cute little murder monster

Baby trash panda looks totally adorable when not lunging for me.

The raccoons have been gently evicted from the eaves of our house and relocated to a more rural locale. We hope for the best for them, but at least one did not have the best survival instincts. Fingers crossed, they live long, happy lives, full of delightful and mysterious leftovers. We hope so, but they couldn’t stay here. Pete found one of the babies inside the chicken run, nibbling chicken food, near very alarmed chickens, so that had to be the end of that.

 

I have one more week of American Sign Language class. Earlier this evening, I suddenly realized I’d acquired enough of the basics to tell a story. As you know, stories are my thing; being able to tell a story is kind of hip, kind of cool, kind of Charlie. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell a story in class, which would be much like tearing off my Foster Grants to reveal my superhero identity, but since I am a middle-aged person, I have zero doubt my young classmates will notice a bird, a plane, Superman.

 

Their Battered Dreams To Heaven

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I’m three weeks into a six week college course. My co-workers joke that three weeks have flown by. To me, it feels like I’ve been at this for months, in a quonset hut in Antarctica, and, when daylight lasts six months, when did I last feed the penguins?

Agog, aghast.jpg

The look I get when I don’t know all the words to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

 

My teacher pointed at me and asked why I’m not taking the second summer semester of American Sign Language. I said, “I didn’t know I could,” but I meant I think I might have a nervous breakdown. Next time you’re tempted to tell a toddler to get a grip, realize that language acquisition is no day at the beach.

 

The Darkness of Everybody’s Life

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The American Sign Language class I’m taking involves improbable amounts of studying, possibly because I’m not a child prodigy anymore. Even so, spring is in the air. Strawberries are in the markets and leaves are on the grapevines. After work today, Pete and I stopped at the secret organic garden one town over, where we have permission to trim the grapevines that are slowly turning a garden gate into a fragrant wall. Pete brought my left-handed scissors, but the gates were seven feet tall, leaves were mostly out of my reach and Pete’s pruning shears won the day. We stuffed our tools and unusual produce into the trunk of Pete’s car and drove home.

seasons greenings.jpg

This evening, Drusy went missing for more than half an hour. I should say we realized we hadn’t seen her in some time and frantically searched the house for her. She is so tiny she had tucked herself into a little corner under Pete’s desk in the attic and fallen asleep. Pete crawled around with a flashlight while I struggled with panic. When he found Drusy, she seemed impatient with us for disrupting her beauty sleep.

The task at hand, however, was more pleasant. Before I go hog wild on weeds, I like to find good instructions. This lady seems pleasant and methodical, so I took <a href=”http://www.maureenabood.com/2013/06/05/how-to-identify-clean-and-store-fresh-grape-leaves/”>her advice.</a> I cut leaves off vines, grouped them by size, wrapped them in cellophane and froze them in freezer bags, careful to label them precisely. It’s a drag to find an unlabeled freezer bag in January and toss the contents, but sometimes I do make mistakes.

 

 

 

 

Calling A Name That’s Lighter

Posted by Tata on

Pete and I left the house this morning, determined to buy little plants at the farm, and to find the feed store out in scenic Hillsborough. Neither of us knows that town well, so we interrupted a young police officer, who seemed convinced that directing traffic around a serious accident on a narrow canal road was more important than pointing codgers to tractor supplies. This worked out okay, but he looked us over and I saw something in his eye that said if I hadn’t been crocheting, he might’ve given directions including a sharp right into the canal.

Portrait of the Artist As A Person Puzzled By Cloudy Cuba Last January

Portrait of the Artist As A Person Puzzled By Cloudy Cuba Last January

Turns out, we weren’t going to that store. We were going to a different store I had never heard of at the other end of the same rolling avenue. There, I had this conversation with a person who walked around Pete to talk to me:

Crazy-Looking Employee Who Approached Me Because I Look Crazy: Are you finding everything you’re looking for?
Tata: We’re looking for better methods to give our chickens water.
CLEWAMBILC: What method are you currently using?
Tata: A bowl.

Every problem you have ever had has been solved by a million people and at least some of them were really smart. Also: some of them were not smart enough to reach for duct tape. We found that other people trying to hydrate chicken had found plastic bottles, ceramic bowls and metal water silos. Then we found unusual seeds, apt fencing and went home to ask ourselves what had just happened, but now with better ways to give chickens fresh water.

I hope those accident victims were okay.

You Don’t Know What You

Posted by Tata on

Strange turn of events: two chickens have joined our flock, and by flock, I mean pride of pussycats. These chickens came from a previous address, where a benefactor had decided they were meat, but residents named the chickens, making them pets. It’s a sentimental distinction. You could have a pig, name it Precious Loveydovey and still look forward to delicious smoky bacon. Many people do. These chickens came here last Sunday and already Pete’s collected four eggs; when he has eight, we will bake a celebratory souffle. I’m thinking it’ll be broccoli.

Our eyes met across an empty coop.

Our eyes met across an empty coop.

The arrival of the egg-laying chickens has caused us to reevaluate the chore chart at the Handmade House. The hens eat dandelion greens, other weeds and bugs and produce eggs. I have asked the cats what they contribute to the household. I can’t be 100% certain, but I believe they’re secretly updating their resumes.