we belong to each other

Move along now

mattheweternal — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 10:22:00 -0400

After two years in Anacortes and a brief jaunt in Portland, we’ve landed in New York. A lot has happened. We ran our first marathon, we had chickens, we had a real garden, we closed down that place, we swam in lakes, we had our first snowy winter, we made a new friend… we lived life in the PNW.

Now we have left the woods and moved to the big city. I started working as a New Media Designer for W. W. Norton. We just moved into our apartment, right near Prospect Park. We are excited to share our new life with you. (New Yorkers, let’s hang out.)

25 years alive!

mattheweternal — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:43:00 -0500

I can’t say how much I appreciate this nerd in my life. She is the coolest. We’re sitting in front of the wood stove drinking mini bottles of scotch. All worn out from our long hike. What a day! To celebrate! My favorite person. Happy birthday Laura.

Grow Potatoes

mattheweternal — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:40:00 -0500

Living in a small apartment we dreamed of being able to grow our own food. We read about rooftop and container gardens, but we never quite got there. It seemed a little too complicated. Now that we have a yard, we are able to experiment and grow our own food. It is shockingly easy. Like really very easy. For example, look at these awesome fingerlings:

Do you know the level of skill it took to create these? Absolutely none. We put our seed potatoes in the ground. That’s about it. We don’t really even need to water here. Now we have awesome potatoes. A lot of them. All my favorite kinds.

Growing potatoes has empowered me. No matter where I live next, I will grow them. There is no reason everyone shouldn’t be growing potatoes. They grown well in containers. Do it.

A gift from a friend

mattheweternal — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:39:00 -0400

A gift from a friend

Marathon

mattheweternal — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:17:00 -0400

Yes! The lady and I ran our first marathon on April 11 (hence the animated gif). This was a real feat for the both of us. 26.2 miles. That is really far. About 2 round trips of our old commute to work, but who’s counting.

Back in August or September, somewhere between swimming in the lake every morning, watching Lost, and the general cabin fever associated with living with 12 people, we decided to run a marathon. Seemed like a great way to become more intimate with this landscape and achieve a goal. We needed to sweat more, for everyones sake.

Training As we increased our mileage in training, our world here felt small and close and well… we had a hard time finding long runs. We zig zagged through streets in Anacortes trying to get enough miles. This is a small island. We even resorted to driving to Bellingham (nearly an hour away) where they have longer trails.

The necessity of mechanic rhythms and mantras is much greater than it was with riding bikes. The sound of the wind is much quieter than the sound of your feet, breath, and heart. So much pounding. The biggest lesson so far over the past 7 months: run no matter what. Don’t worry too much about distances or times of days or when you last ran or any other self-inflicted constrictions. Get out and run, every day, and the rest will come. After the first 4 miles, the weird aches work themselves out.

281 and 321

The Race We started out running around this tiny soccer field, graduated to jogging through the misty night air on the high school track, to 6 miles trails along the water, and now we’ve run 26.2 miles. In the early morning, the first 17 miles of the race almost felt like a breeze, even the massive hill at mile 7. My feet hurt and I was tired, but I felt great.

But the last 8 miles, now that is another story. This was the part of the course that the lady and I didn’t drive. We figured it would be mellow, on the water front, flat. Ha! The hills rolled on. If there is one word to describe the Whidbey Island Marathon it would be hills. Lots of them. I did get a lei, though. It seemed that everyone had an iPod. For some reason I thought this would be frowned upon. I thought I would want to commune with nature and the sounds of everyone running. But at mile 22 all I wanted was to listen to some Usher.

After the race we went out with Nick and ate a whole lot of pizza and then I slept for 4 hours. It took about two days to start walking normal again.

Right Now!

mattheweternal — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:30:00 -0400

Right now we are running the Whidbey Island Marathon!

Chick starter

catslikehenning — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:42:00 -0400

There is a box in our living room filled with little silver velociraptors! JK. We wish. We got some baby chicks to be our friends and eat cool bugs and scraps and turn it into golden compost and blue eggs.

Right now they mostly just chrip, chirp, chirp and poop in their water and sleep beak-down like real yogis. Margot thinks they are weird.

We mixed our own chick starter food for the babes because it will make for tastier eggs and healthier chickens. But mostly because it is a huge hassle to go get the food. No store in town sells any and the store bought stuff is sold in tiny bags (and is mostly soy and corn, etc.).

A quick search on good old google dot com and we were on our way to mixing up a nice batch of eats for those nerds.

