I truly love where I live—Quincy, my little town with its white wedding-cake houses and billowing pink and purple azalea gardens. When I take walks, I go crazy for the old brick garden walls and the leaded glass windows, the deep porches and silvery, rusty …
This weekend we did most of our spring vegetable planting. Rob planted 17 tomato plants in brightly colored cages. He planted four Romas, one Arkansas Traveler, one Japanese Black Trifele, one Sweet Baby Girl, one Park’s Whopper, one Red Grape, one Yellow Pear, one Red Brandywine …
A few weeks ago, Rob made up this delicious, healthy kale stew so we could use up our bounty of greens in the garden. Today we picked almost seven pounds of collards, so we used collards instead of kale in our enormous pot of stew.
Winter Kale Stew
Ingredients:
Olive oil
1 large onion
4 to 6 cloves garlic
3 large potatoes
2 to 3 medium sweet potatoes
6 carrots (about 12 ounces)
Salt to taste
Pepper
Paprika
Basil
Cayenne pepper
12 ounces kale or collards (or mix of both)
2 cups water
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
2 cups cooked lentils
1 can red kidney beans
4 bay leaves
Directions:
Chop vegetables. In a large pot, saute onion and garlic in olive oil. Add potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, salt, and spices and sweat (covered) for 10 to 15 minutes. Add kale and collards. Sweat covered for an additional 10 minutes (or until the carrots and potatoes are tender). Add water, tomatoes, tomato sauce, lentils, kidney beans, and bay leaves. Cook covered on medium-low for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
Here are some pictures I took of the house the other day: In the lower left side of the cabinet, you can see our latest decoy, an eider with a mussel in its beak. I really like that little painted chair. That’s June Baxter on …
Our other cats are trying to make us feel better about Jammer. They’re trying to distract us with their wrestling matches and enjoyment of sunbeams and such. Carl is keeping us busy, making sure we’re on track. …
Last Sunday when Jammer was still with us, when he was still resting in his little bed next to my desk in the Little House, we harvested a couple of fine cabbages, glittering with raindrops, and we made a cabbage salad. We’d check on him, maybe brush him (softly), maybe try to feed him some baby food, and then we’d do some more cabbage-chopping, in tears. The resulting salad was strangely, sadly delicious–sweet and salty and crunchy. We didn’t know Jammer was going to die, so we made a cabbage salad. We didn’t know what else to do, so we made a cabbage salad. And now it’s the same way, now that he’s dead: I don’t know what to do, so I’m writing about making a cabbage salad.
Cabbage Salad with Ramen Noodles
Ingredients:
1 large head cabbage, chopped
5 green onions, chopped
2 carrots, shredded
2 pkg. Ramen noodles (just the noodles, not the flavor packs)
½ cup sunflower seeds
½ cup slivered almonds
½ cup vegan butter
Dressing:
1 cup canola oil
2 Tbls soy sauce
1 cup sugar
½ cup apple cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
Directions:
Break up the Ramen noodles. Brown the noodles, sunflower seeds, and almonds in butter and set aside.
In a large bowl, toss noodles, sunflower seeds, almonds, cabbage, onions, and carrots together.
Combine dressing ingredients. Toss into salad.
I thought I’d post some candid shots of Jammer, most of them taken by Rob, just so I could remember and think about how funny Jammer was and how he liked to spend his days. He liked to “take the air,” as we used to …
Jammer, great Jammer, died on Monday morning. He was almost 17. After he died, Rob and I spent the day talking about him and looking at pictures of him. I found his kitten pictures, and I said, “See, he always had sad puppy eyes, from the …
