Strawbegeddon!

Here's the equation:

24 quarts of strawberries + 4 friends + 4 two year olds = day full of fun, chaos, and yumminess!

And here's a law of physics that I've noticed... the day you plan to can each week will be the hottest of the week. Without fail. I do not have AC installed as it was barely 60 degrees all last week, and am in a second floor apartment. 'Nuff said.

In the end, we put up the following: (all  are half-pint jars unless noted)

3 Strawberry Preserves

5 Strawberry Vanilla Jams

8 Strawberry Lavender Jams

12 Strawberry Jams

6 Strawberry Mint Syrups

4 Spiced Strawberry Butters, 1 4oz jar as well

6 trays Strawberry Leather

I prepped about a quart and a half for the Preserves last night.

Hulling over 20 quarts of strawberries.

The strawberry-vanilla prep that Rebecca brought.

We took slightly overripe berries and pureed them for the fruit leather.

 Finished products

Already plotting more of those Preserves. Sweet mother of all that is holy, they sure don't suck.

Farm Share Week #2

Week 2, and we're still in the very green of early season. Today's take included a napa cabbage, head of (beautiful) lettuce, bunch of scallions, and fennel (squee!). The fruit share was 3 fragrant lovely quarts of strawberries. Bread and cheese this week too! And, I ordered a flat of strawberries - so 11 quarts in total.

3 of the quarts are in the freezer as we speak. I washed and hulled the berries, then put them in the freezer on baking sheets to firm up before transferring them to Ziploc bags. This way they freeze separately instead of in a big red mass.

 I'm canning on Thursday, so I'm still musing about what jams to make. Certainly a strawberry jam, possible one with lavender, and preserves. I'm also planning on breaking out the dehydrator for some fruit leather, and dried strawberries. 

Bella mugs with our goods:

A Couple of Recipes

I've had a couple of requests to share the recipe for that (EPIC) jam - as in, I had four jars last week, I think there's 1.5 left... must.make.more.

I found the Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam recipe in this book. I really like it - the chapters are organized by season, with recipes for fruits and vegetables for each. In addition to canning recipes, there are also ways to use the canned goods, and other food preservation ideas. Worth the money, in my humble opinion.

I did up the sugar amount slightly to taste - here's my version:

• Combine 6 cups (approx 2 lbs) diced rhubarb, 3 cups (about a quart) diced strawberries, 2.5 cups sugar, and a half-cup water in my big dutch oven, and cooked over medium heat until the juices just covered the fruit. Stir occasionally.
• Strained the juice from the fruit pulp, stirring the pulp to get as much juice as possible. Return the juice to the stove, boiling until the juice reduced by more than half.
• Add the pulp to the reduced juice, with the juice of two lemons. Cook over medium-low until thickened, and beginning to jell on a cold plate.
• Ladle into hot half-pint jars, and process in a boiling water canner for 5 minutes. Remove, and allow to sit for 12-24 hours before checking seal.

The recipe I followed said it would yield 5 half-pints, I got 4 with some to scrape off the ladle and stirring spoon, for consumption while dancing around my kitchen in mouth-ecstasy, waiting for the jars to process.

The other recipe I thought I'd share is my favorite preparation for salad turnips. If you've never had these, RUN, don't walk, to your farmer's market and look for white radish looking things. They are in season spring and fall. They taste like a mild radish raw, but cooked they are an entirely different creature. Divine. Love love love them. I use the greens in pasta.

Glazed Salad Turnips

Trim the tops and tails off one bunch of turnips, scrub them well, then slice thinly into disks - about a quarter inch thick. Heat 1-2 tbsp butter or olive oil, or both, in a large saute pan (enough to generously coat the pan), add the turnips, season with salt & pepper, and cook over medium heat until they begin to soften. Add a generous splash of apple-cider vinegar, and a large drizzle of honey, and cook until the resulting liquid thickens and glazes the turnips. Taste, add more vinegar and honey as you like, and serve. Yum yum, good lordie, yum. Guess what I'm having for lunch?

So I ordered a flat of strawberries for tomorrow's pick-up. If it comes in, I'll be freezing, jamming, and trying out my new dehydrator with fruit leather the intended product. Happy tummy dance!

Farm Share Season has Arrived!

This is our third season as members of  Farm Direct Coop, a local CSA (don't know what that is? click here). FDC is somewhat unique in that rather than using one farm, and picking up a box of pre-packed fruits and vegetables, we contract with more than one farm (within 100 mile radius, most within MA), and get to choose much of our take. I joined for many of the 'usual' reasons - supporting local agriculture, cost-effective way to buy organic produce, so fresh, yada yada. This winter though, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle, and that book solidified for me the importance of biodiversity in our food supply, the importance of local food economies, and the importance of leaving the agro-industry without my hard earned dollars. I highly recommend her book, as well as any of Michael Pollan's if you are curious about these issues.