Here’s the list/recipe:

2 x Corn
3-4 x Wheat
1 x Barley
1 x Oat groats
1 x Shelled sunflower seeds
¹⁄₂ x Lentils
¹⁄₂ x Split peas
1 x Millet
¹⁄₄ x Flax
¹⁄₂ x Seaweed

New Fruits

catslikehenning — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:38:00 -0400

We went to Kauai! One of the major highlights was going to the farmer’s market and getting to meet new fruits. Along with the expected pineapples, papayas, passion fruits, lychees, and coconuts, we tasted:

1. Guavas – SO DELICIOUS! Tart and seedy and grainy like a pear. Matthew’s favorite for sure.

2. Cinnamon kiwis – Looks like the familiar kiwi without fur, but the flavor is surprisingly reminiscent of yeasty bread.

3. Egg fruit – I was the only one who had more than a bite of this one. The texture is spot on to a hard egg yoke. Very dry. Sweet and custardy. Would make a great sub for pumpkin in a pie or curry.

4. Mountain apples – tastes like a ripe yellow plum or pluot, shaped like a tiny oblong apple with thin red skin and white flesh.

5. Cream apples – look a these guys! We were super bummed out that we only got two of these at the market. The flavor is hard to explain, simple and not too sweet. Very pleasant. So much going on with the texture!

Oh man, plum jam

mattheweternal — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:42:00 -0400

A few weeks back we discovered another gift from 1011 12th Street, a plum tree, in our very own yard, laden with delicious tiny plums. Actually no one knew what kind of tree it was for a long time. There were guesses that it was a cherry tree by the looks of the fruit. Someone tasted an early fruit and absolutely didn’t like it. I think the unripened fruit freaked them out. We all avoided the tree. But then a nice man came and was pumped and picked handfuls and shared the goodness with us. Now we know.

So, this week I decided to pick a few buckets before they were gone. Margot hung out with me the whole time. She finds solace in the shade of this tree. She is able to watch birds and remain aloof all day. But she was happy for me to come visit her in her zone.

It took be about an hour to pick and pit. This I did alone. It was fun and therapeutic. Afterward I had a bowl of pitted fruit and stained hands.

That is not to say I did all the work myself though, really I only did the easy part. Laura picked up some jars and sugar at the coop. We had a late night of making some decent tart jam. Exactly as I want jam to always be. Not too sweet, nice and gooey.

It was our first time canning and it was a real experience. I was extremely nervous and intimidated by the process. Laura reassured me and told me that I was a geek for freaking out too much. Turns out, the process is really mellow and now we have seven jars of extremely delicious plum jam. We are saving some for the winter when fresh local fruit is scarce.

I’m really only writing this post to boast. Sorry, but it is so delicious and I think about it constantly, like LOST.

Land Camera to Guemes

catslikehenning — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:02:00 -0400

Five-minute ferry ride to another Island for lunch, tested out one of the land cameras we found in the old darkroom at the DoS.

This morning the lake was warm, our palms stained from thimbleberries. Summer on Fidalgo Island—rules pretty hard.

Lake Swimming

mattheweternal — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:48:00 -0400

Have you ever done this? Man, lake swimming is pretty amazing. Part of growing and living in “SoCal” is the ocean, you don’t have lakes. Lakes are something entirely different. They have a different kind of mystery. The ocean can be brash and noisy, but lakes are more quiet about their secrets, they silently suffer.

Although I miss the salty waves and bobbing around in the swell, I have fallen in love with swimming in lakes. Lakes are something we have an abundance here on beautiful Fidalgo Island. There are like ten. So far, my favorite is Trafton (pictured above). I was told that it is very magical and I believe it. It was made by a meteor. The water is the color of rust. Much darker than any of the other lakes.

But isn’t this an island, you ask, isn’t there ocean surrounding you on all sides? Well, yes, that is true, but it is not like La Jolla Cove with its rhythmic waves and tickling Garibaldi. The ocean is more like a bay—and it is very cold—even for Lynne Cox, maybe. There is one “swimming” beach nearby though, it is waist deep forever:

Exploring

catslikehenning — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:05:00 -0400

With a baguette and coffee in hand, we drove around the perimeter of Fidalgo Island.

Stopped near a private beach to skip stones and touch oceanic travelers.

Turns out I need some practice with the skipping.

Cultured Butter

catslikehenning — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:21:00 -0400

When I was in my sophomore year of college I spent a semester on a experiential learning term in LA—taking classes, interning, and living with a family from a different cultural background. It’s where I met most of my favorite people. For our urban religious movements class, I chose to do my research project on Judaism mostly because of this book: Traditions in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism.

