A gradual thaw

This winter has been perhaps the most bleak, dreary, cold, miserable season of my life in so many ways. I don't say this lightly, considering that I once lived in a northern valley, where the wind would suck the warmth out of every nook and cranny. Where snowfall was recorded in feet, and roads would freeze with black ice in seconds. No - not even then was there a time that I remember this exhausting daily pursuit of simply surviving the darkness.

In the fall, we planted some carrots and lettuce as an experiment to see if they would take on the cold weather and flourish in the spring. In our defense, we had no idea what they were in for. Like us, they suffered with the cold - hunkered down against the snow and bid their time until the days got longer, and the dark didn't seem quite so deep.

And yet, despite (or maybe because of) their struggle, they have emerged triumphant - became whole again as they surfaced to the sun to welcome a new season.

A fond farewell

I really love new beginnings. The clean-slated opportunity to put everything in place always brings me comfort, even in the midst of chaos. The start of a new school semester, the first day of the month, heck - even a reorganized closet will put my mind at ease. So a new year always feels like the grandaddy motherload of opportunity. My first instinct is to plunge full speed ahead into the promises of the 2009, but I think it's a better idea to give tribute to one big change that the new year will bring.

The last Farmers' Market of 2008 marked the end of an era for one of our most loved vendors. Mr. and Mrs. Don Gilbert of Gilbert Farms are taking a well deserved retirement and will not return in 2009. The two of them have been a presence at the market since its humble beginnings under the Water Street parking garage in the mid-1980s. Their friendly service, good stories and lovely fruits and veggies will certainly be missed. Mr. Gilbert says he plans to catch up on some fishing and yardwork, but might send his surplus produce to the market with other vendors when he gets a chance. We wish both of them the best of health, happiness and renewed spirits in their exciting new beginning!

Summer on a plate

My fabulous sister went home to PA last week and brought me back five dozen ears of sweet corn, as they're still in season up there. There's just something about PA sweet corn that makes it superior to NC corn - there might be something about the soil, or temperature, but it's also possible that nostalgia may play a big part for me. Sal promptly boiled a couple of ears, while I fried us up some green Mortgage Lifters from the back yard. The result was heavenly.

Here's how we fry our tomatoes - you can also just be lazy and dip them in cornmeal before frying and call it a day:

Slice green tomatoes into about 1/4 inch thick slices.
Salt and pepper each slice, then dip in:
1. Milk
2. Flour
3. Beaten egg
4. Cornmeal with some spices mixed in

Drop the slices in a deep fryer if you're blessed with such a contraption, or just put about a 1/2 inch of oil in a large saute pan and fry until browned on each side.

Full disclosure: I am from the North. I had never even heard of Fried Green Tomatoes until the book/movie. If your grandma has a much better recipe that you grew up on, let me know!

California dreamin

After writing in my last post about the Green Goddess dressing at Chez Panisse, I realized that I never wrote about Chez Panisse. What a travesty. I've got a couple of minutes to spare, so let's take a walk down Memory Lane, shall we?
I'm sure I have mentioned before that Sal and I lived in the SF Bay Area for 5 years before moving here to Wilmington. We've been back only once since then, so decided to go for Spring Break this year. (Bless the career of Education and it's forced vacations). Here are some of the highlights.

We stayed with a friend who lives on a 44 ft boat instead of a house - because you may have heard that housing is ridiculously expensive there. Hence our move to Wilmington. Anyway, staying on the boat was such a cool experience - getting up in the morning to see the sun rise over the Alameda estuary (thank you, jet lag), falling asleep to the slight rolling of the boat, and having a glass of wine on deck while watching the other sailboats glide across the water. Beats the Hilton.

We saw a lot of old friends and visited some our favorite places from our past life. Wondered more than once why on earth we left such a spectacular place. We also spiced it up by doing a couple of things we hadn't done when we lived there - one of those being dinner at Chez Panisse. If you don't know anything about Alice Waters and her world famous restaurant, please check it out and prepare to drool. She is one of the pioneers of local and seasonal eating, and has made a career of doing it with simplicity and elegance.

We made reservations a month before for the upstairs Cafe. We chose the Cafe over the downstairs prix fixe menu. Since the menu is newly created each week, it's impossible to know what you will be eating a month ahead of time when you make the reservations. I am way too picky an eater to find out that there is squid or some other atrocity on the menu at the last minute, especially at $65 - 85 per person. So - the Cafe it was.
I had:

A gorgeous Butter Lettuce salad with yellow and red beets and the aforementioned to-die-for Green Goddess dressing.
Followed by Rosemary Free Range Chicken with asparagus and fingerling potatoes
Rhubarb Tart with Kumquat ice cream for dessert.

