Where Practical Meets Adorable: The Elements Of A Food Story.

This is what I see when I open my fridge. 
Home brewed beer & an oh so cute little basket of eggs. Broccoli, bagels, & cheese.
Fun fact: I like to take pictures of the inside of my fridge. The collection of foods one has on hand at any given moment tells a little story.
This is totally stupid, but one of the things I disliked about having roommates is other peoples' things in my fridge. That messes up the story.
I know, I'm odd.

3.7.2012: Fridge Contents.

This is one of those realities that is too cute to be believed, but is also practical.
Seriously. I've never had chickens before, & we were just collecting eggs & sitting them loose in the fridge. One night I opened the door too hard & one rolled off the shelf & broke & it was oh so sad because I still appreciate those eggs from our girls oh so much. Plus it made a gross mess in the way back hard to reach part of the fridge behind the veggie drawer & it was terrible.
Being me, I immediately introduced that cute little basket I just happened to have lying around (thanks Mum).
It makes me smile to see that cute little basket with those eggs every time I open the fridge.
 I'm looking forward greatly to more practical adorableness come vegetable harvest season. Nothing makes me happy at the end of a summer day like a basket of gorgeous, dirty, freshly picked produce.
Thanks again to my Mum for keeping me in Peterboro baskets.
It's the little things that make you happy that make everything ok, sometimes.
Here's the elements of a food story:
My groceries purchased at work today: broccoli, an avocado, bunch of green curly kale, two heads of garlic, block of Bridge tofu, bottle of Sriracha chili sauce, growler of Lefty's Brewing Co. Irish Stout, bag of bulk short grain brown rice & one of wild rice blend, & a bulk bag of Pierce Brother's Fogbuster coffee.
Go food produced in Franklin County!
Free slightly out of date food I also took home from work with my groceries: loaf of Bread Euphoria Three Seed Bread, & Blue Ledge Peppered Chevre.
Also present around the kitchen: two old potatoes, bag of yellow onions, half of a cheap Stop & Shop steak, salt pork back fat, two fresh eggs. 
From above will emerge dinner.
I like lists. I like food.
Maybe it's all my years working at the grocery store, but I love grocery lists & receipts. I find lists of food items very pretty. 
While we are in listing mode here at EnD, I'm currently listening to my itunes set on Country & shuffle. Enjoying especially this evening Hank Williams, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Toby Keith, Loretta Lynn & Taylor Swift. I don't really know where my current country phase has come from but I'm enjoying it. Blame Bear Country 95.3.
Reading Goat song : a seasonal life, a short history of herding, and the art of making cheese by Brad Kessler.
I think we should get goats. I just took Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats out of the library yesterday. What do you think? Goats? Yes? Tell my husband if you agree.
Also, what should I make for dinner? You know the players, tell me the story.  
It was almost 70 degrees today in here Western Massachusetts. My dog & I sat on top of a hill at dusk & took in the warm wind & breathed & waited for spring.  

Bacon Honeymoon (or bacon makes a good thing even better).

You know. It's always all about bacon around here. Even on my honeymoon, apparently.
We received, at least for us, a very fitting wedding present, which was the use of a beautiful house in a breathtaking setting in which we could spend a week with just us & our sweet hound dog. We have never lived together without at least two & sometimes four roommates. Alone time is very valuable to us. We love to cook, we love hiking & mountains, & therefore being out in the woods with a fabulous kitchen at our disposal & a fireplace & a mountain in the backyard was pretty much perfect (thanks deb & cate!).

September 2011: The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich + Gift Lasagna. 

Some people would take their wedding cash & go out to eat, but we didn't. We were really excited about being alone in our own (temporary) house for once. Our own house is our biggest dream right now. so, yeah, cooking by ourselves! ! ! That said, we hate to waste food, so we didn't go crazy grocery shopping. Basically, we started with wedding leftovers (onions, potatoes, butternut squash, crackers, cheese, eggs, & butter) & we locally purchased really good bacon, a steak, broccoli, & bagels.
Two themes immediate emerged: the need for a serious breakfast if you begin every day hiking up a mountain with your dog, & lasagna, which a very sweet wedding guest (thanks jim!) brought us for "the cabin." (it really wasn't a cabin, it was a gorgeous six bedroom redone farmhouse that even Martha would be jealous of.)
So we, discovered bacon, parmesan, & onions on a bagels is a seriously kickass breakfast sandwich.
I consider a good breakfast sandwich a life staple. Eggs & meat & cheese on a bagel please me. 
& although we didn't actually want to bring the lasagna with us (all we wanted to do was cook) there was definitely a night (after a long adventure in New Hampshire auto mechanics & pouring rain) that we were very content to curl up by the fire & reheat that thing. Obviously, we were unable to resist making it a lot better with additional cheese, broccoli, ample garlic, & of course bacon. I really can't totally not cook.
So, yeah, our honeymoon, bacon, mountains, dogs. That happened.
Oh, did you hear we in Western Massachusetts had a serious snowstorm before Halloween & the power went out everywhere for days & days? Next: EnD cooks breakfast sandwiches on a propane burner in the snowy driveway. True story.

Honeymoon: Wine & Cheese & Love & Gorgeousness.

Greetings, y'all. Happy Fall, officially the favorite season here at EnD. Fall is the season of cooking, so hopefully, as promised, I will get back on the drawing horse & show you some of mine. Starting with this quick glimpse from my fall.

9.26.2011: Jackson, New Hampshire, First Night Of Our Honeymoon.

Oh yeah, we got married.
Turns out planning & having a wedding is a lot of work, if you are into making everything by hand like us, & Hurricane Sunday was the last time I picked up my sketchbook until it was all over. Our wedding was like something beyond our wildest dreams, & maybe someday I'll process it enough to make some art about it.
But for now, a moment from the first night of our honeymoon in Jackson, New Hampshire, sitting outside in the last sunlight of a perfect late September New England afternoon, listening to the brook running behind the incredible house where we were staying & the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.
We drove all day from Cape Cod to the White Mountains, unpacked the car & went straight to the terrace where we enjoyed some of our fine wedding presents: a really good bottle of New Zealand Marlbourgh Sauvingon Blanc (actually that was a birthday present-my birthday was the day before our wedding) & an assortment of cheese from Murrry's (A cooler of cheese! what a wedding present!)& leftover crackers from the reception.
We both got out of the car & said at the same time: "Let's sit outside with drinks & snacks!" We have a terrible yard here in Noho. Up there on our list for a future idea house is a nice place to sit outside in the evening & talk & have a glass of wine & read & or draw or whatever.  My favorite Cape Cod meals all take place on the deck over looking the lake & I want that for myself someday.
I guess that's why I keep holding on to this blog, even though I terribly neglect it mostly & the general idea of drawing my meals, even though I really have no time & I feel guilty about doing this with it sometimes: it preserves beautiful moments like that one: Wine & cheese, an amazingly breathaking place, a brand new husband, & a hound dog tied to a bench going crazy with the joy of all the new wild New Hampshire smells.
Well, I'll try to spend more time on this blog. At least finish the wedding story. There was an abundance of my favorite things: good food, family, friends, wine, beaches, & of course dogs. Thanksgiving is coming up & obviously that is the sacred holiday of EnD. In fact, last year we spent Thanksgiving in the same house where we spent our honeymoon, & I just found those unfinished drawings this morning.
But right now my husband (amazing!) is cooking me a chicken pot pie in our kitchen, & I'm gonna go draw him do it.