halloumi and veg

Once upon a time, and I know I've told you this story before - but this time it has a different ending, I promise!- I was a vegetarian.

 

A terrible vegetarian, yes, the kind who ate a lot of TVP in things because I didn't know how to cook without meant so I just switched all meat for the tasteless little grains, but still, a vegetarian. And Will was not. Poor Will, I knew it was true love when a Texas boy who loved his steak and BBQ and potatoes cooked in pig fat could live with terrible vegetarian me. I was a (terrible) vegetarian through most of college, on through grad school and the first year of our marriage, sometimes to lesser degrees (I still ate meat on occasion) until about halfway though my pregnancy with Briton when, Phoebe-like I came home one day crying for ribs. CRYING for them. I think that, and not our wedding day or the births of our children, may have been the happiest day of Will's life. Seriously.

In the years since (10!) I've toyed with the idea of being a vegetarian again. Not specifically because I have problems with meat-I don't find it gross. But I do find the way most meat is produced to be gross - so I'd rather eat no meat, or less meat but good meat. However much I've thought about it, though,  it just hasn't always been in the cards, mostly because I've been married for 12 years to a committed carnivore.

So (and here comes the new ending) you'll imagine my shock when a few months ago, Will came home from work and said that he wanted to try being a vegetarian. Or more precisely, a sort of vegetarian. Like a - we can eat meat while we're out, but not really cook it at home - vegetarian.

I did a little dance, you guys. Right there in the kitchen.

This time around I'm trying to be a better sort-of-vegetarian cook. Trying to explore interesting foods that aren't missing meat because they don't need it.My favorite cookbook is River Cottage Veg, both for recipes and for philosophy. It's written by a self proclaimed meat lover and I like that his attitude is similar to mine.  Very occasionally I buy meat to cook, but generally only really good, local stuff. Like chicken sausage for cassoulet or the occasional package of bacon for breakfast. But mostly, we're vegetarian now.

Which brings us to dinner. And Halloumi. If you've never had Halloumi, run to your nearest specialty food store and pay whatever ridiculous amount they want for it, then come home and fry it up. Seriously. It's like the Nutella of cheese. So good, so weird, so addictive. My only complaint is that it comes in too small a package, and buying two would be so wrong. Both price wise and calorie wise.

I used to fry up Halloumi slices with red peppers and sausages, but this time I roasted up a bunch of veggies over the course of the afternoon. That sounds time consuming but it was more of a convenience thing. Will hates the smell of cooking Brussels sprouts so I always cook them while he's out. (I know, it's weird. He also dislikes onions and doesn't care for....garlic. I almost can't even say that without fainting) And I cooked the mushrooms on my handy dandy electric griddle (have I told you guys how much I love that thing? And my mom for buying it for me? Well, I do. And it's awesome for cooking mushrooms and Halloumi) And then the rest went in the oven closer to dinner, with the first cooked veg to be tossed in at the end. That way everything didn't smell like Brussels sprouts and it was all cooked and ready at dinner.

Yum. Really. YUM. Not pretty maybe. But definitely yummy. And who needs meat? Not with this. Crusty bread, yes. Red wine, of course. Meat? Eh, no thanks.

By the way. Meat boy is now ordering vegan sandwiches when he goes out to lunch at work. Which is really funny if you know the story of Will and the Vegan Muffin.

*And by the way, in case you are wondering, the kids are pretty much on board with this. Evelyn, although I didn't realize it until recently, is basically a natural vegetarian. The only meats she has ever eaten not under duress are chicken drumsticks and bacon. But she could do without just as happily. Even as a baby she wouldn't eat food with meat in it. Go figure. Briton misses his meat, hence the bacon for breakfast at times. But he get's meat in school where, as I've mentioned, they have an absolutely bad ass lunch program. He told me last night he was ok with us being vegetarian at home, but he was still going to eat meat if that was ok with us. Which it is.
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dusting

All weekend it has threatened to snow. Flakes floating around but not landing, temperatures hovering above and then below and then above freezing. But this morning we woke up to a light dusting. Not enough, unfortunately if you talk to Briton, for a snowman, but a first snow nonetheless. And exciting.

This weekend we put snow markers up along the driveway of our own making. We'll probably end up with the standard orange and reflective variety as well. We saw something similar as an art installation in Burlington and loved them. Just chunks of wood cut into houses and mounted on re-bar, but fun. We still have a few more to finish so that the plow knows where to go (plow!).

So the snow tires are on the car, the markers are in, the snow boots are at the ready in the mudroom and the wood stove is cranking all day and night. Winter, winter. Here we go.

after the rain

We took a drive the first chance we got, after the rain (and it did rain and rain). The long way around between the two villages. Up past the barns. A long loop through the fields.

This weekend is our first soccer free one since August. Bliss (not that I don't love watching my kids play soccer but oh, to have a Saturday that does not require being somewhere early, it seems almost like we're playing hookey.

So instead we'll sleep in (hahahaha, not really) and read by the fire and play games and rake leaves and put back everything we took down for the Hurricane. Which all sounds...ahhh, nice.