In her book, Lynn Davidman explores the resurgence of Orthodox Judaism among modern American women through the experiences of two distinctly different groups of single Jewish American women as they return to their secular roots at a contemporary Orthodox synagogue (Lincoln Square) in New York City and a Lubovitch Hasidic community (Bais Chana) in St. Paul, Minnesota. The book is comparative throughout and seeks to communicate to a lay audience why traditional religious forms are attractive to contemporary women who have come of age since feminism.

You could, and I will, say that the slow food movement is a parallel battle/journey. From the compost of customs a new plant will rise. Again and again, from structure to unstructured, unstructured into new form. Each phoenix, with it’s own virtues, meets it’s end and is reborn. The post-feminism orthodoxy is new and unable to exist outside of it’s own context; the slow food movement is similarly marked and born from history.

With each ancient practice relearned, we inevitably encounter. The intersection of time and movement is a strange place.

If not for the health benefits, the environment, the farmers, or the pure ecstasy of taste… make things to encounter. You will be better for it.

There is magic in welcoming outsiders and integrating ourselves into the community of The Other, no? Perhaps this is the heart of my attraction to culturing foods. And so, with each opportunity, we welcome microorganisms and are thus transformed by/through our collaboration. Food becomes easier to digest and convert to energy, we become stronger and more resilient—our palates are rewarded by the wonder of tang and earth. We are better for being open.

Looking for water, we sink out roots deeper. We remember that feelings of rootlessness are a vehicle and not a place.

I think it was back in September when we made out first batch and we have never looked back. Store bought butter tastes like nothing and earth balance, while deliciously nutty, just does not compare–where even are all of those ingredients sourced from? when were they harvested? how much energy has gone into producing it? Anyways…

So here’s the drill:

1. Get yourself the best quality cream you can. We usually get 2 bottles/cartons of these little dudes.

2. Pour it into a bowl with some culture. You could use a few spoons of yogurt (even soy or rice or coconut) or kefir, just make sure that it has live cultures.

3. Set it in a warm place for at least 18 hours or until it smells sour. We like to put it on the top of the stove or inside the oven, the pilot light is just the right amount of heat. The cultures like it warm, around 80 degrees.

4. Stick it in the fridge. If you aren’t in the mood to do the whole song and dance of making it just now, you can leave it in the fridge for a day or so, but when you’re ready to get churning let it sit out for an hour or so to reach a higher temp. You want it around the mid 60′s.

5. When you’re ready to get started, gather the following:

a few cups of ice water
a mixer or blender
a container for your buttermilk
containers for your butter
any herbs or spices you want to add into the butter (we like thyme, rosemary, and lavender)

6. Unless you are using a hand blender or mixer, pour your cultured cream into the proper container.

7. Begin mixing.

Eventually it will pass from whipped cream to little curds, like this:

You’re almost there!

What you’re waiting for its for is the separation of the butter and the buttermilk. It will get all sloshy, like this:

8. Pour out the buttermilk, careful not to get any butter in with it (you may want to use a colander or cheesecloth) and save it for something fun like pancakes or irish soda bread or ice cream or a lassi.

9. Here’s where the ice water comes in. Pour some into the bowl with your butter and knead. Pour it out and repeat until the water is clear.

10. If you don’t want to salt or flavor your butter, congratulations! Your all set to move to step 11. However, if you want to add some stuff (recommended), do it now. Mix it in :)

11. It’s time to pack it in the containers. We like to use ramkins and cover them in plastic wrap. If your butter does not reach the top of your container, no worries, just cover it in a bit of water. If you’re not going to use it all within a week, just stick it in the freezer until you’re ready.

Now go make some toast <3

Pineapple Vinegar

catslikehenning — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:18:00 -0400

The idle (cough, laid off) mind is the devil’s workshop, and this devil is into fermentation.

Aching for summer, we folded and bought a pineapple last week. It was the sample, they get us every time with those cubes of fruits and cheese.

Cool thing I remembered to do with the peel: stick it in a jar, cover it with some sugar + water, wait 3 weeks, and then BAM! you’ve got some fancy vinegar.

This is a first for me. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Vinagra de Piña

(from Wild Fermentation)

Timeframe: 3-4 weeks

Ingredients (for 1 quart/1 liter):

1/4 cup sugar

Peel of 1 pineapple

Water

Process:

1. Dissolve sugar in 1 quart water. Chop and add pineapple peel. Cover with cheesecloth to keep flies out, and leave to ferment at room temp.

2. When you notice the liquid darkening, after about a week, strain out the pineapple peels and discard.

3. Ferment the liquid 2-3 weeks more, stirring periodically, and your pineapple vinegar is ready.

P.S. You can do this with ANY fruit scraps! Should you try it, report back with your discoveries.

