greens and things

So yesterday I came to a conclusion. Whether or not anything will come of this conclusion remains to be seen. First let's back up. The other night I was cooking some of the turnip greens and spinach that came in my most recent CSA basket. I turned away from the stove and got ready to wipe up the counter top and do a few of the dishes in the sink when I saw one tiny (tiny tiny) baby slug crawling across the counter in the direction of the compost bowl. {She was obviously a wise and intrepid slug who knew what she wanted and where she was going...} I looked around for more. Nope. Just one baby slug crawling across the counter. So I scooped her up and took her outside to the lemon balm on the back patio.

When I came back inside I looked around again for more slugs. Usually there are more, right? This was my thought when I looked over at the greens cooking on the stove top. Thoughts of cooking baby slugs in my greens made me recoil and I thought ack ack ack and blech over and over in my head. Felt the words {and the slugs} in my mouth. Ugh. I am not cut out for eating baby slugs. It's not good for me or the baby slugs. {Yes, yes. I know, I know. But still.}

I looked around in the greens. Scooped them back and forth. Examined them very very closely. So far, no slugs. Nothing even resembling a slug. Sigh. Relief. I ate my greens with macaroni and cheese. No slugs. I checked the greens in the morning. No slugs. I looked very very closely {again}. No slugs. I ate my greens on toast with melted cheese. No slugs. And thank goodness those greens were gone now. No more slugs-on-greens to bother about. I could move on to eating other greens. Different greens. Greens that weren't in question.

So last night I was making one of my very favorite things to eat these days- spicy greens (or any greens, but spicy is much appreciated) with these spicy sesame noodles New Seasons makes. I make my own as well but New Seasons has this chili infused oil that can make theirs extra special. (Eva is sick and I went to New Seasons yesterday for sick-snacks and picked up some noodles for me.)

I chopped up the greens, added in some spinach, tossed all the greens with the noodles. Looked around for extra garlic. Took a bite. Then another. I got a container out and started dumping the extra greens in it for later. More greens! Did I take another bite of the noodles and greens? Maybe. Or maybe I saw the cut-in-half carcass of the rollie pollie bug first. And that stopped me in my tracks. I looked closely and saw a little leg on the knife. A little bit of the head next to the carcass. The main part of the carcass. I looked at the bowl of greens and noodles. I looked at the rest of the greens I was scraping into the storage container. Good grief. It was worse than eating cooked baby slugs. It was eating raw rollie pollie bug. Oh. My. Gawd.

So I looked through the extra greens. I looked through the bowl of noodles. I even dumped them out on the cutting board and scraped through them. No sigh of a little leg. No sigh of an antenna. Egads. No other part of the body. Had I already eaten it? In one of those first couple of bites? Those first couple of blissfully ignorant bites? Possibly. I will never know. I talked myself into eating a few more bites of the noodles and greens but it was no good. It never took. I finally just dumped the rest out. After the slug event the night before and now this with the chopped up rollie pollie bug, I decided to have some smoothie and call it a night. I'd definitely lost my appetite.

So here's my conclusion. I know that people all over the world eat bugs. By choice. That's what we're told, isn't it? That our food system is so messed up that we eat chemicals and all manner of artificial goo but are grossed out to eat a really very natural form of {let's face it} protein. I mean, a rollie pollie bug is even a crustacean. People definitely eat crustaceans. Shrimp. Crabs. I mean, I don't. I'm allergic to shrimp. But other people do. I know that for a fact. So it's obviously completely cultural what we decide is edible and what isn't. I'm hip to that fact for sure.

But I am not one of those people who is chomping at the bit to eat bugs. Not insects nor arachnids nor even crustaceans. And of course I know that bugs are a part of the garden. I go out of my way to share the garden with any number of bugs every day. And I know that I eat all kinds of really tiny bugs all the time. It's the bigger ones, the ones who leave foot prints, that are bothering me (as illogical as it all seems. I know that too.). So what I decided was that if I am going to be so ridiculously civilized and uptight about bug eating, I am going to have to get a little bit more uptight about how thoroughly I wash my greens. It's not doing me or the greens or the bugs any good to keep half eating them and them turning away from the kitchen entirely.

