Category Archives: Around the Farmhouse

Preserving Notes: 9/7/2012

I didn’t think I was going to get to do much preserving this year. Time being one issue and availability of affordable produce being the other. Imwalle Gardens supplied me with produce I could afford to preserve and as for time? I always make time for preserving. I admit that I stay up late coring and scoring and blanching and peeling tomatoes. I just squeeze these projects in because I don’t feel right if I’m not putting food up for the winter at the end of summer.

I’m feeling right in my bones this week. Except that my hip actually hurts really bad (probably from all the standing up while canning) so my actual bones aren’t all feeling super – but taking part in food preservation along with thousands (maybe millions?) of other Americans is giving me a feeling of self empowerment and unity. I’m enjoying the knowledge that the food preservers working hard across the country come from all walks of life, all spiritual beliefs, every kind of sexual orientation, every kind of racial combination, and every kind of political affiliation. While we may have different motivations for canning and drying and freezing food – what we have in common is that we think it’s work worth doing. No matter how our religious beliefs might clash (or lack of religious beliefs, as is the case with me) and no matter how much we might argue over the direction this country should go – we agree that there is value in putting food up for later. I like to think that most of us also think it’s FUN. Because I love it. When I considered not putting anything up this year my husband asked me how I could consider not doing one of my favorite things in the world?

He also made a tiny selfish plea for pickles!

So while I’m canning I’m thinking about what brings us all together, not what might tear us apart. Oh – and us food preservers? We’re the people everyone else will want to know during a zombie apocalypse. That’s a good position to be in.

So what have I been preserving? I’m going to list what I’ve done so far:

5 pints of Thai red curry paste (freezer)

13 pints of elderberry syrup made with raw honey (freezer)

9 pints of corn (freezer)

2 quarts of thick tomato sauce (freezer)

5 quarts of bastardized ratatouille (freezer)

5 quarts of summer vegetable soup (freezer)

21 quarts of diced tomatoes (freezer)

2 quarts pinto bean chili (freezer)

23 half pints of peach jam (canned)

7 quarts garlic dill pickles (canned)

2 big jars of pickles fermenting in brine (lactic acid fermentation)

Most of that has been done in an 8 day period. I still have 40 ears’ worth of corn kernels to process (planning to make corn chowder and also saute some with zucchini, onion, and peppers) and on my counter this morning is 40lbs of peeled de-seeded tomatoes waiting to be processed. As soon as I’m done writing this post I’ll have to make a decision about what to do with them. I think I’ll make a couple of pots of sauce and if there’s any left over I’ll dice them and can them in their own juice.

Money and time allowing I would still like to do more:

80 lbs more tomatoes – canned

dilled beans – canned

40 more ears of corn for sautes and corn chowder – for freezer

peach chutney – canned

5 more quarts of summer vegetable soup – freezer

Random notes and observations:

14 jars of my peach jam were made using pectin – this accounted for 8 lbs of peaches. The jam did NOT set. The flavor is very good the color is bright. The other 9 jars of peach jam were made without pectin and were thickened by cooking it down for a long period (over an hour) and accounted for 8 lbs of peaches. It set but the color is much darker and the flavor is, I think, not quite as good.

I was lucky to find any pickling cucumbers that were worth buying this year. I’d seen some at the farm stands and in the supermarkets that looked old. It’s really important to can freshly picked cucumbers. Not only that – most of them were $2 per/lb or more. !! I got around 6lbs of them and it turns out that only half of them were small enough to fit a few in a quart jar. So after canning 7 quarts of the smaller sized ones I had the problem of the big ones. I couldn’t fit 2 in a quart jar but one per quart jar was ridiculous. Such an awkward size! I decided to ferment them instead of can them.

I followed an old Russian recipe I found in my Culinaria Russia book. However, I didn’t have any marigolds and it didn’t specify which kind of oak leaves to use. Yep, oak leaves. I need to know more about oak before putting it in my pickle. I did have access to my friend Sharon’s sour cherry tree, though. I shared my pickle adventure on fb and I’m going to put it here because it amused me:

“In a pickle related emergency I sped through the night to my friend Sharon’s house and begged for an ounce of sour cherry leaves from her tree, explained to her laughing husband and kidlets what constitutes a pickle emergency and then, like a pickle-bandito, stole back into the night with a fistful of leaves and some dark plans for a bunch of cucumbers.”

