honeyflake

autumn puréed

this soup used to be a favorite. i made it often for chuck and i back in our apartment days... sweet potato, corn and red pepper soup. its been a while since i cooked up a batch. so long so that when i got inspired to make it again today (a bunch of sweet potatoes appeared in our csa box this morning and i happened to have had the peppers, garlic, onion and corn on hand) i couldn't recall which cookbook i used to get it from... but thankfully after browsing through a few i remembered and then promptly began peeling, chopping and whirling together the very seasonal ingredients into a soup. a warm, orange, rustic creation that felt pretty perfect and comforting for welcoming fall.

happy autumn.

summer like that

we're now well into september and so very aware that this was the last. weekend. of. summer. almost hard to believe but it is true. and while this past season was plenty filled with goodness — swimming often, camping trips, sun-kissed shoulders and cheeks, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners al fresco at the beach, sleeping in, gardening, and even all those rainy days, etc.. — it is always quite hard to let it go. so before we all make the 'official' transition to autumn, we made sure to savor the sunshine, light, and warmth that remains, where else but at the beach together... 

 

a barefoot walk in the sand early friday evening presented empty lifeguard stands, smooth windblown textures in the sand, and perhaps more seagulls than people... then a bit more family beaching on saturday had us in awe of the crystal blue sky, sparkling sun and fairly calm atlantic at low tide — as well as the seastars and beachglass that the receding saltwater left behind...  

there were moments out there to be breathed in that still very much felt like summer and yet i can't deny, moments we tasted that showed signs of autumn too. but those glowing summery moments? the ones that sparkled? the ones that we still felt warm and free? the ones i chose to be as present in as i could be? they were treasured. because i get this season thing. i do. because soon the water will increasingly get chillier so that we'll choose not to let our ankles get wet... and soon the sand will be a bit on the cold side and we will choose not to kick our shoes off to let our toes stay warm... and before you know it there's the jackets and scarves, and so forth...

but this weekend. this weekend was still summer. and we got out there. and we held on tight.

now playing

so last week i had a matinée movie date with my grandmother to see julie & julia. a date we'd been planning since back in july just prior to the film's release... and finally on thursday we were able to venture out arm in arm to the theater together... ready to be entertained and inspired by this food glorifying motion picture...

and filled with culinary inspiration it was for sure. it wasn't long after returning home that i was looking up recipes for some of the food straight off the big screen. first finding the recipe here for that bright, fresh and crispy bruschetta that the characters are feasting on in one particular scene... luckily, still being tomato season here, it was super easy to round up the ingredients for this and i duplicated it tonight... fried bread? local organic garlic and tomatoes from our csa? more tomatoes and fresh basil from the backyard? man. it was really, so very good. both chuck and margaret thought so too. an instant hit. i was pretty excited... and as soon as i was finished frizzling up the last slice of ciabatta, i plated up a little sample and ran it right over to nonnie... bringing her a small memory of our afternoon together (way better than a ticket stub).  

there were plenty of other recipes shown in the movie that i'd like to get around to trying. i'm not sure which ones, or when, however i've got my apron and my dutch oven ready.

autumn wool

sometime ago, back in november 2008, i met up with erin in nyc... our autumn day included many city stops including a visit to the craft section of kinokuniya book store. i picked up a japanese sewing book (ISBN 978-4-579-11194-7) with lots of children's pattern's, basing my selection on the following project... a sweet, textured, warm-as-oatmeal-on-a-fall-morning-wool skirt with suspender straps...

all inspired (and armed with a new sewing project) we left the bookstore and moved on for our next adventure... mood fabrics (a fabric store where bolts of great fabrics are stacked from floor to ceiling). i probably spent longer than i realized pondering the tweeds and wools, but eventually chose one... and then a huge bolt of the softest drapey wool was unfurled on the cutting table and i asked for about a yard and a half...

so, right... hmmmm, all this was almost a year ago... i guess it just took a while for this project to get going. but finally, at the end of august 2009 this skirt rose to the top of my to-do list and i was able finished it up for margaret last weekend. right in time i suppose for fall's nearing arrival. 

gravitating

my pocket with just a few sea treasures inside.

friday, margaret and i were strongly pulled down to the beach. the sun was out, the air was crisp, humidity was low, and a full moon was on the calendar... following this great force with glee, we arrived just before low tide, hoping that the moon's pull on the sea would reveal some brilliant treasures of the tumbled glassy kind...  or if not, hoping at least that we'd enjoy yet a little more ocean-splashing summertime together.

brown glass is one of the most common to be found.

greenpiece.