The menu at Chez Panisse mentions all of the local farms who provided the ingredients, as in this week's offering of "Baked Andante Dairy goat cheese with garden lettuces" - sounds delish. I was tempted to take photos of our meals while I was there, but thankfully resisted the urge.

The other new thing we did was to spend two days in wine country instead of our usual one. We used to go up about every 3 months, or whenever anyone came to visit. Normally we'd just drive the hour and half up there, drink ourselves silly, sober up at V. Sattui with some delicious picnic food, and head back home. This time we stayed in Calistoga after all the tasting, sobered up at a great little bed and breakfast called Craftsman Inn (with an emphasis on the breakfast - yum!) and headed back down through Sonoma the next day. We found a couple of great new wineries, and visited some of our favorites. Needless to say, we came home with a case of CA wines. Our plan is to return once we drink through them all.

Spring brings new things

Okay, so here's one of the things I meant to write about awhile ago: The Farmers' Market has started up again. Both the downtown and Poplar's Grove markets have been packed every time I've been there - it looks like business is booming. That's good stuff around here. There are all kinds of great new things coming in to add variety to my life.

Here's a sample of what we picked up this Saturday for less than $20:

Head of lettuce
Beets
(Black River)
Carrots
Romaine
Another head of lettuce
Tomato
Onions
Cauliflower
(Gilbert's)
Sweet potatoes
(Hanchey's)
Chevre
(Nature's Way)
Zucchini
Squash
(Swart's)

I made up a menu that will allow those staples to feed us for the next two weeks, along with what we've already got in the house. We've recently started adding in some non-local food to help stretch our food budget. Although we are still doing almost all of our shopping from local sources, we've added a few "luxury items" to make up a meal. This saves us from running out of food mid-week and deciding to just go out, which we've found ourselves doing more of these days. This is not good for the purse nor the plan we had for ourselves.

So, for example, here is our menu for this week. Everything non-local is indicated:

Mon - Roasted veggies (zucchini, squash, cauliflower, carrots, onion, sweet potatoes)
Tues - Salmon (not local) with snap peas and rice
Wed - Chicken gyros with cucumber, feta and tomato (pita bread not local)
Thu - Pork chops and Bibb lettuce salad with Green Goddess dressing and beets (using an avocado to make the Green Goddess)
Fri - Gnocchi with Pesto sauce (Gnocchi not local)
Sat - Curried veggies and rice

Looking at this list, I think - I could use a locally caught fish instead of salmon. Maybe I will if the Fish Market has something comparable. I could also leave out the avocado in the dressing, but I'm trying to recreate the salad I had at Chez Panisse. I could also make my own Gnocchi, and will if I have the energy, but I'm trying not to make myself crazy. It's funny - we've remained relatively ignorant of rising food costs, since so much of what we've eaten has been put up from last year, or purchased from local sources. So adding a couple of non-local items doesn't hurt us financially, and actually helps by adding to the variety of meals we can make with a majority of local food. For example, there's no way to make chicken gyros without pita bread - but if we spend $2.00 on some flatbread, we can use up our leftover chicken, tomato and cucumber in a way that makes us happy. That's worth the non-localness to me.

As a side note, Saturday's market was extra fun because my sisters joined me for the first time. They were astounded by how inexpensive everything was, compared to the grocery store. Having not bought produce in the grocery store for some time, I was unaware that ONE pepper can apparently go for $2.99. Mr. Gilbert was selling his for 5o cents each. I was warned beforehand by my youngest sister Rachel that they were not into "chatting with farmers", but they actually had a great time, got some delicious, inexpensive food and ended up doing some chatting after all.

Wow.

It rained like crazy like crazy today, much to the relief of our eucalyptus tree that's been begging for water for months. I wish I would have read Stew's post about 20 minutes earlier, because then I would have known that it was also going to HAIL.

What?! Craziness. And painful, I might add. I panicked at first because all of our potted plants were outside, but they took the beating pretty well. Luckily I hadn't planted anything yet because I learned my lesson from last year. Nothing in the ground until the last week of April.

Hopefully we got a good amount of water in the rain barrel we just put in. We got it back in March at the annual county sale, but had to get gutters installed, which happened this past week. Sal assembled the barrel on Saturday and put it in place yesterday, just in time for the rain. I've got high hopes for this rain barrel - we'll let you know how it goes. It's got to be better than the bunch of random buckets we've been setting out on the first sign of an overcast sky.

