Egg Day.

Happy (late) Easter, if you're into that sort of thing.
Or "Egg Day" as my mom adorably said in a text yesterday.
"Egg Day" seemed appropriate, as we did begin our Easter Sunday with very fresh eggs for breakfast, courtesy Easter morning from Lulu & Miranda. Being relatively new chicken owners, every egg is still something to celebrate.
As a half Jewish/half Catholic girl raised in neither faith, I mostly celebrate holidays with food. Not to say that I don't take holidays seriously. I celebrate anything. I am a big fan of any excuse to cook a festive meal, pretty much. Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, whatever, bring on the food.
& the rituals. Christmas trees, menorahs, Easter baskets, Mardi Gras costumes.
Upholding traditions in some form is important to me.
I plan on making chopped liver & matzo ball soup this week in honor of my Gramma Bess & Passover. (I celebrate all the Jewish holidays with those things, they make me think of her the most).
Easter I've always been fond of: Spring is something to celebrate, egg dyeing is a nice ritual, & there's something about the Easter myth that appeals to the drama queen in me. Plus, Easter is a holiday where I have traditionally managed to avoid family obligations & spend the day the way I like, at home cooking a good old fashioned Sunday dinner with the person I love.
This is the first Easter in a long time that I haven't had to work, & our first married Easter.
We spent it exactly as I hoped. We ate a delicious breakfast of our own eggs & bacon while listening to some of the truly excellent Christian Country hits of Randy Travis, then we dug in the new garden all day.
We are attempting to clear by hand an about 60x60 foot square of abandoned & totally overgrown garden space.
On this Easter Sunday we tilled two new 45'x4' beds & planted sugar snap peas, yellow beans, French Breakfast & Easter egg radishes, golden beets, & blue potatoes, then dug a cold frame to harden off the kale & Kohlrabi & broccoli & cauliflower seedlings we have started indoors.
I'm really getting to know that pitchfork. I'm pretty proud of the calluses I've gotten on my palms, these last few weeks.
Then we cleaned the chicken coop (yay farm chores!) & hung out laundry on the line (I love finally being able to have a clothesline here!) & other weekends tasks, trash, sweeping, dishes, etc.
So we totally deserved the completely indulgent Easter dinner we had.

Egg Day Dinner 2012.

 Roast Duck marinated overnight in wine, garlic, sage, rosemary, chili peppers, olive oil, & salt & pepper. 
We bought the duck on a Friday night as a weekend impulse & grilled the legs that night, served with curried rice & broccoli. Then marinated the rest of it over Saturday night & roasted it Sunday.
Owen's famous Cheesy Bacon Mashed Potatoes.
I swear that man is insane. One pound of bacon, both ricotta & fresh mozzarella, & 1/2 & 1/2. Into mashed potatoes. I love him.
With some leftover Kale Pesto because I like to eat a green thing & I'm still on the Kale Pesto kick.
Topped with, of course, Duck Gravy.  Huge amounts of Duck Gravy.
God damn I'm glad a married a man whose good with gravy. 
My leftovers for lunch at work were kind of insane. Yeah, I'm just eating my roast duck & cheesy bacon mashed potatoes & duck gravy over here, don't mind me.
I went to bed completely exhausted & satisfied last night. Good food, seeds planted, house & coop clean. 
Right now I'm making a soup from the duck stock. Fridge soup, don't you know it!
I have a huge pile of seeds on hold I'm gonna buy at work tomorrow. There is a whole cleared bed we haven't even touched yet.
I don't mean to always be all Pollyanna on y'all the time here, but mostly, stuff's good. I don't think we have anything real to complain about.
I guess somewhere along the line I've turned into a positive thinker. Or I'm just happy.

These (Mildly) Difficult Modern Times.

It's been a rather exhausting couple of weeks here at EnD headquarters, i.e. a messy apartment in Northampton. Tons o' work stress, money stress, car stress etc. Blah. I've actually found myself absolutely too tired & cranky to even feel like cooking recently (very unlike me). I miss the garden. I hate when it gets dark at five. I'm sick of every single expense, like toilet paper & toothpaste,  for crying out loud, being a huge deal. I'm sick of not being allowed to get sick or miss any work for any reason because I earn our only income. I'm sick of doing all the cleaning because no one else cares. I don't want to get up at 6am while everyone is sleeping & still come home in the almost dark.
Whine whine whine. Not real problems, I know.
Still, sometimes I feel like maybe it would be cool to not be the one responsible for everyone's survival. I want to call out of work & go to the mall & buy fancy eyeshadow at Sephora & 20 cute dresses at Forever 21.
Sigh. Poor me, I know, I'm stupid. I have no real problems, &
I do have this.

11.4.2011: Dog Cat Husband.

