Lucky New Year

Lucky New Years Day Dinner

This is the classic meal for New Years Day.  The collards represent paper money, the black-eyed peas the coins. We rounded it out with a sweet potato and a beautiful corn pone baked in the cast-iron skillet.  Tasty and healthy.  Plus, the peas, collards, onions and sweet potatoes all came from our garden.

2013 was a very good year. I hope that 2014 will be even better.

Looking back at my goals for 2013, I actually managed to achieve the big things I had set out to do.  I completed my certificate in Environmental Education. I completed the Playful Pedagogy training at the NC Zoo.  I kept working with community gardens and rounded out a good year at the Growing Healthy Kids garden in Carrboro.

My favorite work was with several child care centers doing outdoor learning and nature education.  I expanded my skills in that area of work and continued a solid relationship with Spanish for Fun.  In 2014, I will be launching my new business; Playful Nature Consulting.  I'm excited and already have classes and workshops lined up over the next few months.  Be watching here for more on the new business, I'm working on the website now and hope to have it launched sometime in January.

That is one of the reasons I've been absent from this page.  Very busy lining up new work and getting things rolling.  But also I've been trying to get my life re-organized and ready to go for the new year.

David built this carefully crafted, beautiful and very functional library style ladder for my birthday.  It has been awesome and helped me use the space on top of my closet for storage of things I don't need to get to that often.  Once I got things up top (like 15 boxes of photographs, the family memorabilia) I was able to rearrange the inside of the closet for things I use a lot like office supplies and my EE materials.

I spent Thanksgiving changing my office from this:

 

Into a space I can actually work in again!  So progress is happening and I'm looking forward to the future.

And here's hoping our lucky dinner tonight will keep some green rolling into the coffers in 2014!

I wish you all a very happy new year, thanks for reading.

Thankful for Oysters

Thought I better squeak in one more post before November whooshed on by.

My life has been a whirlwind over the past 2 weeks.  The weekend of November 18th-20th I went up to Asheville to attend the NC Writers Network Conference.  I've just recently joined the organization and this was my first conference.  It was exciting to be with so many other writers and hear and learn about the many genres and styles that everyone was writing in.  There were folks working on non-fiction and memoir, fiction and poetry too. The weekend was action packed, I learned a lot, got some good feedback and critique and got inspired about writing.   I was reminded that to truly sell yourself as a writer is tons of work and lots of self-promotion is required plus the actual time to write-oh yeah-don't forget the writing part! 

I was wiped out by the time I got home but there was no rest for the weary with Thanksgiving on the horizon.  My brother Jon and his wife Candy came to town for the week so there was much merry making, visiting, and long walks together.  And as it was Thanksgiving, we cooked and cooked and cooked some more, which meant endless dish washing, and eating too, can't complain about the eating.

Remains of the oyster fest

 I had the bright idea of getting a half bushel of oysters through our Community Supported Fishery.  I learned a few lessons about oysters:

• A half bushel of oysters in the shell equals well over 100, that is a lot of oysters.
• People from the mid-west (half our guests that night) don't eat a lot of oysters, if any at all.
• Oysters are hard to shuck

But I did remember how much I love raw oysters, they are juicy with brine and biting into one with a squeeze of lemon on top is like eating the sea.  The oyster fans on hand enjoyed them. I discovered after the party that the best tool for shucking is an old fashioned "church key" -a bottle opener on one end, can opener on the other.  We possess three of these but didn't make the discovery til later, when we were shucking the second half and wondering what the two of us were going to do with all those oysters.  Well we had some fried, we had some more raw, and we put the last into a delicious oyster stew cooked up with the oysters of the woods we came across on one of the walks we took together.

Oyster mushrooms carefully tucked into a shawl to carry home

The weather was spectacular and we spent much time outside when we were not busy cooking and eating.  Over the weekend David and I worked in the garden for hours, transplanting and moving things around before the rain and cold set in.  The creeks are slowly filling again and here you can see the brilliant sky reflected from above.

It's always good to be with family especially at holiday time, but also nice to get back into the normal routine after everyone has gone.  I've got a busy work week coming up and then looking forward to some slower days as December rolls along.

The Garden is Unphased

You would think by late November there would be some evidence of frost damage but in fact, the vegetable garden is untouched.  You can see the frost blanket snaking around through the paths, we've only used it one night so far.  It's positively lush out there yet, even the peppers and nasturtiums are still going strong.