So my pickles (pictured in this post) are fermenting in my office window. Tomorrow they go into quiet darkness to experience the wild and strange transformation from cucumber to nasty smelling rotting things, to a gorgeous crisp garlic dill pickle. I keep thinking it’s magic, but really it’s cool science.

Freezing tomatoes and other things in jars instead of in vacuum sealed plastic bags: out of a total of 39 jars put in the freezer I’ve had only one jar break. This was my experience last year as well. Out of about the same number of jars I had one casualty. I’m freezing in jars because glass is inert but plastic is not. Glass is a safer and healthier vessel for storing your food. No chemicals can be released into your food when it’s in glass. Though vacuum sealed bags are BHP free (the ones I buy, anyway) they are still capable of leaching chemicals into your food. Not only that – their quality after one use goes down so far that I don’t tend to reuse them at all. The jars can be used over and over. Much greener. Much less going into the landfills. There are some obvious disadvantages too – they take up more room in the freezer and can break. I’d like to hear from anyone else who’s tried freezing in jars – a friend of mine had a ton of breakage and I’d like to know if others have had lots of breakage too? Please share!

Incidentally – I do actually prefer more canning than freezing. It’s more work but having shelf stable food that doesn’t require electricity to keep it good is very appealing to me. However – I had to empty out my freezer to move and an empty freezer uses more energy than a full one. I have a stand alone freezer for freezing the stuff I can’t safely can. The frozen corn, for instance. If I had had better results from pressure canning I’d probably just do that and get rid of the freezer. Maybe. Although the freezer is better for things like elderberry syrup – the freezer won’t destroy the enzymes in raw honey but the heat of canning will.

That’s all I have to report today. I need to get in the kitchen and make sauce. Please share with me what your canning projects are and thoughts or observations you’ve been making about your preserving this year.

Imwalle Gardens: the best produce market in Santa Rosa

So the farmer’s markets here in Santa Rosa are filled with produce I can’t afford to buy which is a huge disappointment. $5 per/lb for green beans is not in my budget. Neither is eggplant for $5 per/lb or even eggplant for $3 per/lb. $5 for a tiny head of lettuce? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Tomatoes can’t be had for less than $2 per/lb but most of them are upwards of $3 per/lb. Cucumbers are $2 per/lb here – I expect cucumber to be no more than 50 cents each! Corn is between 75 cents to $1 for one ear. ONE EAR OF CORN. Only some of this is organic. The green beans weren’t (I saw organic ones for $4 per/lb).

So I’ve been shopping the regular grocery store. The good news is that it’s not difficult to get mostly produce grown in California. In Oregon it’s much more difficult to get mostly Oregon produce at the big grocery stores – but who cares when they have such great farmer’s markets with produce being sold for really reasonable prices? The bad news is that even at big grocery store prices when produce is on special it isn’t affordable enough to can such produce in large quantities. While I’ve been hearing about all my friends’ food preserving escapades I’ve become increasingly jealous. I don’t feel right not preserving food at the end of summer. I was getting pretty bummed when a friend suggested I check prices at Imwalle Gardens. I’d been to Imwalle’s years ago when I lived here before but at that time I didn’t shop there much because farmer’s market produce was still reasonably priced.

So I went to Imwalle’s expecting to be disappointed.

I was so far from being disappointed – I hit the jackpot of affordable produce and the best thing of all is that this week they had 4 for $1 corn and they sell 20# of tomatoes for $12! Both of which are grown right outside their market. They’re a regular market in that they buy a lot of produce from other growers – mostly California growers (but not small farms necessarily) but they have their own farm and grow a few different kinds of peppers, corn, summer squash, Japanese eggplants, apples, and pickling cucumbers.

