Post Apocalyptic Clothing Line Notes

I’m designing a micro line of post apocalyptic style clothing inspired by my novel Cricket and Grey. I’m starting with smocks made from men’s shirts. As I’m making these I’m thinking about whole outfits to wear with them.

This started because I am faced with the reality that I need to make some money and I can either try to sell my own things in my Etsy shop or I can get a job at an office or retail store. I don’t want to have to work outside my home. So I made a push to label my salves which I was already working on because I wanted to make some apothecary items inspired by my book. Then I asked myself what else I could make that wouldn’t bore me or annoy me.

That’s when I decided to turn my Stitch and Boots shop into a shop wholly inspired by Cricket and Grey. To create a shop that might exist in my own novel. I did the whole apron thing in the past and am tired of making retro style aprons. I want smocks! I want to recycle some things in the spirit of a post apocalyptic world. As I started cutting and pleating this first one I couldn’t help but imagine what I would wear with it.

Especially because it looks like a cute sun dress. Designing and selling clothing is tricky if you don’t have a professional pattern grader or grading skills or a set of slopers in different sizes to work with. So in all the years I’ve been sewing professionally I have never attempted to make and sell my own clothing designs.

I had a revelation yesterday in a facebook conversation about selling hand made goods that being a fashion designer was my only design ambition and it’s the one thing I’ve never done. I’ve been the shipping manager for a fashion designer, I’ve been a costumer, I’ve designed aprons and pot holders, and I’ve been a design assistant at a men’s necktie company but not once have I attempted to design and sell my own line of clothing.

I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it on my terms and with pretty much no budget. No budget means a lot of limitations but this is perfect because anyone sewing clothes in a post apocalyptic world would have many limitations such as buying materials and lack of industrial machinery.

In talking with people out loud about this I have found that I’m very clear about a few things. I’m going to list them here:

I will do NO custom orders. People really take advantage of you when you offer custom. They don’t think that’s what they’re doing, but I’ve had a lot of experience with this and I’m not going to offer it.

I am going to price my line like a professional fashion line and that means I’m not catering to the bargain hunting crowd. If you want cheap, go to Target. My price range will be $45 – $300 per item. My sewing skills are professional and I went to school to learn this shit so my prices will reflect the quality and expertise I bring to my sewn things. No apologies. And anyone who says “I can make that myself for much cheaper” – good, go do it and stop being rude.

There will be pockets! There may even be one or two secret pockets.

Every garment will be designed with these activities in mind: gardening, bicycling, walking, running from zombies or angry mobs, going on road trips, foraging and hunting, and doing all kinds of urban homesteading activities. So no ball gowns or tight pencil skirts.

Sizing: I will be doing general size ranges rather than number sizes. S, M, L, and XL.

No wholesale orders. I can’t afford to do wholesale and am not interested. There will be no selling in other people’s shops.

I need to figure out a cheap way to make labels.

Alright – it’s time to get to work on my second smock!

Hope you have a great weekend!

16 Batches of Pesto is Squirrel Behavior

It has begun.

The point in the summer when my squirrel instincts kick in and I start stuffing and storing food in my cheeks and no one notices because I’m really fat.

Wait – no – I mean, the point in the season where I become a squirrel but no one notices because I’m already impressively hirsute.

Gah! What I really mean is —

CANNING SEASON HAS BEGUN!

I can feel it in my bones. The need to sock food away in the pantry and freezer. I look at all produce and wonder what I can do with it to save it. I don’t do it in a small way, either. Food preserving in a small way is great and I encourage everyone to do it on any scale that suits them.

I only do it on a large scale. I’m an inherently lazy person. I really am. I think in some way my spazzy excitement about the things I love has to be balanced out by my dark chronic depression and a damning inertia in order to prevent the world and people around me from being irradiated by my overwhelming excitement over the little things, like when I find basil for $1.25 per bunch from my local farm.

