recipes
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It’s Not Chokecherry
There is a tree overhanging the parking area of our driveway at an awkward, ugly angle, and it really looks like it should be cut down. Except… Every once in a random year it blesses us with enough fruit to make a most scrumptious jam. For years I have called it chokecherry jam because my Continue reading
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The Ghosts of Vegetables Past
This is not a refrigerator story. It’s a tribute to the dead mutant pumpkin on our front porch … …and a reflection on why white blobs embalmed in red liquid creep me out.The dead mutant is one of three giant pumpkins produced in the garden this year, grown from giant pumpkin seeds. One of them–a white pumpkin– cracked Continue reading
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Not to the Store Blackberry Sauce
Not a picture of blackberry sauce I almost went to the store yesterday. There is nothing unusual in almost going to the store. Many days I almost go to the store. Many more days I refuse to go to the store. I hate going to the store. Yesterday, however, I had an urge to go Continue reading
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In summer we gather, but we don’t gather chocolate
My daughter asked her two year old for dinner ideas because she was, yes, that desperate for help. “Emily, what would you like for dinner?” “Chocolate!” If it were the middle of the hectic teaching year instead of the middle of summer, my daughter might have gone along with it. Ah, but it is summer. Continue reading
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I’m Gonna Get Squashed
On a fishing pier Saturday with my mom, watching the waves roll to shore beneath us, I said, “Pretend it’s a tsunami and you have to outrun it.” Right. The great-grandmother to my grandkids had already walked close to twenty miles with me during our week at the beach. Running was not going to happen. Continue reading
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Snow Bees and Honey Butter
There’s a break in the weather. After a foot and a half of snow, Mr. Beekeeper trudges out to the tractor to plow before the next batch of snow comes in this evening. The “break” means that it is merely raining. “Merely raining” means that the foot and a half of snow is getting packed Continue reading
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Whole Milk
“You’d yell at me if I did that.” So true. My offense this time was to bring home a gallon of whole milk. My husband has been scolded in the past for bringing home 2%. But whole milk? That’s positively decadent–like pouring half-and-half on cereal. The irony of this situation is that I grew up a product Continue reading
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Making room for a new season of venison… and football
We know it’s hunting season when friends show up with gifts–a heart and a liver that they just harvested from a doe in our woods. While they might normally toss them, they know that John will use them to make an amazing venison liverwurst. The new heart and liver will join what John has in the freezer and will soon appear as John’s redneck Continue reading
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Meditations on a Grilled Cheese Sandwich (with a recipe for Winter White Martinis)
Sometimes you just need a grilled cheese sandwich. You have a hunger in the pit of your stomach and you’re stressed out. A grilled cheese sandwich is comfortably warm and creamy while also offering a most satisfying crunch. (Crunch is important for releasing stress and anger.) So you get it into your head that your hunger Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 