Imwalle Gardens is the BEST produce market in Santa Rosa. Here are some of their current prices: $1.49 per/lb for green beans, 99 cents per/lb for regular tomatoes, $1.99 per/lb for heirloom toms, 99 cents (or less) for a head of lettuce, 99 cents per/lb for hot peppers (that they grow – compared to $8 per/lb I saw at the farmer’s market), $1.19 per/lb for organic potatoes, 99 cents per/lb for summer squash (compared to $2 or more at farmer’s market), 49 cents each for regular cucumbers, and $1.19 per/lb for pickling cucumbers.

For $56 I came home with 60 lbs of really gorgeous tomatoes and 80 ears of super tasty corn. That was my first visit.

Yesterday we went back and got another 60 lbs of toms, 2 big bags of organic potatoes, some Hungarian wax peppers and some jalapenos, big bag of green beans, 6.5 lbs of pickling cucumbers, 2 heads of lettuce, big bag of zucchinis, big bag of onions, and a big bag of heirloom tomatoes for $67.50.

Here is their corn growing right outside the market.

So if you live in Santa Rosa I highly recommend that you shop at Imwalle Gardens for your produce. Some great super local produce, lots of California produce, reasonable prices, and all the staff is super nice. Imwalle’s is my new favorite place in Santa Rosa.

Imwalle Gardens

685 West 3rd Street

Santa Rosa, CA 95401

(707) 546-0279

My Unaccountable Happy Place: Asian Markets

My friend Chelsea and I visited an Asian market in Santa Rosa on Friday.

I may as well start off by saying that I don’t have any Asian street cred. I’m not part Asian. I haven’t been to any Asian countries. I haven’t formally studied Asian culture and as a person raised vegetarian there has always been a huge barrier between me and traditional Asian foods (I consume zero seafood or even vegetation derived from the sea). So when I tell you that my happy place is in Asian markets, know that it isn’t about me trying to be cool or delightfully exotic.

I was born in San Francisco and my first 8 years of life I lived in the Bay Area (San Francisco, larkspur, Berkeley, El Cerito, and Richmond) and at some point China Town had to have made a deep impression on me because there’s never been a time when I didn’t know its streets and wares and smells and associate it with enchantment, amusement, color, and comfort.

When I moved to the city with my friend Carrie I would get away from our cramped studio apartment by hiding in China Town or at the park across the street from Grace Cathedral. These were (and still are) my two favorite places to go to ground, though I’m not close enough to them any more to get lost in them. I spent a lot of time in a quiet park between Grant and Kearney where the people who actually live in China Town eat their brown bagged lunches during lunch breaks. There was a pigeon-shit covered statue there. I smoked endless cigarettes as I meditatively practiced several different handwriting fonts I made up. My favorite was a left leaning one that took much practice.

I can’t say why I have found such pleasure and peace in an environment full of Chinese people selling cheap wares and yelling at each other. I don’t know how a vegetarian finds such comfort and familiarity in a place where windows are hung with headless rabbits and hens with the air full of fish scale. Does one have to know why? The shops full of strange herbs and shriveled fungi smelling of dust and mothballs has always felt like a landing place to me.

I can’t eat 85% of what I see in Asian markets because of the ubiquitous shrimp paste and fish sauce. Asian markets are full of strange and wonderful jars of foods with provoking names like “Sago”. I hear “sago balls” rolling around in my head and though I fear giant tapioca balls I can’t help but also be charmed by them.

Even for a vegetarian there are treasures here. I once lived in a sweet little apartment with one of my favorite people in the world who I’ve known since I was fourteen years old. We lived on fifth and Clement right next to the Happy Super. Our apartment was owned by a psychotic landlady named Mrs. Lee. The fish trucks dumped their slurry of fish juice and guts right under my second story window. The whole butchered pigs would parade out of trucks from the same spot under my fascinated eye.

I loved that apartment. I loved my room mate who was always fifteen times cooler than I could ever be. I loved living next to the Happy Super. I shopped there for cheap vegetables, Thai tea, canned goods, and any other interesting things I could pick up like a happy magpie. I would troll the isles for interesting packaging, for creepy vacuum packed plastic bags of eyeballs or dessicated shrimp that I would never buy but which filled my eyes and mind with wonder.

