bee creative

being local: food, seeds, and yarn

Food:

For the next Dark Days post there is a challenge, to make desert!  What a great reason to do a little playing in the kitchen...

Coeur a la Creme, raspberry sauce, and cookies.  It was a bit of work, but I'd do it again.  

First I started with making cream cheese.  Cream cheese is really easy to make, it just takes a little time.  I used directions from Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll.  It wasn't until I was washing the dishes that I realized one tiny little non-local thing had made it into the mix, the culture for the cream cheese.  Oh well!  Cultures probably aren't something I'd ever give up as I explore sustainability as a life style. 

My recipe for Coeur a la Creme called for cream cheese, sugar, cream, egg white and kirsch.  I substituted honey for the sugar and left out the kirsch. 

The raspberry sauce was made with frozen raspberries, water and honey.  I cooked the berries until they were syrupy. 

The cookie recipe came from here.  I used butter, honey, local flour, and hazelnuts.  If anyone decides to try this recipe, watch the cooking time.  I almost burnt my cookies.  I want to explore this site more as I switch to baking with honey rather than sugar.  

All that cooking inspired me to clean the fridge:

I store my bulk items in canning jars.  I have rice, flours, nuts and seeds here.  Plus pickles and jams.  And cream cheese! 

 

Seeds:

I've been considering a lot how eating local depends a lot on planning ahead.  Last week I found quinoa seed.  I've never grown it before, so it will be a bit of an experiment. 

Yarn:

My latest bus project.  I've lost count of how many socks I've knit now.  The yarns used in these socks are "leftovers" and the green in these socks is a local yarn.  

 

 

houses and hammers

This is the project I finished today. 

It's been an unfinished project for about ten years. My original plan was for it to be a rug, but rugs aren't very successful around the dogs.  And then, after visiting here (Art Spirit), it occurred to me that it could be a pillow.  In less than an hour it was done.  (And yes Dad, I know my window and door proportions are off. )

Someday I'd like to build a house.  Maybe like this one.  I have a hammer...

When I needed a hammer, my dad gave me one of my grandfather's.  It's rather hard to take a picture of, but it has a bend in it that somehow my grandfather managed to make.  I value this hammer, not just because it was my grandfather's, but because of the bend.  It represents my paternal grandfather better than just about anything else would for me.  He was a man who valued work, making things, and had a temper. 

One of the projects I've used this hammer for was to tear apart a porch.  Somehow in the process of cleaning up, my hammer went home with someone else.   Before returning it, the person who had taken it home thought he'd be helpful and take the bend out of it for me.   He straightened out the bend and then told his sister, who was my housemate, that he had my hammer.  She told him that the bend was important to me and that I might be upset.   Since he'd already straightened the hammer, he put a bend back in and returned the hammer to me! 

So many years later, I still smile and think of this just about every time I pick up my hammer.  And I value the hammer even more ... 

 

the second ring

I played with the color...

 because I can.

I've cut the fish for my "Following Sea" blanket out of white wool.  It's a nice tight weave that I believe will wear well. 

 

I've been remembering a summer day.

We were out on the boat, surrounded by fog.  I remember such stillness.  This is the part I'm not sure I remember directly, or if I just remember my parents telling the story.  My dad was talking on the CB radio telling someone we were going home.  

The story, as my dad tells it, was of someone on another boat wanting to know how we were going to make it happen.  Dad used the fathometer (which measures the depth of water), the compass, nautical charts, and a call to one of the logging camps he could hear running in the distance.  The call was to find out which camp it was so that he had a location to work from. 

Thinking about how we decide where we are...and how we are going to get where we want to go. 

 

 

dark days: knitting and eating and thinking

Somehow my mind has started connecting my sky scarf and the Dark Days challenge.  I think because I am knitting with local yarn (mostly!) and there is so much gray right now...

The sky scarf, month number five: 

 I've been wondering, once the scarf is finished, will someone look at it and think, "Hmm...that reminds me of the sky?"  Will they look closer and see the fat white stripe, and wonder if that was our snow storm?  Will they see the orange stripe and wonder if that was the morning after the lunar eclipse? 

Yesterday as I was knitting, it became very real to me that a story can be told without images or words.  That a color could hold a story...

 

As for food...

I didn't really join the Dark Days Challenge to explore eating locally, I already knew I could.  I mostly wanted to check in with myself to see if I was eating as locally as I thought I was.  To push myself a little further. 

