eating habits

(at sunrise, out the upstairs windows)



Lunch

We bring our lunch to the porch today. Leftovers for Ed -- gnocchi from Monday's dinner. Isis sits at our feet, patient, but very much wanting a taste. And of course, Ed acquiesces. And sure enough, the cat that rejects most every cat food on the market, lovingly cradles in his mouth, then swallows appreciatively the potato dumplings, smothered in a light tomato and mushroom sauce, heavily sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan.

There isn't enough for Ed to eat after that and so he distributes the remains between the cheepers.

The farmette animals follow a strange diet.


Dinner

The evening meal on a Wednesday is a challenge. Ed often bikes on this day and doesn't get back until late. Sometimes hungry, sometimes not so much. So I make a farmette Niçoise salad. Using all farmette ingredients: tomatoes of course. Beans from our bean teepee.





Potatoes from the field out back, eggs from the cheepers. I skip the fish component. (There are no fish on the farmette.)

I settle in to watch the tail end of the PBS News Hour and eat my half of the salad.

Isis comes over.
Meow.
What, do tell me, is appetizing here for you? It's not as if there's any tuna or anchoives!





It's the potatoes. He's in that kind of a mood! I give him some, smothered in juices of the garden tomato and a dash of olive oil. His palate is definitely evolving. The cat's unstoppable!


Breakfast

You think I forgot about breakfast? Never!






And after, a walk through the garden. (It needs water again. Sigh...)










And still later -- a bike ride. Because even though I don't keep a step counter at my hip anymore, I know I'm not moving around enough by going from porch to yard to kitchen. Besides, it really is beautiful out there.



prairie, just up the road




truck farmers, working the fields to the east of the farmette




a friend along the road


There you have it: a day in three meals. And a little bit more.


One last photo, of that special slant of sunlight that tells us it's almost Autumn.

Tuesday

Sitting on the porch for breakfast, we feel the cool morning air. I have a sweater on and I know Ed's a little chilled, even though he would never say so.






What he does say is -- I'm going to miss those flowers in the winter time.

So this is it, that period in time that can't even be imagined in the cold season. Summer, a lush and plentiful summer where there was enough rain and enough sunshine to make our gardens grow.






And it seems so much part of our world now, even though in three months, it will all be gone. All of it. Pffft! Gone.






I spend the morning deadheading. Snipping off spent blooms to encourage one more run.  It's a beautiful time to work outside: the air is a cool 70 degrees, the wind refreshes and blows mosquitoes away to some distant hiding place. Can it be more perfect?






In the early afternoon, our truck framer who grows potatoes, onions and garlic in the back of the farmette, asks us to mow down her weeds for another planting run. Ed works his John Deere in exchange for a bucket of potatoes and a bagful of garlic.





And then he and I have a date! A movie and a dinner -- both frivolous and a bit of a joke, because the movie is a fun but silly little thing about restauranteurs squabbling in the south of France (a poke at the Ed who refuses to go back to my beloved Sorede exactly in that region) and the "dinner out" isn't really out at all, or at least it isn't one where we sit down across from each other at a table elsewhere; it's one where we pick up take out food at our favorite Thai place and bring it home.


Home. Where the flowers grow and the world is kind and calm and he cheepers look at me with hopeful eyes every time I pass them in the garden.

tough conversations

Morning

We all have them. A life well lived cannot exclude tough conversations. But you can do them well or you can do them poorly. Learning how to do them well is an ongoing thing. Ed and I do them significantly better than years ago. I suppose that's good.

There are a couple of ongoing conversations that really haven't an end and I suppose those are everyone's fate. You think you've found a way to accommodate both your idiosyncrasies and then you see that you haven't really and so you finesse and massage the sticking points once more. So there are those talks.






But then there are the ones that arise because a major shift has to occur. For one, for both -- either way. Change is needed. We had one back in February about travel. A conversation where convictions had been mounting but each hadn't wanted to hurt the other and so we remained silent on the topic until finally, among Greek ruins on an island mountaintop, Ed blurted an admission: he had reached his travel saturation.

In that conversation, I understood. I surely wasn't happy about it, but there was nothing to discuss. The expression of true feeling was so genuine and heartfelt that there was little more to say. Sadness to process, but few needed words.