I will never be one of those worldly jaded people who has been everywhere and become spiritually international, as cool as the continental drift. I’m interested in the world I live in and ALL the people in it but especially Chinese and Russian people. I will never be able to explain this – I’m not obsessed with Chinese culture or Russian culture but the languages and the people I meet from each and the groceries… it’s really all about the groceries if I’m being honest.

Asian markets are my happy place. I may not have any Asian street cred but this is where I find simple joy.

I loved seeing the cans of goose-fat and boiled potatoes in the Glasgow markets and certainly Scotland is my favorite place on earth besides where I live now – but nothing will ever compare to the mixed aroma of eastern spices, aged produce, and shipping pallets that assault you in the isles of Asian markets.

Where the hell else can you find Kewpie Mayonnaise?

It makes me so HAPPY.

Santa Rosa has two Asian markets that I know of so far and all the pictures in this post were taken at the one at the corner of Fulton and Guerneville Road. Can you argue with “smiling fish”? Other things my friend Chelsea and I found were dumpling presses, frozen lime leaves, African flours and spices, jarred bringal pickles, black mustard seeds, guava jam, dried Indian pulses, galangal root (which I bought for Thai red curry), frozen whole fish, birthday candles, peculiar Chinese biscuits and British teas.

Where’s your happy place? What colors dominate it, what smells do you associate with it? Where does your curiosity catch fire and your sense of time disappears?

Dairy Free Dinner Challenge: samosas, dill, and hummus

Not cooking with dairy if you’ve been cooking with lots of dairy your whole life is exactly as challenging as I thought it would be. I’ve had a couple of meals out again this week that had dairy and there was some grated Parmesan left that I put on some ratatouille because I was so desperately craving cheese. Since my goal isn’t to be 100% dairy free – this is okay. The goal I set is one I’ve kept to – I haven’t bought any cheese or yogurt (or milk or butter – though I may still buy some for baking as stated in my challenge) since the end of July.

What to cook without any dairy? I’m finding you simply have to shift your focus. I don’t want to cook things that normally would have cheese in them because it makes me miss the cheese. I don’t want to do mock-cheese dishes. I don’t want to be cooking dairy free but trying to replicate dairy with soy or coconut. For the most part I want to learn to cook meals that are simply and normally dairy free.

I love Indian food. It’s true that my all-time favorite Indian dish is palak paneer. Paneer, as you know, is CHEESE. I’m so predictable. One of the other things I love best is samosas. These are usually fried and I don’t do much (any) frying in my kitchen so I decided to experiment with doing a baked samosa. For the filling I used a recipe from a book called “India’s Vegetarian Cooking” by Monisha Bharadwaj. I didn’t have frozen peas (or fresh) so I used broccoli cut small. The filling turned out really well.

For the wrapping I used a yeasted dough recipe from Deborah Madison’s cookbook “Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone” (my most used cookbook). I loved the dough – it held up really well when used like a calzone – it didn’t get soggy. Admittedly, the filling wasn’t very moist. The dough has egg in it which helps strengthen it – I’d love a similar dough that doesn’t have eggs in it but has the same strength. Anyway – Bharadwaj suggests eating samosas with either chutney or ketchup. We ran out of our chutney so I ate mine with ketchup and loved them. To serve with them I made a cucumber salad with dill and vinaigrette. Just cucumbers. This was nice and cooling next to the spicy samosas.

Hummus. I think hummus has become our go-to snack and meal food. I can’t keep up with the demand for it. It’s fast, nutritious, and satisfying. I made pita last week too. I couldn’t find my baking stone which is how I usually make them but my friend Emma reminded me that I could cook them in a cast iron skillet so I tried that. I’ve never done them stove top before. I really loved the results. Since I never make pita to stuff it – it didn’t matter that they didn’t puff in the middle for me. I rolled the pita thinner than usual (I was worried about them cooking all the way through) and they were fantastic!

One of my favorite lunches (seen in the pic above) was a pita spread with hummus and then topped with sliced avocado and some sun dried tomatoes in oil. While I was eating it I didn’t think about cheese for a second. It was so satisfying and the tomatoes and avocado made it feel indulgent.

Another dish I made that was amazing was a cous cous dish using the leftover steamed potatoes and broccoli from the samosa project and caramelizing some onion and mushrooms to add to it. Then I made a lemon, olive oil, mustard, and dill sauce to dress it with. It was amazing! I will be making it again and posting the recipe for it soon. I love dill and think it’s underused in American kitchens.