So that's it. That's my conclusion. It's simple, really. Either make peace with the bug eating once and for all or wash the heck out of those greens. (And then I'm going to lay them out on a towel and give the bugs a chance to crawl away just like we used to do with berries when I was a kid...) But here's the caveat. If I choose to wash the heck out of the greens, I have to let it go after that. I have to actually let myself eat and enjoy the greens. Trust in the washing. Trust that the bugs are gone. And be done with it. Where, after all, is the peace in washing the heck out of the greens and then never getting around to enjoying them? I guess either way I look at it, there is some peace to be made around eating the bugs. My hope is that the cleaner the greens, the easier that will be. We shall see. I'm not sure I'm up for trying out my new system right now. Maybe by lunchtime. For breakfast, though, there will be eggs without greens this morning...

doing

There are some days when Eva makes a list of things she wants to do (or things she would like me to do) on that day. Yesterday her list was-
be swung on the swing
read Fox in Socks
read Garfield
read Watership Down
play another game of The Settlers of Catan

Samuel's list went something like this-
play another game of The Settlers of Catan (he got this for his birthday and is really really enjoying it)
play a game of backgammon (for money)
get an icee
buy Wii Monopoly
play mancala

My list was-
mow the lawn
{and I added} get Indian food {later on}

We ended up playing The Settlers of Catan and backgammon (not for money), reading Fox in Socks and a few other books, and getting Indian food. I did indeed mow the lawn over the course of the entire afternoon and I also did a little garden work here and there. We did not swing and we did not buy Wii Monopoly. No matter now as we did those things first thing this morning.



Swing!

And now off to play some mancala with Samuel...

update

updates. in case you were wondering-

after the going away party yesterday, there were no more ants today...



here's the cleared-off-table in action. see how the children magically appear at the cleared off table? where better to play a robot game?

i was also able to make it to the yarn store today with a somewhat healthier, although not entirely cured, samuel. second leg warmer here I come. just as soon as i play some dominoes and backgammon, the current games-du-jour. where will we play these games, you may be thinking? why, at the cleared off table, but of course...

ant season

We have been a little preoccupied with ants over here lately, it being ant season and all. This time of year always brings a certain number of ants inside the house and a huge number outside the house. I have plugged up most of the places that I can find where the ants come into the house and am fine letting the one or two who I find wandering around to continue to wander. They come and go and eventually ant season mellows out and there are no more ants in the house. This year there even seems to be extra spiders in some key places helping to keep the ant population in the house to a minimum. Eva and I really enjoy keeping tabs on the spider families as well as watching the flow of ants- particularly queen ants- making their way, both inside and outside.

The best ant watching by far, though, has to be out on the patio. Most of the year you can find at least one or two ants walking back and forth across the patio (to where or for what, we don't quite know) along the ant path. Eva and I are well trained in stepping over the ant trail, particularly at this time of year. We love watching the different ant styles- the small ants, the medium ants, the large ants... How cranky they seem to be with one another. How the larger ants look slightly perplexed. How the small ants swarm more around their ant hill openings. How the ants come out of their holes sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. How when they are in groups they snip at one another and seem confused by so many other ants being around. How they are all going in the same direction, along the same path, with such a purpose but still seem slightly absent minded about the whole thing. Unstoppable. Not quite comprehensible to human minds.

Right now the queens are coming out of the medium and large ant colonies in large numbers and yesterday Eva and I had fun helping the ones who were trapped by the patio screen find their way out- helping them with their life purpose and all that {what queen ant doesn't dream of flying off to start her very own ant colony after all?}. There were so many queens out yesterday they were practically swarming in the patio and you can imagine my surprise today when I went out on to the patio and saw even more queens with so many helper ants all around them, ostensibly helping them find their way? Making sure the coast was clear? Making sure the queens don't get cold feet and go back into the colony? Just milling around chatting with one another about the big day? Eva thought some of them were trying to decide if they might want to go off with the new queens to help set up the new colonies? Who can really say except the ants. Maybe some of those ant scientists out there fearlessly studying the social lives of ants? Don't tell me they aren't out there. I haven't tried googling yet. The last time I googled ants I got discouraged because the majority of the information I found was on how to um exterminate them. So not quite the information I was looking for. Ahem.