So you may have noticed it's been almost a month since I've posted anything. This whole traveling thing we've been doing has taken a lot of time. Just returned from a week long CA trip and have finally caught up on work. I'll be playing blogger catch-up this week. There's exciting stuff going on around Wilmington, people!

I heart Sal.

As I mentioned before, being one handed for two weeks was a big pain in the behind. This is not meant to be disrespectful to people who have only one hand all the time. But being that I am used to having two functioning hands most of the time, it was a huge annoyance. I'm really dominantly right-handed, so when I had surgery on my right wrist, I needed help showering, getting dressed, and eating. So obviously, cooking was out of the question. Lucky for me, my husband is awesome and took over like a champ. In addition to putting my hair in a ponytail, and pulling on my socks, he also made sure that I had food to eat. Here are a couple of the yummy local meals he whipped up while I was out of commission:

Chicken and tomato saute

Turkey Meatloaf

He made lots of other great stuff too, but having not documented it on camera, I can't remember. Pain medication will do that to you.

I'm baaaaack.

Why, hello ya'll! I have returned from the land of the one handed, and can now type a sentence in less than ten minutes. Yes, it is a happy time. I still have a splint on my wrist (not the giganto cast you see in the photo), but at least I can use the fingers on my right hand, which means I can now brush my teeth without poking myself in the eye. Ahhh, the things you miss when you're one handed. Anyway, look for some updating posts in the next week or so.

Oh, I do want to remind local Wilmingtonians that Lewis Farms is now open for business. Hoorah! For now they've got strawberries, plants and oh yes: their blessed ice cream. We walked down yesterday for their opening day and had ourselves some waffle cones for lunch. Delish.

Peace out for now

Hey ya'll - I'm having surgery tomorrow, so I won't be blogging for at least a week or so. Nothing major, just repairing some degenerative damage to my right wrist. I've had Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis since age 5, and a lot of my joints have deteriorated to the point of needing repair. I didn't expect to be having this surgery so soon, but I guess it's another way for the universe to reiterate to me that everything in life cannot be planned out. I'll be off work until next Monday or so - I'm going to try to relax in my time off, and not stress about all the stuff I'm not able to do. Anyway, I'm practicing typing with my left hand, but fine motor tasks in general are going to be kind of difficult for the next few weeks.

Any suggestions for good books to read/movies to watch while I'm recovering?

PS - Check out this awesome bag my grammy and Val made me! I have got to learn this cable stitch for myself...once I've got the use of two hands again.

On the road again.

The month of February is a busy one for us. As you know, I was in Florida last week - Friday we're going to Charleston, and this past weekend we visited the Outer Banks. We were really fortunate to have received a generous gift of a free weekend at the Hilton Garden Inn at Kitty Hawk. We love the Outer Banks, and hadn't been up that way for over 9 years (a travesty!), so it was a great getaway.

As usual, we tried to get the local flavor when looking for somewhere to eat. Last time we were there, Sal and I had to search hard to find somewhere to eat during the off-season. On this trip we could have eaten at any one of the fast food places that have unfortunately popped up around town, but of course, we have more sense in our heads than that. We opted for the RunDown Cafe the first night, a cool little place within walking distance of our hotel. Both of us opted for the mahi, which was delish.

The next evening we decided to try the Outer Banks Brewing Station, which had the obvious draw of locally brewed beer. I'm telling you, if the Mack-Daddy Stout wasn't $19 for a growler, I would have brought home a kegful. Sal tried the Compass Rose ‘Secret-Spiced’ Ale. I immediately identified the secret spice, which was confirmed by our waitress, but I won't reveal it here in case you want to solve the mystery on your own. Email me if you're curious.

Okay, so fabulous dinners abounded, but the best meal of all had to have been the breakfast we got from Duck Donuts. Holy goodness. Right across the street from the Hilton is this little, unassuming place that serves made-to-order hot cake donuts that you can have dipped in the icing and coating of your choice. Oh my lordy, you have no idea. I'm actually not a huge donut fan in general, but I could probably eat these every day for the rest of my life and be perfectly content. I tried to just order one, but the super cool woman who runs the place, Paulique, gave me two (but only charged me for one) because they were "small." Total price: $3.08.

