I started my first batch of seeds this weekend. About 450 seedlings in the planning stages for this spring!! I've got 'em planned out for seed-starting over the next 10 weeks. Ambitious, I know. But I haven't been able to raise anything from seed since 2008, when we moved into the house in Lindstrom which was smack dab in the middle of an oak grove. Read: shady. I love this Landware Pro-Seeder. It comes with 3 different sizes of needle tips, for handling seeds in a variety of sizes. The seeds in the bowl are snapdragon, and as you can see, teeny tiny. I was able to pick one seed up at a time with this tool and deposit it exactly where I wanted it in the cell pack. I don't really use it for anything larger, it's easier to do it by hand. But for tiny seeds, I haven't found a better method. In a few short weeks, this entire shelf system will be full of green sprouts getting a head-start on the growing season. Just makes it feel more like spring even when it doesn't look like it outside, ya know? What do you do to get ready for spring??

It's been a whirlwind week. I still can't believe I'm sitting in my own dining room looking at snow outside the windows instead of flowers.

Arriving home at midnight Tues. night has left me a bit jet-lagged and groggy, which hasn't helped the feeling that I wish I were still enjoying the temperate climate and ocean breezes of the coast. It will be months before spring truly arrives here.

Uff da.

To cheer myself up I am going back through my pictures from last week.

Like visiting Fisherman's Grotto on Fisherman's Wharf for lunch with my aunt and uncle. They recommended the Boston Clam Chowder (scrumptious!) and the fresh dungeness crab (I had the sandwich - yum).

Fresh crab would turn out to be a recurring theme this week - after eating it here I would also later have it fresh cracked, in crab dip and crab salad. Considering I don't normally eat finger food (like cracking crab), this was quite an accomplishment for me.


There is a great view from this restaurant but alas, this was one of only 2 days it rained while I was out there so I only caught glimpses of the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog and drizzle.


While we ate, my aunt and uncle told me stories of the city and the area, of earthquakes and bridges,the history of the wharf and of an odd little man nicknamed the "bush man," who could often be found on the wharf hiding behind a couple of tree branches and scaring the living bajeevus out of anyone who passed by. Then asking the laughing on-lookers for donations. (Clever way to earn some change, no?)

After lunch I was given a short tour of the city, complete with a climb up Lombard Street and a visit to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.

I enjoyed reading about Lillie Coit, the San Francisco legend who became the mascot and honorary member of Knickerbocker Engine Co. 5, often accompanying the fire truck as it was hoisted up Telegraph Hill to a blaze.

After her death at age 86, Lillie left one-third of her fortune to the city “to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved.” The tower is the outcome of that donation. Murals ring the walls inside the tower, depicting aspects of California life in 1934 when the paintings were commissioned.


My favorites were those depicting country scenes like this one, where the cows are housed in a pristine barn and attended to by men in white, even receiving a shower!

Although the view of the city and bay was draped in fog, we marveled at this little park at the top of the city and at the fortitude of the residents whose homes perch seemingly precariously on the edges!

As enchanting as the tower and murals were, by far the most beautiful building I visited during this trip was The Palace Hotel. This iconic landmark has graced the city for over 100 years, having been completely rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake.


The Garden Court's stained glass dome ceiling graced with Austrian crystal chandeliers is really a sight to behold. Having dabbled in stained glass myself awhile back, I can really appreciate the work and effort that went into building this amazing ceiling.


After wandering around the Garden Court (which is used as a dining room) we were then drawn into the dimly lit, richly appointed interior of the Pied Piper Bar, so named because of its 1909 Maxfield Parrish mural of "The Pied Piper of Hamlin." Joel the bartender was not nearly as gregarious as Larry in Pescadero, however, he makes a darn fine Long Island Iced Tea.

Or so I'm told.


After checking in and wandering around a bit, Lowell took me over to Yank Sing for deem sum - another first in culinary experiences for me. As you are seated at your table, staff wheel carts of fresh offerings of bite-sized Chinese noms around the restaurant and you pick and choose as they go by.

It was, of course, yummy. Everything I ate this week was yummy. My jeans no longer fit me.

