New Homesteaders is the place to be

http://newhomesteaders.com/

Asa

I haven't declared a summer soundtrack for a few years. But now I've got one for 2009. Everybody needs a favorite album to listen to with the windows down, cruising around in the heat of the summer sun. And the memories of each summer are inextricably linked to a group of songs, so that when you hear them again, the summer's warmth and meaningful events come wafting back to you.

This is my album for 2009: Asa (pronounced "ah-sha") by the artist of the same name. She's got just the right combination of jazz, soul, folk, and world flavor to get you dancing, yet there's a rich depth to her voice; an effortless musical gift that will keep delivering new subtleties with every repeat hearing.

Her radio hit, "Jailer," is a fun, reggae-influenced, sassy tune that gets better and better the louder you play it. (I think I've shared it with most of East Liberty and Highland Park now. Heh heh.)

The album doesn't gloss over life's inequities or pain -- if you know me, you're probably painfully aware that I seem to gravitate toward angsty, heartbroken artists -- but Asa has an optimism that shines through the blues. Just the fresh album I needed for 2009 summer adventures. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Visualize whirled peas

My baby was born to eat. We all were, really. It's a necessary part of life, a key to survival. With almost every gulp of milk or spoonful of vegetable puree, she makes small, grateful "mmm" sounds, as if to say "Thanks. This is just what I needed, and it's good stuff."

Now that she's sampling vegetables and fruits herself, without me as the processing middleman, she opens her mouth wide, showing her brand-new serrated teeth and eagerly awaiting the spoon delivery of her fruit and veggie mash. She loves each bite -- but somehow, she knows when to stop. She knows when enough is enough, and she trusts that when she gets hungry again, her daddy or I will be there to fill her up again. She has no need to stock up -- no matter how sweet those pears are, or how creamy the carrots -- she trusts that we will provide, and stops when she is full.

How do we lose this sense of "enough," this trust of the hands that feed us?

Happy baby

Need some more laughter in your life? We've got plenty in our house. This was taken two weeks ago, on Mr. Incredible's birthday. Enjoy!

A taste of Scandinavia

This is what I had for lunch. This is what I'm still savoring, two hours later: Spice-encrusted salmon with Aquavit sour cream and new potato and green bean salad with capers and herbs.

The salmon, bought skin-on and frozen from Trader Joe's, was surprisingly fresh, tender, and flaky, rubbed all over with dill seeds, fennel seeds, cumin, and coriander. A splash of lemon juice before baking and a ridiculously generous dollop of sour cream seasoned with fiery Aquavit and caraway seeds cooled and complemented the salty, anise-y fish. And on the side, we enjoyed the buttery texture of new potatoes, fresh from the farmer's market, seasoned with mint, basil, and parsley, then tossed with green beans, olive oil, lemon juice and tangy lemon zest. For an umami-pleasing twist, this summer salad was peppered with briny capers.

Thanks to Andreas Viestad for the recipe, and to my husband for enjoying it with me. It was a fresh taste of Scandinavia in our own backyard.

Learning to love goat cheese

I used to think I hated goat cheese. It wasn't the taste, really; I mean, I was pretty confident that if I held my nose while I ate it, I would enjoy it very much. Somehow, that pungent, "goaty" smell just turned me off, and I steered clear of all goat cheese recipes -- which always looked so delicious -- for years.

And I'm here to tell you that I not only put up with goat cheese, I love it. Don't ask me what changed; I guess I just decided to like it, and now I can't get enough of this creamy stuff.

This recipe was what really did it for me:

Goat cheese salad with beets and walnuts

Serves 4

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot
• 2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 5 small roasted beets,* peeled and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
  
• 1/2 cup toasted walnuts, finely chopped
• 6 ounces soft goat cheese, room temperature
• Lettuce, spring greens, beet greens, baby spinach -- whatever tender greens you have on hand
  

Directions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together shallot, vinegar, orange juice, and oil; season with salt and pepper. Place beets in a small bowl. Pour 1/3 of the dressing over beets; toss to coat.
2. Place walnuts in a shallow dish. With your hands, form goat cheese into 12 equal balls. Roll balls in walnuts, turning to coat completely, then flatten into discs.
3. Place greens in a large bowl. Drizzle with remaining dressing, and toss to combine. Divide among plates, and top each serving with some of the sliced beets and 3 goat-cheese discs.

