Art & Motherhood (& Sandwiches).

Yeah, so today I was reading Alison Bechdel's "Are You My Mother?" while I was eating my fried egg & Brussels sprout sandwich for lunch (take "today" loosely because I am am currently post bath nursing Iris & can't imagine that I will actually finish this tonight). Anyway.

Set the scene. Iris is napping. I'm at the kitchen table by the window & the poetry books. 

Nice November light today. Bare trees, pale sunlight. 

Sandwich. Fried eggs, two of them, sliced bread, cheddar cheese, last night's leftover battered deep fried Brussels sprouts...there they are.

(See, this is still a food blog!). Lots of mayo & sriracha. I've got a cup of cold coffee from the morning. 

I'm reading. I'm eating fast, because who knows when the tiny human will wake up. 

And I'm reading Alison Bechdel, & she's referencing Adrienne Rich on motherhood, & I'm seated right there by all of Adrienne Rich's books, & I wonder, can you really be an artist & a mother? And do either on properly, the way you really want to? Can I? 

I always believe that you could, but actually being a mother, I don't know. I can't even write this post. 

I personally am so self centered when I make art, & I think I really need to be in that place where I put art first to do it well. 

And now I put Iris first, & can barely complete a thought. 

I feel like having Iris is the most important thing I've ever done & I would rather do this than have my opportunity to be self centered & make art back, but still. Do I want the same thing for her? Or do I want her to be famous & fabulous & everything she could ever possibly want?

Does anyone know?  

I don't know why I had such a moment there. Maybe I should just focus on sandwiches. It was a great sandwich. The eggs were freshly gathered from our chickens & I fried them in butter in a cast iron skillet & melted the cheese on top in the pan. 

And ha, Iris is sleeping on my lap now, so maybe I'll just post this as is. 

Happy Friday night, world, here at the homestead we are having spicy duck soup & homemade biscuits for dinner. 

And listening to Britney Spears. And still contemplating the meaning of motherhood. 

Egg Day.

Happy (late) Easter, if you're into that sort of thing.
Or "Egg Day" as my mom adorably said in a text yesterday.
"Egg Day" seemed appropriate, as we did begin our Easter Sunday with very fresh eggs for breakfast, courtesy Easter morning from Lulu & Miranda. Being relatively new chicken owners, every egg is still something to celebrate.
As a half Jewish/half Catholic girl raised in neither faith, I mostly celebrate holidays with food. Not to say that I don't take holidays seriously. I celebrate anything. I am a big fan of any excuse to cook a festive meal, pretty much. Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, whatever, bring on the food.
& the rituals. Christmas trees, menorahs, Easter baskets, Mardi Gras costumes.
Upholding traditions in some form is important to me.
I plan on making chopped liver & matzo ball soup this week in honor of my Gramma Bess & Passover. (I celebrate all the Jewish holidays with those things, they make me think of her the most).
Easter I've always been fond of: Spring is something to celebrate, egg dyeing is a nice ritual, & there's something about the Easter myth that appeals to the drama queen in me. Plus, Easter is a holiday where I have traditionally managed to avoid family obligations & spend the day the way I like, at home cooking a good old fashioned Sunday dinner with the person I love.
This is the first Easter in a long time that I haven't had to work, & our first married Easter.
We spent it exactly as I hoped. We ate a delicious breakfast of our own eggs & bacon while listening to some of the truly excellent Christian Country hits of Randy Travis, then we dug in the new garden all day.
We are attempting to clear by hand an about 60x60 foot square of abandoned & totally overgrown garden space.
On this Easter Sunday we tilled two new 45'x4' beds & planted sugar snap peas, yellow beans, French Breakfast & Easter egg radishes, golden beets, & blue potatoes, then dug a cold frame to harden off the kale & Kohlrabi & broccoli & cauliflower seedlings we have started indoors.
I'm really getting to know that pitchfork. I'm pretty proud of the calluses I've gotten on my palms, these last few weeks.
Then we cleaned the chicken coop (yay farm chores!) & hung out laundry on the line (I love finally being able to have a clothesline here!) & other weekends tasks, trash, sweeping, dishes, etc.
So we totally deserved the completely indulgent Easter dinner we had.

Egg Day Dinner 2012.