To counter all this great food, I hoodwinked Lowell into attending a hooping class with me later in the evening. My favorite professional hoop dancer, Christabel Zamor of Hoopgirl, teaches a beginners class every Monday night on Divisidero Street about 2 miles from the hotel.

Sadly, Hoopgirl herself was not in attendance this night, but one of her instructors filled in for her, Debbie. She was a lovely girl with long curls and beautiful tattoos on her back and arms. She spoke with an exotic accent.

I had a blast in this class. Having been hooping in the privacy of my living room for awhile now, it was still a good workout but not nearly as strenuous as it was for those (like Lowell) who had just picked up a hoop for the first time that night.

Twenty minutes into the class I looked over and saw Lowell mouthing the words, "You Are Evil!"

I think deep down inside he really did have a fun time though, despite his aching glutes and thighs. If you're ever up for the challenge, hooping is great cardio and a phenomenal core workout, not to mention, just plain fun!


After catching a cab back to the hotel, we had just enough time to change and head out for... dinner!

Lowell's friend Dana picked us up and we headed over to Chaya Brasserie, which serves a yummy and surprising combination of Japanese and French cuisine.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that my roasted free-range chicken breast was yummy.

Not only that, the company was utterly delightful. Not that I'm surprised, all of Lowell's friends and coworkers that I met while visiting were engaging and entertaining, and everyone without exception seems to adore him.


After all of this fun, food and excitement, it was time to head back to the hotel and call it a night. Of special interest was the king sized bed, which I had all to myself, with no cats pinning me down in strategic places!

It was sad to awake the next morning realizing I would soon be on a plane back to Minnesnowta.

It is still sad now that I am back.

Not just because of the temperature, the snow, the lack of flowers and sunshine, but because it had been 25 years since I had last spent any measurable amount of time with Lowell.

And now I remembered exactly why it was that I cherished his friendship so much in the first place.

If ever there was a kinder, more generous, loving soul, I have yet to meet him. Hanging with Lowell is like putting on your favorite pair of jeans - perfect fit, and they make you feel great.

Unlike my current pair, which, for some strange reason, do not seem to fit me at all after my week in San Carlos!

Cheers -

Yesterday Lowell took me over to Pescadero, a sweet little town a short but scenic drive on Hwy 92 from San Carlos to Half Moon Bay and then south on Hwy 1 along the coast to Pescadero. I don't have a single picture from the entire day. In my defense, it was drizzling all day, and I had neither an umbrella nor a waterproof camera nor the skills or know-how to take a photo on such a dark, damp day. So in lieu of my own photos, I will be sharing pics from the websites of the places we visited, and from Flikr, a photo sharing website. The drive along the coast was beautiful, despite the drizzle and fog. This stretch of coast is almost entirely undeveloped - lush green hills and state beaches. The coast was often obscured from view by hills and cliffs, but the glimpses I caught offered long rolling waves sweeping the rugged shoreline.

picture from here

Our first stop was at Harley Farms Goat Dairy, a restored 1910 dairy farm with 200 alpine goats on nine acres of pasture who produce the milk for award-winning chevre, fromage blanc, ricotta and feta cheese. I wish I could say we saw some of the 96 baby goats born so far in 2011 romping happily in the green pastures at the farm. However, the goats were too smart to stay outdoors in the rain. They were all lounging in the barn, which was off-limits to visitors unless you were signed up for one of their tours, which were all booked up yesterday.

(Photos above from their website)

So we had to imagine them just as you are. Their gift shop, however, was open, and we did spend some time sampling their yummy goat cheeses and perusing their goat related bath and body products. We also wandered upstairs to the restored Victorian hay loft where they host Farm Dinners at a long wooden table on select dates throughout the year.

picture from here.