So I guess that although we are pretty broke, my job is pushing me to the limit of reasonable tolerance right now, & the house is really dirty, I get to have this sweet family. & last night I made a really basic chicken & potato curry & felt a little more like myself. Cooking heals many wounds. Note to self: when depressed, purchase some inexpensive but still luxury cooking item (in this case, short grain brown rice & chicken thighs). Then cook dinner. Possibly listen to the Mountain Goats even though my husband hates them. Repeat.
I look forward to Thanksgiving. & I've seen some mad crazy gorgeous sunsets en route to work lately, so I guess that's also something.

Bacon Honeymoon (or bacon makes a good thing even better).

You know. It's always all about bacon around here. Even on my honeymoon, apparently.
We received, at least for us, a very fitting wedding present, which was the use of a beautiful house in a breathtaking setting in which we could spend a week with just us & our sweet hound dog. We have never lived together without at least two & sometimes four roommates. Alone time is very valuable to us. We love to cook, we love hiking & mountains, & therefore being out in the woods with a fabulous kitchen at our disposal & a fireplace & a mountain in the backyard was pretty much perfect (thanks deb & cate!).

September 2011: The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich + Gift Lasagna. 

Some people would take their wedding cash & go out to eat, but we didn't. We were really excited about being alone in our own (temporary) house for once. Our own house is our biggest dream right now. so, yeah, cooking by ourselves! ! ! That said, we hate to waste food, so we didn't go crazy grocery shopping. Basically, we started with wedding leftovers (onions, potatoes, butternut squash, crackers, cheese, eggs, & butter) & we locally purchased really good bacon, a steak, broccoli, & bagels.
Two themes immediate emerged: the need for a serious breakfast if you begin every day hiking up a mountain with your dog, & lasagna, which a very sweet wedding guest (thanks jim!) brought us for "the cabin." (it really wasn't a cabin, it was a gorgeous six bedroom redone farmhouse that even Martha would be jealous of.)
So we, discovered bacon, parmesan, & onions on a bagels is a seriously kickass breakfast sandwich.
I consider a good breakfast sandwich a life staple. Eggs & meat & cheese on a bagel please me. 
& although we didn't actually want to bring the lasagna with us (all we wanted to do was cook) there was definitely a night (after a long adventure in New Hampshire auto mechanics & pouring rain) that we were very content to curl up by the fire & reheat that thing. Obviously, we were unable to resist making it a lot better with additional cheese, broccoli, ample garlic, & of course bacon. I really can't totally not cook.
So, yeah, our honeymoon, bacon, mountains, dogs. That happened.
Oh, did you hear we in Western Massachusetts had a serious snowstorm before Halloween & the power went out everywhere for days & days? Next: EnD cooks breakfast sandwiches on a propane burner in the snowy driveway. True story.

Honeymoon: Wine & Cheese & Love & Gorgeousness.

Greetings, y'all. Happy Fall, officially the favorite season here at EnD. Fall is the season of cooking, so hopefully, as promised, I will get back on the drawing horse & show you some of mine. Starting with this quick glimpse from my fall.

9.26.2011: Jackson, New Hampshire, First Night Of Our Honeymoon.

Oh yeah, we got married.
Turns out planning & having a wedding is a lot of work, if you are into making everything by hand like us, & Hurricane Sunday was the last time I picked up my sketchbook until it was all over. Our wedding was like something beyond our wildest dreams, & maybe someday I'll process it enough to make some art about it.
But for now, a moment from the first night of our honeymoon in Jackson, New Hampshire, sitting outside in the last sunlight of a perfect late September New England afternoon, listening to the brook running behind the incredible house where we were staying & the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.
We drove all day from Cape Cod to the White Mountains, unpacked the car & went straight to the terrace where we enjoyed some of our fine wedding presents: a really good bottle of New Zealand Marlbourgh Sauvingon Blanc (actually that was a birthday present-my birthday was the day before our wedding) & an assortment of cheese from Murrry's (A cooler of cheese! what a wedding present!)& leftover crackers from the reception.
We both got out of the car & said at the same time: "Let's sit outside with drinks & snacks!" We have a terrible yard here in Noho. Up there on our list for a future idea house is a nice place to sit outside in the evening & talk & have a glass of wine & read & or draw or whatever.  My favorite Cape Cod meals all take place on the deck over looking the lake & I want that for myself someday.
I guess that's why I keep holding on to this blog, even though I terribly neglect it mostly & the general idea of drawing my meals, even though I really have no time & I feel guilty about doing this with it sometimes: it preserves beautiful moments like that one: Wine & cheese, an amazingly breathaking place, a brand new husband, & a hound dog tied to a bench going crazy with the joy of all the new wild New Hampshire smells.
Well, I'll try to spend more time on this blog. At least finish the wedding story. There was an abundance of my favorite things: good food, family, friends, wine, beaches, & of course dogs. Thanksgiving is coming up & obviously that is the sacred holiday of EnD. In fact, last year we spent Thanksgiving in the same house where we spent our honeymoon, & I just found those unfinished drawings this morning.
But right now my husband (amazing!) is cooking me a chicken pot pie in our kitchen, & I'm gonna go draw him do it.