That one's over and done with. We've moved on.





This morning though, over a wonderful breakfast, as we talk about other difficult (for me) topics, explaining things, giving perspectives -- all marking progress which is all you can hope for -- we got to one topic that really came out of the blue: the cheepers.

I blurted out that that in the scheme of things, we were better off without them.

Ed took that to mean that I would prefer for them to be gone and so he put on the table the idea of finding another home for them. And of course, it's not so easy. Both of us are tremendously attached to them. We like their personalities. (Well, I don't quite get Oreo, but I like that he likes Ed and Ed likes him.) We like that they trust us, that they find happiness in the various favorite corners of the farmette. That they depend on us and we don't let them down.

And so we begin to weigh the benefits of finding a home for them, against the modest but significant benefits of constructing a bigger enclosed space for them (so that no one *has* to let them out or lock them up every single dawn and dusk of the calendar year).

For now, we decide to leave things the way they are. The pang of imagining them gone was too strong. We're not ready for that quite yet.











And, of course, that shifts us into fields and domains that have nothing to do with chickens and that is how the morning passes because such conversations if done well, or at least fairly well, take time.






Afternoon

As promised (here on Ocean!), today I bake a peach cake. (With a modest sprinkle of pecans.)






Again I mess with ingredients, substituting yogurt for cream and again I am lucky with the final outcome.





That's not the end of it. My older girl and her husband are coming over for a postponed Sunday dinner and since she is still having a tough time with many of the dinner foods that you or I may want to put on the table on a Sunday evening and asks for pasta just one more time, I decide to at least step up from the spaghetti with home made sauce that I've been feeding them for very many weeks now.

When my girls were small, on evenings when I absolutely had no time for a multi-course dinner preparation, I would open a bag of frozen gnocchi and serve that as my go to fast-food (with tomato sauce). Gnocchi became fashionable here in the last decade or two and now there are many good recipes on how to make your own. It's a labor intensive task (boil the potatoes, make a dough out of them with flour, roll them out, cut them into morcels and then roll each one on a fork for that classic gnocchi ridge), but after a morning of conversations, I'm ready to rest my brain and work my hands.





I'll serve them with a mixed mushroom sauce and lots of cheese. Lots of cheese.


Evening

My older young couple comes over after the afternoon storms rumble through.


 


And as always, dinner on the porch is a time to listen to stories and to exhale. We do a lot of both.






And the light fades earlier and as I wash dishes afterwards, Ed sleeps on the couch and when I remind him to put away the chickens, he says (quite rightly) -- it's beginning to feel like autumn outside.

Sunday

It's almost as if I'm working again: I wake to a Sunday that marks the closure of a weekend, a wonderful week-end at that, an ending, rather than just another day resembling very much those before it and those ahead.

I'm sure my visit reshuffles the schedule of the young couple here, in the Twin Cities. Sunday brunch at 10 a.m. seems terribly early for those who treasure the rare day where no schedule is imposed by work. But they never complain, never indicate anything but delight in spending these precious few free hours together with their farmette visitor.

And so we leave their most special home, a married couple's home...






...for one last brunch together, this one at Heyday...






And of course, I take out the camera -- how can I not? Here is their patient realization that I am again aiming for a photo...






...and here's where they give me that precious pose, which is no pose at all, as they really are that happy.






Delicious foods, delicious company and then -- onwards and upwards! To the bus stop.

The bus ride home? Only 20 minutes late -- blame it on the Chicagoans clogging the highway on their end of weekend run from up north Wisconsin, back to the city.

Home now. Just two days later and still, it all looks different. Two days closer to Fall. August sets those thoughts already. Anticipating the next season.

Saturday in the Twin Cities

Early Evening

Did I wear the young ones out today? The apartment is quiet...


 


They planned a day's worth of events and foods and ramblings and now, in the early evening, they're taking a nap upstairs, as if to conserve energy for the rest of my visit! Or is it that their week is long and the play weekend is short and it has to accommodate missed sleep from previous days?


What a full and beautiful day it has been!

From a delicious brunch at the French Hen Cafe (a name with such a good intertwining of two themes that seem to be running through my life right now)...






...to a walk along the grand Mississippi River (the grandest of natural wonders, don't you think? - my girl muses) and then to the dam that creates the pounding waterfall that surely proves her point...
