Goodbye for now

mattheweternal — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:33:00 -0400

We are having a party, let us give you a proper goodbye.

Fire walk with me

catslikehenning — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:03:00 -0400

NEWSFLASH: We’re out, yo.

Come May 1, 2009 we are moving out of the desert and into an old fire station near the forest of the snow owl (see B). Eagles will rest on our shoulders as we pick wild berries and we will learn great truths from the ferny depths. There will be mushrooms and ocean and cool dudes on motorcycles. We may meet this friend. There will most def be lots of musics and “art” and references to these symbols:

Department of Safety! (We are going to live there.)

We must heed the call of the mountains.

GET SOME WHILE YOU CAN. We are.

Where have all the textures gone?

catslikehenning — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:15:00 -0400

We used to think that the “Southern Blend” greens mix from Trader Joe’s was pretty good…

It’s not.

After months without a taste of store-bought greens, let alone BAGGED produce, we did not know what we were in for: my god, we had no idea.

After our 10 day song and dance vacay up in the great northwest we were tired and in need of some serious restoration. Oh, who am I kidding. After the first few days M’s input into the meal discussions consisted of “soup and salad” accompanied by a faint and wistful, “I just want what we have at home.” It was awkward. Our companions’ blank stares were no doubt filled with memories of the french fry enthusiast of yore.

Anyways, we got back on Sunday afternoon, thereby missing our regular farmer’s market. After long deliberation, we had decided not to order the CSA box to be picked up at another location so that we could keep on schedule and not waste food (you’ve seen the pictures, that’s a lot of produce for two people to finish in 7 days, let alone 4). We opted to suck it up and shop at the store this week.

DUDE.

No wonder people aren’t as obsessed with greens as we are!?! Tasteless! Limp! A sham! It was a true disgrace to the glory of the mustard and collard. And who could blame them? After being trapped and shipped, those poor little dudes were—just like our post-travel plane and bus ride selves—no more than a hologram. (Don’t even get me started on the apples, but that was no shocker.)

It was a rough week, at least the greens part. All I can say is, thank heaven for soup: the ever humble and always noble dish.

I would like to add that the unbagged produce from a supermarket, as glistening and crisp as it may be, bares no mark to the freshness of farmer’s market jewels either. Time is everything, no?

Not everyone has the luxury of a year-round csa or farmer’s markets. But maybe you have access to farm stands or a small area to grow things (windowsill, container, yard, roof, abandoned pubic area) or areas to forage.

DO IT FOR THE TASTE MY FRIENDS. Do it for the mustard green, it deserves to be remembered for it’s true spice and vigor. Therein lies the happiness and life that you are incorporating it into your self for, don’t waste your chews.

Farmer’s Market: February 22

mattheweternal — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:44:00 -0400

Bloomsdale Spinach
Broccoli
Carrots
Cilantro
Collard Greens
Kale
- Blue
- Red
- Tuscan
Kohl Rabi
Mustard Greens
Parsley
Radishes
Rainbow Chard
Red Beets

Buckwheat Honey
Fuji Apples
Ginger
Tangerines
Tomatoes

Highlights

A challenge: Finish it all in four days.

Farmer’s Market: February 15

mattheweternal — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:26:00 -0500

Beets
- Chiogga
- Red
Bloomsdale Spinach
Broccoli
Carrots
Cilantro
Collard Greens
Kale
- Blue
- Red
- Tuscan
Kohl Rabi
Mustard Greens
Parsley
Radishes
Rainbow Chard

Fingerling Potatoes
Fuji Apples
Garlic
Ginger
Onions
Parsnip
Raisins (from Burkart Farms again. Can’t get enough of these!)
Sweet Potatoes
- Japanese
- Orange
- White
Tangerines (from a different seller this week – much more sweet and seedy)
Walnuts

Highlights

Bread pudding from Caffe Etc. that was extremely satisfying.
David Ha from Ha’s Apple Farm remarking that we eat a lot of apples.

Farmer's Market: February 8

mattheweternal — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:16:00 -0500

Beets
- Chiogga
- Red
Bloomsdale Spinach
Broccoli
Buttercrunch Lettuce
Carrots
Cilantro
Collard Greens
Kale
- Blue
- Red
- Tuscan
Mustard Greens
Parsley
Rainbow Chard

Acorn Squash
Avocado Honey
Black Eyed Peas
Fuji Apples
Garlic
Ginger
Onions
Japanese Sweet Potatoes
Tangerines