(Nothing But) Flowers

Raspberries picked at Smolak Farms in North Andover.

So, yesterday my partner and I finally made good on our promise to ourselves to prep food to store for the winter (in our efforts to eat more locally, thus avoiding food shipping = carbon emissions). I’m worried about those Polar bears and lots more. Seriously, I can’t think about the Polar bears & global warming, I get too sad even though I know many human beings will be affected as well.

So what did we do?

Blanching & Freezing: We prepped our first set of blanched vegetables by boiling ‘em for about a minute (or 2, or 3) and then cooling ‘em down and then freezing them. We did this with some swiss chard we grew ourselves, some green beans from our farm share, and some yellow beans from my partner’s uncle’s garden.

Pickling: Yesterday we tasted our first pickles that we pickled ourselves last week! Well, my partner pickled them– I looked on skeptically, but now that they turned out great I’m willing to take credit! So, we pickled two more jars along with some hot peppers from our garden yesterday.

Raspberry picking and freezing: Our morning started off with raspberry picking at Smolak farms. We got black, red and white raspberries (see pic above). But, now that I’ve picked them, I’m willing to go ahead and buy them from my farmer’s market. They’ll still be local & won’t require standing under a 90 degree sun for three hours. I did learn about the different types of raspberry bushes, but I only need a one time lesson in that.

Lessons: One thing I am realizing this summer is that trying to eat locally and do things yourself takes much more time & effort– but its worth it. We are finding ways to save time such as steaming all of our beets from our farm share early on in the week so that we have beets for salads and sandwiches all week. Or grilling up all of our summer squash & zucchini so that they are prepped for salads and sandwiches too.

Thursday night was the 10th annual Lantern Festival here in J.P. About 4,000 people showed up! It was inspired by Japanese Bon festivals to honor the dead (which is what the lanterns are sent out onto the water for). I don’t know much more about it than that! But, is was beautiful, as I hope these photos attest to! It was held in the Forest Hills Cemetery which is a gorgeous, old cemetery with lots of old statues & beautiful trees– I never thought I’d say it but we’re planning a picnic & bikeride through the cemetery one of these summer afternoons– its really a neat place.

Photo credits go to my sweetie, whose hand at night-time photography is much steadier than mine.

I normally don’t encourage folks to sign up for things like this, but this one is so easy & the International Rescue Committee does great work– so, Click here to sign your name so that $1 will be donated to their humanitarian work with Iraqi refugees.

(Yea, I know the html button doesn’t work on the image above, my html skills aren’t good enough to figure that out! Click here instead.)

I have not been knitting much lately. I think its due to my starting three knitting projects that are a bit lacy– (here’s one, another). I’ve come to realize I’m not a lace girl– too much counting! I want to zone out as I knit, so I’ll return to those at some point when I’m feeling uber patient.

Last week a friend and I visited Northampton, Massachusetts which is home to a knit shop that is yarn nirvana to seasoned knitters, WEBS. I admit to at first being disappointed– its didn’t seem that much bigger or with a better selection than other big yarn shops I’ve been in. But, ahhh! I found THE BACK ROOM– home to all the yarn close-outs and with a much yummier (and cheaper) selection of yarns.
So, having found a magazine with the pattern for this blue sweater, I got some of the exact yarn it called for, but in black. I even got some cute, funky ribbon to do the detailing. I am also going to knit this one (the Clover Cardi), but in a slightly more green tone. Note that both of these sweaters are labeled “My First Sweater” on the pattern– in other words after years of knitting I have found out I am still at the kindergarten stage of sweater making. So be it. I like my simple sweaters.

Too much Harry Potter, you know. I’ve made that mistake a few times today.

So we are on our third week of our CSA from Stillman’s and our boxes have been bountiful– our first box consisted of:

Spanish Kale; Yellow Chard; Arugula; Spinach; Beets & their Green Tops; a bunch of lettuce; and a box of strawberries

And the second was similarly full of greens; this weeks was a bit more mixed, but equally great. We’re gonna be busy cooking this summer!
Today we got some garlic scapes, which are essentially the buds of garlic flowers cut before they bloom. I’m a garlic scape newbie so we’ll see how it goes– I’m sauteeing ‘em up with some summer squash and kale to have over some cheese grits (ahh, the South sticks with ya, even if you leave) for dinner tonight.

This week has also marked the first time we harvested from our gardens: lettuce! We should have cucumbers in 1-2 more days. I’d love to post a picture but I can’t find my camera cord! I also was lucky enough to get some rhubarb this week from a member of our community garden’s rhubarb plant. I’m looking forward to some more strawberry rhubarb pie!

(I finally learned how to make pie crust 2 weeks ago– one of my new year’s goals for 2008.)