As a bonus, we also got to meet two of the resident cats, who were snoozing on the pillowed benches around the room - a tabby named Carmel (emphasis on the "el") and a black one named Oscar. They were both very friendly and seemed to enjoy a pet and chin scratch. After the farm we headed into Pescadero, stopping first at Arcangeli Grocery for a loaf of their regionally renowned artichoke bread, and then wandering up the street visiting gift shops along the way to Duarte's Tavern, which is regionally renowned for its artichoke soup. I am sensing a yummy theme going here, aren't you? I don't believe I've ever had a vacation where I have eaten so well. But let me backtrack just a moment. One of the gift shops we visited, Luna Sea, which carries an eclectic mix of art and gift novelties, also has a bonus feature - a mellow and utterly adorable Goldendoodle named Pebbles. Lowell and Pebbles are new best friends. I really do wish I had a pic of her, all golden locks and softness. She looked a lot like this cutie.

picture from here

There is a growing chance there may be one of these dogs in my future. At Duarte's Tavern, we sat at the bar and were entertained by Larry as he told us the tavern's history and served us samples of Cream of Artichoke and Cream of Green Chile soups, accompanied by fresh hot crusty sourdough bread. We took his recommendation and each had a bowl of mixed artichoke/chile soup. Yum-mer. We passed, however, on the fried smelt, or as Larry called them, "fries with eyes." We did, however, sample the olallieberry pie, ala mode. In case you are not familiar with olallieberry (as I was not) its pedigree includes loganberry, youngberry, blackberry, raspberry and yummyberry.

photo from here

Yum yum yummer. As I said, I've been eating very well on this trip. Too well probably. I began to regret my full belly however on the return trip home, which followed Hwy 94, a winding bugger of a highway that cut through the Santa Cruz Mountains. If I had not been riding in the front seat of his truck, Lowell may have rediscovered my creamed artichoke/chile soup. As it was, I just got to admire Lowell's driving (a clutch no less) and the Redwood trees as we careened down the east side of the mountain. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and digesting, topped off later by more of Frank's good cooking, crab salad on fresh artichoke bread. I wonder if my plane ticket dates can be changed... I just may never leave. Cheers -

Sunday morning dawned nice and crispy cold. -18 degrees crispy. But it didn't stop these two from their normal eager morning ritual, which now includes pre-tasting the alfalfa hay as I carry it out of the tack room. Even after I scatter the flake around the snow out by the fence, Boo still looks at me as if wondering if I have any other hidden treats for him. Oh Boo, I just want to bury my face in your soft, fuzzy neck! But rather than torture him so early on a frigid cold morning, I headed back into the warm house and started a batch of cheddar-potato-soup in my recently acquired and already much-loved cast-iron Dutch oven. The original recipe came from The Farm Chicks website, but I no longer see the Pantry heading where I originally found it. At any rate, I dollied it up a bit by adding onion, garlic, and cooked bacon to the mix - wowza, this batch was amazing! Part of the credit also has to go to the Otter Creek Summer Aged Cheddar Cheese. This might just be the best cheese, and cheesy soup, I have ever tasted! After I died and went to heaven and came back to earth again, it was time to head into St. Paul to the Science Museum of Minnesota. Sadly my little point & shoot does not take good flash pictures indoors, so I left it home. You'll just have to picture two of the only adults there without small children, wandering the exhibits having a blast. One of our favorite exhibits was the Experiment Gallery, which included hands-on learning with wave tanks, convection currents, and even a tornado display. We did also attend one Omni Theater film, Tropical Rainforest, with approximately five million children under the age of five. It wasn't nearly as amazing as the Hubble film we viewed at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature on our recent trip to CO (which is also showing at the St. Paul museum). But it did give us a chance to rest our feet for a bit. We couldn't pass up the gift shop, either, where in another fit of unexpected shopping bliss I procured these delicate earrings by Trish Waldron of Organix. Oh my! My quest for perfect pink and pearl earrings is over! Just as our quest for the perfect butter dish. Quite a weekend, no? But I was in for one more surprise - after purchasing them, I flipped the tag over and was startled to read this on the back: How could they know we are currently struggling with transition? Where to purchase a farm, what careers to pursue? And who are they, anyway? Earring angels? It was eerie. I've been wearing them ever since. Blessings!

