Well, there you have it, I am now the proud producer of chard (the tall guys) and two kinds of basil. I started these babies in the b&p seed starting class about 10 days ago and am now observing the fruit (sprouts?) of my labors. I was too lazy/cheap to rig up a florescent shop light over my little soil pots, but the beside table lamp with a compact florescent bulb seems to be doing just fine.
I've been casting around for the best spot to transplant these greenies, come spring (oh please, come spring). With my goofy sunlight I think I will have to have a progressive garden with stations all over the place. No one big spot gets sun for 6-8 hr.s a day. Plus there's the heirloom tomatoes, blue hubbard squash and green heirloom pumpkin seeds to think about as well.
Now I have to get up the nerve to thin my lovelies...
Oof, playing catch-up, again. Still, we've had a couple of good weekends' worth of classes and talks, and here are the pictures to prove it:
Two weekends ago,Liz Fiorenza of Wind Ridge Herb Farm shared tips for treating colds and the flu with herbs. Secret weapon: tea. She suggested a variety of tea ingredients: sage, rosemary, rose hips, lemon balm, mint. In combination with hot water and steam, they all offer varying degrees of comfort. Start with warm, moistened muscus membranes in the nose and throat and go from there. Surprising tip: the sole of the foot is also a good receptor for herbal remedies, so essential oils combined with a lotion (olive oil, shea butter) is a good delivery system. We mixed our own tea.
On Sunday, Paul Dionne taught a Kitchen Basics class on making stir fry. Much of the class time was spent on prep, to get all the various vegetables chopped. Secret to peeling ginger? scrape the skin off with a spoon, so you don't waste any of the fresh root itself. As with the pasta, the final dish was more than the sum of its parts and we had a delicious mound of Asian veggies and tofu, with leftovers for everyone to take home.
This weekend, Rose Hoffa (of Madame Purl fame), gave a talk on the source of wool: From Sheep to Skein. She demo'ed how to card and spin wool to get a ply appropriate for knitting or weaving. She had a pile of delicious wools and yarns for us to paw thru. It made me want to get out my knitting needles, immediately.
We also had several meetings of Bushel and Peck's Garden Club. Jackie is spilling the beans and trying to save us all from disappointment by teaching us how to plan a garden (remember how tall things are going to get when you space them) and how to start seeds (don't jump the gun, unless you want a lot of rotted, leggy seedlings). We dug in the dirt, discussed bats and rain barrels, and started basil, chard, and kale. My babies are upstairs right now, under a florescent light, awaiting late April. Hello extreme amounts of pesto!
No class this weekend, because of the Beloit International Film Festival, but stop on by. We're a venue and we're open all night (well, not quite, but it's going to feel like it...)!
To me, there are few things more appealing than a cheese tray. Gooey, crumbly, veined, stinky, waxed, mold-crusted; I'll take them all. I guess it's a good thing I live where I do, because--after California--Wisconsin is the biggest producer of cheese in the United States. AND, if you measure by the amounts of award-winning, artisan cheese, we're the biggest producer--take that Golden State!
Saturday afternoon we were pleased to host Jeanette Hurt, the author of The Cheeses of Wisconsin. She signed the book and taught a class on cheese pairings--with wine, with fruits and nuts, with various spreads. Very interesting and, man, did we fill up.
We tasted: Crave Brothers' Petit Freres (my fave, a soft cow's milk cheese); Carr Valley's Cocoa Cardona; Hook's Basic Blue; Hook's Sweet Constantine; Country Castle's Limburger. The Sweet Constantine was delicious on bread with a little smear of fig jam; the blue was perfect with Double D's Honey; and we spread mustard on the Limburger and it was very nice, and not too smelly.
We hope to have Jeanette back later in the spring to do a class on Tapas, so stay tuned!
They say you shouldn't lie to your kids; that you should just give them enough information to answer the question without too much detail. Eamonn (the four-year-old) has been very interested in the source of food (how do they make oranges? what's in cookies?), and I've been happy to tell him where things came from. Smug locavore-mommy gets to say, "Oh, the eggs are from Jackie's farm" or "The cheese is from that town we drive past on the way home from Gram's(Monroe)."
We had roast beef for Xmas dinner at my parents'. Eamonn took one look at his slice (not even medium rare) and asked where does this meat come from. So I told him it came from a cow. "How do you get it from a cow," he asked suspiciously.
Pause. Everyone looked at me--"Uh, they cut it off the cow," I tried to answer nonchalantly.
"When he's alive?!?" Eamonn asked with horror--how the kid knows it was a steer, I don't know. He's not great with pronouns, though, so maybe it was a lucky guess.
"No, no," I assured him. "When it's dead."
The piece of roast beast in questions remained on the side of the plate, chilling and becoming more disgusting-looking, in light of the aforementioned conversation. Eamonn wouldn't touch it.
What have I done?
Kitchen Basics...who couldn't use a little tune up on their chopping and frying skills? Saturday afternoon was spent learning easy ways to dice, tricks for removing the garlic smell from your hands (hold a steel knife under running water, really!), tossing veggies in a fry pan, and assembling a gorgeous plate of pasta. But enough from me...you can see/hear for yourself (Paul Dionne is doing the teaching). Check out the Asian Stir Fry class on Sunday, Feb. 8!
Oh, this poor little blog is languishing. Juggling two of these babies is hard work, esp. when juggling everything else. Still, I resolve to be a bit more attentive. I think about topics all the time, so maybe the thing is to just post these musings and see what y'all think. Food, who doesn't think about it most of the time?
I'm teaching a Make Your Own Baby Food class this month (Jan. 18) and have been thinking about the introduction of food and how the lads reacted. I thought it was going to be some major epiphany, but, for both of them, it was a bit of a snooze (rice cereal with a splash of apple juice--who could blame them). Eamonn was much more interested in the purees; Alec did a lot of spitting and didn't really engage until he could pick stuff up. He's still a lot more fickle when it comes to eating than Eamonn ever is. E finished a beet salad two days ago!
I'll use a lot of information from this site, and my personal experience. As with all things concerning babies, it's useful to remember that they are just little people and can be picky and quirky just like everyone else (I sneer at Bat Man "fruit" roll ups, but can't stop eating Twizzlers, for instance--I guess it's the fake strawberry flavor that makes one slab of corn syrup more appealing). I hope I will inspire some new moms to go beyond Gerber's and create their own mash-ups. Sweet potatoes and apples, anyone?
Oof, one thing after another and suddently it's 10 days later. There's a name for this...slow blogging..and I wrote about it on GTTSB. So let's just say I'm trying to guarantee quality blog. Here are some pics from the last couple of weekends at the store. We also had the first couple of episodes of B&P's Discussion Sections, but maybe I'll talk about those in a couple of days.
First up, Bath Fizzies with those Dodges of Double D's B's. Simple to mix (oil, scent, baking soda, citric acid), delightful to use. 
We combined, compressed and took them home as gifts. Eamonn loves them, but is frustrated that they don't just fizz for the whole bath time--just until they dissolve. He kept trying to sit on one in tonite's bath, so now his can smells like cranberry. Could be worse. A lot worse.Next up was Truffle Making, in kid-(grand)parent teams. The class was lead by Jinjer Miller, who is has great truffle-expertise. We rolled coffee-flavored, vanilla, almond and peppermint. They were all very pretty, but I thought the almond rocked (secret ingredient: Watkins Almond Extract). Delish.
Last, but not least, was Shrimp Three Ways--as cocktail, proscuitto-wrapped and in gumbo. We were a small, but dedicated bunch and Chad even broke out the crab cakes as an extra treat. Chocolate, seafood, last weekend was rather decadent.
