What I did on my summer vacation, by Ali

Okay, so summer is just begininning. But I have been traveling, with limited internet access along the way. This is why you have hear neither hide nor hair from me. (Fear not, beloved worriers: all is well).

First, we went to New York City for a handful of days. This was delightful. Stayed at the Marriott in downtown Brooklyn, which was only just being built back in the day when I called myself a Brooklynite. At the time, it seemed like a crazy idea. A Marriott? In the middle of Brooklyn? But it was lovely, well-appointed, centrally located. And filled with people who apparently didn’t think it so crazy after all.

We did all kinds of things. Dining out, the Ellis Island museum, funky little shops. At one point, we went to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, and Merrie took photos of the New York skyline with my camera:

Photo credit: Merrie

I got to visit my sister’s light-filled, Pottery-Barn-esque office:

That is my sister in the background. She is yelling at children. It turns out that light-filled, Pottery Barn-esque offices are not the place for high-energy children.

Also on the trip, I got to meet my new friend Oscar.

Oscar might need to go on a diet. He is HEAVY, dude.

(if you weren’t around in February 2008: yep, it’s real).

Merrie and I had been watching Project Runway, and we made a trip to Mood Fabrics in the fashion district, the place where designers. We also wandered through the city imagining outfits inspired by the random things that we saw — one of the tasks of Season 2 (and if you watched that season, please don’t give away the winner, for we still don’t know). Anyhow, we wound up snapping lots of photos of things, and my camera is now filled with dozens of pictures like this:

Quinoa is my new boyfriend: corn and bean quinoa

No ancient civilizations were destroyed in the making of this dinner. At least not recently.

A few weeks ago, my local food co-op, Wild Oats Community Market, did an evening seminar about inexpensive ways of eating well. The evening featured Deborah Blood, a local registered dietitian, and Kelly MacDonald, a local nutritionist.

Healthy AND inexpensive? Not surprisingly, we spent a fair amount of time hanging around the bulk aisle.

The bulk aisle: it offers the best buys in the store, and yet is wholly intimidating. How much should I dispense into my bag? What’s too much? What’s too little? What does a pound of lentils look like? Will I know how to prepare it? Crap, I missed the bag and now pearl barley is spilling all over the floor! Everyone is looking!

It’s a minefield that aisle. But don’t worry about that. It’s all worth it in the end. Particularly if your bulk aisle offers quinoa.

On the night in question, about 25 of us, most of us women, learned about quinoa. There were also two men, and three perfectly-behaved children (not mine). These were not normal children, mind you. Their manners were impeccable, even though it was late, even though there was nothing particularly child-friendly about the evening, even though I had left both of my own children in a heap of exhausted tears just a few minutes before. One of these kids, a girl about 10 years old, was quietly sketching as we stood there. I peered over her shoulder to note that she had drawn pictures of vegetables with the accompanying words, written in bubble letters, “Go vegan! Vegan rocks! Vegan is good for YOU!”

I have no photos from the evening. Actually, I do have photos, but I have no photos that turned out well enough that dietitian Deborah Blood or nutritionist Kelly MacDonald would be happy about my broadcasting them on the interweb. You’ll have to imagine the small crowd of us, shuffling from the produce aisle to the bulk aisle, nodding as they spoke, piping up occasionally with our own experiences with dried goods.

No, I don’t have photos. But I do have a few insights into quinoa that seem worth sharing.

1. It is not pronounced Kwin-OH-ah. It is pronounced Keen-wah.

2. It is ancient, cultivated in the Andean region of South America as early as 5,000 BC. Just as a reference, that’s roughly when the wheel was invented. It’s two thousand years before Stonehenge. We’re talking ancient grain here.

The last several weeks, in twenty-six sentences, or thereabouts.

Oh, hi there. Been a while.