I can’t muster up the energy to make one or two batches of pesto. That would require that I drag out my food processor and all the ingredients for food that will be gone by tomorrow. WASTED USE OF ENERGY. But it’s totally worth getting it out to make 16 batches of pesto.

That’s what I made yesterday. One batch to eat last night and 15 to put in the freezer.

Need a pesto recipe? I have a great one my friend Chelsea and I developed together:

Pesto Recipe

Philip wants me to make at least 10 more batches. It’s hard to refuse when I can get locally grown basil for such a great price. I can’t afford to buy pine nuts so this pesto is made with walnuts.

Walnuts I foraged from the neighborhood for free last fall. I have plenty to use up. Tons. That cost me nothing but the labor of gathering and then cracking them and then freezing them. This makes this pesto the cheapest I’ve ever made. In Oregon one summer I froze 21 batches of pesto but each basil bunch was $2.40 and I used pine nuts which cost $16 per pound (I think we got ours from Trader Joe’s which might have been less but some pine nuts cost up to $32 per pound and eventually I just couldn’t pay it). Anyway, it was much more expensive to make that pesto but it was worth it for how much better home made pesto is than store bought.

This year the pesto is costing about $2 per batch which is just for the oil and Parmesan and garlic. A bargain.

There’s something about food preserving that makes me so excited and energized and deeply satisfied. I look forward to canning season all year just as much as I look forward to eating tomatoes and cucumbers all year. I hope I’ll get a ton of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce in the freezer this year too. Last year I didn’t process many tomatoes in the canner because I have a lot of space to use up in my freezer and if I don’t fill it then it’s wasted energy.

Today is a pickling day. Yesterday was going to be for pickling but then that basil happened and I had to go with it. Today I’m pickling (ripe) cherry tomatoes (new to me – not sure if I’ll like the results) and dilled beans which I love and haven’t made for several years. I’ll do one or two jars with a hot pepper in them for my sister and others who like a spicy pickle.

It’s already almost 1pm and I’m still in my pyjamas so it’s time to get dressed and bicycle to the farm for some dill heads and I may have to go get more vinegar. I’ll be using the burner on the BBQ for the canning today as I’ll be making batches too big for the kitchen stove.

LET’S GET THIS PICKLE PARTY GOING!

A Great Year for Tomatoes!

The tomatoes this year are phenomenal! The winner for most prolific is tied between my Sungold cherry tomato plant and the Ananas Noire plant which produces these small green tomatoes. They’re pretty good but not nearly as good as Aunt Ruby’s German Green which I couldn’t find in the nursery. I have a seed packet of them to start next year.

This tomato soup with garlic croutons is the best tomato soup I’ve ever made – but I added too much salt so next batch I will be more cautious with the salt. I made this just as the tomatoes were starting to ripen so it’s half homegrown tomatoes and half canned store bought tomato sauce. I will be making this again and probably actually put the recipe on the blog.

I took color theory at FIDM so I knew this sauce was going to be brownish but it is less pretty than I predicted. In future I will not combine my green tomatoes with my red ones for sauce. Also note how full the pot it. This batch of sauce cooked down to just 2 quarts of sauce.

Orangey brownish sauce.

Philip, Max, and Max’s friend Sam made chicken Kiev this past weekend though Sam had to leave before tasting it because it takes FOREVER to make this. Huge success with the kid. He liked the parsley garlic butter sauce. Even ate the big chunks of garlic though it was supposed to be smooth. The kid likes garlic! As it’s turning out, Max is a gourmand. He likes really fancy food. Only freshly made. He loves sushi but only from the restaurant they go to, not from the supermarket. He is still intensely picky about texture so if the salt roasted chicken he usually likes is a tiny bit rubbery or different – he won’t eat it. No leftovers.

I’m having a lot of trouble feeding him from day to day still. Back to Nature seems to have changed their cracker recipes and now they’re all sub-par and Max won’t eat them. So peanut butter and round crackers is suddenly not happening. It’s super frustrating. So everyday eating is still hugely frustrating but meanwhile he’s trying lots of things. Like, I say “hey, try this out, kid” and if what I hand him doesn’t offend him visually he’ll try it. This was not how things used to be. He used to be so suspicious of trying anything new that huge negotiations would have to be undertaken, probably with plenty of warning days in advance, in order to convince him to try things.