Wishing you a lovely, restful weekend out there.

pretty pile

Just in the nick of time, before Sandy dumped buckets on us, turning our little creek into something much more rushing, we got the last two cords of our wood stacked up for the winter. And a pretty stack it is too. In fact, if I were a little but more crazy, I'd say we should re-stack the wood in our shed like that so that we could have two. (But I'm not that little bit more crazy, because that would be...crazy)

The interesting thing about this style of stacking is that, while it seems like it would take longer than your traditional row stack, it's actually pretty darn fast. We stacked most of the two cords in a few hours where last time it took us a couple of days of stacking for the same amount. It could be that we're just getting faster, but I think it's because you really only stack the outside. Some of the directions we read had the inside stacked upright neatly, but others said you can just toss it in, and that's the route we went with.

We started by laying logs that were roughly the same size around in a circle. I stuck an old ski pole in the center and tied a three foot long rope to it so that the circle was pretty close to perfectly round.

Once that was down we stacked the first round, bark down, propped up along that bottom circle so that they are leaning in. This is the trick to the stability of this kind of stack, as long as the logs are tilted in, if they slide or fall a little, they just fall in on themselves, making it more sturdy. When you have a few rounds down, you fill the center up. As I said, we mostly just tossed them in, although we did check now and then to make sure the gaps were filled.

Round and round, with the bark down as much as possible, until the logs are laying flat instead of tilting in.

At this point we added a whole ring similar to that first row because our logs went flat all at the same time, but in some of the pictures I've seen, you just prop up a new row whenever you need to. As we worked up, we brought the sides in just slightly to create a solid dome.  (Sorry for the blurry pictures, it was getting dark at this point. Best I have)

When we got the top (ok, when Will got to the top, I was off at play rehearsal with the kids by then, the bark needs to be up to help shed the rain.

So there you go, just in case you ever need to stack a holzmiete. (Hey, you never know)

all well

The wind is still a-blowin and the rain is still a-pourin, but we seem to have escaped the worst of the storm here. I hope everyone out there is safe and sound on this morning after the storm!

battened

And also, keep safe, East Coasters. We are as battened down as we can be, I think. Everything loose in the yard is tucked safely inside, windows are locked shut, water jugs and pots and coolers and buckets are filled so that we will have plenty if (when) the power fails and we have to stop using our well. We have food and flashlights and blankets and candles and board games.

This weekend we spent a few hours helping to sandbag some of the businesses along the river, especially those that were hammered terribly by Irene and have only just (one of them two weeks ago) opened again after more than a year of renovation. The kids helped out which was...helpful. Beware of children wielding long handled shovels was the main takeaway message from that experience.

Keep dry and safe and indoors friends.

of first dances

On Friday, despite coming home earlier in the day with a low grade fever and a distinct sluggishness, Briton went to his very first dance. I spent a good part of the day trying to decide what would make me a less terrible parent. Allowing my ever-so-slightly ill son to attend a dance with his classmates, all of whom he has, no doubt, already infected with...whatever he had. Or NOT letting my ever-so-slightly sick son attend a dance with his classmates where he might infect them with...whatever he had. In the end, we let him go. In part because he really was feeling better, but also because I remember, oh so clearly, my first dance. And I'm 100% sure that I would have wanted to go even if I was on my deathbed. Because first dances, they are important stuff.

My first dance was in sixth grade, so I was around a year older than Briton is now. In fact, since our birthdays fall just shy of two weeks from one another and my first dance was also a Halloween one, I'm pretty sure that he's exactly one year younger than I was. And until today, when I started thinking about first dances, I'd completely forgotten that that dance, that night, I had my first kiss. A nose bumping, cheek blushing, stolen peck behind the chairs we were supposed to be sacking. Embarrassing and awkward, as all first kisses are required by law to be. I remember that the boy in question was named Jake and that he was the absolute opposite of the type of boy I thought I would find myself with, if ever I were to find myself with a boy who I wanted to kiss. He did not read piles of books, or play secretly with the dolls hidden in the closet (at least I assume he didn't have dolls in the closet, but I never went to his house, so, you know, he could have done). He didn't play in the orchestra and wasn't in honors math and English. He wasn't, in other words, like me at all. He was, I thought at the time, "bad". Bad being relative when you are are eleven. Bad, meaning he didn't always always do all of his homework and the extra credit as well. Bad, because I couldn't even fathom disobeying like that. I thought I was being daring, romantic, to have a "bad" boy kiss me.

It didn't last long, my romance with the bad boy. I can't actually remember breaking up, or who did it, although I suspect it was him because I do remember crying buckets. But then, I always cried buckets, no matter who did the breaking up. Because I was a drama queen  and we drama queens like to deliver us some drama dontcha know? And after that there were other boys that I liked. Other boys who gave me awkward kisses. And two years later (yes, when I was 13) I'd meet another "bad" boy who, although I didn't know it at the time, would steal my heart for the long haul .

All of this is to say, there was a dance. And no matter what, my boy wanted to go. And I let him. Because first dances, they are important. They shape your life, just a little, and sometimes a lot. And whether or not this first small romance of Briton's ends in heartbreak and crying (because, ahem, he may have inherited his mother's drama queen genes) or if it just sizzles away, it's the first one. Ready or not, we're here, at that moment.