We've still got a couple of main heads of broccoli to cut and the first we cut a few weeks ago are now putting up nice sized side shoots. Truth is we have way too much food out there for 2 people right now.  Beets, carrots, turnips, chard, collards, broccoli, spinach, lettuce.  I get overwhelmed trying to decide what to have for dinner, and when I'm tired- I confess, I don't always eat my veggies because I don't want to deal with picking and washing and cooking them.  On those nights we have soup or  sauce out of the freezer with spaghetti. I shouldn't complain with people out there not having enough to eat, and I'm not complaining really, just telling it like it is.

With Thanksgiving tomorrow I'm looking forward to a nice big traditional meal with family, and not at my house.  I just made my pie crust to chill over night and prepared the lemons for my Ohio lemon pie.  Zest and insides of two lemons combined with 2 cups of sugar and a teaspoon of salt.  Tomorrow I'll add 4 eggs to complete the filling and bake it in a double crust.  Super tart, super sweet and with fresh whipped cream, man it's heaven.  Going to do a pecan pie as well, the only time of year I allow myself that sinful treat. The family counts on me to be the baker for this holiday and I'm happy to oblige, I enjoy making pies but don't do it unless there are lots of people to help eat them, too fattening to have around the house with just the two of us.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because its all about the food, nothing religious to muck it up.  It was my mom's favorite too and I always feel her presence as we tuck into a spread including many of her traditional favorites, best of all the southern style dressing baked in a cast iron skillet and smothered in gravy. 

I can hardly wait.

Thanksgiving and the Gluttony Continues

The gluttony continues. It was Thanksgiving this week after all. My favorite meal of the year. We roasted a 16 pound turkey, made two cast iron skillets of my family’s southern style dressing made of cornbread, biscuits and various leftover breads out of the freezer. Moistened with turkey broth and flavored with lots of celery, onion and sage then baked till crispy and brown in the skillet in a hot oven. Served with sliced turkey and plenty of gravy it is unbeatable.

It didn’t matter that we were only four at Thanksgiving dinner, as the leftovers make up for all the hard work on the day. The next 3 days we had turkey sandwiches for lunch and at night we had a repeat performance of the complete meal warmed in the microwave. Last night I put together 4 packages of “turkey dinner” complete with turkey, gravy and a portion of stuffing for two and put them in the freezer for later enjoyment. Tomorrow I will make a turkey soup from the remains.

At night we sleep like bears in hibernation, 9 hours when possible and wake groggy from all the tryptophan in the turkey. Just another form of the greedy autumn desire to submerge. On the day after Thanksgiving I read the seventh installment of Harry Potter. I had been saving it for a good time when I could really dive in and dive in I did. For hours I sat going deeper into the page turner. I finally succumbed to bed at 12:30, woke the next morning and finished the exciting climax with my morning coffee.

In a trance a few weeks ago I ordered 800 bulbs. What was I thinking? They were mostly small bulbs I reasoned and would be easy to plant. Not exactly true when they came and I saw that even the little ones need to be 4-6 inches deep. Oh well, each day that I am working in the yard I put a few more in. A smattering of crocus here, a cluster of daffodils there, some blue muscari to create a pool of color in a corner or under a tree. Next spring they will bring much pleasure as they emerge and bloom from all over the yard and edges of the woods.

Yesterday I planted five small lilac bushes that the sweetie pie started from cuttings last year in a semi-circle at the bottom of the yard. I surrounded them with daffodils and crocus. My plan is to build a small patio, just large enough for two chairs where we can sit with a cup of tea, smell the lilacs, and gaze up across the orchard and lawn to the house and garden.

In a similar trance in the spring of 2006 we went to Scott Stone out near Mebane and bought 8 pallets of Pennsylvania field stone for walls and 8 more of flag stone for walkways and terraces, 26 tons of rock now sit on the east side of the house waiting for us to do something with them. The lilac terrace will be my first wall attempt I think, on the far edge of the yard, a good spot to experiment with my stone wall building skills and perfect my technique in a place that isn’t easy to view.

Whenever I come around that side of the house and see the stone I think,” there is my life’s work waiting for me.” There is so much to be thankful for that I can’t even begin to put it all down. I have stone and the time to lay it, bulbs and the time to plant them, and enough food in our fridge, freezer and garden to last us for months. Suffice it to say that life is incredibly good for us in this place and time and we are much more fortunate than many across the country and the planet that are torn by war, famine and poverty. This good fortune does not go unnoticed or unappreciated.