Here’s to the makers, the experience creators, the space holders, and the curators of memory. We see you, we love you and we support you.
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Then while dining at one of our favorite lunch spots in Des Moines, I had a perfectly paired grilled cheese with smeared with savory tomato jam. I nearly fell out of my seat. While we had been eating tomatoes on everything, nothing I made tasted this beautifully intense. I had to figure out how to make it, and keep it on hand all year round, botulism be dammed. Thus my foolproof recipe for Tomato Jam was born.
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A significant part of our Homo-Steading journey has been practicing self reliance in all forms. When Marti contracted a spot of poison ivy earlier this Summer, she took to the woods (but first to Google) to harvest some jewelweed to apply to her itchy skin. When we have needed a little pick me up and have run out of coffee, we have sipped on Nettle tea, fresh from the woods. Using herbs for cooking and for medicine is part of our daily life and will continue to be more significant, as we plan to repurpose the vast majority of our backyard as a small speciality herb farm in the summer of 2020.
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The green oblong beauty begs me to turn it into fritters or a beautiful shaved salad dressed lightly in a garlic lemon vinaigrette. It calls out to be paired with a grilled pork chop, or even sautéed in a pan with minimal effort. SOMETHING! ANYTHING!
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As a lesbian who loves to travel in small, rural, scenic byway towns, I knew what it felt like to stay in a bed and breakfast with my partner. I knew how scary it could be to tell the innkeeper about who you really were. I knew what it felt like to lie and say: “We’re sisters.”
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Our cucumbers are truly out of control. Vines scaling our chicken wire fence at an alarming rate, sending tendrils of connection our every whichaway. Their vibrant yellow blooms have given way to oblong alligator -skinned fruit that hangs heavy, from limp vines. Summer’s fullest bloom is upon us.
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