 Roast Duck marinated overnight in wine, garlic, sage, rosemary, chili peppers, olive oil, & salt & pepper. 
We bought the duck on a Friday night as a weekend impulse & grilled the legs that night, served with curried rice & broccoli. Then marinated the rest of it over Saturday night & roasted it Sunday.
Owen's famous Cheesy Bacon Mashed Potatoes.
I swear that man is insane. One pound of bacon, both ricotta & fresh mozzarella, & 1/2 & 1/2. Into mashed potatoes. I love him.
With some leftover Kale Pesto because I like to eat a green thing & I'm still on the Kale Pesto kick.
Topped with, of course, Duck Gravy.  Huge amounts of Duck Gravy.
God damn I'm glad a married a man whose good with gravy. 
My leftovers for lunch at work were kind of insane. Yeah, I'm just eating my roast duck & cheesy bacon mashed potatoes & duck gravy over here, don't mind me.
I went to bed completely exhausted & satisfied last night. Good food, seeds planted, house & coop clean. 
Right now I'm making a soup from the duck stock. Fridge soup, don't you know it!
I have a huge pile of seeds on hold I'm gonna buy at work tomorrow. There is a whole cleared bed we haven't even touched yet.
I don't mean to always be all Pollyanna on y'all the time here, but mostly, stuff's good. I don't think we have anything real to complain about.
I guess somewhere along the line I've turned into a positive thinker. Or I'm just happy.

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.  

Meals With Eggs: Cilantro Pesto & A Fried Egg For Lunch.

In honor of my dear friends Lucy, Lulu, Amanda Jo, & Miranda, I bring you some meals made from their amazing eggs. It still feels like magic when I find one. Thanks, ladies.

2.29.2012: Snowy Leap Day Lunch. 

Last day of February. I came home from work around lunchtime due to impeding snow, just in time to kiss my husband goodbye before he left for work.
We had some leftover homemade cilantro pesto from dinner the night before. I try to eat in season, but the local discount grocery store, The Barn, had really cheap bunches of cilantro & I am craving spring tastes so badly. Arugula pesto soon. But not yet. So, the Barn.
There was a fresh egg in the chicken coop, perfect for frying on top of some pesto & cappellini reheated in a cast iron skillet, topped with a drizzle of sriracha & eaten at the dining room table, reading Achewood on my laptop, drinking coffee, & watching the snow. 
Who needs convenience foods! Eggs!
Having eggs seems like such an important step towards self sufficiency. We've had a couple of summers now of pretty much from all our own vegetables, but producing our own protein! That's so cool. With eggs & veggies we could really take a break from the grocery store, especially now that my husband is producing his own (now drinkable) beer regularly.
Seeds are sprouting under lights. one of the pullets is laying, hopefully the other two will be soon. The baby chicks turn four weeks old this Friday. I'm daydreaming about acquiring meat & fur rabbits.

Snowy October Driveway Breakfast Sandwiches.

I mentioned the Great New England Halloween Weekend Snowstorm/Power Outage.  Where we cooked lentil soup outside & ate it in the dark? Well, here's breakfast, i.e., another chance for me to mention the overwhelming life importance of a good breakfast sandwich.

10.30.2011: Weather Related Outdoor Breakfast. 

I can't say we suffered anything truly unpleasant at all, but it was the longest time I have been without power in my adult life (two days, I know, boo hoo) & I have lived through hurricanes in New Orleans. We never lose power in our current apartment for more than a few minutes, so when the lights went out of Saturday night it seemed so very temporary.
By Sunday morning, after having got ready for work at 6am by candle light, walked to downtown to get the car from the stupid snow emergency lot (curse this town & the asinine snow parking regulations-don't get me started) called my boss at home & work several times to see if we were open, driven to work when I got no response, then found out we were closed, then got back to a cold apartment with no stove...well Owen figuring out to to fry eggs & toast bagels over a propane burner in the driveway was pretty freaking cheering.
A good hot breakfast goes a long way. It certainly helped me appreciated the day off work (& the day post-storm was a gorgeous, gorgeous day) & not really care that we didn't have light (or heat, but hey, I dug out the wool blankets & wore several of Owen's flannel shirts at once).
& the dog enjoyed eating the snow after Owen rinsed out the frying pan. Good times were, as you can see, had by all.
Breakfast sandwiches. They rule. You know, several were eaten during the purchase of my car, present in the driveway during this escapade.
Now that's the circle of life, right there.

A Spring Cape Cod Breakfast: Hangar B, Chatham.

More from the (sort of, maybe) hurricane. Being home all afternoon is rare for me, so I've been taking advantage of the weather, cleaning off my desk & paging through my sketchbooks. Apparently I have some catching up to do.
Here's one moment I found: a breakfast, on Cape Cod, early June, rainy Saturday, at the surprisingly (why surprisingly? Because we are both really good cooks & live in Massachusetts & have developed low restaurant expectations in general I guess) excellent Hangar B. 