So for those people with extreme picky eaters like mine – even once they start trying things – this food thing can be a major uphill climb. Hang in there, (I tell you and remind myself), your kid might actually be a gourmand instead of just a problem eater but it will take a lot of patience and experimentation and time to uncover the food lover.

Today I’m going to make a big pot of experimental salsa to can. The one thing I have to figure out is how much acidity to add to it to make it safe for canning. I’m using a Ball recipe for guidance but changing some flavoring things. For one thing, I will be using my pickled jalapenos in it (which obviously means my salsa will already have higher acidity than if using fresh peppers). Also – way more cilantro. Their recipes always call for a couple of tablespoons but cilantro loses a lot of its flavor when cooked and that small amount adds almost nothing to salsa. I have found a couple of other recipes that use a lot more of it. Anyway, I’m using my green tomatoes for this and I’m pretty excited. I haven’t canned salsa for many years. It will be good to have some jars stashed away.

I spent a couple of hours looking through my extensive collection of preserving books and it got me so excited to do some new preserving projects. The one author I’m missing from my collection is Marisa McClellans two books. I can’t afford to buy them right now but I really want both of her titles: Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint and when I have money for a couple more books I’m getting them. But my collection is pretty fantastic and it’s just about time to rev up for the canning season.

Canning projects I want to try this year:

pickled red onions

pickled cocktail onions

develop new salsa recipe (today!)

bruschetta topping

pickled ripe cherry tomatoes

Old favorites I plan to make:

tomato sauce

dilly beans

marinated summer vegetables

garlic dill pickles

canned peaches

canned vanilla pears

and more pickled jalapenos*

*Those black little dots I’ve seen in the batches this year and last year are weird but apparently not dangerous (Philip and I have been eating the jalapenos anyway with no ill effects) . Needless to say, I can’t give them to friends just to be safe. I’m going to be using a bunch of last year’s in my salsa so they will be cooked again and 100% safe at that point. But I will hold back a jar and take it to the extension office for answers. I meant to do that last year but will do it this time. I need that mystery solved.

Garden Clean-up

Yesterday evening I spent two hours in the garden. It got just cool enough for me to go out there without shouting “you motherfucker” at the sun every two minutes. In fact, there was a nice breeze.

What’s happening right now is a lot of ripping out and cleaning up of spent or failed plants. I tore out all my chard plants, bug eaten and covered in powdery mildew. I tore out my Black Krim tomato because every last tomato was rotting and they aren’t even remotely close to ripening. I tore out a bunch of leggy dry allysum and have a ton more to rip out. New allysum will replace it in no time.

I cut back half of my rudbeckias and still have the other half to cut back. They are all falling over and the blooms were spent. I’m hopeful that I’ll get more blooms in a few weeks after trimming them.

I ripped out a nasturtium and have more to rip out. I trimmed back my vervain and some thyme plants.

Next up I have to take out my failed bush beans, the leggy buggy tough-as-leather kale plants, the calendula (leggy and covered in powdery mildew), and the borage.

What I want to add to the garden: penstemon, thunbergia, lobelia, lettuce, more million bells, Alpine strawberries, wild violets, beets, and carrots.

I also need to get the kiwi trellised and the mandarin orange planted in a raised box.

I felt incredibly energized after gardening last night. I think this is how some people feel after yoga.

July Garden Update, 2014

The garden this summer has, so far, been amazing. I have been harvesting calendula for over a month now. At first there was just a small amount each time, too little for the dehydrator, so I strung them up to dry. While pretty, they don’t dry as thoroughly this way. I ended up putting these in the dehydrator later for a few hours.

