The JOY of a good knife...

Really, truly, I can think of nothing better in the kitchen for a passionate cook than a darn good knife. And thanks to one of the generous gifters at our wedding, we happen to own such a knife. I love it. A whole bunch. Heaps. Megatons. REALLY.

There is something so satisfying about effortlessly slicing through lettuce, tomatoes, apples, chard, bread (well, really anything, come to think of it...)

Just had to share.

Eating with the Season

Each Wednesday, Matt dutifully picks up our farm share from a designated CSA (community supported agriculture) site. Each week brings a bountiful new allotment of both familiar and completely unknown produce for our consumption. I will confess, we do not eat the eggplants... (and in the beginning, we were horrible about finishing our shares and sent almost half to the compost pile... Eeek!) BUT we are getting better each week, and as we consume more fresh, local, organic and super-yummy veggies and fruits, I feel a bit more grounded; connected to the local economy, to the harvest, to the seasons, to the earth... It is one of the richest feelings on earth, second to grace and third to love.

My current mantra comes courtesy of fabulous author and advocate Michael Pollan: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Sounds like a recipe for happy fields, happy planet and happy tummy...

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Sara

My best friend and PLP (platonic life partner) is moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 11 days. She and her husband are bravely selling all their furniture, kitchen doo-dads, boxes of books, clothes that haven't been worn lately [you know how you are always wanting to clean out the closets and get rid of the junk you are holding on to from HIGH SCHOOL but can never quite get around to it? They are DOING IT!] and all sorts of STUFF that we all find quite helpful and lovely and wonderful to have around... but is not special enough to take precious cargo space in their cars as they DRIVE to their new home. (Wow that was a long sentence.) While I am extremely excited for them as they shove off on this adventure, I am also... damn sad. And that is just what I wrote as there are no words to describe what I am feeling. I am zooming back and forth in my mind, remembering every fun (and not-so-fun) moment, class, brunch out, shopping trip, cabin weekend, snow experience, late night therapy-style ass-kicking conversations, weddings, new nieces and nephews, growing up, new cars, sibling moments, mom moments, road trips and hours of content silence in each other's company.

Jen is the kind of person who makes your day better simply by asking how you are feeling. She is the most naturally gifted counselor that I know - not just in profession, but in her countenance, presence, intuition, wisdom and conversation. It is a GREAT thing that she is moving to eventually go to grad school - the world will be exponentially better off for it - but still, Atlanta?!? The South? Where you put on pearls to go to the local football games??? ;o)

I know she and her wonderful husband will be only a Skype video call away, but really is that the same as being able to drop everything and drive down when a much loved pet dies or a heinous break-up happens (although that's not going to happen again for either of us...)??? There is something reassuring about knowing that, whatever happens, the person who understands you best is less than an hour away. I know this is a selfish way to look at it, but I am feeling slightly childish and petty and thus here we are. At least we had good cupcakes for their going-away party this weekend...


So, here's to:

- lina
- counseling psych
- mimosas to get us through each graduation...
- singing the Beatles in three part harmony
- shoe shopping until we both want to die
- bunny's discounts
- the halloween of gangster and "his" moll
- a billion break-ups (me) and two weddings (each of us...)
- hair color experimentation
- bringing your first snow to you in the back of a truck
- cafe brasil
- getting the carpool permit my junior year
- each finding the perfect wedding dresses together
- praying that flight deals will magically appear
- AND unconditional love.

On Gardening...

Is there anything quite as satisfying as eating a meal full of food that you have grown yourself? Right now we have purple peacock bush beans, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, sugar snap peas, nantes carrots, ronde du nice zucchini, black simpson lettuce, zebra stripe and red roma tomatoes, nasturtiums, red bell peppers and a smattering of spinach rounding out the garden. I plan to get a few more starters in the next week or so to add to our future harvests.

These home-grown crops beautifully balance the CSA farm share that we get from Live Earth Farm every week. Most weeks we have so much food that an unfortunate portion ends up in the compost bin as an investment in super-rich amendments for future plantings... (or at least that's how I try to justify it...) I am working hard to research best storage techniques, new recipes that utilize our varied (and sometimes unheard of) weekly cornucopia of veggies and fruits. Apricots freeze surprisingly well, halved and pitted, and are DELISH in smoothies! Carrots do not appreciate being stored with their greens still on... (picky, picky!) Beets stain EVERYTHING. Purslane is fantastic in salads (ever eaten purslane? Even Matt has eaten purslane! Get on the bandwagon!) Strawberries are AMAZING in green salads! Fresh apricots? Not so much... Caterpillars are best when not eaten (I know, shocking, eh?) and slugs give me the heebee-geebees when lurking in radicchio (again, shocking, eh?)

There is something so grounding - so fulfilling - about knowing where my food comes from. Seeing it go from seed to seedling to shoot to vine or bush or even tree... amazing. Matt doesn't have much experience with gardening - to see his face when inspecting the growth progress of our Autumn Harvest sunflowers is wondrous in and of itself. He's like a curious child, amazed that the now-six-foot-tall flower stem started only a few months ago as a tiny seed smaller than his pinky fingernail. I find his curiosity contagious, and catch myself running late for work because I decided to set my bag down and stare at newly opened Black Magic bachelor buttons (a-m-a-z-i-n-g.) Our cat spends 90% of her day perched in her basket-bed, overlooking the richly varied palate of colors and, particularly, the happy birds that are flocking to our birdbath and multiple feeders. I find myself plopping down beside her every lunch, watching nature be "as natural" as is possible in a controlled in-town environment.