The ingredients that I find myself considering the most as I plan these meals are fats for cooking, sweeteners, salt, baking soda/powder,  and spices.    This is where I am at currently as I consider these ingredients:

Fats:  I am using butter, hazelnut oil (very sparingly as it's expensive), or cooking with water instead of my usual olive oil for the most part.  I have also used some bacon fat and might at some point consider rendering fat (don't look if you are vegetarian!).  I don't eat much meat though.   Today I experimented with making ghee. 

Sweeteners:  Honey or fruit (apple cider works great for some things).  This really changes baking.  Found a web site this morning that I want to explore more.  But really, the bottom line here is that I need to bake less. 

Salt:  I am going to try making my own.  Found this blog post for a resource.   Just have to decide which beach seems best to collect from....

Baking soda/powder:  Well, back to that baking issue.  Sour dough anyone? 

Spices and cultures:  Certainly we could adjust to cooking without spices.  Many wonderful herbs can be grown locally.   I could either give up foods that made with a culture (some of the cheeses I want to make for example) or be really wild and see what cultures are hanging around (that could be dangerous I'm thinking).  But that seems to be taking things a bit far.  I'm pretty sure the shipping of cinnamon is more sustainable than apples from New Zealand to Washington. 

 

 

The other thing that I am looking at is that I've given myself a bit of a break by allowing foods that are bulk to be exceptions to the local rule.  This is the area that I can get better at.  I think I can establish the same rule for bulk that I have for vegetables and fruits.  If I can find it or grow it locally, I have to buy it locally first.  If it's not available in Washington, then it needs to come from the west coast. 

 

This week's Dark Days meal was an experiment in making pasta with whole wheat flour.   This is one of the flour choices that is available to me locally. 

I made a topping by sauteing onions in butter, adding a handful of cabbage and then sprinkling in a bit of rosemary.  Tasted great, looks... well... And I cheated a bit.  Used salt. 

 

working on following sea

I was able to get the cat to move off the blanket so I could work on it some today...

Looking down

Looking across.  Trying some things I've learned in Jude's (Spirit Cloth) classes...

This morning as I stitched I remembered childhood friends.  Good memories...

snow day

Today I was able to come home early from work.

I took a walk through the park.

Tried to work on one of my blankets but had a little too much help.

And took the chickens a treat. 

I've had three eggs this week, despite the cold weather.  Barred rocks (the striped chickens) will lay through the winter their first year (edited:  and sometimes other years too).  I was lucky enough to get a piece of plastic over their run so they've had a nice cozy shelter during our snow storm. 

While I was out I noticed one of the last branches of lunaria in the garden.  They are becoming even more transparent as they age. 

I've been thinking about how snow is rain transformed.  The ordinary (for us) made unusual (again, for us).  The snow has caused a lot of frustration for people I know, but as it melts away, I still think it is magical... 

Now it's time to spin white yarn. 

snow field

The field across from where I work...

There has been 8 to 18- 20 inches depending on what neighborhood.  It's all about snow right now...

let it snow!

Hello snow... I've been waiting for you. 

We don't have much snow yet...but enough to enchant my walk.  Enough to distract me for several hours today.

Enough that soup was the perfect meal for lunch.  It also happens to be my "Dark days" meal for the week.  I added some dehydrated corn and peppers for some extra flavor.  The last potato from my garden and a handful of parsley that I picked today went into the pot too.

Parsley is hardy stuff, but we're supposed to have a pretty long stretch of cold so I pretty much picked everything.  I'll make a "pesto" with most of it. 

This is last week's "Dark Days" meal that I never got around to posting.  It turned into a comfort meal of sorts.  The last of the sugar pie pumpkin I grew topped with hazelnuts, a boiled egg and apple slices. 

It was good. 

 

a moon, a moth and mending

Born of friendship and conversation. 

Hatched from a blue egg (barely visible). 

Transformed by leaves,

under a moon and among the stars

A small little moth finds shelter.

Among mountains and blue chickens.

She might want to watch out for the paw though...

of moons and science and poetry

This morning, at the bus stop, for just a moment a glimpse of what would appear to be the full moon.  But according to the charts I looked at, the full moon was really yesterday.  It made me think about how without science, determining when the moon was full would be a matter of instinct, of faith, of poetry. 

My first seed order arrived today.  Perhaps I can grow a blue moon...