Was I at my carpentry class, you wonder? Nah. That’s not for some time yet. Here’s some of what’s been going on around here:

1. Planted herbs, chard, heirloom tomatoes, broccoli, flowers.
2. Started learning to make simple cheeses. More on that later.
3. Bought an old, cool piano that once traveled the Panama Canal.
4. Turned house upside down to make room for the piano.
5. Got a phone call from the movers on the day the piano was to arrive saying that they wouldn’t move it. Too big, too heavy, too many stairs.
6. After much drama, and after paying almost as much to move the piano as we did for the piano itself — gulp — got the piano here at last.
7. Started doing battle with tunes that I once knew by heart – like the ol’ piano lesson classics, things like Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata. Also helped Merrie practice piano songs like Cowboy Joe and Listen to the Drums, each of which are about two measures long. I can still play those, thankfully.
8. Shopped for bathing suits with two small kids in tow. I do not recommend this. In fact, the only thing I might recommend less highly would be shopping for bathing suits with two kids in toe while someone simultaneously shoots a staple gun into one’s skin and sets one’s hair on fire.
9. Made a delicious cucumber soup with no recipe, but which roughly consisted of 2 cucumbers, a big scoop of Greek yogurt, a slightly smaller scoop of sour cream, splash of red wine vinegar, chives, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and a touch of mint. Delish.
10. Waged a non-toxic war on sugar ants. Appear to have won the most recent battle, though I’m not sure the war’s over yet.
11. Waged a filthy war on our basement. Haven’t quite won that one yet.
12. Got all gussied up for a black tie ball. Okay, I was wearing an 11-year old semi-formal dress. But for me? That is gussied.
13. Before the black tie ball, tried for — no kidding — 45 minutes to help Blair successfully tie a bow tie.
14. Failed, panicked, called a friend who kindly met us in the parking lot of the black tie ball (for which we were now late) with a clip-on.
15. Ate, drank, danced, stayed out until the wee hours of morning.
16. The next afternoon, fell asleep in the parking lot of a diner while Charlotte napped in her carseat and Blair and Merrie waited for a table. Awoke to find a long stream of drool down the front of my shirt.
17. Made a few recipes with quinoa and fell a little bit in love. We must talk more about quinoa, and we must talk about it soon.
18. Watched The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke, which was devastating.
19. Read Juliet Schor’s “Born to Buy,” about the commercialization of childhood, which was equally devastating, albeit in a totally different way.
20. Went to the world’s most divine yarn store, bought a bunch of chunky alpaca wool, and began making a simple ribbed scarf that is heavenly to touch.
21. Became convinced that everyone should knit, and that they should knit only with chunky alpaca wool, forever and ever, because it feels so good.
22. Listened to an audiobook recording of “Tale of Two Cities,” often as I was knitting. Imagined myself as Madame Defarge, knitting the revolution, which was a giddy, fun thought at the book’s start. By the book’s end, not so much.
23. Discovered that yes, “A Tale of Two Cities” is just as enjoyable as it was in the spring of 1985, in Amy Benjamin’s tenth grade English class. Except that as an adult, Mrs. Benjamin (no relation to me, at least as far as I know) is no longer here to rush out of the classroom, chase Deena Weese down the hall, then scream at her about manners because Deena slammed the classroom door. For the record, I was terrified of Deena Weese, who was rumored to carry brass knuckles in her jeans, and was duly impressed with Mrs. Benjamin for demonstrating such bravery in the face of such an ominous threat. Also for the record, that was the first time I ever heard a student use the B-word about a teacher. Also for the record, I think I’d still be frightened of Deena Weese today.
24. Pulled not one but two calf muscles while running. Which, frankly, is a little embarassing.
25. Thought about blogging about queso blanco, whole grains, edible flowers, children splashing in puddles of pee, wild ramps, my grandfather, dollhouses, the beautician who plucked out half of my eyebrows without my permission, and many other things.
26. Didn’t.

But I am here, I am fine, I have much to report, and all is well. I hope that things are fine in your world, as well. Happy unofficial start of summer to you.

Rest in peace, dear Fishy Fishy

Let’s say you have a seven year old, and you allow this seven year old to get a fish.

Let’s say your child was elated the day you bought this fish, a bright blue betta in a little plastic container, the kind of container that might have otherwise held a $3.90 serving of fish soup from the local Chinese takeout joint. To make the fish feel at home, you purchased a little floating piece of bamboo and some pink glass stones for the tank.