Sal mixed it up by choosing a strawberry icing/chocolate sprinkle combo as well as a chocolate icing/rainbow sprinkles one. I kept it simple and went for a double dose of the chocolate/coconut. You know how I love the coconut. We took them back to our room and ate them on our oceanfront balcony with a cup of coffee. Seriously? These donuts were beyond believable: warm, gooey, sweet and perfect. Mmmmm. We may plan a trip back just to see Paulique.

Local and tropical

This past weekend I went to visit my family in Florida. In addition to spending a much-needed relaxing weekend with some of the people I love most in the world, I also got to snag some of the fruits and veggies that were in season down there. My mom and grandmother and I headed into St. Petersburg for the Saturday Morning Market at the bright and early hour of 10:30. I love sleeping in. The market is always a fun conglomeration of yummy smells, delicious looking produce and odd folks. Not to mention cute dogs.

Anyway, a lot of the produce turned out to be from far, far away, but there was a sampling of local goods. I went straight for the tomatoes; choosing a large, deep red guy destined for a tomato sandwich, and a mixed bag of cherry and grape varieties.

My mom picked up some peppers and heavenly smelling strawberries, while my grammy chose a pineapple that lived up to the sign that boasted it was Super, Super, Super Sweet! Grown in Chile, or somewhere thereabouts, but definitely worth a sample.

The most exciting (and, it turns out, aggravating) find of the day was a local coconut. Say that 5 times fast. We somehow managed not to gorge ourselves on all the delicious baked goods and fudgy things the market had to offer, and headed home to make some lunch from our purchases.

I ended up flying back with a suitcase packed with tomatoes and a coconut, plus a carryon bag of oranges and tangerines. The fruit was a gift from my mom’s friend Nilima, who scaled the trees in her yard to provide me with some real Florida citrus. I do declare that it was the juiciest, most delicious fruit I have ever tasted. My mama made me a fresh squeezed tangerine/orange juice for breakfast on Sunday, and it was so good I could have drank a gallon. Thanks, mom and Nilima!

The coconut ordeal

I loooooove fresh coconut, flaked coconut, and pretty much anything coconutty. So finding this locally grown coconut at the Saturday Morning Market was like hitting the jackpot for me. The coconut proprietor offered to husk it and put a hole in the top so I could drink the coconut milk, but I had bigger plans for it, so declined. Somehow there was a miscommunication and I ended up taking it home unhusked as well. I figured I would get it to my mom’s house, husk it, and take home the inner nut in my luggage. Weeeeellll, easier said than done.

It took three of my loving, patient and skilled family members to crack that coconut. An internet search on how to husk a coconut turned up some pretty hilarious videos, but nothing that was truly helpful. My mom took the first go by using a screwdriver and hammer. That made a pretty good crack, but didn’t really get through the fibers.

Then my uncle Steve took a saw to it, and created a pretty good incision all the way around. My grammy finished off the job by tearing away all the husk and leaving the cute little coconut inside. And, last, but not least, Sal cracked the nut when I brought it home. Grammy suggested maybe going for the Baker’s shredded coconut next time I get a hankering.


All of their hard work was truly appreciated though. I ate a bunch of fresh coconut pieces when I got home, put some in my oatmeal, and Sal shredded the rest for drying. I’m thinking coconut chicken, Polynesian salad, toasted coconut ice cream…ooh, the list is endless! My family is awesome.

Local eating in the news - again!

Ironically, we stopped our subscription to the Star News in order to reduce our waste. I typically check online about once a week to see if there's anything interesting going on, but I totally missed this article. Luckily, Trace kept us in the loop by posting it on Cricketbread. Very good stuff.

Do you ever have one of those weeks when life just completely slips by you? I try so hard not to have that happen - to at least step back and appreciate some part of each day just for the little moments it contains - but man, has time passed me by lately. I have not germinated, nor planted any seeds. I have not even purchased the peat pots and light rigging I need to do so. I have not added the mayonnaise making post I promised Trace (will make amends immediately). Okay, that's really it - maybe it just feels more like I'm way behind because the seed planting part encompasses a lot of work that I'm going to have to squeeze into my regular work week, since we're going to be gone the next three weekends. It's very doable, I just need to DO it.

Photo: Trace in the produce department of Tidal Creek. Published on the online version of Encore

Recipe for a chilly, rainy day

This Saturday it rained all day - it was awesome. It was the start of a three day weekend, so we had pretty much already given ourselves the pass to laze about all day, but the rain just sealed the deal. I ended up getting some things done that I had been meaning to do, all at a leisurely pace. I finished Sal's scarf (that I started last year - hey, better late than never!), did the laundry, and read some magazines that had been piling up. Finally, I decided that I wanted to bake something warm and yummy. I searched around the kitchen for ingredients that would perhaps meet my craving requirements, but that wouldn't sit around for days tempting me with deliciousness. I had: apples that were going soft, a never ending stash of oatmeal, and peanut butter.