This is the medicinal kind Calendula officinalis and if you plan on using your calendula for salves, I suggest you plant this variety. It has the strongest medicinal qualities of all the calendula varieties. Picking them, smelling them (marigold), drying them, and plucking the petals off to store for use later make me happy. Maybe it’s the colors. Maybe it’s knowing they are so good for skin and so easy to grow. I love everything about calendula.

I’ve been harvesting my comfrey too. I have only one plant but it’s putting off tons of leaves and I keep cutting them and drying them. They are huge. Too huge for my dehydrator unless I cut them first. This one harvest was just too big so I hung it out in the back yard under the oak tree. I don’t like the quality of hung dry as much as the dehydrator. They turn pretty brown. Which is fine. But it’s just better in the dehydrator. I dislike the smell of comfrey. Cutting it, crumbling it, yuck. Not sure why. But it is one of the best medicinals in my opinion so well worth the unpleasant scent.

I finally FINALLY made salve with the oil I already infused months ago. This is a triple strength wound salve and it’s turned out really well and we’ve been using it and it’s GREAT STUFF.

Mom loves kale. I used to think kale was okay-ish but mostly only in soup with white beans and cooked so long it stops being tough or tasting like old man breath. Yeah, I really don’t like kale and never have. But it’s one of mom’s favorite greens so she grew a couple plants of it and I harvested it for her, cleaned it, steamed it, and then froze it. She is still having to be careful of her produce intake after surgery.

Prettiest little insect eggs ever. They look like beads and are hard like bead too. These clusters came off in one piece. I have to admit that kale leaves can be really beautiful.

Our squash plants have been pretty productive. The most productive being the zucchini and the least productive being the yellow crookneck. All of them are so good fresh from the garden – I can’t get enough of them.

Started harvesting and drying my sage.

The tomatoes I planted this year are: Ananas Noire (actually ripens green and yellow), Ethiopian Black (small black tomato), Cherokee Purple (huge and deep red), Japanese Trifele (small reddish pink), Sungolds (orange cherry tomatoes – the only cherry toms I ever grow), and Pinapple (orange with red streaking).

We’re getting lots of tomatoes right now. And yet – we eat them almost as fast as we harvest them. I made a wonderful tomato soup the other night and I didn’t have enough of our own tomatoes that day so I had to add a can of tomato sauce to it. Even so – the fresh tomatoes made it especially good. I made garlic sourdough croutons to go with it. I did make it too salty though.

The neighbors all love our garden. They tell us all the time. Strangers walking by stop and enjoy and we’re outside they tell us how gorgeous it is. It’s gratifying. It’s so wonderful to have our front yard vegetable and flower garden giving so much joy not only to us but to a lot of other people too.

Notable failures: beans. I planted bush beans around the base of the peach tree and they started turning yellow and the beans are tiny. I think it’s the variety and I don’t like it because I can’t tell when they’re mature. The carrots and beets have not thrived. My herbs keep flowering and not growing in size. My summer savory died. Screw summer savory!

It’s time to remove the chard which has become covered in powdery mildew. Time to cut down the spent snap dragons. Time to trim back the rudbeckias. I need to weed out all the spent sprawling allysum and take out the dying nasturtiums. I think we need some new flowers. We definitely need some penstemon and thunbergia. Maybe some lobelia and creeping verbena. Flowers to add some color once I cut down the spent ones.

Next herbal project is to develop a great lip balm. I have just ruined a big quantity of organic sunflower oil by trying to infuse it with fresh rosemary and dried peppermint. FAIL. Infusing oils with fresh herbs has failed twice for me now and I need to stop learning that lesson. I don’t like the resulting smell. It smells like bruised leaves. So this time I’m going to do a batch of sunflower oil with calendula and comfrey and then add essential oils to it. I’ll start that today.

Being out in the garden to pick vegetables and herbs this season has been amazing. Getting back into gardening after such a long time away from it feels healing and good. So, more of that soon!

xoxo

Finding my Feet in the Garden Again

Yesterday I had a major anxiety meltdown. It made everyone miserable. Today I have a huge emotional hangover. The best thing I know of to cure it is to hang out with plants.

