First Greens

Its spring which means the first bits of green are appearing in the little scrub woods the boys and I frequent. One of the first plants shaking a leafy head is the garlic mustard. Its a ridiculously vigorous weed. The thing can go to seed and spread spawn after being pulled up for crying out loud....and its germination rate is out of sight. Handily, it is also highly edible.

While we were poking around in the woods the boys jumped off of stumps and threw sticks and Lockbox and I gathered fistfuls of garlic mustard leaves, hovering in hopeful rosettes of green over the carpet of brown leaf litter. With two handfuls from each of us we walked home up the sunny block with enough leafy green to fill a sandwich sized ziploc baggie.

Tonight I'm roasting a pork loin with olive oil and basil and the garlic mustard went into my baby, food processor to become pesto to spoon over zucchini noodles. There is a very special high that comes from the first green things of the year....that and the first juicy, slicing tomato. Gotta mark it down in the books!

The Fresh Apple

I forget every year just how good an apple tastes. A real apple. An apple that grew near you. An apple picked from an actual tree. An apple that drips juice on your chin and tastes like the rusty leaves, like the nippy wind, like the tart chill in the air.

Ru turning the press wheel.

Apple cider! At least in small quantity.

My boys wild apple picking with Big Grandpa (my dad) last fall.

I no longer buy oranges unless its the dead of winter and I think this year I'm done buying apples unless its fall. Yes, they are edible all year round but they become a bland, pale shadow of themselves, something that gets old so fast its hard to time it. I really love a good apple but every year when it is apple time I have to polish off my enthusiasm and convince myself to go apple picking because a whole year of completely pitiful, mediocre grocery store apples has stolen their thunder. I don't hate regular apples, they're edible I just don't actively like them either and they are so ubiquitous and so overdone that they completely steal the thunder of a real ripe tree fruit.

Wild Michigan apples come in a.....

....beautifully varied palette.

Our homeschool co-op plans field trips most fridays once the weather turns nippy. This week they planned a pint-sized, cider pressing instruction. Pretty darn cute! My little boys were big fans.  I think Ru would like a cider press for our backyard so that he could spend some time every day feeling really important, turning that big crank.

Fallen apples at one of our local orchards.

Red Delicious on the branch!

We don't really buy store-bought juice at our house but we do occasionally indulge in cider in the fall. (Especially if we can find it raw!) Cider feels more authentic to me than most juice. I fondly remember romping around as a little girl at chilly, annual cider pressings with our local congregation and also at least once as a deal split between two families sharing the sweet rewards of all the apple picking and the use of a borrowed press. I grew up in a place where there are wild apple trees on every corner. Getting fresh apples is as simple as harvesting them from an ancient roadside orchard or craggy wild tree down the nearest lane. Most of them simply go to waste although a few are gathered up for deer, bait piles for hunting season and never even tasted by a local human.

Big Grandma and Big Grandpa, my parents with Ru, after a wild apple ramble.

Here in Connecticut they are slightly harder to come by. I know where one wild tree is but mostly we pay money to be let into a cultivated orchard in counties north or east of us. I'm okay with that though, the fruit snaps when bitten and the flavors are nothing, nothing you can buy in May in the corner grocery store. 

New CSA

We're a good bit of the way through the harvesting season with our new CSA and I have to say that I like it. It is just as handy as I imagined to have our pick-up location down the street, instead of 45 minutes away, and kind of fun to meet neighbors there who also happen to have a share. I didn't count on the community interaction bit, kind of a fun bonus.

I do miss going up to an actual farm. It was a great built-in break that we had going and I feel like we've removed ourselves a little bit from the food-land connection. There was one scheduled members day when our new CSA invited everyone to come up for a picnic and help pull garlic and then go for a dip in the creek. Have to make sure to plan on going next year. I am an organization klutz and through a lot of fumbling we managed to miss it this time around. Am still kicking myself  although this morning I found out there is a special autumn farm festival scheduled for September when we can maybe make up the difference! Hooray!

Since there's such a small actual farm connection to speak of via our CSA this year, I find that I'm seeking out chances to go to drive out to the country for other things: caterpillar hunting, listening to the frogs sing, rural estate sales, buying farm milk, picking up local meat...etc. Kind of fun to mix it up anyhow.

So, the time savings is great, the produce is great, the community connection is fun and over-all I think we made a fine trade. You never quite know when you make this kind of a gamble and switch everything up, but this time it worked out.

A List of Delicious, Good For Me Snacks

I need healthy snacks.
But, I have to say they need to be delicious and healthy. All too often I fall into the trap of shoving some convenient and less than terribly nutritious, maybe not even that enjoyable something-or-other in my mouth on the go. I do it when I'm stressed out (emo-eater extraordinaire here) and when I'm tired and when I have whiney kids to feed and when we're dashing in and then back out again and I don't have time to even think, let alone cook dinner. 