Apples and peanut butter are perfect together, so figured that someone in the universe had to have been smart enough to put these two into a recipe for cookies. A quick search of the internet told me that yes, such a cookie does exist. However, it was tough finding one that I could adapt to my local stash. I finally settled on one from Cooks.com that I changed a bit, but the results were totally satisfying. They totally hit the spot on the chewy, peanut buttery scale - and really can't be that fattening, right? I hope not, since I ate half the batch in one sitting. Here it is if you want to try for yourself:

Mix:

3 tbsp. butter

3/4 cup peanut butter

Add and mix in:

1/2 cup sugar (or honey)

2 egg whites

2 tbsp. skim milk

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Add and mix in:

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup oats

1 medium apple (peeled and finely diced - 3/4 cup)

Stir until mixed; drop by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet; flatten slightly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

Makes about 1.5 dozen cookies.

They're heeeeere!

My order from Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds arrived on Friday, a mere 5 days after placing my order online. That's fabulous customer service. All my selections were in stock, and they even included a free gift of Tropeana Round onions, which I can't find in their catalog, but I'm assuming must be the same as the Tropeana Lunga they have listed?

Since I basically have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to gardening (though I don't let that stop me!), I made a visit to our local library and picked up an armful of books on growing heirloom seed and the like. A couple of them ended up to be hugely helpful, so I'm going to buy them. Here are my favorites so far:

Seed Sowing and Saving: Step-by-Step Techniques for Collecting and Growing More Than 100 Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening

The North Carolina Fruit & Vegetable Book

I'll probably go back and get another load of books and add more to this list next week. God, I love the library. And books in general. As a complete side - I also adore the Amazon feature that suggests other books you may like based on your shopping cart. Just by adding these three books to my cart I've already discovered like, five others I now want. But I'll check them out at the library first - Amazon doesn't always know what it's talking about.

Oh, one more useful thing that my mom got me for Christmas (thanks, mom!), is this garden journal. It's got weekly entry sections to record what you've planted, what the weather was like, etc. and it's got little tips and info specifically for North Carolina. I've been good about recording for the past two weeks, but then again, it's only mid-January. We'll see how long I can consistently keep it up.

Ringing it in

I really do love celebrating the arrival of a new year. Okay sure, alot of that usually has to do with champagne, but what I like most is the idea of a clean slate - that fresh start. I'm a minimalist kind of girl, and the start of a new year always inspires me to purge the closets, organize my files, and begin again with only what I need.

I also like the idea of making New Year's Resolutions. I try to stick with attainable, meaningful goals that I think will make a difference in my life in some way.

Last year's (which were almost all attained, save one) were:

1. See 4 new movies at the theater. Check. ( I had previously thought I'd only seen three, but realized we also went to see The Future of Food at UNCW, which I think counts.)
2. Try 3 new foods. Check. (I actually waaay surpassed this thanks to our local eating. Rutebagas - who knew?)
3. Invite over/hang out with 3 new people. Also check.
4. Take a class for fun. Check - Spanish class at Centro Latino. Not the best, but fun.
5. Walk for exercise three times a week. Nope. Try again this year.

This year is a little harder. If you hate me after I say this, it's okay: I'm quite content with my life the way it is right now, and am not hugely motivated to make dramatic, life altering changes. I am happy. After much thought though, I've come up with these - may add more later...

1. Add at least 5 more vegetable varieties to our garden to expand our eating self sufficiency. Try not to kill them.
2. Call/email at least one faraway friend per month.
3. Call H to schedule at least 4 sessions of cake decorating lessons.
4. Do my best to create more good in the world. Try not to be an ass.
5. Okay fine... Exercise three days a week.
   

You may notice that I didn't say anything about blogging more often. It's a goal, but not one that I'm going to be tied to. I spend way to much time on the internet anyway.

So that being said - I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful, meaningful 2008!