margaret's amazing super-tiny teal find... an extremely rare color.

an assembly of the day's green pieces.

the tide seemed to have receded out for miles. the moon must have a very strong pull right now. we waded (and swam) back and forth in the ocean and tide pools for hours, scanning for beachglass... watching the gulls feast on crabs and clams... just loving the warm, still summery, clear water and our peaceful corner of where land meets sea and thankful for being drawn towards it all once again.

adventure re-cap

green mountain camping... rising with the sun, settling in at dark. losing track of 'clock time' as we know it and being more in tune with the natural pace of the day. we crave this. and everything seems so right when we're there and in sync with it all.

green mountain hiking... exploring the trees and the trail. stumbling across a few ruffed grouses, some raspberries, some poison ivy, some pines, and a nice vista at the top.

green mountain eating... early morning oatmeal eaten in the chilly air (with our hats on!!) along with some warm coffee and herbal teas. local berries, local cheese and local beverages as the day winds down. some potato + carrot soup (recipe from this book) made at home, reheated over the campstove and enjoyed at night. 

deep in the woods

planning

maps... books... recipes... lists... thinking about another trip to the mountains.

a pocket

growing up, we had a little felt pouch. it was shaped like a tooth and it's purpose was to hold our newly fallen out teeth so we could place them safely under our pillow for the tooth fairy. as soon as margaret's first wee pearly white began wiggling i started to remember that pouch. i wondered what we would use to place her tooth under her pillow when that time eventually came. and i thought i had plenty of that time too. i leisurely sketched a few ideas here and there. i thought about it...  some little pouches out of felt, fabric, paper... some shaped like teeth, some like little envelopes, some like pillows... and to my surprise her tooth came out much quicker than i expected! and we were pouchless! so while she got ready for bed that night, admiring the new space in her smile, i quickly stitched up this simple little holder. we considered attaching some really loud bells and zippers so that when the tooth fairy came it would wake margaret up and she would see her, but then decided that simpler/quieter was better. and considering the time restraints, simpler it had to be. so it ended up as a small, flat sewn page with a rounded pocket that held the tooth just as it needed to. and now it is waiting for the next little loose one that seems to be on it's way out too! thankfully, we'll be prepared.

from seeds to the table

over the winter, as we dreamt of our summer garden and perused the seed catalogs i became quite taken with the idea of growing some savoy cabbages... maybe not so much the idea of growing garden cabbages as with the idea of cooking with garden cabbages. and not regular green or red cabbages but the wonderful crinkly savoy cabbage. i knew they were great in soups and tortas yet we had never considered cultivating them. so for fun this year we added a pack to our order list... we planted the seeds... they grew — from this in april to this in june to the final green giant above in august. and actually, this enormous big-enough-to-feed-a-family veggie was picked over the weekend and did just that...

i had some surprise kitchen visitors during the process of turning this cabbage into a torta. and these brief visitors were all family. they helped with making the dough, stirring the the cheeses into the filling, entertaining margaret, adding salt and pepper... and most importantly sharing in conversation and keeping the process flowing...  believe it or not i think i counted about 10 spontaneous, brief guests breezing in the front door, the back door, about the yard... family everywhere... and eventually a family creation in the oven. with all the activity, the final torta amazingly seemed to be ready as quickly as it was started... then as it cooled and everyone trickled out we parted the torta and parted ways for the evening... 

i believe that i couldn't have planned a better destination for that big leafy garden globe if i had tried, than to be a part of a family recipe... created by family, for family... 

warm

reds, oranges, yellows... love the warm colors showing up in the garden collection on this very "seasonably toasty" sunday afternoon:

atomic red carrots
moonglow tomato
amish paste tomato
random cherry tomato
sungold tomatoes
random sunflower (reseeded from the previous season)

layers

foreground: summer phlox in nonnie's garden. it bountifully appears every summer in pink, white and soft purple... planted many years back in nonnie's yard by my great-grandmother apolonia. year after year, it grows, showing it's colors for all the family to see.

background: margaret (wiggling her first loose tooth) and snoopy. posing for some "before" photos. before her very first ever haircut. really. 6 years of hair. locks grown long without ever a slight trim, free-flowing-hippie-style. hair that when unbraided was past her waistline...  it was time for a trim of some sort. it was far from the scenes of "baby's first haircut" depicted in so many baby books that we put off. it turned out to be more like a little lady's first trip to the spa. all exhuberant and wide-eyed, taking it all in.. "look! that lady's getting her hair painted!" to which i needed to explain that it was a actually a common hair treatment not the craft-project dujour although a true art i'm sure.) she enjoyed every minute of the washing, the cape wearing, the complimentary-cookie-eating (i'm surprised she didn't opt for the cappacino), the blowdrying, the chatting, the styling and the layering. she ended up loosing 10 inches in length and now sports a new do with slight layers in the front. she loves that. the layers.