*TO ROAST BEETS: Wrap washed beets, with the skins still intact, in 2-3 packets of aluminum foil, and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on size, until beets are slightly soft to the touch. Cool in packets, then rub off skins.

Adapted from Great Food Fast

If you're like most people, you probably don't eat beets too often, either, so this recipe might actually get you hooked not only on goat cheese, but on this sweet, tender root vegetable as well.

Enjoy this late-spring meal with loved ones outside, with the breeze blowing through the backyard, light condensation forming on your iced tea glasses, and the sweet and tangy tastes of beets and goat cheese mingling in your mouth.

I highly recommend it.

Oh, and so does Mr. Incredible; actually, he's the expert in our house at preparing this salad (which is probably why the walnut-studded cheese medallions are so, well, perfect).

We have this treasure in five-gallon buckets of dirt

I am an aspiring farmer. It's more of a theoretical thing, really; I have little experience but a lot of enthusiasm and I like to read about it a lot. Which, you might say, is worth something, but I really think it's about as useful as learning how to swim via an online correspondence course in which you never even enter the water.* The key to growing things is really experience, and good growers have years of it under their belts.

Nevertheless, I am determined to get good at this -- so determined that I've taken to planting my vegetables in five-gallon buckets and giant storage bins in my miniscule concrete backyard.

This year, I'm trying my hand at:

• Bell peppers
• Heirloom tomatoes: "Japanese Black Trifele," Czech Bush," "Stupice," and "Snow White," and "Be My Baby"
  
• Basil
• Curly parsley
• Cilantro
• Mint
• Peas (growing along the fence -- we'll see if they survive the slug attacks)
  

The five-gallon buckets aren't pretty, but I'm proud of my urban farming attempts, and I must admit it makes planting and weeding pretty simple. Check back later for updates on the Avondale Farm.

*Big shout-out to all you Big Bang Theory fans who actually got this reference.

Waiting for the storm

The wind is picking up. Doppler radar images reveal bright green splotches moving rapidly eastward from Ohio. The honeysuckle breeze that smelled so sweet an hour ago is now mingled with dust and the maple leaves show their underbellies in the frenetic gusts.

A storm is brewing.

What is it about storms that's so appealing; so satisfactory? Natural as they are, they are violent nonetheless and decidedly inhospitable. Yet who can deny the sense of wonder and excitement we experience at the sight of the gathering clouds?

I suppose a storm is like a good, heated argument with a lover; everything that's been lurking in the shadows of our private hearts and minds is brought out in the open to clash and collide. And when the winds die down, the thunder silent, and the lightning just a spark on the horizon, there is peace.

Good for the soul

Call me naïve. No, really -- go ahead and call me naïve.

But I think our society's unique maladies and general loneliness are closely linked to our departure from the back-breaking acts of growing and making food, raising children, and making the things we need with our own hands. Yes, of course I realize that the industrial revolution has made life a lot more livable for everybody, especially the poor. And this is the point at which you might want to call me naïve, reminding me that if I had to make my own bread and my own cheese, and if I had to grow all my own food and live at the mercy of droughts and floods, I would feel very differently about such things.

I don't doubt it, and I probably am being naïve. It's awfully cheeky of me as an affluent Westerner to idealize subsistence farming -- of course "getting back to the land" sounds wonderful when you have all the options in the world.

Nevertheless, I believe that gardening, baking bread, attending to children, washing diapers, making cheese, building furniture -- the things we used to do with our hands but now delegate to other people and companies and machines -- I believe that these activities feed us in ways our society never realized. And now that all our stock is in efficiency, ease, and quantity, it's nearly impossible for us to return to a lifestyle that asks so much of us, body and soul.