Let’s say this fish was no more affectionate than your average fish, that it swam and moved its fins and ate pellets of fish food and didn’t do much else. But somehow your child adored this fish; she talked to him and cooed to him, fed him and fretted over him and loved him profoundly.

Then, let’s say it dies, and your child’s heart is broken.

‘Made from Scratch’ winners, and the rest of us, fumbling on

I so enjoyed reading all of your comments about what DIY skills you want to acquire. As I read, I kept nodding along, “Yes! Oh, that one! And, ooh, that one! I want to do that, too!”

If I were Oprah, I could say, “now everyone look under your chairs! Because underneath your seat I’ve hidden not only Jenna Woginrich’s Made from Scratch book, but also a flock of chickens, a chicken coop, canning supplies, a vintage sewing machine, sheep, wool, knitting needles, peat pots, raised garden beds, a years’ worth of organic compost, several fruit trees, and an entire hive of bees!” (in this fantasy, bees don’t sting, and sheep can be hidden under chairs).

Alas, I had only two books to giveaway, I can’t carry that many fruit trees at once, and I don’t even know where most of you are seated right now. So for the moment, we must draw only two names, for two books. And the winners are…

Kelly and Astromezzo! Huzzah!

Here’s my trusty assistant folding the names before the drawing:

Last year was Kelly’s first attempt at growing food and, in her words, it was “horrible.” Nothing grew. I suspect she will feel comforted and inspired by Jenna’s journey.  Astromezzo says that she, too, is mastering the skills of outdoor plants, though she got chickens last year, and has lately gotten into fermentation. Says Astromezzo, “there’s a whole skill-set that was lost in the post-WWII era…there’s nothing for it but to fumble and learn now!”

That bears repeating: there’s nothing for it but to fumble and learn now.

Reading through comments about what people want to do, I realize that this is exactly what we’re all trying to do. We’re fumbling our way, mastering some skills, dreaming of others. Some have begun to knit and crochet; others simply hope to learn. Some have chickens and raised beds, some aspire to these things. Some already make strawberry jam, cheese, yogurt, refrigerator pickles, others have yet to master those skills. Some want simple herb gardens, others an entirely self-sufficient, off-the-grid farm. One want to rebuild a pumphouse by hand. Another wants to hunt and raise her own meat. More people than I would have expected want to learn to sew. Others want to spin, weave, make soap, insulate homes, raise angoras, make music, even work with draft animals.

Here we are, all of us, fumbling and learning, a leap of faith, all of it. As Frances said in her comment, “it really gives me hope for the future of our big, strange world.” Indeed.

I’ll fumble on if you will.

Dispatch from the ’simple’ life: Jenna Woginrich and ‘Made from Scratch’

Point is, it feels good to get dirty, work hard, and slow down.

Jenna Woginrich, “Made from Scratch”

More and more, I am learning to do it myself: learning to knit, learning to sew, learning to make broth/cheese/yogurt, learning to grow my own herbs, to work with dried beans, to start my own tomatoes. In a month, I’ll be at my women’s carpentry class; in the meantime, I’ve been pouring over designs for portable chicken coops, hoping that I will have the skills to build my own (and if not, by golly, I’ll scrimp and I’ll save and buy myself an Eglu). With some help from my brother-in-law, I’ve been slowly mastering the art of wielding an axe without splitting my body — or anyone else’s — in half. To celebrate, I recently knocked down a bunch of saplings at the edge of our property.

It’s not exactly homesteading, mind you, but even doing those little things, those simple steps, feels pretty darned good.

There’s only one problem: I do most of it poorly. The crops I try to grow myself? Sometimes they turn out well, but sometimes they get covered by mysterious fungi, or get eaten by ballsy chipmunks right in front of my nose. I might forget to water the cilantro for a day or so mid-summer, only to discover it has withered pathetically to the point of no return. The first time I made cheese, it didn’t work, and I was left with something watery and sour and stunningly unpleasant. My axe-wielding technique is harder on those poor saplings than it should be; where others would leave clean stumps, I somehow leave shreds.

Which is why I was delighted to discover Jenna Woginrich’s memoir, Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life.