But in all this beauty, there is a longing that is stirred in me. A desire to run away from the paved streets and city lights - to the quiet and beauty of woods, fields, oceanscapes, bluffs, mountains, meadows, creeks... To take the moments of peace that we find while two days in to the back country on a pack and hold it close forever.

Does this make me anti-social? Weird? A tree-hugging-hippy? Anti-American? What if we re-thought the American dream... Mine certainly isn't the biggest house on the block with the newest cars and track lighting. I think that more and more people are awaking to realize that this suburban dream is a myth, one that we need to leave behind in our search for sustainability in our community and in ourselves. So where do we go from here? I'm still looking...

Yes, actually, we do have too much.

Oh how I love my red toaster oven.

I am RIDICULOUSLY lucky. I mean DAMN lucky. I have food, clothing, shelter, personal transportation (aka Angelina, my bought-new-VW-Jetta), a pet, a washer/dryer, a kitchen-aid and Cuisinart, a Bose, laptop, furniture out the yin-yang, a memory foam bed, a warm jacket for every day of the week, comfort/orthopedic flip flops for every day of the week... The list goes on and on into minutia, making my head hurt and my eyes cross. While we am by no means the richest couple on the block, we're doing just fine and quite comfortable, thankyouverymuch.

The Salwen family of Atlanta, GA, recently sold their ginormous house and donated fully half to an international aid organization in Ghana. Read their story here. They downsized to a house half the size of their original palatial historical home (granted, still a HUGE 3,000 sq ft...) and restructured their lifestyle and belongings to fit with this new dwelling.

Dang.

In addition to the wonderful things I list above, I also have a closet bursting with clothes that I don't wear (but hold on to, thinking that someday I just might wake up and think "dang it, today I will ACTUALLY wear that skirt that I bought six years ago while they were in style. How retro of me!"), crates of shoes that I don't wear, a dozen handbags that go unused all but one or two days of the year (if ever), a garage of STUFF, an antique 7' x 9' barn door, shelves of books that are never read, stacks of canvases that I never find time to paint, a huge tub of crafting supplies that represents half of my 2005 paychecks and .0005% of my current attention span, art to fill a house four times the size of our cottage, luxury cooking tools that have not been used yet (but boy will I be quite the gourmet once I crack that box open...)

The list goes on.

What do we need? REALLY need? How many pairs of shoes? Pairs of jeans? Pieces of jewelry? Expensive and time-sucking hobby supplies? Collections of china patterns or thimbles or MAC eyeshadow?

Our church community did a series on "Frugalgroovin'" - ways to be better stewards of our finances. Excess stuff = excess money spent = excess resources wasted = what the hey?!?

I'm still processing all of this. Too much. We have too much. And yet how is it that we never feel fulfilled, reflecting on society as a whole? My husband and I are meeting with a financial advisor to figure out how to get out of debt, save money for a house and eventually (ha!) be completely debt-free.

How did we get into debt in the first place? See above.

The fall of community...

First came phone calls. Then email. Then texting. MySpace. Facebook addiction. And now... a blog?!? One that will likely never be read by anyone outside my immediate family?

WHY?

Why do people blog? Why email? Why Twitter and Facebook and text and dagnabit why have all of these technological phenomenons become verbs? "I'm Facebooking Zoe about dinner tomorrow," or "I'll just text Jen to see when she'll be in town." Why not call? Because we're losing our ability to pick up phones. We spend our days in stifled box-buildings with fake light, fake air, fake plants, making fake-friendly calls to "clients" and "prospects." We are tired of talking - of communicating - at the end of the day. (Or, sometimes, by the end of the morning...)
Do you know your neighbors? I mean know your neighbors? Names - first and last? Birthdays? The names of their children, even if they are grown and moved away years ago? Grandkids?

When is the last time you wrote a letter, sealed the envelope, put a stamp on it and sent it on its merry way, courtesy of the USPS? (Wedding thank you notes do not count.)

I'm tired. I think perhaps many of us are tired. I want to sit down and connect with others in my community, even in my family. I want to host a neighborhood block party - and actually have people look forward to it and come join in the festivities. I want to be offered extra lemons from a neighbors tree, bring lemon bread back as a thank you, go on a walk and stop ten times to ask ten different locals about their ten different latest and greatest "memorable moment of the week." I want to have friends over for dinner that only have to walk down three houses to go home.

Selfish? Or a natural instinct that we are shying away from, even intentionally denying? This is not a call for a 1950's Stepford commune, but for common sense and connection while trying to get by in an electronically (impersonally) driven world.

To do today: take a walk and compliment a neighbor on one thing about their house or garden. Write a letter to the first person I open my address book to. Bake for my co-workers' meeting in the morning. And smell the sweet peas.