Right now I’m making my own red curry paste and I’ll tell you all about that and the Asian market adventure I went on with my friend Chelsea to find some of the ingredients in the next post. In the mean-time – tell me what dairy free meals you’ve made recently that you loved?

The Free O’Keefe & Merritt Stove

Here she is, folks! The FREE vintage O’Keefe & Merritt stove Philip got for me. It required a visit to a dusty shanty-town near a power plant in which it would not surprise me to find a dead body in an old oil barrel (not that I go looking inside oil barrels, cause, c’mon! Bodies get hidden in them…) and a whole lot of jostling a local with a truck to help haul it home plus this stove almost crushed Philip to death.

This stove supposedly works but the person who was giving it away (to us!) hadn’t ever actually used it himself so this is not really known. It’s in remarkably good shape for a stove that has been lying on its side out in the open air. Very little rust on it – definitely some rust near the pilots (not good) but the enamel is in really good shape and the chrome is also in great shape. The whole thing is understandably dirty.

Isn’t it pretty? It comes with cooking guides (such a convenience). It also has the salt and pepper shakers.

Why get excited about an old stove like this? Have you ever cooked with one?! In our old house on Beaver Street we had an O’keefe & Merritt stove very similar to this one (but it only had one oven) and it was the best stove I’ve ever cooked on. I left it behind because the house we were moving to up in Oregon has no gas to the house. But boy have I missed that stove.

These stoves cost an arm and a leg when they’re restored. It’s a lot less expensive when you start by getting it for free. I’ll need to have it worked on inside by a place that restores vintage stoves (I’ve already found a place) and I don’t know what that will cost. The more pressing problem is how to fit it in the kitchen.

The current stove we have is only 30″ and this one is 40″ so to make it fit we’ll have to lose some cabinets. This is not work we know how to do so we’ll need a professional to help us.

It’s in really good shape inside too – it’s pretty clean. Look – more instructions for my convenience! I can’t wait to be cooking on this stove. Philip is hoping we can have it in by Thanksgiving. I don’t know that that’s realistic.

Two ovens and two broilers! Think of the possibilities! I know I am.

Dairy Free Cooking Challenge: the first report

At the Santa Rosa Wednesday Market (which also has some produce stands) it’s all about the BBQ. People just can’t get enough of meat on a grill. The whole down town was a haze of meaty smoke. I suppose this is really primal. I guess the reason commercial BBQ stands don’t ever grill vegetables is because people don’t understand how to make an amazing grilled vegetable sandwich. I could teach them a thing or two.

Years ago the Wednesday Market was the farmer’s market with some restaurant and craft stalls. Then it became equal parts restaurant/craft stalls and produce stalls. Now it’s almost all restaurant and craft stalls with just a few produce stalls. This makes me sad. However – what’s cool is that the farmers that are still showing up at the Wednesday market are the same ones that have been there since the first time I went. All familiar faces to me and though they didn’t recognize me – it gave me pleasure and a sense of continuity to see them there – to buy from them again. They are also at the actual farmer’s markets that run all year long – but I have yet to get to those because I am still waking up too late every day to get to them in time.

August is here and with it is the beginning of my challenge to cook without cheese. I haven’t been 100% cheese free because I am still eating it out but since I can’t afford to go out much I haven’t eaten much cheese in a week. (The first few days of August I still had cheese left over.) Wanna know how I feel about it?

Mostly okay. Definitely not excited about food much. Thank god for avocados and hummus! The best thing I’ve eaten since cooking without dairy is the mushroom and polenta dish I posted a couple of days ago. That was so good I didn’t think about how much better it might be with some cheese.

I’m suddenly craving much saltier food.

I can’t hold my liquor as well.

I feel the need to eat more frequently. This is not such a bad thing. Typically I eat two really big meals a day and then a major snack late at night if I stay up. Now I seem to be hungry all the time.

But really I don’t think I’m actually hungry all the time – I’m just craving cheese.