So before I go get some bean seeds and squash plants from the nursery I am sharing some pictures of how the front garden is coming along. Many things are settling in and just now starting to make new growth. These pictures are from a week ago.

Those tomatoes are in. I didn’t start my own seeds this year so I’m at the mercy of the local nurseries choice of toms. So far we’ve got: Sungold, Japanese Trifele, Pineapple, Cherokee Purple, Ethiopian Black, and Anasas Black. (Wishing I could have found Caspian Pink and Aunt Ruby’s German Green)

Sharon gave me a bit of comfrey root and I wasn’t sure it was going to make it – but it did! I’m pretty excited about this. Don’t you dare tell me how it “takes over” as though that’s a bad thing. Comfrey is one of the best medicinal herbs there is so bring it the hell on!

The border against the porch is really coming along well. All the roses, having been fed a couple of months ago, are thriving and are covered in blooms and buds. We cut our first bouquets of the season and for days I’ve been enjoying the heavenly rose scent next to my laptop in my office. Iceberg is a workhorse. We’ve missed having it in our garden. Beautiful small blushed blooms with a medium honey-scent. Wonderful for filling in bouquets.

People stop and stare at our garden now every day all day long. And not as though they were wondering how such a trash heap was allowed to flourish. They LOVE it! They tell us how much they love it all the time. A UPS man slowed down to tell me the garden was looking great. A group of hoodie and skinny pants -wearing teens walked by and I heard one of the guys say “I can’t wait to see what they do with this next!” pointing at the raised beds. Seriously. Teens love our garden as much as the older set do.

It’s childish of me but it makes me giddy to say I designed and built them every time someone asks. I’m that proud.

On earth day I was writing but I stopped to go plant my Abraham D’Arby rose and do a little weeding. Perfect day. Perfect moment. Everyone knows I’m not a fan of sunshine but I will say that when it’s mild enough even I can enjoy the feel of it on my back. The alyssum smells strong when the sun is out so the yard smelled like honey. I picked my mom and I each a little vase of roses. That is a chief pleasure in life of mine. Deadheading roses and picking bouquets to bring in the house. My therapist said I needed to do that as often as possible because I mentioned it as one of the few activities that I find truly calming. Anxiety is an insidious bitch and she took me the hell down yesterday.

Today is gorgeous out and so I believe the best way I can push the lingering threads of stress from my head and body is to put my hands in that soil out there and open packets of seeds and play that game where you put them in the soil and hope something comes of them. You never know with seeds. I’ve got some Alpine strawberry seeds I’ve been meaning to plant. I’ve been hesitant because I don’t want them to fail. Today I’m going to sprinkle them out in different areas and just let nature decide what to do about it. There isn’t enough time in life to sit on seeds when you can throw them out into the world and watch for the tough suckers that pop up.

On my day out Friday I spent about an hour at a bus stop waiting for buses that didn’t come. I picked up trash and I enjoyed the scattering of chamomile. I don’t know what kind it was – no petals on them – the scent was more pale than on the Roman or German kind you grow in your garden but had the unmistakable smell of chamomile. I’m not sure if chamomile has a wild cousin or not, I will find out another day. I just enjoyed that a carpet of it was thriving in the hardscrabble behind the bench at the stop. I feel like I’m one of those scrappy little buggers, just hanging on through drought and flood. Popping back up after being walked on carelessly. Multiplying its universe against all odds. And for the desperate traveler they offer succor to an aching head. If only the traveler would bother to know what’s right there under his feet.

I hope your garden is breaking out of its winter shell now. I hope you’re able to get out in it. I’ll be connected to you all today when I’m out there blackening my nails. xo

Organized House for a Clear Head

I have been very busy recalibrating my body and mind but I have come to a roadblock. There are a lot of tools I have for dealing with my mental illness which is the thing that must be managed above all else or nothing else happens. Among the tools for managing my mental health (aside from the life-saving psyche meds) are gardening, cooking, making things, making POTIONS, taking photographs, arranging flowers cut from the garden. Canning. Writing about it all. I have an exhaustive list of projects I want to be working on in addition to writing book 2 of Cricket and Grey. But until my house is organized and cleaned up I can’t work on these other projects because I can’t GET AT STUFF. I can’t FIND STUFF. I can’t CLEAN STUFF when it’s all such a mess around here I don’t even know where to begin.

