Life is kicking us a bit these days. Insane events and stupid happenings and beleaguring circumstances, you know who you are, you don't get any extra press here. {FQ's own sidebar...you heard that song
Pompeii that got played endlessly, right? By a band called Bastille? Well go listen to the rest of the album because it's great and in one song you'll hear this:
If you give it a name then it's already won. Take that, bad stuff that shall not be named.}
Ahem. Anyway. This is post is meant to be an antidote to that stuff. Self-medicating, as it were. But in print, so not hallucinogenic or anything.
We're careening toward spring around here, but winter isn't giving up without a fight. At the farm that means RAIN (and more rain and a little more rain with maybe some wind and overflowing gutters tacked on just for fun) and a stark quietness to the landscape (apart from our gutters and creek).
I don't hate winter at the farm - winter is when we first saw it and said OURS NOW. The trees are bare, which means you can see the moss and lichens and long shadows (trust me on the shadow thing, it's just hard to capture them because there's something like 37 seconds of actual shiny sunlight in any given day).
The weather changes sixteen times an hour and once in a while the sun comes out (for 37 seconds).
The baby digs trenches in the garden, rolls in things that turn him many shades of not-white, grudgingly submits to a bath, then commandeers all the blankets and almost all the tennis balls.
To sum up...winter is fine. Honest. But right about now my eyes and brain and soul need a little something pretty. I went looking. Here's what I found.
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| Lovely up the hill neighbors saved all their wildflower seeds for us. The ugly hill of dirt from new pond excavation is sprouting! |
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| Wait a minute. How did that get there? |
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| Over-wintered mustard greens. |
And look at these!
It still gets dark insanely early, so some of our soul-balm pretty is coming from the kitchen. Look at this:
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| The very end of a small head of Treviso radicchio. It's a flower! Or a Fibonacci sequence. |
But the REALLY pretty indoor stuff is in the pasta category. Phrodaux gave me a pasta maker for my birthday and we've been experimenting. Spaghetti and fettucine - fine, fine, no big deal.
But then we were geeking out on the PBS show
Mind of a Chef (jeez, that show! It sent us to Charleston last summer to eat at Sean Brock's restaurants and provoked some very ambitious cooking this winter.) The latest season has two parts, Dour Hour California guy and so cool but we're glad we don't work for her NYC woman. There was an episode called Rome in which interesting chef woman watched some old Italian ladies make these enormous ravioli type things. And of course Phrodaux said what he always says:
We have to do that!!! (with no recipe or experience or anything, adds FQ under her breath). What a process.
On Friday night you have to make the ricotta.
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| I know, I know, not so pretty (yet). |
Then on Saturday you have to make the pasta (and the filling, which was camera shy, but included the aforementioned ricotta plus spinach and mustard greens and some other savory bits). (Phrodaux- after a day of blacksmithing, just saying. There is something of a balance in spending a day pounding on red hot metal with big hammers, then when you can hardly lift an arm then, and only then making foods)
Then you compile the things, which is dicey and stressful and made Phrodaux growl a bit. Just a little bit. Not too scary.
Then you cook them and wonder when they're done and hope for the best and top them with the fancy tomato sauce you made from your chef friend's cookbook. (Phrodaux- not to mention toms that we grew/canned last summer) An actual chef whom we know, honest, not just someone we saw on TV, she has cooked at our house and everything. Would we lie to you? (Phrodaux- We do love her, she cooks and plays the drums for fun, really)
Then you add parsley and pine nuts for contrast, and hope for the best. How could anything go wrong when the Fairy Queen is wearing her pink/octopus apron AND her leather cuff of power?????
Yum. I mean, holy cats, yum. And you have to admit, it turned out real pretty.
If anyone is actually reading this, can you write something in the comments about something pretty that is getting you through the last days of winter into spring? Pretty please?
