A berry good day

Alchemy waiting outside the cupboard,

the cupboard where the DOG treats are kept!

He's a sneaky one, that cat!

This week's CSA box:

Romaine lettuce, celery, leeks, carrots, a double bunch of asparagus,

onions, potatoes, mushrooms, Roma tomatoes, red peppers,

kiwi, oranges, tangelos, apples, Asian pears, and strawberries.

And speaking of strawberries, here's a pic of the strawberry patch,

a raised bed we planted today with 17 strawberry plants.

We used 3 types; an everbearing, an early bearing and a late bearing.

If all goes well (and not well for the birds and slugs),

we should have strawberries well into July! Yum!

Later we'll be adding some bush beans and spinach to this box

as they are good companion plants to strawberries.

We also planted our raspberry plant today.

Tomorrow, it's time to stick those onion starts into some dirt!

And finally to those who have been asking about the gardening resources,

I add them as the books of the week:

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Sucessful Gardening by Louise Riotte and The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan

Good Friends, Good Food, & Good Reads

Today on the farm, we built another bookcase and promptly filled it with some of the many books which have been lining the floor of our bedroom. Many thanks to suburb assistant, Alexander. (I'm still trying to figure out how to sleep on the opposite side of the bed.)

This evening, Ari and I had a wonderful Thai dinner with our friend, Lisa. We also went to a great used bookshop in Redmond, MacDonalds. It was having a sale on cookbooks. Lisa and I stocked up!(See below) I also found a copy of a back-to-farm memoir and of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

This week's book choices are 5 in a series of vintage cooking books, thin little volumes, by Barbara Swell. The books are published by Native Ground, which also has books and recordings of ol' time music and lore. The cookbooks have a cornucopia of interesting recipes such as Thomas Jefferson's Spoonbread, Fairy Cookies, Fried Green Tomatoes, Sweet Potato Dumplings, Cranberry Pot Roast, Ethels' Nice Tomato Cookies, Volcano Potatoes, and Foods That Wiggle. In addition, these little gems have many historical tidbits, food poems, farm humor, vintage photos, household hints, food proverbs & superstitions, weather lore, folk remedies, good luck rhymes, and pioneer etiquette. The titles I picked up are: 1) Log Cabin Cooking, 2) Secrets of the Great Old-Timey Cooks, 3) Take Two & Butter 'Em While They're Hot!, 4) Old-Time Farmhouse Cooking, and 5) Mama's in the Kitchen: Weird & Wonderful Home Cooking 1900-1950.

Back to school in the rain.

The weather is wild and woolly around here again. This time it's wind and rain, lots of rain! We've been pulling out the rubber boots and waterproof coats. After all our crazy snow, I thought the garden would be toast until replanting in the spring, but it looks like the carrots not only survived but thrived under their snowy blanket!

All the future farmers are back to school after the holiday break. Alex is enjoying his history. Anni had a blast working on her magnet game, and Ari was busy working online for her math class this evening.

The book choice for this month is The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama. The future prez is a good writer as well as speaker. The book is the discussion book for the Tuesday Group. This evening the group helped out with dinner for Tent City IV which being hosted at a church in our neighborhood.

Opps, the power is flickering (probably the high winds) so more tomorrow.

Silent Night, Snowy Night!

Holiday Greetings!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Chanukah!

Soltice Greetings!

Ah, another 5" of snow today!

It's beautiful, but enough already!

We spent 2 hrs digging out of our driveway,

but we still can't get out as the roadway has at least 9" on it.

My garden has 12" of snow!

Ari showing her holiday spirit,

with her reindeer antlers and her Christmas mocha,

many thanks to her dad.

We had great fun playing in the snow today. We went for a neighborhood walk that was a real workout in the deep snow. We ate many, many cookies. We opened gfts from our families.

Many, many thanks for all the lovely presents.

And we made a Christmas Eve dinner of 2 types of a latkes (parsnip with leeks & thyme and classic potato-veggie), a winter citrus salad with watercress, feta, walnuts, oranges, & red onions, yogurt cream with caramelized shallots, and mulled cider-cranberry-orange applesauce.

They were absolutely scrumptious!

(Recipes can be found in The Healthy Hedonist Holidays cookbook by Myra Kornfeld,

a year of multicultural veggie-friendly feasts.)