I do feel cleaner inside and I don’t know how to explain what I mean by that. Animal products, even ones I love like cheese and eggs, have a sort of icky aspect to them. They taste fantastic but they don’t always FEEL fantastic in my body. I really don’t know how to describe it – eating the flesh of or foods made from the body parts of animals makes people smell a little like –

Carrion.

There, I said it. I’m not trying to be obnoxious or mean or make any judgements about meat or dairy eating (because I LOVE eating cheese and eggs). I’m simply saying that people do smell like the food they eat. People who consume large amounts of vitamins (of the naturally made kind) often smell of vitamin. People who eat a lot of garlic often smell of garlic (not in the classic garlic-breath kind of way – but more subtly – through their pores).

I admit that I’m especially sensitive to smells.

But my point was that I am feeling cleaner inside. I imagine that if I quit eating eggs this feeling would be heightened.

It totally annoys me when people talk about eating “clean” because it definitely sounds like a judgement but I just can’t find a better word for it and I know what is meant by that word.

Anyway – I’m not really happy to be without cheese. We went out to a mediocre restaurant (that’s putting it really nicely) this week that Max likes for the waffle fries and I ordered a sandwich called “The Caprese” which was a hamburger bun, fresh mozzarella cheese, onions cooked in balsamic, tomato, and pesto-mayonnaise.

I should not have ordered a cheese item featuring fresh mozzarella because this is one of the few cheeses that I find has zero flavor and whose texture is unpleasing. I like the less fresh version of mozzarella or this one kind I bought from a farmer’s market that was freshly made mozzarella curds. SO GOOD. Anyway – the cheese was flavorless and terrible, the onions didn’t taste at all of balsamic vinegar, the mayonnaise had pesto in it?, and the tomato… also lacking in flavor. Such a mad disappointment.

The good thing is that it didn’t remind me why I’m so grumpy that I don’t have cheese in my house. All I could wonder is how any chef could achieve such a singularly flavorless sandwich with so many promising ingredients? I want to go into the kitchen and teach that chef a few things about making flavorful food.

Over all I think I’m going to be much healthier with so little dairy in my diet but I’m not feeling happy about it yet. I need to make more food like the mushroom saute – things that are so good without cheese naturally that I start craving those dishes all the time.

Eating a lot of hummus is helping. Avocados are really wonderful on everything – I’m not sure I could go cheese-less without them. I have this idea for making a tzatziki sauce without dairy – using a blend of silken tofu and vegan mayo thinned with lemon juice and flavored with garlic and fresh dill. I think I’ll make that today. I have another idea for a similar spread using the tofu and mayo but using sun dried tomatoes, garlic, and thyme for flavoring. I need really amazing spreads and sauces to brighten up my meals.

That’s my cheese report for now.

The Official Virtual House Tour: the downstairs

I present this house tour to all of you, but it is especially for my friend Angela who requested MORE PICTURES and for my aunt Lin who requested MORE PICTURES from my mom. Since Angela is a close friend who helped us move and my aunt owns the house with my mom and is letting us live here – it is my pleasure to fulfill your requests.

You will notice that the house is in a spectacular state of dishevelment like a mistress of leisure who has just woken up after a bacchanalian night of questionable taste. Reality, she sets in with the sunrise. Behold: THE MAD CHAOS.

I was resisting showing any more house pictures because I wanted to wait until I had everything arranged and looking nice. Since I work 30 hours a week, try to keep food on the stove, and have my kid to take care of, the shopping to do, and all those hideous chores like getting my California license and getting Max registered for school – this is going to take a while.

(I need to mention that this old cabinet, which I love, is disgustingly dirty and peeling and needs to be sanded and repainted but I’m nearly passing out at the thought of all that work. You can’t see the grime in this picture. I suppose you should be spared some horrors.)

So here’s what I thought this morning: why not take pictures of the house en déshabillé so that pictures taken later when the house is put together will make for stunning contrast?

This is a wonderful house. We love it. Even so, it has many awkward spaces. So good luck shui-ing its feng. Let’s just say it’s all going to end up a little quirky, like us.

At some point this space will be filled with quilting projects and copies of all the novels that I’ve published. Shut up. I have an invisible friend for an agent so I’m ALL SET FOR SUCCESS.

