I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions. Somehow nothing I promise myself in the dark cold of December/January ever sticks. Winter, for me, is a time of peaceful reflection. It’s a withdrawal, a hibernation of sorts. It’s a gathering-in and a taking-stock, but it is rarely an effective time to make any real changes….
I will preface this by saying that I am not a hunter. Maybe someday in the future I will learn to be more comfortable with guns, but it hasn’t happened yet (right now it makes me uncomfortable to even handle them when they are not loaded). I’m not even an expert in hunting-and-meat theory: if…
note: Rick went hunting on Wednesday. He got 5 ducks! We have been quite enjoying cooking with and eating them, and I have a post planned for next week about what-to-do-with-organ-meat and a wonderful no-brainer roasted whole duck recipe. I have some things I need to figure out how to say about hunting and meat…
I have never made chili. Well, I take that back. I have -now-. But before last week, I had never made chili. I’d eaten a lot of chili, sure – who hasn’t? And every time I tasted a chili that I particularly liked, I’d ask the person who made it what makes their recipe special….
It occurred to me recently that though I am an omnivore and am very proud of my choices regarding where the meat we have in the house comes from, I very rarely post recipes that involve it. Perhaps this is because I’m a bit of a purist: most of the meat we eat is consumed…
(This recipe’s gonna be short. Which is good, since it’s great for those last-minute parties where you still want to be a snobby foodie, but don’t have the time to make something complicated.) It’s winter. It’s raining, and I feel like I haven’t been sufficiently warm or dry in weeks. Generally, I am not a…
Last year I ill-advisedly picked up on one of those “the first 5 people to comment on this will get a hand-made gift from me” kind of memes floating around facebook. The caveat, as is often the case with these things, was re-posting it on YOUR page, thus continuing the cycle of gift-making. Right. So…
For the past four weekends, I have been working the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. It is a beautiful reenactment of Victorian London at Christmas time, and a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday season. It’s great fun. It is also at times stressful, dramatic, and completely exhausting, like…
One of the last battlefields in my quest to be self-sufficient has been condiments. Yes, I can bake my own bread, clean and dress a chicken, or make a kickass batch of Russian tea cakes (OMG – I need to make those again soon!), but when it comes to those little things – the mayonnaise*,…
Someday, I would like to leave the city. Move out to a little house on some great land, settle down, and get a farm going. I’d like to end up somewhere with some life to it; some history and some wilderness and some magic. Such a place is Preston Ranch. Rick and I were invited…
Dog Island Farm is a small urban farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
