3/5-17/10 - While you were out....

I really suck at this blogging thing—it's been nearly two weeks since my last entry! Not that I haven't been busy, and actually Martha might be right approving of my erstwhile pursuits. Though she's been engrossed with duties such as deep-cleaning her kitchen appliances (I'm betting this task was thrust upon minions?), cleaning stables (again, minions?), fertilizing & edging the lawns (still more minions?), vacuuming upholstery & curtains (ditto), shopping for art & antiques at fancy NYC shows (she could probably handle this one, though I bet minions were in tow to fend off the paparazzi), and flying to LA and back, I did manage to clear out & plant one garden bed w/greens & root veggies, clear out another bed & lay down black plastic to kill off weed seeds, start my seedlings, clear a nasty patch of privet & replant with native beautyberry bushes, pull the last straggling specimens of lariope from my patio flower/herb garden, take some lovely shots of spring blooms around the yard, cook quite a few Martha-inspired meals, and travel to Tallahassee & back to meet my brand-new nephew in-law, Max (and present him with his own Aunt Melissa-made baby quilt).

Still tackling recipes from last month's foodcentric issue, I served up an easy dinner of croque monsieur sandwiches with a side salad one night (translation: Mr. Crunchy) and whipped up some arroz con pollo on another (this was really tasty but a bit flat, It coulda used a little brightening up with thyme & fresh parsley & a dash of paprika for heat). I also delved into my backup supply of frost-discount local farm carrots and some freezer-burnt broccoli and knocked out a quickie veggie/venison stroganoff one night (in an effort to put a dent in the massive supply of ground Bambi in our freezer). Once upon a time, I toyed with various degrees of vegetarianism for about 12 years. Veggie stroganoff was one of my favorite meals (the chewy creamy tangy combo of sauteed mushrooms, worcestershire, wine, & sour cream makes up for any missing meat—though in these frugal d-i-y obsessed days, I sub homemade yogurt for sour cream). It must've made me nostalgic, because just a couple nights later I set my heart on another favorite vegetarian meal, the Golden Bowl. This is the signature dish of The Grit, a much-adored local vegetarian restaurant. It's basically rice topped w/ soy sauce-sauteed veggies, topped w/ savory twice-sauteed yeast-sprinkled tofu cubes, topped w/ yeast gravy. The Grit cookbook reveals the secret formula for the tofu, but it takes a special touch to pull it off anywhere close to Grit good—Charles declared it almost indistinguishable from the real deal.

Now that Spring has finally decided to show herself a bit, I'm having a hard time staying inside during daylight hours to do stuff like clean my house or blog, much less get around to mending clothes, making curtains, and covering couch cushions. I've been spending every possible sunny afternoon on my hands & knees elbow deep in the red earth of Georgia. I'm not one to wear gardening gloves and my orange-stained fingernails and cracked, calloused hands would definitely cause Rhett Butler to scoff—I wear them like a badge of honor! It is kinda a pain in the ass though when I'm doing something delicate like darning a sweater or sewing a button on a silky flowy thingy and my sandpapery fingers keep catching & scratching the fibers. But when I break a nail, I need only turn to the other hand for built-in file!

In the meantime, daffodils of every variety are all abloom and the yard weeds have exploded into a carpet of tiny flowers—this is when I know winter is truly behind us. Say what you will about daffodils & crocuses as the harbingers of the season, those lyin' ass flowers are known to show their sunny faces well before the final snowstorm—shit, in these parts they tend to be up & at 'em around Christmastime! I'm more prone to celebrate the miniscule little blossoms of stuff like henbit, chickweed, pepper cress, violets, and a dozen other adorable little mystery weeds that appear scattershot across the lawn. Unfortunately so many people go to great measures to eradicate these precious little specimens. I won't let Charles near the mower 'til the purply haze of henbit cloud has started to dry up in the near summer sun and the chickweed has long gone to seed. Instead I head out with my camera to photograph the blazing glory. I'm even prone to creep around on hands & knees and collect some of the edible varieties to toss into a salad—this practice won't seem so freaky when the shit goes down!

This is exactly what I did yesterday as I picked through a patch of dock and collected a handful of dandelion greens & violet leaves. Today is St. Patrick's Day and in an effort to acknowledge my ancestors, I always make corned beef and cabbage and colcannon. Though supposedly, corned beef isn't purely Irish. From what I understand, the proper Irish meal is boiled bacon and cabbage (Irish bacon being more akin to what we know as Canadian bacon rather than those fatty pork belly strips we like to fry to a crisp). Apparently the Irish immigrants to America were introduced to the corned beef brisket via their new Jewish immigrant neighbors and adopted it into their traditional dish. As for the colcannon (mashed potatoes and greens), that's pretty damn Irish and I made it just like my peasant kin would've done back in the homeland—with lawn-gathered greens, overwintered onions, wrinkly old potatoes, and a healthy dose of homemade soured cream (in my case, yogurt). And in an effort to make proper use of our Bambi supply, I actually corned a venison roast myself. A three-day cold bath in a seasoned brine made for a perfectly savory little hunk of meat. I even lay a couple strips of American bacon on top as I piled on the cabbage, local farm turnips, and mutant forgotten carrots discovered during spring planting prep.

I'm pretty damn proud of my efforts to acknowledge my ancestors and Charles repeatedly declares corned beef & cabbage to be his favorite meal of the year. Though he was a bit suspicious when I informed him of my plans for a more home-grown version of the dish. The meal was ready and waiting for him when he walked through the door carrying grocery bags full of on-sale corned beef and potato chips—my Irish ancestors are likely spinning in their graves knowing the fate that's fallen upon their precious potato! I pretty much banish crap like potato chips from the house, but apparently our weekend with the in-laws kindled some nostalgia in my husband. At some point he'd polished off a bag of readily available chips and it reawakened his craving for nutritionally vapid crack food—he just couldn't resist when he came across the 2 for 1 sale on the way to the checkout aisle.

In the end, I had the last laugh. He gobbled down a second helping of the venison & veggies & even declared the weed-infested colcannon a hit. And I'm already hatching plans for an appropriate eviction of the potato chips....