We don’t actually have a dining room table. We’re going to have to use our round metal patio table for a while. My dream is to commission my friend Jim to make us a table and chairs. Or at least a table. His work is gorgeous. That’s my end-game with this room.

We don’t eat meals at the table very often anyway. We’re unconventional like that.

No more words are necessary here.

If I had money and my mom and aunt’s permission I would redo this kitchen with new cabinets, a much better stove, and new flooring. But it’s not so bad as it is. At least I have a gas stove again! (At least until all the natural gas runs out.)

I got a little sloppy with my captioning. This bathroom is so much nicer than any bathroom we’ve had for 6 years.

I think a cute shower curtain and maybe a matching cute curtain would be nice.

The colors on the walls and ceiling don’t show up really well in my pics but they’re very soothing and pretty. The floor is carpeted in a plum-ish color. Cat vomit shows up spectacularly well on it as do chewed up corn cobs.

Le mess. Sigh.

If I had been redoing this house I would have chosen reproduction fixtures to go with the vintage of the house but my mom and aunt, in their infinite wisdom, opted for lights with fans in almost every room. I’ve not been sad about that even once. I think this is a particularly nice fixture for being modern.

There you have it. These are all the rooms in the downstairs “unit”.* Next up I’ll give you an excessively candid tour of the upstairs “unit” and then, if my mom will give me permission, I will give you a tour of the back “unit”.

*The house is divided into three legal rental units but the upstairs and downstairs units are easily convertible by the unlocking of the French doors. The back unit is a little more separate and that’s the space my mom chose for herself.

10 Reasons You Want to Read Cricket and Grey

I spent all morning writing up the reasons you want to read Cricket and Grey. Please go read them at Better Than Bullets because I think I just might convince you. But even if I don’t you’ll probably enjoy the image I put in your head of Nathan Fillion NAKED.

10 Reasons You Want to Read Cricket and Grey

I will return to regular Stitch and Boots programming in a couple of days. In the meantime – go read chapter one of Cricket and Grey!

Read the First Chapter of Cricket and Grey

After some major indecision about what approach to take with my writing career – do I keep sending queries to agents in hopes of getting my book published in the traditional way or do I publish it myself and take on all the work that that entails? The bottom line is that I’m ready to release this book and start writing the next one in this series.

So I am going to publish one chapter of Cricket and Grey every Monday afternoon until the whole thing is published on my blog. While I’m doing this I’m going to format it for e-readers that you can buy as well as formatting it for print on demand copies that you can buy. The advantage to reading the book on my blog is that if you’ve been following my whole writing process for the past three years – you don’t have to wait to read the book any longer and you can read it for free. The disadvantage is that reading chapters in blog format is not the most comfortable format to read a book in. The advantage to buying either an electronic copy or a hard copy is that you can read it anywhere and it’s in a much easier on the eyes.

I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to work this out but I may expire each chapter after it’s been up for a full month. I’ll keep you posted.

Wanna find out why I had to do so much research on automatic rifles and semi-automatic pistols and the legality and method for burying your own dead? Wanna find out what Yamhill County might be like when oil becomes so scarce that the government keeps it all for their own uses? Go read the first chapter of Cricket and Grey on Better Than Bullets:

Cricket and Grey (winter): Chapter One

This is speculative fiction and as such I got to take some liberties with how I imagine the future but I also did a lot of research to keep it real. I hope that you will find my novel entertaining.

Some things you may wish to know beforehand:

1. This is fiction NOT a survivalist manual. I pity the fool who takes it too seriously.

2. There is swearing, though less than I do in my journal writing.

3. I wish I was Cricket Winters.

4. I kind of wish I was Grey Bonneville at the same time, though that would be awkward.

5. Trying to learn enough Scots to form a super breezy exchange of pleasantries took many hours of study.

6. I really like my villains.

7. There are adult themes in this book so don’t read it to your seven year old.

8. No hot sex. I’m sorry. But you would be a lot more sorry than me if I tried writing a torrid sex scene and then subjected you to it.

