Nothing From a Box, Can, Store or Truck

"When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree;

when drinking water, remember who dug the well."

-- Vietnamese proverb

Vegetable frittata 7-30-14

"We may find in the long run that tinned food 

is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun."

-- George Orwell

"Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. 

They probably get jet-lagged, just like people."

-- Elizabeth Berry

One of the most singular pleasures in life, for me anyway, is cooking a meal with food that comes straight from the good things growing in my own garden.

Yesterday I did just that, using ingredients I picked twenty steps from my backdoor. Anything I didn't grow myself came from someone I know who did.

I provided the zucchini, basil and tomato (I found my first ripe one blushing on the vine yesterday).

My farmer friend Bob grew the spinach a stone's throw away on his local vegetable farm. 

The eggs came from a physical therapist named Megan who raises her own chickens. She personally hand-delivers dozens of her home-grown brown beauties -- eggs so far beyond "jumbo" that the cartons won't close over their tops -- to my husband at work every week or two. 

With this handful of simple, good things, I took a personal stand against "big food" and the corn cartel and environmental negligence and processed pseudo-food and cooked up a nutritious, deliciously simple vegetable frittata.

It was probably the best frittata I've ever eaten. I made enough to fill my biggest cast-iron skillet -- plenty for four people -- and ate half of it all by myself. I'd give you the recipe, but there isn't one. Sorry. I just free-formed with what I had and made it up as I went along.

I like cooking that way. 

It feels more creative and exciting and satisfying. Instead of running to the store to buy something some cookbook or recipe writer says I should use, I'd much rather assess what I have on hand, and go from there, creating something good all on my own -- with a little help from my friends.

First Harvest

"As we plant, so we harvest and eat."

-- Guru Granth Sahib

Broccoli 6-21-14

"The broccoli says 'I look like a small tree',

the mushroom says 'I look like an umbrella',

the walnut says 'I look like a brain',

and the cucumber says 'Can we please change the subject?'"

-- Unknown

Ding! Ding! Ding!

And the One Good Thing award for "Most Ambitious Young Veggie In The Patch" goes to (drum roll) --

Broccoli!!!

Wait, wait. Before you turn up your nose,  let me say that home-grown broccoli is totally tastier than store-bought. I admit, broccoli can be pretty aggressive on a lot of fronts. But home-grown broccoli lightly steamed mere minutes from being picked from the backyard garden is a kinder, gentler, lovelier vegetable altogether.

Because it isn't bred to withstand long-distance truck travel, its flavor is more delicate, its texture is tenderer, and its -- let's say "digestive after-effects" -- are milder and more, well, demure.

Its florets are prettier and less dense. Its emerald color is more vibrant, before and after cooking. And the serving bowl is emptier after everyone digs in and eats every last tiny tree. 

We enjoyed the first broccoli harvest from my little garden at supper last night along with some basil pesto pasta that I made with my fresh garden basil. I love cooking good fresh food for my family, but growing the good fresh food that I feed them is extra satisfying.

Everybody knows that eating veggies is good for you. But here's a little secret about growing the veggies yourself -- they're so healthy that they make you feel pretty darned good before they even hit your plate!

Fresh New Art Supplies

"Life is about using the whole box of crayons."

-- RuPaul

A well-used lemon yellow crayon 3-27-14

"A box of new crayons! 

Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect.

Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps,

missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors.

Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic."

-- Bill Watterson

What is it about fresh, virgin art supplies that makes me so giddy?

I think it is the vastness of the untapped potential and possibility that lies within them -- in each box of new crayons and pencils, in each tube of paint, in each pristine tablet of paper, in every straight edged brick of fresh, untouched clay.

New art supplies still hold the unsullied hope and promise of perfection, of wild and ambitious visions that haven't been dashed by mistakes or blunders or disappointment. They could still become anything I can dream of.

Leo and I went to the art supply store yesterday to re-stock. He needed a couple of tubes of oil paint, and I needed some acrylics. We also bought brushes and I picked up a fresh linoleum block and some Super Sculpey. I got a huge roll of black paper to use as a photo backdrop, and I also grabbed a box of little markers with points like brushes. I always try to find something new to experiment with and they looked interesting.

I don't have any particular plans for my new stuff. But they'll get their chance. Inspiration will strike. It usually does.

My love affair with new art supplies goes way, way back.

My dad was a high school guidance counselor, and when I was little he was also the Santa Claus at the annual high school employees Christmas party. (I was clueless. The suit and beard totally fooled me.)  The teachers and office staff all filled his bag with pre-wrapped gifts for their own kids, and then my dad distributed them as if he'd brought the stuff all the way from the North Pole.

Every year I got a box of new crayons. Not just a regular box, but this HUGE flat of 124 (and not the fat, little kid ones, but the slim, pointy big kid kind) all laid out in a single layer, each crayon resting snugly in it's own little space in the specially-molded plastic tray. 

I have three sisters, and the rest of the year we had to share our crayons, which were all dumped into a jumbled grubby mess in common ratty shoe box. As far as I was concerned, having my very own pristine box of 124 crayons was the true Christmas miracle. 

I was always just a little afraid to start using my new crayons. I didn't want to break the spell. There were colors in there I'd never even seen.

I distinctly remember finding the silver crayon for the first time, with its sparkly metallic flecks embedded right into the wax. I took it to the kitchen to show my mother, cradling it gently in my cupped palms like an injured baby bird.

Me: (breathless) "What is this?"  (I still too young to read the words on the wrapper).

Her: (bored) Silver. (Her unspoken "duh!" rang loudly in the subtext.)

I carried Silver back to the family room floor where I was coloring, and began.

The only word I knew how to spell at the time, besides my own name, was "love," which I wrote in sky blue on a piece of blank paper. Then I colored all around the letters with my new silver crayon. I soon discovered that the harder I pressed, the more metallic glitter it released. So I colored feverishly until "love" was surrounded by a solid sea of silver shimmer -- until my beautiful crayon was a ground down stump in my hot, sweaty little hand.

Resting back in the tray, Silver looked oddly shortened and rounded next to her slim and pointy friends. 

I loved her all the more for that.

Which ... Ding! Ding! Ding!

Brings us to the first ever "One Good Thing Coloring Page!"

I made this special picture of fresh new crayons just for you, so you can print it out and color it in however you like. You can use crayons, paint, lipstick -- whatever. You can even color it digitally on your computer if you want. You can make them any color you want to.

There are no rules, because rules suck. 

Have fun!

New crayons 3-27-14

Fresh Snow

"Well, I know now.
I know a little more how much a simple thing
like a snowfall can mean to a person."

-- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Apple in winter 1-2-14

"In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago."

-- Christina Rossetti, "In the Bleak Midwinter"

"The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches."

-- e.e. cummings

I have two small apple trees in my backyard. The branches are bare and all of the apples are gone -- either eaten, sauced, or fallen to the ground and abandoned.

Except for this guy. He's still hanging in there.

We got a fresh snowfall for the first day of the new year, and the snow kind of swaddled everything like a newborn's soft blanket. It gave this apple a fluffy, silly little hat.

I know that Earth's cold, hard bones are sleeping underneath. And I know that eventually this pristine landscape will turn ugly and bleak, sagging into that awful muddied gray of despair. But today, Earth looks snuggly and tucked in.

Not everybody loves the snow. That's OK. Go ahead. Love it or hate it. 

But for me, for today, snow is a good thing.