Art is the Handmaid of Human Good

Life in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA


Leave a comment

CSA: Midpoint!!!

Apparently we’re halfway through the season, I can’t believe it! Our first half has been lovely but, honestly, I feel like August is when the produce here in New England really gets good… We’ve had local tomatoes in our shares and we should be getting corn soon *swoon*

I’m still on a big salad kick, with because it is an efficient way to make a big dent in my weekly share and because it has been awfully hot and humid here in Massachusetts this summer. I found the salad above here and it was delicious and refreshing. Continue reading

Advertisement


Leave a comment

World PEAS CSA: Week Four

As promised, here’s what I did with my radishes, kale and garlic scapes (and zucchini, because there’s always zucchini…)Most of my radishes went into this Greek Salad with Marinated Radishes. This comes from one of my favorite CSA inspiration cookbooks: A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop. Continue reading


4 Comments

Oh, Lowell… (Or, why I’m afraid we’re not ready to have nice things…)

20140426-140652.jpg

Our (obviously very classy) local paper, The Lowell Sun, stole a (pretty crappy, taken with my mobile phone) picture from this post praising our bike lanes to illustrate an article condemning said lanes. No, the irony is not lost on me. Stay classy, Sun.

20140426-145519.jpg

Post edited to add that the picture was also used in the print edition. Hey, it got me to buy a paper, right :-/


3 Comments

Getting out of ruts (culinary and otherwise…)

20140112-144647.jpg

I have been in a couple of ruts lately. I haven’t been posting here as much as I would like, and we have been eating a lot of the same things for dinner. To kill a couple of proverbial birds*, I decided to spend some time looking through my cookbooks to find something interesting and post about one of my meals. Yay for setting and meeting goals, because I have three new recipes in the dinner rotation for this week and I am going to write about one of them right now.

Risotto with Roasted Butternut Squash and Kale
20140112-145305.jpg

Continue reading


Leave a comment

2013 in Review

Oh my. 2013 certainly was a long year. As I was looking at pictures from the beginning of the year I couldn’t believe that they were taken less than a year ago. This was taken on January 1st 2013, and so many things – the place we live, the tree, the furniture – are different now.

1/1/13

This was a year of big changes both for me and for people close to me. A lot of really wonderful and fun things happened this year but, for whatever reason, this year seemed like a bit of a slog. I don’t know why it is (ummmmm, probably all of the changes,) I have just felt more overwhelmed that was probably necessary.

January started off with some cold bike commutes…
Today's commute brought to you by the letter B for Brrrrr! 1°F/-17°C

Continue reading


2 Comments

Day 7

20130407-142000.jpg

It’s Sunday and all I have on the agenda for the rest of the day is 1. seeing The Host and 2. picking up K at South Station so, yeah, I am rockin’ the crocs and sweatpants.

In other news… Simon, Rudy, and I went to Deer Jump Reservation in Andover this morning for our walk. While we were there we saw a fox…

20130407-142249.jpg

And this neat tree…

20130407-142330.jpg

The fox picture is blurry because he was pretty far away from us (and I snapped the shot with my phone) but he stayed staring at us for quite awhile and then ran around the field. He looked quite a bit like Simon and Rudy. They, of course, didn’t even notice the fox because they were too busy sniffing the stone wall near the field.


Leave a comment

Nemo 2013

As those of you on the east coast already know, we’re getting walloped with quite the winter nor’easter!

When I woke up yesterday morning, there were a few flakes flying and a dusting on the ground, so I took the pups to the forest for a walk.

20130209-092019.jpg

Then, in the great procrastinator’s tradition, I made one last trip to the market for emergency supplies… I’m this case, it was a bulb of fennel.

20130209-092204.jpg

I got the snowshoes out of the attic (where they’ve been since April 2010 😦 ) and Gist, Simon, Rudy, and I hunkered in to wait out the storm.

20130209-092337.jpg

I did some work and made a big pot of tomato sauce to sustain us during our hibernation.

Sausage, onion, garlic, fennel & mushrooms...

I took Simon out for a walk at about 3:30 pm on Friday, and while it was snowy and windy, there wasn’t much accumulation.

20130209-092955.jpg

20130209-093008.jpg

After our walk, we settled in again for a long, cozy snowy night. Complete with yummy pasta! Thanks, fennel!

The final product: YUM!

The snow and wind really picked up after got dark, and we started to see some serious accumulation. When we went to sleep, we had about a foot of snow and we woke up to a winter wonderland!

Even though it was still snowing, still windy, and only 7:30 in the morning, I had to go out snowshoeing!

20130209-093559.jpg

20130209-093616.jpg

20130209-093628.jpg

20130209-093651.jpg

20130209-093659.jpg

I would say that we have about two feet of snow, but there are definitely drifts of at least five feet. When I went out, I was hoping to cross my street, which is a busy four-lane boulevard, and walk along the esplanade along the Merrimack River. This didn’t happen. The pedestrian signal buttons were covered in banks/drifts that were twice as tall as I am, the road was white, and there were enough vehicles on the road that I didn’t feel safe crossing against the light. Instead I snowshoed around the block on side streets that had been plowed sometime during the storm but still had about eight inches on snow covering them. As I walked, I saw quite a few car-shaped lumps.

As I write this, at 9:30 on Saturday morning, it’s still snowing and very windy. There are a couple of plows and a bobcat working on clearing out our parking lot, but I think the cleanup after this storm is going to take awhile. I think today is going to be another hibernation day (maybe with a few side-street snowshoe breaks…) I am hoping that I’ll be able to make it to the forest tomorrow to do some snowshoeing; and I’m hoping to be able to bike to work on Monday (but I’m pretty sure I’ll be bussing it!)

As I get out during the day, I’ll post more pictures of the snow. I love the stuff, so I’m pleased! If you’re chillaxing with Nemo today, I hope it goes well and that you have power, lots of snacks, and someone to shovel you out 😉 If you are taking pictures of the snow, please share them!

Now… It’s waffle time!