And, too, we side-step to the Polish Fest, right there, by the river. (So many Poles in the Twin Cities? Who knew!)



(Polish organic farmers)


Of course, it's all about the food here...



(typical fare: potato pancakes, kielbasa, pierogi, stuffed cabbage...)





(paczki -- doughnuts, filled with rose or plum jam)



...and the polka dancing...



(older)





(younger)



...but not only. (What thoughts are meandering through this woman's head, as she sits there in her wreath of flowers and her clothes of red and white?)






We linger for a while...











...then go further into the neighborhood, where my girl and her husband show me a truly Polish bar, a place, they say, where in the evenings, there is more polka dancing and singing too.  
Polish songs? I ask.  
More like 'Moon River'... she tells me, smiling.

We sip a Polish beer...






... then walk even deeper into the neighborhood, pausing at a Polish sausage store...






...where, in fact, you can also pick up (and I do!) Polish sauerkraut and a Polish herbal tea I like (Melysa)...






And that's not the end. We visit a cafe with good, strong coffee ('the Empire') and a delicious peach cake (I'll be baking one on Monday, just you wait!), and then still more: we go to an apple cider distillery ('Sociable Cider Werks'), where you can see the vats and sample the product (so add that to my list of beverage distilleries that I have now visited)...










...and now my favorite Twin Cities couple is plum tuckered out, but me, I'm so excited about being here and seeing the city through their eyes, that I sit back and take this moment to jot down a few notes and download a few photos, because I know that if I do any of this after dinner, I will be the one dozing off and it will take me one hour to write one sentences (which is what happened last night, hence the ridiculously late posting).


After Dinner

We eat our evening meal as a foursome -- with his mom who happens to be in town right now, at the terrific 112 Eatery. Aside from birthdays and weddings more recently, I never eat out in restaurants in lively configurations these days and so it is especially delightful to indulge in all the foods and accoutrements of a grand dining experience, where it's more than just me, or just Ed and me. 






And now its nearly over -- I'll have a Sunday morning and then puff! -- out I'll go, to become once more a more distant (but always so very eager!) participant in their lives. 
 

between meals

You could say that I am writing this between meals. There was breakfast (ah, how well I remember it!)...




(Is he grinning because he knows he'll get a break from morning photos for two days?)

And a lovely walk through the farmette yard, appreciating the strong show of annuals, especially now, in the full heat of August (note the expanding nasturtium and of course the cosmos)...






And then there will be dinner. Greatly anticipated, well planned, delicious sounding, happily reserved dinner, in Minneapolis.

Except, what's this? As I wait in Madison at the parking lot where the bus picks up riders, an email comes in on someone's iPhone from Megabus. Running late.

Geez Louise! Not JUST late. 1 hr. 45 min. late. Of course, if you know Megabus, you'll know that there are no comfortable waiting areas. You're on the curb. It works well, except when the bus is ultra late.

There is a big "I should have known" running through me. Last time I took this bus to the Twin Cities, it was two hours late getting there and four hours late coming back. And it was winter. The curb seemed like a cold and lonely place to wait.

The email notice tells us not to move far. The driver will try to make up some of the lost time. Fine, but it's hot and there is little shade. Some of the people leave. I go to a nearby Arby's with a view toward the stop.

And no sooner do I settle in with my computer and an iced tea than boom! The bus arrives. So not 1 hr. 45 min. late but only 45 min (at this point) late. Me, I'm happy. (My daughter obligingly calls the restaurant yet a third time to change the reservation. I can imagine her sweet voice -- no, not at 10:30 after all... yes, I know you're immensely busy and it's the weekend... now she's coming in not so late, but still late, so we can be there at 9:30...) Less happy will be those people who left the stop for a while.

And now what's this? We're not going to Minneapolis? Oh, we're going to downtown Madison first! Who knew. No wonder this trip takes six hours. Lord.

(This is the time that I think of trains zipping between points on other continents and sigh. We almost got a rail link to Minneapolis. Almost.)

And so the bulk of the post is written between meals. Breakfast, dinner. 'It ends with dinner. At Bar La Grassa, where I eat like a pig and indulge in that feeling of well being that comes when irksome details resolve themselves, as they so often do and life proceeds smoothly, lovingly forward.