The theme of this year seems to be recalibration. Changing habits. Cleaning up. Cleaning out. Rebuilding. Rewriting.

I have a great house. Plenty of room for things. It’s got a lot of awkward spaces and so my living room closet is actually my kitchen pantry. It’s okay though. If I work at organizing my rooms better I can make it all work better for me. I need to make it so that it’s easier to put stuff away. I need to clean out more stuff – just because I like getting rid of stuff. Feels good the way rejecting infinite loops of negative thought feels good. Maybe you have room for old records in your head but why keep them in there if you can make more room for fresh air if not fresh thoughts?

As I work on losing another 20lbs in the next 3 months I need to be getting my house organized and cleaned out so that I can write better and more and also do more fun things in my kitchen and learn more apothecary skills. To get my household polished up and running more smoothly I need to do the following things:

Clean out all bookshelves – pare down books and DVD’s and anything else that lives on my bookshelves.

Organize bookshelves – in particular my reference books. Cooking, preserving, and gardening books need to be grouped together for easy locating.

Clean out and organize the living room closet – it’s gotten hairy in there with empty jars. I may need to store some empty jar boxes in my office.

Clean out canned goods from laundry room – I don’t use canned goods when they’re difficult to access. That cabinet in the laundry room could hold empties and canning supplies like screw lids. (The things living on top of the freezer?)

Clear off everything living on top of the big freezer – cause it just hurts looking at that pile of crap.

Organize the kitchen cabinets better – tough job, this. Too bad. Find a way to make it work better.

Plan rearrangement of kitchen to fit the old stove – make an actual plan on paper of how I will fit the vintage stove into the kitchen and how I will fit a dish washer near the sink – will I find a cabinet on craigslist to put next to the one we have or find one to replace whole sink cabinet and everything or build something myself?

Clean off all the things I never clean off – fridge, big freezer, washer and dryer, doors, mouldings, window sills, stair railing, and cabinet fronts.

Make bathroom curtain – because that sitch is kind of depressing. It’s a small window and I already have the fabric and trim to do it.

Make curtains for office – because the blinds SUCK. Admittedly this is a huge job because I’ve got a ton of windows in here.

Hang my weird crap up in the office – because I like looking at my weird crap.

All of these things will make it easier to clean my house efficiently and access all my stuff for projects when I want to instead of avoiding projects because it exhausts me thinking about all I have to do before I can even start. My head will feel better because my space will feel better. I’m going to give myself a deadline to finish ALL of these things.

That deadline is July 9th. The same deadline I gave myself to lose my next 20lbs. These goals are not unrelated.

What kind of household projects are hanging over your head that you need to finish so other things run more smoothly? Want to join me in getting shit done?! Let’s do it!

The Monastery Garden Update

BEFORE:

Institutional plantings of agapanthus, spider condos (aka mock orange?), and some wan heather (or whatever those wan plants are that you can’t see in this picture).

AFTER:

Matching tiered raised beds on either side of the front walkway with an Elephant Heart plum in the center on one side and a Frost peach in the center on the other side.

First we had to strip out the agapanthus – a job that will never be completely done because this plant was designed by the devil – and then we removed the creeping amorphous shrubs that all the neighborhood spiders were using as their hatchery.

Then we got one of the neighbors to come dig up the beautiful weeping cherry that produces no cherries. This was a sacrifice on my mom’s part. I swear I didn’t force her to agree to let me put a fruiting tree in its place.

Then I began measuring and cutting the lumber for the beds. Remember that I already designed the beds this winter?

