Considering dinner...

Tonight, for dinner, we had:

Appetizer: our first sliced tomatoes, still warm from the sun, with salt and pepper

First course: Corn-on-the-cob from the CSA, boiled, with butter and salt.

Second course: a stir-fry, made from our own zucchini, squash from CSA, scallions from CSA, and these absolutely, positively amazing beans from our garden (var: rattlesnake), which can be eaten as nice, fat green beans, or dried like pinto beans. We ate them in a chinese-style stir-fry, which was overpoweringly delicious. Seriously. It was so delicious that we started spooning our sauce over the corn and J was mad that we didn't have any rice to go with it. (I have a thing about 'too many starches'!) But there were leftovers, so we can make rice tomorrow. ; )

Dessert: I had homemade chocolate-chip cookies made last week. J ate those 'Grandma's' brand of choc. chip cookies. I don't know how he stands 'em.

It's so satisfying to walk out the door and pick the food that will be dinner. What a loss that most people don't know what this feels like. It feels like 'diversifying your portfolio' or 'insuring against a loss' or 'I love it when a plan comes together' or, more simply, it feels like magic. Because when you carefully tuck the little seeds in under their soil blankets, you just have to believe that sooner or later, they are going to feed you. And then they do. And I think, 'Wow. What have I done to deserve this?'

Home again.

We've had family in town for almost a month---first my mom and her partner for 8 days, then a few days later, my 17-year-old sister arrived for a two week stay. It turns out...

we're weird. ; )

From the food we eat to how warm we let the house get in the afternoon, to the chickens and the garden, we are just slightly off-center.

And so our house has not felt like our own. We lived altered lives during the month---roasting a chicken, having bacon, being 'off the farm' most of the day, driving all over Utah, missing visits to ponies.

Guests take up room in your space and in your head, no matter how much you love them. And when they go, there is a feeling of ease, with a heavy, contented sigh, as you do the last of the laundry, munch up the last of the cereal you never buy, and shut the door of the guest room. And go back to the garden to see what's new.

Been a long time...

but lots has been going on.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll try to catch up. I'm back from Socorro anyway, and can tell you that seeing actual stores again was like being a little kid in Disneyland. If I never step inside another WalMart, that'll be ok.

But the garden is in, and that's keeping us busy.

10 pounds of cherries off the tree yielded two quarts of dried cherries for oatmeal and granola.

We have four pints of pickles and two pints of cherry jam already in the cellar as well.

40 pounds of seed potatoes, asparagus, a dozen tomato plants. Ack!

And the front garden attracting attention from everywhere.

Lots to catch up on! I'd better get on it!