We're lazy now. We've separated ourselves so much from the back-breaking toil that our great-great grandparents knew. And really, you can't blame them for trying to make life easier, can you? It was hard. But there are a few things that they didn't count on. Like that the hard work of making a life was good for the soul. There are lots of studies out there these days about how therapeutic these activities can be, and more and more people are "discovering" the joy of getting their hands dirty.

I'm one of them, I guess. And it may be naïve -- or even arrogant -- of me, but I think that hard work does a body (and a soul) good.

Adjusting

Someone told me yesterday that motherhood is pretty much just a series of adjustments and readjustments. Parents experience a progression of their children's stages -- from newborn to college graduation and everything in between -- and just when you get used to one phase, it's time for the next one to begin.

Actually, it seems like much of life is like this. Seasons come and go. We adults go through stages, too, even if they're not as dramatic as the developmental leaps our kids are making. This is perfectly natural.

But it does take time to adjust to each new stage in our lives, and I wonder how many people really give themselves the space to make healthy transitions; to fully enjoy each season and prepare themselves for the next one.

There's one thing that gives me comfort as I make space for healthy change. Adjusting is normal, and I should just expect that I'll spend the rest of my life doing it.

Feelin' Irish

Three months

Man does not live on bread alone

But it certainly doesn't hurt. Now that I am a stay-at-home mom, I figure I might as well indulge my more time-consuming domestic and do-it-yourself urges. So I bake bread. My bread repertoire is expanding to include soft, swirled sandwich bread; chewy, porous rustic loaves, and long, shiny-topped Italian feather bread. I also make cheese, although so far I've only made microwave mozzarella.

Mr. Incredible says this is one of his favorite things about my new vocation--that I make bread and cheese. I'm not sure what he's more excited about: that he knows my diaper-filled days are also filled with kitchen fun, that he gets to eat my delicious experiments, that we're saving money and still enjoying artisanal food, or that we've moved one step closer to living off the land.

Next, he says, he'd like to start bottling his own perry from our remarkably prolific pear tree. And in between loaves of bread and canning the summer harvest of our 5-gallon bucket garden, I think I'll lend him a hand.

Contemplating my return

Well, I've hit the three-month mark. It's hard to believe, but I am now a seasoned veteran of motherhood, having made it through those challenging first three months. And now I'm thinking about returning to my blog after a long absence. So stay tuned! Hopefully, I'll have something to say (and some time to sit down and type it) soon!

What up, my homies?

Belated Christmas greetings

Merry Christmas from me and mine. :)

Handmade gifts

In the past few weeks, we have received a number of beautiful, handmade gifts for our baby. Here are some photos of just a few of them (to the left are the burpcloths my friend Katie made for us--I stole her image of them because she's a better photographer than I am)! Thanks to Katie, Brubaby will be barfing in style.

And here's a long-awaited shot of the blanket I knitted, on a backdrop of the soft white blanket Mr. Incredible's mom stitched for us. This is a winter baby, and everyone seems determined to make sure that we get some good, warm cuddling in before the weather turns warm. I'm not into pastels, you see; hence the autumnal colors. Everyone thinks this means I'm having a boy. I think it means I don't like pastels. Either way, I'm really happy with the blanket--it's soft and washable and I can't wait to use it.

And here is the blanket [Great-] Aunt Mildred knitted for our baby. As a novice knitter, this crocheted blanket looks impossibly complicated to me, and we'll always think fondly of Aunt Mildred when we use it. She is, without a doubt, the cutest, sweetest Brethren in Christ little old lady I've ever met, and somehow I had the fortune of marrying into her extended family.

Okay, enough with blankets! This kid is going to be swaddled and bundled like crazy.

The wife of my cousin by marriage--yes, it's a little complicated--surprised us with this beautiful sweater, which she knitted herself. I love the design; it's so simple, almost with an Asian styling to it. She also knitted a little red flower, "to pretty it up" in case we have a girl!

And perhaps my favorite items are these onesies, made with love by dear Brandie. I love these little animal characters, with all their varied textures and buttons, and can't wait to dress my little one in Aunt Brandie's creations. Part of me loves these onesies--just like Katie's burpcloths--because both of these friends very recently got into sewing and threw themselves into making totally amazing, useful, creative items!