I built the beds. It took me about a week to build all the beds. Philip leveled them in the ground and filled them with soil.

If you want to meet your neighbors in Santa Rosa all you have to do is work on a garden project all week. Absolutely everyone will introduce themselves to you. I love it! You could work on a garden project for a year in McMinnville and no one will EVER talk to you or introduce themselves. Ask me how I know.

Everyone in the neighborhood (so far) LOVES the raised bed design! (They’ve all told me so and have been commenting on the progress excitedly for two weeks now).

I wanted the beds to be matching on either side of the path to give the walkway a sense of symmetry and formality.

This week I will be planting the beds out with most of the herbs they’ll have in them for this year. The vegetables will go in next week. Next year I will add more medicinal herbs to the beds as we’ll be building vegetable beds at the end of the driveway.

I’d be out there planting right now but I woke up too late and it’s already HOT out and I wouldn’t be able to water anything I planted without giving them major sunburn. Next week I should have more to show you in these beds.

Buckwheat the Hippie Way: recipe for buckwheat groats

The naked child is me in 1971. The back of the photo says “flower child” in my mother’s handwriting. That was probably the last time I was naked in public. The other picture is of me and my mom making “seed paintings” in the One World Family commune I was born into. The beads are from my mom, given to her by my dad (I think). Pretty sure he brought them back from India himself.

I grew up eating this stuff. My peers think they discovered eating whole grains. Pshaw! While you were all eating hamburger helper and white rice I was eating this healthy crap.

Being raised by a hippie mother left an indelible mark on my culinary palate. While my peers are discovering the marvels of millet, raw foods, fasting, and sprouted everything, I have done my best to distance myself from these horrors from my childhood food legacy. The best use I could come up with for millet, for example, was to pretend it was Kix cereal for my Barbies. (Though I never got to taste Kix as a child, I knew it had to be less difficult and more pleasant to chew.) In spite of growing up to dislike brown rice and raw tofu, my mother was a good cook and there are dishes she made that I have fond memories of. One that I’ve been wanting to recreate is fluffy buckwheat groats with steamed vegetables served with butter and soy sauce. It’s earthy humble food that is beloved by no one but hippies and Russians, though in Russia the buckwheat is more likely to be the bed upon which a huge roasted pig is served.

The last time I had a craving for this dish from my childhood I followed the directions on the (very expensive) package of buckwheat I bought. The instructions said to bring the buckwheat groats and water to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Within five minutes of simmering it I had a pot full of buckwheat mush. Not to be discouraged, two years later I’ve made a fresh attempt to recreate the buckwheat of happy memory. This time I followed directions for making it the traditional Russian way. I brought my buckwheat just to a boil and removed it from the stove and put it in the oven for an hour in a bean pot. I’m not going to lie, the kitchen smelled wonderful while the groats cooked, but they didn’t look promising having the look of mush in progress.

When I removed them from the oven and fluffed them with a fork I realized that they were almost fluffy, which was encouraging, but when I tasted them they were bitter. Bitter? Frugality prevented me from throwing my experiment away. I put it in the fridge for a day. Sometimes magic things happen to leftovers, right? The next day I put on some Simon and Garfunkel, got out my mom’s old Indian beads and, determined not to waste food, I heated up the buckwheat while steaming some broccoli. I added butter and soy sauce and ate it. I don’t know if it was the music and beads, or if taking a time out in the fridge sweetened the buckwheat, but suddenly I was taken way back to the good parts of being the child of a Hippie. It was the perfect fare for an overcast winter day in Northern California.