Some time last fall I picked up this little pot of Rosemary at one of the farmer's markets we try to frequent during the warmer seasons. It has been growing quite happily on my kitchen windowsill despite being next to some very cold windows. It is even, quite to my surprise, flowering. I didn't even know rosemary had flowers. Such delicate signs of new life, in the midst of the coldest part of the winter, bring me quiet delight. Blessings -

I admit, I was kinda cranky today. It all started with the financial drama of my almost-out-of-the-house-20-year-old-child. And assorted other child-related messes, physical and mental and emotional. Added to that stress was work stress - internet was broken (thank goodness for my Mifi card!), my server connection to a client site broke, and communications with my work team were nonexistent despite several attempts on my part. I was a cranky lady when I left the house to go pick up my car-less child from Forest Lake, 20 minutes away. But after I picked her up, we stopped at the local whole foods type grocery store, where I am a frequent customer, and the lady at the register asked me if C-baby was my little sister. Oh Joy! I could have hugged her! And then at the farm today, after scooping a wheelbarrow full of dung, I stopped and watched Betty hose off the girls, who are all still fully fleeced and very uncomfortably hot. They love the hose, like little kids love hoses & water. It was a hoot. And then I watched the two babies born this year chasing and romping around the pasture. I drove the back roads to go get my car-less child after I was done at the farm, and marveled at the emerald green fields everywhere I went. First crop of hay is being harvested at some farms. I want to learn how to cut and rake and bale hay. Does anyone out there need a hand with this task? I also had a good laugh with C-baby over some of the "slingo" her and her friends have come up with lately - I'll post about that very soon. You'll find out what "Mackin' with yer Koolaid" means. So stay tuned on that one. And then, just now, I checked one of my favorite blogger sites, Pioneer Woman, and she had literally JUST POSTED her daily Confessions blog - and I was able to comment as number eleven!!! Make that, number seventeen - in the 3 seconds it took me to post my comment, 6 others had been posted, too. I mean, number 19... once the page refreshed, I was bumped to 19. But still, this is a site the frequently receives hundreds if not thousands of comments/day (her giveaway posts exceed 30,000 comments!), so making the top twenty of any of her posts on any given day is no small achievement. I know, I live a small and pathetic life. I have to look for the good where I can find it, when surrounded by child financial drama and work excommunication. At any rate, I did smile today, several times, despite my tantrums and stress frazzles. And now, I am going to go make these. And all will be well with the world. Smiles - Victoria

Vegetables stole my blog. Yep, they just marched right into my kitchen, one big CSA box every week (+ a few extra odds and ends from the farmers’ market… I am such a sucker for a local farmers’ market!), and demanded that I DO SOMETHING with them, and do it right quick, before they started to revert to a previous organic life form, a conversion facilitated by copious amounts of mold. ‘Doing something’ usually entailed some combination of chopping (and chopping and chopping…), sautéing, mixing, stirring, seasoning, and eating. It also often involved my new favorite veggie cookbook (thanks sweetie for picking this up for me and saving me the agony of having to walk through the Mall of America).

Occasionally it involved the food dehydrator that I borrowed from my friend Betty; or freezing extra portions to savor summer’s goodness in the frostiness of mid-winter (frozen pesto thaws beautifully and makes a great topper for pitas, with tomato slices and mozzarella cheese – broil until the cheese bubbles!). And over Labor Day weekend, it involved canning 42 pint jars of homemade (organic, locally grown) tomato sauce with my friend Mary.

For four solid months, I ate, slept, breathed and chopped my way through my weekly servings of veggies. I have never eaten so many fresh veggie-based meals in my life. And if you knew me very well, you would probably be scratching your head right now and wondering, “What on earth? She doesn’t even like veggies!” I’m afraid it’s true… I have never met a raw vegetable that I would consider taking home to meet the folks. I not only dislike raw veggies, I truly despise them. I can still recall being forced to eat raw carrots and celery sticks at lunch… which usually ended up mush in the pocket of my cheek until I could excuse myself to go spit them in the toilet. So my husband was a bit taken aback when I announced last spring that I wanted a CSA share this year. “What on earth are you going to do with all of those raw vegetables that you so despise?” A fair question, given his knowledge of my vegetable avoidance habits.

What, indeed? Well, there really is only one answer. Although I can tolerate and even sort of kind of enjoy a fresh salad every so often (Romaine and spinach leaves only please – no frilly bitter things allowed! And keep those other raw veggies off of it… and please don’t forget to smother it with chicken, croûtons, sesame seeds and yummy salad dressing so I can’t taste the leaves!), the only real answer to my dilemma of consuming more veggies in my diet was to cook everything.