High School Musical Fruit?

Oh my stars. After years of slapping images of their characters on everything from Happy Meals to Froot Snacks, Disney’s gone all healthy on us.  The Washington Post reports that they’ve expanded licensing images of their characters for packaging on fruits and vegetables — from Zac Efron avocadoes to Winnie the Pooh apples. Maybe Disney tired of the criticism they’d earned via their billion-dollar decade-long contract with McDonalds, or maybe they just didn’t want to keep re-engineering the rides at their theme parks to accommodate our nation’s expanding girth.

Either way, it’s totally messing with my head.

When I first heard, I was like, “Huh. Well. I guess….”

Then I was all, “Bah! They don’t care about kids’ health! It’s all about reputation and bottom line!”

Then I’m all, “Who cares? Remember when kids liked carrots better simply because they had the McDonald’s logo on ‘em? This actually could help bump up consumption of healthful foods!”

Then I’m all, “Oh, but I work so hard to avoid corporate merchandising! And now it’s in the produce aisle, too?”

Then I’m all, “Yeah, but check this out: bagged-apple sales went up 47 percent during a High School Musical promotion at Winn-Dixie! And remember Popeye? That funny-looking bald dude alone increased spinach consumption by a third, and he didn’t even have the Disney marketing machine behind him!”

Them I’m all, “Aww, but with all due respect to Disney — or Freud, for that matter — can’t a banana just be a banana sometimes?”

Then I’m all, “Hate to break it to you, Ali, but you know that wee Charlotte would more gladly eat a banana if it was a Cinderella banana.”

Then I’m all, “But homogenization of food! Food miles! Where is the small? The sustainable? The regional?”

Then I’m all, “Come on. Isn’t this what we wanted companies to do? To stop marketing junk? To start promoting something that was in kids’ best interests?”

Then I’m all, “But sustainable food IS in kids’ best interests! I know it is!”

Then I’m all, “Yeah, well you also know what it’s like to be in a grocery store with a hungry kid that’s ripping a box of Pop Tarts off the shelves simply because she sees Barbie smiling at her from the box. This way, you can wave a piece of SpongeBob fruit in front of her face as a distraction. At least it’s a whole food, yo!”

Then I’m all, “But is it really a choice between marketing one thing, or marketing another? Isn’t that a false choice, when you think about it?”

Then I’m all, “Well, maybe the false choice is the one between ‘good food’ and ‘corporate food,’ Missy. Maybe the perfect really is the enemy of the good. These products are getting kids to nag their parents for healthy food for a change!”

Then I’m all, “I…I guess I…well, I mean…I think I just really wanted to tone down the merchandising altogether. I mean, can’t we simply decide that they’re kids and not consumers?”

Then I’m all, “Hahahaha! You’re really funny!”And so weird!!” (insert knee-slapping and shaking with laughter here. Then, after a few minutes of laughing so hard that tears roll down my cheeks, I get all serious again). “Seriously, this is America, yo.”

And then my brain kind of explodes and I putter around the room touching random objects and forget what I had been doing five minutes before.

So what do you guys think? Sign of newfound corporate responsibility? Sign of the apocalypse? Please discuss.

Ditch the dry cleaner; advice from someone with better sweaters than my own

A few years ago, I went to a party. It was a casual type of party, or so you’d think. Outdoors, autumn, middle of the day, kids running around. It was a beautiful day; the sounds of children all around us, color in the trees, tasty food, plenty of friendly conversation.

There was only one problem: I was wearing a down vest.

It’s part of my uniform when the weather gets chilly: denim, wool, and down vest. Hell, it’s everyone’s uniform up here. But I wasn’t up here at the time. I was Elsewhere. And in this Elsewhere, people are apparently…uh…well dressed. They are coiffed. They have manicures. They wear kitten heels. And apparently down vests are not part of the uniform. I stuck out like a sore thumb.