Buckwheat the Hippie Way

4 to 6 servings, depending on how much pot you smoked

Buckwheat the Hippie Way

Ingredients

2 cups toasted buckwheat groats
4 cups water
2 Tbsp butter
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 lbs broccoli, cut into florets
soy sauce

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350°
Put Simon and Garfunkle's greatest hits on your stereo.
Put your India beads on and don't shave.
Put the buckwheat into a medium saucepan with the water, butter, and salt.
Bring just to a boil, stir it, and then put it in a small baking dish.
Bake groats for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Hippies aren't specific people. Remove from oven when all the water is absorbed into the grains. If you're antsy for precision, go smoke a joint or have an orgy while you wait to calm you down like my parents did. Fluff grains with a fork.
While the buckwheat is cooling down, steam the broccoli just until tender.
Put a healthy serving of grains down on your plate and top with broccoli and drizzle with soy sauce.
Now you're eating a piece of my authentic hippie childhood. Feel free to rebel, I know I did. But if you grew up with fare like this I promise that no matter how goth or urban chic or sophisticated your tastes become, you'll always come back to this earthy weird food.

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Windowpane Quilt as Allegory for Hope and Patience

This is my finished windowpane full sized quilt that I started in 2007. It’s taken me a whole 7 year cycle to finish it. I had no idea when I started it that I was about to be the loneliest and fattest person I knew. I had no idea my old cat was about to die and I was going to go bankrupt and that my son’s problems were going to come to a head. I had no idea that we were going to spend almost $2,000 we didn’t have to save two tiny kittens from the claws of death. I had no idea that before I finished this quilt I would start feeling so sick inside I would wake up most mornings wishing I could just peacefully go back to sleep and not wake up again until it was time to die.

I had no idea that I would finally write the novel I’d been trying to write my whole life. Or that I would take Kung Fu from an unbalanced but brilliant Kung Fu master and discover how empowering it is to punch and kick things. I had no idea that the town I was living in which treats some people wonderfully would become an iron trap holding me and my family down with our faces in the dirt. I had no idea just how poisonous a location can be to a spirit. Nor did I have any idea that such poison could simultaneously inspire such raw creativity and beauty in the people it infects.

I had no idea any of this was coming. I just wanted to make a quilt to keep us warm and to cheer up our house. I just wanted to have fun with my sewing. Which I did. I had no real plan when I started it. I just cut a bunch of rectangles the same size and then started stitching them together. This quilt was a bright puzzle I put together as I went along.

It’s about the joy of surprises and how color and pattern can come together and work in unexpected ways.

This quilt was about letting go of expectation and using what I had on hand.

Which is how it ended up with a layer of ugly cotton flannel in addition to the usual layer of cotton batting. About a day after I took this picture I started basting the layers together and suddenly came down with influenza for the first time in my life. The real flu. And not just any strain of influenza – this was the first round identified as H1N1. Ten days of fever, shaking, excruciating pain, and wracking cough that caused me to break a rib. I didn’t work on this quilt again until last month, February 2014.

Finishing this quilt stands for a triumph over adversity. It stands for creation over destruction. It’s about never giving up and keeping hope alive with the little things like not tossing WIPs just because so many of them never get finished. It’s a willingness to see something through, no matter how long it takes.

It’s the first full sized quilt I’ve ever made, my fifth quilt in all. I’ve made 3 baby quilts (for Adriana, Ben, and Ivy), 1 twin sized quilt (for Lili), and this one.

All my animals love it and claim it. My sister was the first to break it in.

I re-watched most of Alias (for the 3rd time) while making it. I stayed up until 3am working on it on more than one occasion because I wasn’t drinking alcohol and consequently have returned to my insomnia.

I learned to make my own binding and how to machine quilt something bigger than a twin. Finishing this quilt has set something free, I’m not even sure exactly what. The past? Pain? Creativity? Faith in myself? The future?

Maybe it’s an allegory for hope and patience.

I don’t know. All I know is that a whole lot of shit has happened since I cut out the first stack of rectangles. I started it in McMinnville, Oregon and finished it in Santa Rosa, California and in spite of all the bad stuff that’s happened, this quilt reminds me of the good friends I made in Oregon and miss. It reminds me of the blueberries and the asparagus. It reminds me of the rain and the snow. It reminds me of Hotel Oregon and the geek techs with M16′s. It reminds me of the brambles everywhere that make the best jam on earth.

This is my windowpane quilt – finished.