Not only did we cook almost everything that came in the door, I learned how to cook with things I have never, ever, eaten in my entire life before. Like Napa cabbage (stir-fry… still too bitter for my taste though). Red and green cabbage – we liked the small, red heads of cabbage better than the big green ones. We made a lot of Bierocks – a German version of cabbage/beef calzone, a recipe sweetie’s mom passed on to us. They even freeze and reheat well. They were actually quite good… but with 4+ heads of cabbage coming in every week, we just couldn’t keep up with enough cabbage dishes – sadly, some of the cabbage ended up in the compost. Parsnips (parsnip soup). Swiss chard (tastes like spinach when sautéed and used in pasta dishes). Collard greens (I don’t even recall what dish we hid these in). Kale (again, like spinach – sautéed and used on pasta).

image from here.

And then the glorious time of the summer finally arrived, when the leafy green things started to peter out and we were refreshed with a wave of veggies I actually recognized and used in abundance – potatoes, onions, shallots, carrots, TOMATOES (and tomatoes and tomatoes!), zucchini & yellow summer squash. And then later, winter squash and pumpkins. And some more tomatoes. And I learned some new tricks for those plentiful tomatoes. Like, what do you do with 5# of tomatoes when you already cooked enough veggie dishes to last a month? Make tomato paste! Five POUNDS of tomatoes will cook/bake down to less than a pint of paste. And boy oh boy is it good paste, too! Much better than those little cans you’ll pay an arm & a leg for at the grocery store.

image from here.

As if this Vegetable Undertaking weren’t enough, the searching out new recipes, the braving new frontiers by eating things I’ve never eaten before, the chopping and chopping and chopping and cooking, cooking, cooking, I had to do it without the help of my faithful kitchen companion, whose real job suddenly approached a project deadline with such frantic parameters that he spent the last few months of the summer/fall leaving at 8am and returning home around 11pm, long after the veggies had been cooked and the dishes cleaned up and everything put away. This was the real tragedy of the Summer of Vegetables – normally we would chop and cook side by side, sharing the toil and the experiments, celebrating our success together over another good home cooked meal, together. But not this year. I, who hate to cook almost as much as I hate raw vegetables, did all of the cooking. Alone. And lived (barely) to tell the tale. The Veggie Tale (couldn’t resist). But all was not for woe. I did learn some powerful lessons from this experiment with vegetables. 1) I still don’t like raw vegetables. 2) Almost anything is palatable if cooked with enough garlic & onions. 3) If you don’t like to cook, do not cook a season of food, alone. Just don’t do it. Hire a cook if necessary. The expense is minimal compared to saving the marriage. 4) Even a favorite vegetable can get tiring when served in copious amounts, for weeks on end. (Even tomatoes). 5) Ratatouille is fabulous but it makes sweetie ill. Eat it when he is not around. 6) Four or more heads of cabbage is just not do-able in a week, with a family of two. 7) Red cabbage will keep almost forever in the fridge and will eventually be eaten by sweetie on his wraps and in his scramblers (don’t ask!). But even this fact does not justify receiving more than 1 head of cabbage/week. If your CSA continues to bombard you with cabbage, you have my permission to not feel guilty when it goes to the compost. Reuse it on your own garden next year, on a vegetable you love. 8) I have a wider range of vegetable tolerances than I previously thought.

9) When all else fails, add salsa & cheese to the dish. 10) Canning should always be done with a good friend… and at least two bottles of wine and some really good chocolate.

image from here.

Happy Chopping – Victoria

For several years now Kelly and I have been making some rather unusual New Year’s resolutions. Instead of joining the gym, vowing to lose 10 pounds, get in shape (round is a shape, isn’t it?), we have decided each year to focus on one area of our life where we can reduce our environmental impact, in big and small ways.

