Our Graduate & Summer Snapshots

Our girl Jamie graduated from high school last week.  The baby.  It was fabulous and exciting and we love experiencing the woman she is becoming!

Our neighbors have a new member of the family.  A tiny pig named Lily.  Pierre was mystified.

John and I celebrated our 23rd wedding Anniversary.  It was a special day of enjoying each others company and our family.  We also enjoyed a splash of his gift from me :)

The Main Street Farmers market in a neighboring town is my very favorite!  Turkey eggs, great food, honey, cool plants, you name it!  The best part of this week's market was introducing our college intern, Mara, at The Boulevard Market, to the pleasures of a local Farmers Market!  

I've had a collection of copper pans for years and never used them for cooking.  Why?  Because I'm an idiot!  Drug them out, cleaned them up....using them and enjoying every minute (even just to boil eggs)!!

Only 7 days until our graduation party...I am officially over the edge.  However, the place is looking good, I've got a new bottle of motrin, and we are starting a whole new chapter in our family!

Recipes?  Ummm....here's what we've been eating for supper these days.  Delicious but not too exciting.

 
New York Pumpernickel bagels with cream cheese and tomatoes.

Abundance...

The Boulevard Market recently started a Culinary Book Club and the last book was a selection by MFK Fisher, "How to Cook a Wolf".  A small book, written in the 1930's, during food shortages, ration cards and blackouts with the basic premise of how to eat well in extremely tough times.  I loved the fact that "MFK" kept her sense of humor, sense of self and made the most unusual dishes and seemed to enjoy every minute of cooking and eating them!  The book, and the fact it's almost Thanksgiving, really got me thinking about abundance & gratitude.  MFK's approach to using every bit of  a steer or hog or chicken and more mirror my own upbringing on the farm.  My family NEVER threw food away, it went to the chickens(to this day!!!) or back in the fridge for leftovers.  Strange pieces like tongue etc. we eaten as well.  I believe that is where I got my love for pates, marrow bones and the like.  I am thankful that my mother and grandmothers were great cooks!!!

After reading this book, I am quite ashamed at the waste of food that goes on in my home.

I have also vowed to be more appreciative for the sheer abundance in my life.  The people, the land, the freedoms, the animals, the food and all of the other "things" but also intangibles like family values, memories, time and free will.  To think "thank you" instead of "I wish" to say "I appreciate" instead of "I want"...it's written in dozens of books and preached from many pulpits, yet I forget when I'm caught up in the daily tasks of life.  For me, it begins today...

(photo: Jamie Aylward's ceramic art project on display at Tecumseh High School..."Cheese, Please!")