AVM chronicles a year of local eating in the Kingsolver family. Virtually all of the food they consumed was either home grown, home raised, or sourced from their own county. While I'm not intending to do anything that radical, I intend to put up, either can, freeze or dry, at least half of our produce for this winter. I'm not married to this goal, but I'm curious to see how much I can do. So for tonight, I have four 8 oz jars of (the most ridiculously delectable EVER) rhubarb-strawberry jam, and a quart of sliced rhubarb in the freezer.

Our first take of the season - large fruit, small vegetable:

A bunch of kale, a beautiful head of romaine, kohlrabi, brocoli (squee!), a quart of strawberries, and 2 pounds of rhubarb.

Making the jam: 

Reducing the juices into a syrup:

This picture does no justice to the color of this concoction.

The fruit pulp:

Ladling into jars:

The finished product!

A Wonderful Way to Awake

Yesterday I wrote on an old friend's Facebook wall to wish him a happy birthday. This is what I woke up to:


I love that you're Mira. You might not know what that means, because I've got a sizable buzz on, but I know what that means and I think you're spectacular. I feel like you wear the map of your life on your face, you always have, you stuck by you and you're fucking at the top of the human game for it. I deeply and importantly salute you.


If you do not have a funny, fabulous gay Iranian in your life, you need one. Mehran was one of a few people in high school that inspired me to be authentic. We were in the Mikado together in middle school. The school was a duller shade of hell when he graduated. He's a comic in the Boston area - brilliant and irreverent. Find him here.


And no, I may not fully understand what this means. But I will try to embody this. Make it my manifesto. Be aware of my map. What a gift.

Sacred Space

I can't tell you how much I look forward to my time on my mat. Although I keep setting my alarm to try and do my practice early in the morning, before the kids wake up, I typically can't drag my ass out of bed. I mean really, it took two and half years to get Bridger to sleep past 6:30 (ok, past 5:30, but ok), I really really am enjoying being asleep at 6! So, most days, after The Wild Life are in tucked into bed, I unroll my mat, and have my time in my body. 

Admittedly, that means most days I'm a little tired for super vigorous anything, and I tend not to work too hard. That's what studio classes are for. I do try to get to at least one a week. But just the time to notice nothing but my breath, to observe my universe, at a cellular, pranic, macro-cosmic level is lovely. 

I love ritual. When I was a smoker, it was the ceremonial taps of the pack on the heel of my hand, unwrapping the foil, turning up a 'lucky', the raisiny smell before the flame touched and ignited, that first long draw. The evaporation of my near-constant anxiety. I don't smoke anymore. I need ritual. I am still an overwrought, anxious mental being. The shadows are near, and times are unstable. The ingrained coping mechanisms, the urges to cut, or puke, or just not eat at all never go away. That could be exhausting. But it's not. Because most nights, I unroll my mat. I stand at the top, and bring my hands together. My feet and hands tap in time with my long breath. I observe. I choose not to attach reaction to that which is observed. Things evaporate. I finish, laying in savasana, floating on a sea of chi, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes not. I sit, hands in anjali mudra, prayer. I speak.

Om. Shanti, shanti, shanti.

Peace in my mind, peace in my body, peace in our world.

Namaste.

By the numbers

I recently jumped on the scale, for the first time in months. 

Before my children, I was always trim, athletic, thin. Oh, and eating disordered. Pregnancy was a total mind fuck for a recovered/ing 'eating disorder not otherwise specified' woman. But after Isabella was born, the 32 pounds I gained fell off in three short months. Three months later I had lost an additional 20 pounds or so. Extreme stress did that to me. I wore a zero. I stopped lactating. Not awesome. 

With Bridger I gained the same 32 pounds. But three months after giving birth to a nearly 10 pound baby, plus a large placenta, I was just 10 pounds lighter than the morning my water broke. Two years later I was still 18 pounds heavier than when he was conceived. He is still as of this post breastfeeding. It did not melt off the pounds the second time around. I feel cheated.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered I am now within five pounds of my pre-Bridger weight. 12 pounds of my pre-Isabella weight. And how? Living. Loving. Eating real food. Baking from scratch. Following, more or less, Michael Pollan's advice: Eat Food. Mainly Plants. In Moderate Amounts. Having a celebratory relationship to my fuel. Daily yoga. Mindfulness.

But the truth is, my navel is a different shape. My breasts no longer stand at attention. My hips have spread. Two people grew within the confines of my abdomen. No number can change that fact. And finally, finally, I have surrendered my need for control enough for that to be ok. I am two children away from my pre-pregnancy body. And that is beautiful.