Last year we switched out all of the light bulbs in our rental unit and the duplex we own, for CFL’s. We also traded in our 2005 Hyundai Tucson SUV for a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid, trading in 21mpg for 45mpg. We bring our own bags for shopping, bring our own “to-go” containers to restaurants, our own water and coffee mugs on the road, and recycle everything we possibly can. So this year, when we looked at our lifestyle and once more said, “What can we do?” we decided to focus on food. We have long been patrons of whole foods grocery stores, seeking them out wherever we have lived. We try as much as possible to secure organic options, not just in produce but also our grains, pasta, sauces, spices, snacks, etc. But we felt we could go even further, when we found out that those luscious organic tomatoes have probably traveled 1500 miles or more to reach the grocery store shelves. So, we decided to educate ourselves on where our food comes from. Even more disturbing than the distance most foods travel to reach our stores, and our plates, was learning that, according to this information from Sustainable Table, every week 330 family farmers are being forced out of business and leave their land. “The dramatic expansion of industrial agriculture (or factory farming) has made it increasingly difficult for small family farmers in the US to stay in business. Instead, the food industry has become dominated by a handful of giant corporations which benefit from government policies that favor large-scale production.” So, we started checking the addresses on packaged foods before we put them into our grocery cart. And labels on the produce shelves. I was saddened to see onions from Peru (yes, as in South America!) on the shelves of a local grocery store last summer when I knew there were fresh, locally grown onions down the street at the local farmers’ market. We moved to this area too late last summer to join a CSA, or community sponsored agriculture program, where you purchase shares up front from a local farmer in return for fresh produce all summer long, but we vowed to select one for 2009. A local alpaca breeder, Peggy from Sunrise River Alpacas tipped us off to a local CSA called Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. We visited their blog and decided they would be a great local option for us. We are close enough to run over and pick up the food order each week, attend their festivals and workshops, even volunteer on the farm. And, they have a fun farm name. Last weekend, we attended their annual spring festival and blessing of the fields. We enjoyed meeting Gigi and Robin, who own and run the farm, who are both delightfully engaging, along with many of their summer interns and many other share members. We wandered the grounds and saw a wide variety of livestock – bunnies, chickens, turkeys, goats & kids, sheep & lambs, two steer, some young pigs, and about a dozen ducks. We feasted on brick oven pizzas, created by Dustin, intern and chef extraordinaire. During a short ceremony, we blessed the fields (whose names span the alphabet from A-I, starting with Abundance and ending with Integrity), the bees who will work tirelessly this year to pollinate the crops, and all of the animals. We also prayed for more rain. The fields are so dry that the top layers of newly planted fields are literally blowing away. After all of the wandering around, chatting, eating and meeting people and animals, the afternoon was gone and it was time to head back home again. I am very glad we visited. I have found a great peace in knowing exactly who is growing the food I will soon be eating, and exactly where it is coming from and how it is being grown. I look forward to learning how to use what is in the box each week in creative ways, whether long-time favorites or new and unfamiliar varieties, building our meals around them. I also look forward to learning how to can and dehydrate some of it, to enjoy throughout the fall and long MN winter ahead. If this all sounds too intimidating, don’t fret – it’s easy to get started eating locally. Use your fingers to find local, sustainable foods. Here are some sites to get you going: Resident of MN? Check out the MN Grown directory, maintained by the MN Dept. of Agriculture. Using this directory we located fresh locally made gourmet cheeses and buffalo meat at Eichten’s Hidden Acres, locally grown and bottled, award-winning wines at Winehaven Winery and Vineyard, grass fed beef and pork raised with no chemicals or antibiotics from Hidden Stream Farm (they ship our bacon directly to us), and even our popcorn is now MN grown, from Clem’s Homegrown Popcorn (also mailed to us). The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of thousands of family farms, restaurants, and other outlets for fresh, locally grown food. Its listings include farmers’ markets, CSA programs, and even vegetarian eateries. If finding healthy grass-fed meats, dairy and other edibles is on your agenda, check out Eat Wild, whose site also includes information on the benefits of raising animals on pasture (for example, did you know that grass-fed meats are lower in fat and calories than grain-fed, and can actually lower your LDL cholesterol levels?). Don't feel like you have to make radical changes to make an impact. Start small. Visit your local farmers' market. Try one meal made from local ingredients and taste the freshness difference. Before you know it, you'll be hooked like we are. Who grew your food? Eat locally grown food, support global sustainability, enjoy your food, and smile.