I’m mostly really glad about the choices that I made in this life. I love that that most days, I get to clomp around in Muck boots, which, indeed, are often filled with muck. I love that we have a “mud season,” and that I know that when mud season ends, a patch of chives will sprout outside my kitchen door, just as it has year after year.  I love that every 4th of July, I attend a small-town parade where half the town marches, the other half watches, and then everybody meets at the bottom of the parade route to eat cake made by the local bakery. And  that many mornings, when I’m on my way to a meeting, I must stop driving to let geese cross the road.

Still, there are risks to this lifestyle, and one of those risks involves leaving home, going to social events where the other guests don’t drive cars with the Check Engine light on in perpetuity, or where it is clear they can the afford, say, a personal trainer or the out-of-pocket costs of a good dermatologist. There I am, the Clunky Weirdo from Vermont, sugarbush cushman standing around in a bulky down vest.

Why I will not cover swine flu today

WHEREAS you are getting all-swine-flu all-the-time coverage elsewhere, and

WHEREAS there is far, far too much noise on Twitter, even as one can still tease out some decent coverage, including @veratect), and

WHEREAS the trouble here appears to be a unique combination of avian-swine-human virus — making the virus more easily transmitted and dangerous to humans — and to me this genetic combination conjures up visions of microscopic cloven-hoofed birds with human heads circling around me in swarms, and

WHEREAS Tom Philpott is asking good questions about the connection between swine flu and a Smithfield Farm-owned Mexican CAFO, and

WHEREAS I am as opposed to CAFOs as anyone I know, and believe these questions should be asked, especially in light of a Pew report on the potential for CAFOs to create pandemic influenza virus transmission, yet feel it’s way premature to report the CAFO-influenza as fact as others have done, and

WHEREAS CAFOs in general, and Smithfield in particular, are wholly nasty, and fully deserving of scrutiny whether or not they are the smoking gun in this particular pandemic,

WHEREAS meanwhile others are blaming the swine flu on their own favorite scapegoats —  Big Pharma, secret government programs, military weapons, those dirty immigrants, Donald Rumsfeld — and reading these theories make me want to make a hat out of tinfoil, and

WHEREAS Michelle Bachmann is saying that it’s an “interesting coincidence” that the last swine flu outbreak came also under a democratic president, and yet is completely wrong in her facts, and

WHEREAS Salon did an interesting piece on that last big swine flu epidemic (which happened under Ford, yo), which can be considered a cautionary tale to how we respond today, and

WHEREAS the whole thing makes me feel sad and weary and under assault, and

WHEREAS the only thing I can really do about all of this anyway is wash my hands and rest and exerciese and make sure my family is doing the same, and

NOW THEREFORE let it be decreed that I will not be covering Swine Flu today. I will, however, steer you to the site of Stephan Zielinski, who turned the amino acid sequence of swine flu into a work of ambiant music, which is far more relaxing than anything I’ve heard on the teevee news report.

Postcard from Vermont: happy spring

It’s spring, yo. Just like that, in a mere day and a half, we went from having no leaves on the trees to having great bursts of green, like powder puffs, unfolding from trees. Warmth is in such short supply in New England. Winter lasts, and it lasts, and it lasts. And then suddenly, over a weekend, everything changes. The air smells rich and earthy, songbirds chirp in cacophony, and fields and lawns — which the day before might have been dull and matted — are suddenly technicolor bright.

It does a heart good. I tell you, it does.

Earlier this winter, after everyone in this house had been sick, off and on, for weeks, reader Anna commented to me that she suspected my family and I were not getting enough vitamin D. It was the lack of sun that was making us sick, said Anna, bringing us down so we had no fight to give to the germs. I was out in the sun this weekend, feeling the warmth go through my skin, seep into my core, and I thought, she’s right. Anna was just so right.

Sun, soil, blossoms, birds, bugs, bees. It is like waking up, like spring cleaning for the soul.

Elsewhere, there is much to worry about. Such an imperfect world is ours, with our potential pandemics and our economic tumoil. But it doesn’t feel that way today, not as the kids scramble around the backyard, finding snakes that have emerged from dens to warm themselves in the sun, not as peonies push their way up through the dirt, not as lilacs and bleeding hearts prepare to open themselves to the sky, not as I load seeds and soil into the back of my car, ready to get my hands dirty.

Oh, it is good, spring is. So good. Happy warmth to you.