Socks and Bones

As a child I collected deer jawbones. I kept them in a box like treasure. I would take one out from time to time and comb my long, dark hair with it. All the while imagining myself a beautiful Native American princess. When my daughter came home with these two jawbones I thought it was pretty cool. Her story is that her and her friends came upon a deer skeleton in the woods and claimed it as property of "the fort". The bones were gathered and arranged artistically in the fort along with a lot of other broken, sharp and dangerous treasures that I'd probably rather not know about. My girl tells me she was allowed to take what she wanted home because I'm the only mom who happily allows "dirty bones" into the house. About the sock- I started this blog with my spring sock so I thought I'd show off my fall sock. It's taking a long time what with all the doll making going on around here but it's coming along.

Go Ask Alice poster

I am furiously working to finish up my 2nd doll for the Go Ask Alice Doll and Plush Art Show with opens on Dec. 5th. Here is the very cool promotional poster which is sure to drum up interest with all those lovely images. There's my long necked gal peeking in at the side there. If you are in the Santa Barbara area join them for a Mad Tea Party reception, I'm sure it will be a grand time.

acorn caps

I’m always looking for different ways to bring bits of nature into my home. I am especially fond of acorn caps. The little hats fit snugly on many things since they come in different sizes. Here are a couple glued onto the corks of little glass bottles. One holds tiny glass seed beads. The other is filled with an ancient red dye, a powdered pigment made from the crushed cochineal insect. In the foreground you can see one of my many beaded acorn pincushions.

food ruts

When I find myself in a food rut I use the internet to get some inspiration. I’m not talking about a recipe search. What I’m looking for is an idea, a pretty picture that will spark me. Many times I come across an old favorite that I haven’t made in a while because I just forgot about it. That’s what the rut does, makes me forget about great dishes that I may even have all the ingredients for. It’s wierd, but the rut seems to creep back little by little. Soon I’m rotating the same 3 or 4 dishes. I’m not talking about buying fancy new foods for the sake of variety. I’m talking about buying your usual, seasonal, fresh and affordable foods and just rearranging them a bit. To liven up your senses while sticking to your budget, that’s the aim here. What seems to be mundane can become quite exraordinary with just a few tweaks. So here I am posting a few recent successful meals of ours that you may want to try. If you have any favorite fall meals or cookbooks I’d love to hear about them.

*All meals pictured here are just as tasty without the meats. I just happen to have 50lbs of organic, grass fed beef in my freezer at the moment and need to use it.



Chili with plantains. I like lots of raw veg toppings. For company I would add on some corn muffins.



A stew of potatoes, carrots, white beans, corn and green beans all flavored with oregano, can tomato and a sprinke of feta cheese. One chicken breast goes a long way when you've got all those other tasty things.



Beef and mushrooms with cumin and cinnamon served with coconut rice. A little bit of good quality something goes a long way to enhance a dish. In this case it was chopped tomato and plain (full fat) yogurt.



This is my current favorite sauce. It is coconut-tomato with basil from Molly Katzen's book The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without. What can I say? She is the Queen. I made it here with wide noodles and veggies.

The Goat

Lord, let me live as I will!
I need a little wild freedom.
a little giddiness of heart,
the strange taste of unknown flowers.
For whom else are your mountains?
Your snow wind? These springs?
The sheep do not understand.
They graze and graze,
all of them, and always in the same direction,
and then eternally
chew the cud of their insipid routine.
But I- I love to bound to the heart of all
your marvels, leap your chasms,
and, my mouth stuffed with intoxicating grasses,
quiver with an adventurer’s delight
on the summit of the world!
amen

from Prayers from the Ark by Carmen Bernos Gasztold

The photo is of a fancy gentleman we met on our last Bronx Zoo excursion.

keeping warm

We have been experiencing some frigid days over here. Overcast, grey, it even snowed last week! That was actually pretty fun, since we were having a “home day" anyway. To combat the cold and bring a bit of sunshine to the table and to the belly there were fresh buns, peach preserves, a bit of cheese. Also in attendence was the happy mouse cheese plate, a well used thrift store treasure.

The Monster Mushroom

While enjoying an autumn stroll around a favorite local haunt this past sunday the girls discovered this crazy huge mushroom. We didn’t pick it, it was already plucked and lying on the ground. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I dig mushrooms and I am always on the prowl for new specimens. I have never seen this type this large before, so it was quite a big deal. It immediatly brought to my mind the following quote from the book The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon.


“And the mushroom? Ah! It is proof of creation ex nihilo, the paradigm of the marvelously solid unnecessariness of the world. How anything so nearly nothing could at the same time be so emphatically something- how the Spirit brooding upon the face of the waters could have brought forth this... well, words fail, and mystery reigns. “