But I love them also because I know that, behind every stitch of all these gifts, there's so much love and time and prayer that's already being invested in our little one.

Thank you, everyone, for welcoming Brubaby so enthusiastically! Now if this baby will just make its appearance sometime soon, it can actually use these items. . . .

Welcome to Brubaby's room

During Thanksgiving week, we finished Brubaby's room. Not that he or she will be spending a whole lot of time in it for a little while, but it feels good to have it done. At least there's a place to put all of the baby stuff! Mr. Incredible worked hard on this room, with very little help from me--partly because of the fumes and partly because, by the time we were ready to paint, I was too big to be climbing up and down a ladder!

He gave up his study, moving his desk into the dining room; then, with his dad's help, he put new drywall up on the ceiling (it looked like the plaster would give way sometime soon). After our favorite local drywall finisher did the dusty, nasty work of taping and spackling--we hate that part--Mr. Incredible painted the room with the help of a generous neighbor. And then, almost on a whim, he decided to refinish the floor--a feat he accomplished in one day with a pretty cool tung oil-based product. The result is a nice, warm, natural finish that we're pleased with. We headed to Ikea last week for a fun rug, and now all we have to do is hang some pictures!

The chair was a random yard sale purchase that my mom made; it's surprisingly comfy!

The baby's closet is already getting full.



















The crib also came from my parents.

My buddy

Today, among many other things, I am thankful for a well-behaved, happy dog.

Brubaby hopes

Nobody is really ever ready to be a parent. I'm no exception. Seasoned veterans laugh at my first-time parent optimism, but pat me on the back for my lofty goals and say, "Well, if you think can do it, that's great."

I may not know for sure yet if I want a stroller, or which kind is the best for our lifestyle, or whether or not we'll do the whole co-sleeping thing (some people say that if your baby sleeps with you, it's a commitment through toddlerhood, and I am not cool with that). But I do know there are some things I want very much for my child, and I will do everything within my parental power to make them happen.

Christmastime wishes for our Christmas baby

Knowing God. Well, this one had to be first, didn't it? But before you skip over the blah spiritual-ese you're expecting, please know that I really mean it. I don't mean "going to church and being a good youth group-type kid." I mean having a relationship with the creator of the universe and really truly trusting God in ways that I have always struggled to do. I mean stripping the Christian faith of all the unnecessary, unhelpful, ungodly trappings that have accompanied it for two centuries and seeing God for who he really is.

Knowing that he or she is loved. Our small family – consisting of me and Mr. Incredible and Lewis the leaping hound – has already established a firm foundation of frequent affection, and I love that. We may be serious a lot of the time, but we always make time to cuddle, hug, and just be together. I hope that this affectionate environment communicates love to our little one, but I also hope Brubaby learns love from the choices we make as parents: when we don’t shower him or her with material things because we believe there are better gifts we can give our children and when we hold our child to higher standards because we love him or her enough to see the full potential he or she can reach. These are hard lessons to learn; my hope is that our child learns them as early as possible, so that he or she can understand that Mr. Incredible and I don’t just plan to make life miserable or different for our kids; our choices are motivated by love.

Loving people – and engaging with them honestly. I wish for my child that he or she will learn to treat people as people – their personal views, cultures, practices, political ideologies notwithstanding. There’s nothing I hate more, or find more divisive, than when people label me a certain way and reduce their understanding of me to a caricature. I try my best not to do this with other people, and I hope that my child will be able to see past labels and ideologies to the diverse and beautiful (and broken) human creatures underneath. But I also hope that my child inherits its father’s ability to engage with the worldviews around him or her, and distinguish between truth and fiction. I believe that this combination – being able to love and understand people, yet never being swayed by false arguments – is a significant key to peace. And I hope that our child will know, find, and share peace.

There are many more things I wish for my child, but those are the ones on my mind right now. Do I sound ridiculously idealistic? Are you seasoned parents laughing? Sorry; I can’t help but strive for the best – even though I know I will fail often, I think it’s still worth trying and training and praying.