Ant watching 101. The ant path with strings of ants marching along on their mission. The ants on this path are all medium ants. Usually there will be a large ant here and there but they are definitely in the minority. I think the large ants are my favorite type of ant. Unless you count the very wee babiest ants of the small ants who are the smallest of the small and who elicit a squeal of delight from Eva.



Large queen ant making her way to her destiny. Swarm of medium and large queen ants (and helpers) coming out of one of the colony doors on the patio.

april knitting

Here's what I made with one skein of Noro taiyo yarn (color 18). Let me say that this is one yummy yarn. Delicious to work with and gorgeous to look at both knit and unknit.

Noro taiyo- 40% cotton, 30% silk, 15% wool, 15% nylon. One skein is ~100 grams/ 200 meters. I got a gauge of 4 stitches/ inch stocking stitch in the round with #8 needles for the baby hat. I used #3 needles for the fingerless gloves which were roughly ~5 1/2 st/in in pattern and #5 needles for Eva's leg warmers (she is 7 years old; co 36, k1p1 rib for 12-13 inches {she wanted them past her knee}).



One pair fingerless gloves for smaller adult hands, one baby hat, one leg warmer for a 7 year old girl, plus a little left over. You know what that means? I have to get back over to the yarn store lickety split to pick up another skein of this yarn so that I can knit up that second leg warmer pronto. Too bad they are closed on Mondays.

a little fluff on what i froze last winter

I am making tamales tonight. They are a great way to use up left over chicken and corn from last summer. I have been going through the freezer trying to use up what is still in there from last year's bounty and because last year was such an amazing year for corn and because I subscribed to not one but two CSA's last summer and because I thought the kids would be more into the frozen corn over the winter than they actually were, I still have some corn left. A little. After making the tamales, there is a little less. Corn isn't my favorite vegetable by a long shot and it was a stretch for me to figure out what to do with all of that corn. Tamales work out really well. I wish there was something like tamales for me to do with all of those green beans.

Green beans obviously make the list of vegetable I-shouldn't-have-frozen-so-many-of. Zucchini too. Definitely yellow squash. At least with zucchini I can make muffins. The yellow squash and most of the green beans simply lingered. I ate all of the peas. All of the tomatoes. None of the hot peppers. {Here's a good rule of thumb. If the peppers are too hot for me to eat during the summer, I will not magically want to eat them in January, no matter how cold it is outside. Yep.} I could probably do with a few more jars of canned tomatoes, but not really more than that. Hmmm. More broccoli. That is always appreciated by someone. Maybe some more chopped greens like kale and chard for when they are sparse? This winter was sort of a bummer for greens because all of the cabbage froze in December. I hadn't realized how much I had come to appreciate cabbage in January. One of the nice perks of having a CSA is learning about and looking forward to which vegetables will be around when.

Going to check on my tamales. Mine aren't very traditional and haven't been wrapped in corn husks. I use parchment paper and like to think I am wrapping up little packets off goodness when I fold them up. Hoping they are done so that I can share some of that goodness with Eva. And then off to push my girl on the swing. I know when she says, "Do you think you will have time today to push me on the swing?" that it is time to get pushing.

inspiration where it finds you

Eva surprised me yesterday with a picnic in the backyard. She brought out a table cloth and spread it on the grass under the apple tree so that we could look up into the pink and white blossoms above. The sky was blue, the sun was shining. She brought crackers, tortilla chips, Parmesan cheese and some of the boysenberry-peach crisp I had made for her earlier in the day.

Later on she spent some time with the cleared off patio cement and some sidewalk chalk drawing chalk robots Forinor, BeBe and Kenos, rabbits Cuddly and Carrots and some chalk people I helped her trace, Eva and Lucy.

We never did get around to making sugar crystals on the cleared off kitchen table. I guess the cleared off patio was the inspiration for the day this time...