sigh. i see the layers. they are definitely there. the layers of growing up. shedding the hair she'd been growing year after year... shedding the baby teeth, getting ready for the adult teeth ... moving into a new layer with a new awareness. and as long as snoopy's still coming along, it's pretty good.

and a giveaway

a few weeks ago i received a copy of a cookbook. it is a sweet collection of stories and recipes from the blue heron ranch zen retreat center — good food and meals that they've prepared over the years for all the family, friends and visitors that stayed at their very dreamy off the grid locale. 

i immediately connected with the vibe of this cookbook (meditation + risotto + tent life? right on!)... i really liked the hand drawn illustrations throughout — images of teepees, patchwork picnic blankets, mamas wearing aprons, mamas toting babies, mamas preparing food in the lotus position, trees, flowers, oh yeah, and food too.  

 

there's a mix of recipes and stories — tales of self-sufficiency, living amongst nature, family and their zen gatherings. i liked finding a mix of recipes — some that were familiar already to us and our cooking around here (like the simple polenta on a board or the oatmeal with warm fruit) along with some new-to-us foods that we've never thought of ever whipping up (like the apricot pudding). so far both chuck and i have created a few meals from this book (chuck made the the ojai bouillabaisse for us all over the weekend with some local clams which...  was... awesome). we've also tried  the chocolate marble bundt cake, the black bear apricot pudding and the blue heron beans... i loved the simplicity of the blue heron beans! and i thought they looked quite cool too.

so, did i say i received a copy of this cookbook?  well, actually i received two. i have a fresh, new extra copy here ready to pass along to one of you! woohoo. if you'd like to leave a comment below -  please do so and on friday i'll close the comments and draw a random winner. simple as that. good luck and thanks so much to nadia for sending out these books!

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congratulations to the winner of the cookbook giveaway:
"it all sounds good so good" posted by rachell

thank you to everyone who stopped by and left a comment. it is always so great to hear from you. and thank you also to nadia for passing along these copies of her cookbook.

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always cooler by the sea

found objects

valencia tomato. found today in our garden. we're witnessing some tomato growing this year that is quite unusual. it's been overly cold and rainy, putting many warm weather loving veggies on the slow track to ripening. and with the early and prevalent arrival of this awful blight (even martha's tomatoes have encountered the devasting blight) we're keeping a very close eye on every yellow leaf and brown spot out there. so today it was a pretty big, happy occasion when we noticed this orange, spot-free tomato on the vine, ready and ripe. yes!

sixteen exposure three dimensional camera. found this afternoon while up in the attic. this was a camera that i bought some time ago. and i think the last time i used it was summer 1995. at a grateful dead concert. getting the film processed was not an easy task, so i just held onto it. and it eventually got put away into a box... for some reason when it caught my eye today, i decided it was time to find a 3d film developer. i searched online and think i may have found a place? i can't even imagine what 'previously-unreleased-never-been-seen-before' memories might be hidden on this film!! in three-d no less.

mmmmmm.... patchwork

finished up two more patchwork squares this week for the one quilt project. one for maitreya's green/white/black "m" theme quilt. i loved mixing type and fabric for this one. i experimented with a huge (921 pt) lowercase black fabric m (in one of my favorite go-to fonts), cropped off the patchy 'page'. the other square was for sarah's quilt, made up of some great fabrics in natural colors. she too had some type going on in the fabrics that she chose, can you spot them cropped in there amongst the linen and stripes?

now i'm ready to really focus on which fabrics i'll use, which direction i'd like my quilt to go in and then work on getting everything out to the group soon!!! 

summer sun

sew

this week i was able to finish up another square for the one quilt project . this one for amy. here is a glimpse from the beginning sketching and planning (lots of measuring) to the final detail of some woodland inspired embroidery (before settling on the mushroom there was lots of woodland image researching - including this foggy critter)...

(side-by-side: january's vintage flour sacks & denim square next to february's red and white woodland theme)

next up... i get to finally dig in to sarah's wonderful bundle of natural hued prints for a little more patchy-ness!

shore love

h2o

water. so good on an august summer day. it was hot, so we swam in it. it got hotter, so we put a big pitcher full in the fridge to drink it. it was that time of day — the quiet, slow, late afternoon/pre-dinner hour —  so we dipped our brushes in and painted with it.