Image via Wikipedia

I decided that its time to end all the empty, crappy snack insanity. I know better. I know how to eat well. I enjoy eating well. We buy good food. I live with a supportive food partner who believes in making good food choices...I'm just lazy. I'm not even talking physical laziness...its just the mental brain-fog-lazy that I need to kick. You know, this whole bit: "Uh....what could we eat???" *long and empty stare into the fridge*

Image via Wikipedia

And that was how the idea of The Vibrant Snack List was born. 
I can do the thinking now, ahead of time, when my brain still works...and then later when I'm starving and my cerebellum freezes up on me, all I have to do is scan the list (which I am posting on the side of the fridge) and then have an automatic moment of gastronomic genius with whatever ingredients we are currently stocking. 

Image by intuitive cat via Flickr

This list is full of things that I consider to be healthful, happy, easy (or at least moderately so) and super enjoyable. You might not think everything on here sounds tasty to you, pick what you like and feel free to cut anything that sounds nasty to your palate and be sure to add your own brilliant stand-bys...(hint hint! Adding them in the comments below means we all get to enjoy your brilliance.) Also worth noting is the fact that my personal version of healthful isn't everyone's definition. I like all the food groups, generally eschew sugar am an omnivore and firmly believe that fats are good. You won't find any low-fat versions of things, or substitutionary style food copycats here either. I'm all for real food, all the time.


Vibrant Snacks

Image by Flavio@Flickr via Flickr
• avocado, squeeze of lime, sprinkle of sea salt (eat out of shell with a spoon!)
• string cheese
• a small pool of good olive oil, a dash of rosemary and a good hunk of fresh bread
• honey drizzled cottage cheese
• an apple (preferably a fresh, autumn apple) eaten out-of-hand with periodic smears of natural peanut butter
• a handful of good jerky 
• dried cherries
• a glass of fresh juice (take your pick!) just pressed out of my juicer
• a sandwich w/ soft goat cheese, basil, olive oil and thick slices of ripe tomato
• a fresh, garlicky hummus with raw carrots or red pepper slices
• a poached egg, cut open to dribble over a bed of sauteed mushrooms and fresh salad greens
• half of a melon and a spoon (leave the melon to ripen on the countertop for three or four days after purchase in the grocery store...it will get melty ripe and juicy)
• a ramekin of quality granola and fresh, raw milk
• ripe strawberries, or apricots sliced into cream...sprinkled with sugar or drizzled with honey
• fluffy scrambled egg with a tiny spoonful of caviar on top, some snippings of fresh dill and a bit of sour cream
• two halves of a fresh prickly pear fruit
• shrimp cocktail
  Image by ~dgies via Flickr
• jicama spears with a squeeze of lime
• a crisp dill pickle
• a handful of blueberries
• Vietnamese summer rolls with a small dish of nuoc mam for dipping
• 1/3 of a bar of dark chocolate
• thin slices of cold leftover chicken spread with a little honey mustard
• rosemary Triscuits, wedges of apple and paper thin slices of sharp, sharp cheddar
• a spoonful of glowing honeycomb
• a handful of Sungold tomatoes
• a small dish of salted edemame
• freshly popped corn w/ butter and salt 
• celery w/ a dollop of Alouette herb cheese on top
• dark chocolate covered strawberries
• raw spinach, raw walnuts, a hunk of crumbled goat cheese, chopped strawberries and a handful of blueberries topped with Brianna's delicious poppyseed dressing
• a shot of wheatgrass!
• goat cheese, ripe figs and proscuitto
  Image via Wikipedia
• half a grapefruit, drizzled with honey, eaten with a spoon
• fruit leather (you know, the kind made with real fruit)
• a head of garlic, dribbled with olive oil, salted and then roasted until the skin is gold...eaten with the fingers 

Okay...now I'm slobbering. Awesome. Gotta get this baby printed off and then...I think I need a snack!

Ah! The Farm....

Sure feels good to be back at our CSA farm, picking up our share! We kind of blasted through the fields and coolers today, collecting our goods and sort of run/walking back to the car. Just a quick Cheshire grin greeting with the head farmerette was all we had time for...hazards of moving your whole daily routine a couple of hours earlier in the day and sharing a car with a hard-working spouse. This week it has felt like I am forever running around dashing everywhere two minutes late.

But, next week will be more sane, practice makes perfect and pretty soon we'll the new rhythm down and we get a new chance to enjoy the farm every single week, all summer long. I cannot wait to linger, and listen to crickets along the lane, watch the tomatoes swelling on the vine and look up our list of weekly goods on the chalkboard above the vegetable bins. Good times are coming!

This week: tatsoi, butterhead lettuce, fresh strawberries (farm to table to stomach in about an hour and half!), arugula and broccoli raab Mmmmmmm!!!!! Fresh food, how I do love you.