Grace + Gratitude

Last weekend, Keith and I drove to Madison, a town in southern Indiana, to participate in the "Borderlands" reading project. 

As we drove further south, we grew nearer to Appalachia...

...which meant more hills!

The town of Madison has a lot of historic buildings that are actually pretty lovely. This is the Ohio Theatre, where the Borderlands reading took place. This reading brought together poets from both sides of the Indiana/Kentucky border. 

Then, Thanksgiving! Keith and I headed to my family's home in Columbus. We started our day, though, with Linda Leonard's Cranberry Nut Bread, which arrived in a care package just before we left Bloomington. She learned to make this bread in her 8th grade Home Ec class, and has baked it every Thanksgiving since. It is so good. And a new Thanksgiving tradition for me! 

On Thanksgiving day, it's a tradition in my family for my dad, brothers, and their friends from the neighborhood to head to the park for the annual pre-dinner "Turkey Bowl." Lily and I went along, too. This year, Lily was big enough to join the game. She really got the "tackle" part down:

Post-game wipeout

Two human beings I am unspeakably grateful for. 

And two more. :)

Pushcart Nom + Pie

Hi, family and friends! I don't know who is actually still reading these posts, but if you are, that's really sweet of you. There's been a lot going on around here, lately. After a week of super long (like, seventeen hour) workdays and extra commutes to and from Indy, Keith was in need of some good news. That good news came in the form of a Pushcart nomination!

November sunrise

I, on the other hand, have been suffering from severe writer's block. I think this is due in some part to a class I'm taking this semester called "Writing the Earth." The class, taught by Ross Gay (my mentor and one of the most wonderful people in existence), has been, at turns, incredibly empowering and totally paralyzing. It has completely opened my eyes to the depth and severity of the damage we've done to our world. It has also challenged me to face this mess with an active hope.  

  

While I wait out this writer's block, I've been trying to keep busy with other things. So, when I'm not in the office, I've been listening this podcast, reading a lot about agriculture, farming, deep ecology, and environmental stewardship, and trying to incorporate more sustainable practices in our day-to-day lives.

Having the CSA has been a great way to eat locally and in season.

Keith and Joe Betz picking up our CSA

 The CSA has also been challenging us to learn to cook different kinds of things. 

Turnips, for example, were uncharted territory for us. What do you do with twenty of them?

After tasting one just steamed and finding it to be pretty bland, I was inspired by a recipe I read online. 


So I boiled them together with the bag of red skin potatoes we also got in our CSA haul...

 ...and then added some onion and garlic and rosemary from Keith's rosemary plant (which has potential to be our Christmas tree this year) and smashed them all together. It turned out to be not bad at all. 

Okay, but what do you do with three pecks of apples?

One thing we did was make apple butter in the slow-cooker. 

And learn to can.

 I also made my first-ever pie!

Keith was kind enough to be my test kitchen...

And Tubbs wished he could've been.

For the next post: I'll work on doing a better job of taking non-food and non-cat related photos. Promise!  

We hope you're all keeping warm and happy. Write when you can. 

Love,

Jen

Apples + Figs

Hey family and loved peeps,

Now that Jen has shown me how to work this bloggy blog, this will be the first of my many enlightening and groundbreaking posts about random things that we're doing. Strap in. Hold on to your butts. It's about to get exciting.

Last weekend, Jen and I went to the Bloomington Community Orchard to press some cider.

I don't know who that kid performing child labor is, but the guy standing next to him is "Big" Joe Betz, my friend and spouse of Megan Betz (also my friend), who writes beautiful words over at this blog. (Check it out if you like food and good people who write wise things).

 

I don't think I quite realized how many apples are squeezed into a glass. We must've went through seven dozen batches which lead to this:

 

Then we found a fig (Picture taken after it was bitten in half. We did not find it already bitten in half. That'd be gross.)

 

The fig came from a fig tree, which shouldn't be growing in Indiana, but the Bloomington Community Orchard is a magical place where the impossible happens...

Like little kids play in strawberry patches while some guy is strumming some Dylan on a steel guitar...

 

And where people have blue hair and fox-face hats...

And where Jen makes this face...

Thanks for reading. More good things to come along soon.

Best,

Keith