6.11.2011: Breakfast in Chatham. 

I had a smoked salmon, goat's cheese & arugula omelet, with avocado slices & fried potatoes & toast & Owen had the famous Red Flannel Hash (Beets, Yukon Gold Patoes, Sweet Potatoes, Bacon), with toast & poached egggs & horseradish creme fraiche.
Mine was brilliant anyway, but the avocado slices but it over the top. Owen's was the best use of beets I have ever tasted. The toast was homemade & wonderful & there was housemade jam too. Good potatoes (which is both very important in a breakfast & not as common as you'd think).
I'm very into going out to breakfast as a thing & this meal made it into my Top Three Restaurant Breakfast List. It didn't quite beat out the amazing breakfast sandwich at the Sunny Point Cafe in Asheville, NC but comes in second before brunch at the The Green Bean & I do love the Green Bean,
Despite the rain, it was a lovely Cape Cod Saturday. After breakfast, we drove to the beach & collected seaweed & shells for our garden in a torrential downpour.
Standing on a beach on the bay on Cape Cod in red boots & a dress in pouring rain with someone you love & a hound dog, holding a bucket of ocean matter, after a really good breakfast is the kind of moment that makes for a satisfying life, I believe.
Here, in Northampton, in the present, the sun just came out.

Cali Part Two: Grilled Cheeses at Old Spanish Missions, Burger Arguments, & BACON.

So Diamond Daughters in the great state of California, continued.

In which Gramma drives us to Riverside, & we get lost & end up at the city limits with the auto parts stores, & we eventually arrive at the Mission Inn, see some parrots, & eat grilled cheeses in Mum's (allegedly, Gramma tells these stories sometimes) favorite lunch spot, Simple Simon's.

Grilled Cheeses In Old Spanish California, After Being Lost In The Urban California Desert.

At some later point, we had this burger conflict. First, Grampa Diamond is self-admittedly terrible at grilling. Only burgers he is good at. This makes him a burger crazy person. I, as an adult, have formed my own burger preferences, & mine include Hellman's mayonnaise as a must & Sriracha as yes yes please & crazy additions as hells yeah what have you got? As you can see here. Sooooooo...I wanted my mayonnaise, some chopped jalapenos, & a sliced perfect avocado & whoah was I shot down. Oh families. PEOPLE FROM BROCKTON, MA DO NOT PUT FING AVOCADOS ON MEAT. END OF STORY. I forget this.

(Note, Ali, a burger girl is anyone is, did agree with him, so I give his taste buds the benefit of the doubt).

Anyway, I present,

Grampa's "Perfect" Burger.

To comfort us from all this terrible family burger conflict, Saturday morning breakfast. The most essential one, the Platonic ideal of breakfast, why bacon smells good like nothing else to me, & why I can never be a vegetarian.

Breakfast with Bob

(Fried Eggs, Bacon, Thomas' English Muffins, Always & Forever).

Coming up: We find our perfect Liz & Ali restaurant after almost dying of depression in a giant California mall, we purchase sparkly discounted things while drinking smoothies, have a more odd than even usual for us family evening, & a moving & memorable in emotional terms but so upsettingly bad foodwise Anthony Bourdain would cry Macaroni Grill experience. Seafood Linguine. Shudder. All coming up next. Stay Tuned.

A New Car & A Series Of Sandwiches.

Three sets of sandwiches, all relating to the recent purchase of my new (to me) car, the 1989 Toyota Cressida. The LUXERY model, oh yeah. This is the first car I have purchased, & therefore kind of a milestone, & being me, I documented the occasion in a series of sandwiches.

1.13.2010. A visit to a car in Leverett, & 2 sausage, egg, & cheese sandwiches from Go Nomad in the infamous town of South Deerfield.

1.17.2010. Fried egg, cheese, & Sriracha sandwiches at our kitchen table after we drove the Cressida home for the first time.
1.22.2010. Ali's first ride in the Cressida, when we picked her up at work for our classic lunch date of sandwiches at the Black Sheep (2 Nick's Picks, aka semi-Ruebens for me & Owen, 1 Southern Comfort for Ali). Note: the semi-ruebens had coleslaw & not sauerkraut, & so were not as good as real ruebens. The Southern Comfort I did not taste, but appeared to be all bacony & chickeny so, probably the better choice.
I know, I know, I'm odd as always, but I always remember things in life most clearly by what I ate that day. Taste/smell are my strongest sense memories, I guess. So even if it's just a fried egg on toast with hot sauce, if something happened that day, what I ate was important. On an even deeper note, what to egg sandwiches have to do with the 1989 Toyota Cressida? There just must be a connection. Discuss.