Hello again

How time flies when the craziness of the holidays is upon us! Apparently it's been almost a month since I've updated this blog, and I'm here to make amends. I'm going to make a goal of updating at least once a week - I think I can handle that. I've never been someone who journals, so it's hard for me to remember to keep up with these posts. Anyway, blah - blah. Here are some thoughts from the past weeks:

1. Carrots are in season - yay!
2. Where the heck is spinach? Collards - check. Cabbage - check. Spinach - nada.
3. The Farmers' Market is coming to an end - I've got the hookup with most vendors so that I can continue to shop through the season if needed, but it still stresses me out a little.
4. Ruttebagas are delicious, especially when made into potato salad with Nature's Way Chevre. (Thanks to Wayne Betton for cooking up that particular treat at Poplar Grove)
5. The newly released Blue Cheese Walnut spread from Nature's Way is to die for.

Saturday shopping

We got down to the Farmers' Market late again today and as a consequence, didn't get any eggs. Plus, Bill sold my by-request Ricotta to a smooth talking lady named Cathy. Thanks alot Cathy - no lasagna for me this week. Well, at least until Wednesday.

We did however, pick up our Thanksgiving turkey. If you live in Wilmington and didn't get a chance to pre-order your turkey from Grassy Ridge about 4 months ago, then I'm sorry for you, because it's too late. I'll try to remember to remind you next year. But I did see that you can pick up a full Thanksgiving meal from WalMart for $37.77. Just kidding - please don't do that.

Our turkey weighs in at about 10 lbs. and cost only $27.00, which I think is a bargain, considering the amount of time and effort that Marie Wallace and her family put forth to raise each bird. This is the first year that we will know exactly where our turkey came from, and it helps me to be truly thankful for the sacrifice of labor and life that will make our dinner complete.

State Fair

On Saturday, Sal and I made our annual trek up to Raleigh for the North Carolina State Fair. We decided to make this a tradition when we first moved here, and have looked forward to it every year since.

I looove the State Fair for lots of reasons, but mostly because its a giant, messy, conglomeration of all things great and disturbing about North Carolina. It's supposed to be a celebration of NC Agriculture, and really is, despite the amount of commercialized junk that prevails there. I love seeing the craft and food entries; cases and cases of displayed jam, pickles, preserves, and even cakes, diligently created by folks all over the state and submitted with the hopes of winning the $8 or so first prize. I also love the art show, the produce competitions, cow judging, flower and garden displays, and all of the animal shows.

For all of the wonderful opportunities at the fair, here are some things I pretty easily managed to restrain myself from doing:

• Buying an airbrushed sweatshirt with my own name on it
• Joining the military
• Eating a deep fried anything

Here are some things I couldn't help myself from:

• Eating a scoop of NC State creamery ice cream as big as my head
• Rubbing the heads of some cute animals even though the signs clearly said NO!
• Pocketing a banana at the hotel buffet

Another fun year celebrating the varied agriculture of NC, and all the weird people who enjoy it.

Seriously, could you resist these guys?

A Monday moment

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind around here. Besides the brisk pace of our day jobs, Sal and I have had several home improvement projects in various levels of completion to contend with each day. We've been getting up around 6:30 - working all day, fulfilling other commitments - teaching, tutoring, etc. after work, then coming home to paint, clean, shop or organize our way through some aspect of our home transformation, usually followed by falling into bed exhausted around 10:30. Next day: repeat. Weekends: ditto. In reality, the projects aren't huge, just time consuming, and have eaten up lots of our "free" time. I have no idea how we'd do it if we had children - part of the reason we're taking care of these things now.

So a bit of my going on about how busy I've been is to offer an explanation of why the past few weeks have been more about others than about how we're faring here. Much of our busy-ness has been due to local eating issues: in direct ways - like planting veggies, and in not so obvious ways - like putting in a fence gate and an additional door in our garage for easier access to our garden and composter.

Instead of posting a Local Producer Spotlight this week, I thought I'd introduce you to some of our newest crops - which will be our own local producers in the coming months and years.

Here's proof that life is moving way too quickly. There was nothing sprouting in this pot just 48 hours ago. I went out this morning to find a ton of little carrot plants fighting their way out of the soil. I'll have to thin them out later, but for now; look at them go!

Here are our newest surprise additions from Shelton Herb Farm: Lemongrass and Ginger. I had no idea either of them would grow here. Ooooh, the cooking possibilities!

Part of our little potted jungle: basil, chives, dill, cilantro, parsley, tarragon, mint, jalapenos, rosemary, lemongrass, ginger, and avocado.

Oh, and by the way, I'm also hoping to make this site a little more user-friendly, as I'm anticipating some increased traffic in the next few weeks. So if you get an "Under Construction" message, don't fret.