9. My favorite character aside from the two main ones is Shockey. I love him. He needs a bigger part in book two.

10. This is meant to be a four book series (winter, spring, summer, and fall).

Where Wild Food Grows

This is a fine old Gravenstein apple tree on my father-in-law’s property which includes a falling down old apple orchard. One year we pressed the Gravensteins and made fresh apple cider which I then canned (there was a lot!) and I entered our apple juice in the Harvest Fair of Sonoma County and it won first place. I still have my ribbon because I haven’t often won first place in any kind of contest. The juice was fantastic and I wouldn’t mind having a glass of it right now.

This old apple orchard is a place where nature show-cases the beautiful side of decay. It’s quiet and peaceful with haunted whispering leaves.

There is nothing in this world like a broken old apple tree that is still blossoming in the spring and producing fruit in the fall. How its branches must ache under the weight! This particular tree here (which you can’t see in full) was grafted with more than one variety of apple and is nearly prostrate – to the point where I’m not sure there would even be a way for it to be reclaimed and healed – yet a few years ago it made one of the best fresh eating apples I’ve ever tasted. I am sure it was a Golden Delicious – the way they’re SUPPOSED to be: crisp with a fine textured flesh and sweet without being insipid, full of the most wonderful classic apple taste. I’m not sure what variety this is in the picture – it’s growing on half the tree.

An old trellis which used to have grapes growing over it. I couldn’t find many of the grapes left but we’ve tasted them and they are wonderful – like tiny Red Flame grapes (which is what I suspect they are). Now there’s some poison oak around it and blackberries too. I don’t understand what those pipes attached to the structure are. Maybe my father-in-law knows. I’ll ask him.

You couldn’t pay me to go into this cellar unless someone goes in first and ushers the spiders to new locations. It is covered in a thick blanket of dirt and dust and webs. But it’s so cool! The old man from whom my fil bought this property kept barrels of either cider or vinegar or wine in there. It digs into the hillside. It would be a great fruit and vegetable and canned goods cellar if it was cleaned out.

My camera wasn’t cooperating with me much here – this is a small Kalamata olive tree my fil planted for me. It’s one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done. Kalamatas are my very favorite olive of all time and olives grow well in Sonoma so I really wanted to have some of my own. He planted two but the other one died – unless I just couldn’t find it. This one is still quite small – I don’t think it’s getting enough water. Olive trees are not necessarily big trees in the first place and they do thrive without much water once they mature. This little one is proof of it – he may be diminutive but he’s completely healthy! I mean – every leaf is disease free and lush. Now all he needs is a pollinator.

Yes, I’m aware of the kind of work it takes to cure olives. I’ve done some research on it and it’s exactly the kind of food making challenge I love with the possibility of great rewards. My dad has a property in Sonoma County too and has a stand of olive trees that he presses olives from – they make a wonderful olive oil – I’m not sure exactly what kinds he has but some of them are eating olives too and he says I can pick and cure some this winter because it’s a good harvest year.

This is a mostly wild partially terraced garden area. Before we moved to Oregon my fil let me run wild on his property, just like the apples, and gave me permission to build a garden here. The big problem was irrigation (there’s well water and even a pump house but the property is mostly up-hill and planning irrigation systems isn’t my strong suit. Planning garden spaces IS. This whole sunny hillside directly behind his house would be perfect as a terraced garden in the Italian style. I’m hoping he’ll let me run wild again and get back to work on taming parts of the property to grow food on for all of us. There are lots of challenges to such a project: irrigation, root protection from moles and other underground beasts, deer, and soil. Still – every time I’ve been on his property I see what it can be and a little of what it was.

But even if he prefers I don’t do any garden planning – he’s still generous with the fruits that grow wild there. Right now I’m processing his Santa Rosa plums which he let me pick. I got about 15 pounds of them and by the morning after I picked them I had to toss a couple of pounds for having gone bad – it happens fast with these plums! I got two batches of plum liqueur going and one small batch of sweet and sour plum sauce for dipping egg rolls and pot stickers in and I am going to make either jam or jelly with the rest. Santa Rosa plums are really juicy so it will probably be more challenging to make a jam from them but that’s what I really want to do.

It feels good to be digging my hands into my first food preserving project in the new house. The preserving season is officially OPEN.