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

Chapbooks + Cornbread

So much to be excited about this week! I've listed the highlights below.

1. Keith's chapbook has been selected by YesYesBooks for publication! Click on the link; their website is incredible and their books are beautiful. More about this to come.

2. We celebrated by taking a drive through Brown County and spending a few hours in the town of Nashville, Indiana. Lots of rustic charm, as evidenced below.

3. Figuring out what to do with our CSA goods. Here are a few of the results:

Cornbread from Fields of Agape cornmeal. 

Sweet potato hummus (tastes more savory than sweet). Tahini and a touch of olive oil makes it creamy. 

One of the things we had to figure out how to use was a head of cabbage. I was wary about how this crock pot cabbage soup would turn out, but it was not shabby. I think this might've had something to do with the Herbs de Provence I had leftover from making ratatouille with Megan Betz's recipe (somehow mine did not turn out as good as her's).

4. Starting to quilt. I've wanted to forever, and finally bought the materials. Now I just need to find a sewing machine. 

  

5. Watching The Wonder Years. 

6. My mom and her friend Sue coming to visit! We went to lunch at Runcible, then showed them Keith's soul--that is, the orchard, where we went again today for:

7. Cider fest! Keith will be sharing more about this later. But here's a preview for you:

Good try, Keith. Maybe next year!

Al Green + Green Tomatoes

So, it occurred it me today that "togethered" sounds like "tethered," and when I mentioned this to Keith he was like, "Yeah, that's what I thought we were going for." Oh dear. 

I realize we're already verging on solipsism here, so the we renamed our blog, ___________. (Suggestions?) 

Last week, we got some great stuff in Week Two of our Core Farms CSA. We used the squash and zucchini to make stuffed portobello mushrooms, which turned out to be pretty decent. 

Keith took a photo: 

Friday was Keith's turn to cook. We'd done a pretty great job of using all our produce, but we were left with a bunch of green tomatoes. What can you do with green tomatoes, except fry them? Neither of us had ever experienced a fried green tomato (though I did see a movie with Kathy Bates I think?)

Green tomatoes sliced, dipped in two eggs, and tossed in breadcrumbs.

Also, we listened to Al Green:

Saturday was grey outside, but that made the trees along the way to pick up Week 3 of our CSA look even more magnificent.

One of the things we got in our Week Three roundup: cornmeal from Fields of Agape, a local sustainable cooperative farm. Stay tuned!

Raffum.