Improv: Quiche.

A quiche made entirely from random free expired & semi-damaged shit acquired at work: Avocados (I am a huge fan of the cooked avocado), tomatoes, spinach, snow pea sprouts, raw milk cheese, in a homemade whole wheat pastry crust (by Owen, not me), with a baby arugula salad & Annie's organic buttermilk dressing. An exercise in the "work with what you have" model that we like to use around here, i.e. the Iron Chef Challenge Dinners invented by Rin & I.

1.30.2010: Free Dinner.

Eaten in bed drinking a 40 of King Cobra ('cause we classy like that) & watching Xenia the Warrior Princess on the laptop. Yes, really. Makes for an excellent Saturday night when it's January in Massachusetts & the weather is subzero. When will spring be here? End is pretty much ready for Farmers Markets & gardening.

Non-Traditional Holiday Foods (Soup & Eggs).

Yeah, I know, I've been very late with the holiday posts, but let's just pretend that it's not yet January 10th, ok? I mean, the Christmas tree IS still up around here & all...so, um, yeah, Christmas did happen, I believe around a couple of weeks ago or some shit like that, & undeniably the holidays are ALL ABOUT FOOD but we don't usually do it up normal food-wise in the assorted Diamond households. (thankfully for this website, DR & I did it up all traditional for Thanksgiving). Crap Chinese food in New Bedford or Dennis is really how we like to roll on Christmas day, but this year we did this...

Creamy Parsnip Soup, made with great success by Ali & Barb from The Martha Stewart Everyday Food Cookbook, eaten by the Christmas tree in bowls on our laps with bread & cheese, in a funeral home in Turners Falls. Actually, one of the six Christmas trees, all suitably gorgeous. Oh & we used Ali's new Christmas immersion blender, that was a good time.

& the next morning, our sit down holiday meal took place over breakfast at Sylvester's before shopping for all our favourite things like boots & yarn. (yes, I have those boots from The Mountain Goat & shawl yarn was purchased from Northampton Wools, & of course small red birds for everyone from The Artisan Gallery. Thanks, Mum.)
My breakfast: the Community Garden Eggs Benedict, essentially eggs, hollandaise, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli. My only complaint, that I had to borrow bacon from Mum, because all the breakfasts were EITHER meat or veggie, none both. VEGETABLES TASTE GOOD WITH MEAT PEOPLE. COME ON.
Note: Owen & I had swine flu over Christmas which did affect our ability to be festive. But no fear, we drank a lot of JohnnieWalker in bed while watching around Shaft collection DVD set we purchased Christmas Eve from Big Lots. New Christmas tradition? Dustyrose thinks so.

The Hidden Meaning Of Breakfasts.

The thing I find most missing about not waking up next to someone mindblowingly awesome on a regular basis(well ok, obviously not the thing I miss the MOST, but still an important one)is BREAKFASTS!!!! (this is a food blog not a dating blog, yo)

There's just something about excessive quantities of butter & bacon & maple syrup that seems awkward when you do it alone, but when you wake up in the mood to show true affection through food, is just perfect. Cooking in pajamas & t-shirts in the morning sunlight, sleepily locating eggs & toast, that's a huge part of physical chemistry, for me anyway. (we all know of course that I'm weird) I've been waiting to keep bacon & eggs in the house on a regular basis for a while. So here's a few breakfasts from the past month or so.

First Breakfast = All the obvious things, i.e. bacon, eggs, toast.

Cause I'm me, the toast was from the Hello Kitty Toaster & the butter was served in a kitten rice bowl,

SO KITTY BREAKFAST.

The type of breakfast only eaten by two people who get a shit ton of odd food items for free from work, & are also running late for work.

& This is also work related: the Overly Local Breakfast,

consisting of Kickass French Toast made with Diemand Farms Eggs, Vermont Applewood Smoked Bacon, East Baking Company Maple Cinnamon Bread (i.e. the world's best bread for any kind of toast), Maple Syrup from the Northampton Farmers Market & Cabot Butter & Pierce Brothers Coffee.

Yeah we are kind of new breed of hipster yuppie I think.

I have a feeling that the Chocolate Chip Pancake chapter is next in this saga.

Also the wonderful world of SAUSAGE.