Yep, it's been nearly a month and a half since my last post! I haven't exactly been feeling witty these days as a big, black oily cloud has been hovering over my head ever since that rig went down and the blue, placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico started filling up with toxic sludge! I find myself waking in the middle of the night haunted by an endless amorphous dark monster making its way through the murky depths, choking fish, poisoning sea birds, and sending turtles and dolphins washed-up lifeless on greasy beaches soiled as far as the eye can see! The whole catastrophe makes me feel angry and sad and grossed out and profoundly guilty. I can't help but acknowledge my own culpability in the whole horrifying mess—I drive, I wear rubber shoes, I'm typing these very words on a laptop computer encased in plastic, and despite my localvore efforts, so much of my food travels thousands of petroleum-propelled miles to get to my plate. Yet I am essentially helpless—a slave to a lifestyle dependent upon the consistent rape, pillage, choking, and sucking dry of this only Earth.
I will say that May was an exceptionally busy month. It started off with Charles' birthday which unfortunately coincided with the annual Roving Garden Party for my local garden club. I was charged with making an apron for a raffle basket as well as some food. I made an adorable tiered fountain of teeny, tiny cupcakes sprinkled w/ edible weedflowers from my yard. Seeing as Charles had no desire to join me on the tour, it was good fortune that his best friend happened to be in town & the two of them spent a happy afternoon drinking Schlitz and shooting the shit. Although I'd meant to make a little birthday cake out of the last glops of cupcake batter, I burned the thing in my frenzy. Nonetheless I managed to cut away the blackened bits and transform the mess into a few pretty parfaits layered with the previous week's strawberry bounty and some buttermilk ice cream which Charles took it upon himself to make. Served up in my Granny Link's pink depression glasses, they made for a perfectly suitable substitute.
Mother's Day weekend saw a visit from my mother in-law. I have to admit I'm pretty lucky to have such a laid-back and funny lady for a mom in-law. I also happen to share with her an unabashed addiction to underpriced vintage crockery. While Martha paid visits to some fancy-schmancy New England antiques shows, we spent most of Saturday bargain hunting at a rummage sale (I scored a full set of super pretty 60s-era Noritake dishes for $7.50—turns out they're worth over $300!), and perusing the dirt mall (a.k.a. the J&J Flea Market) for more goodies (here I walked away with a coupla blueberry bushes and some more herbs for the garden).
The following weekend had me helping out with a neighborhood fundraiser for which I managed to solicit a fat spread of food from local restaurants as well as respectable collection of stuff for the silent auction—and another cupcake fountain was in order. Along the way I managed to churn out a steady stream of freelance articles and I kept insanely busy in the garden—harvesting my tiny strawberries and occasional handfuls of beans, mulching, weeding, lugging watering cans from rain barrels to garden beds and back again and doing the occasional rain dance in the hopes that Mother Nature would relieve me as well as replenish said barrels (and keep my little lily pond full to the brim). By the time we hit the road for our annual extra-long Memorial Day beach weekend at my family's triple-wide in the inland trailer park just south of the Myrtle Beach, it had been a week since our last rain and my fingers were crossed that the skies over home opened up while the sun stayed shining over the Redneck Riviera.
Apparently someone up there was listening as we arrived home that Tuesday evening to a blooming explosion of bounty—Queen Anne's lace, Day Lilies and hydrangeas busted open all over the place and the vines were heavy with fruits. While Martha is just getting her squash seeds in the ground, I've been harvesting a basketful of veggies–kale, beans, tatume squashes, basil, dill, beet greens, sorrel, bok choi, a coupla Early Girl tomatoes, and more cukes than I know what to do with–every other day or so and I manage to make most of at least one meal out of home-grown goodies just about every day. Menus have included cuke soup, kale salad niçoise, squash pesto pasta, and regular green bean sides.
I often wander through my half-dozen little veggie beds, prying back foliage to see what will be up next and think to myself, "Shit, I'm ready for ya—commence to going down!" Then I'm presented with a desperate request to serve up some fried chicken. I inherited my Granny Link's deep cast-iron skillet and have fond memories of her delicious fried chicken (she was a West Virginia native) and I did heed Charles' request for this dish a coupla years back, turning again to Saveur's step-by-step illustrated instructions. Anyone who's ever made it will agree with me that it's a messy, time-consuming pain in the ass—why should I endure this when there's a Popeye's just a block and a half from our house? I'm not one to cave in to fast food, but this was the sensible choice. The chicken was served up with a selection of homemade sides that included homegrown green beans, slaw made from homegrown bok choi and locally grown carrots, and locally grown potatoes mashed with home made locally grown yogurt. And the fact that the chicken was picked up from the drive-thru by bicycle while on my way home from an oil spill vigil hopefully cancelled out any remaining bad food karma
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