As a long-time fan of the art of everyday things, I was thrilled to discover a completely unlikely source of inspiration at our recent Mother Earth News Fair. Hint: If you think brooms are a strictly functional object designed for the back of the pantry, guess again.

Historically, many farmers grew a little broom corn and crafted their own brooms to use around the home place. At the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, I met John Holzwart and his partner Linda Conroy, who are carrying on that honorable tradition with a very modern twist, proving that art is an approach, not a matter of materials.

“Little John” uses no machinery to craft his rustic brooms, which are made from all-natural broomcorn and handles crafted from a variety of materials, from tree limbs to carved sticks, shed antlers to wrought iron and even guitar necks reclaimed from the landfill. (He will do custom work, if you have an old guitar or other object you’d like turned into a broom handle.) Every piece is individual, bearing its own personality and character – which in my book is one definition of art.

John and Linda grew their own broomcorn for a while, then the business grew to the point that he needed to contract out that portion of the process. As Grit readers might remember, I grew up in Lindsay, Oklahoma, the “Broomcorn Capital of the World,” so running into John and Linda at the Fair was a great reminder of home. His broom-making demonstration drew a steady stream of interested observers. Since we’ll be returning to Seven Springs in September 2012, I plan to spend more time observing how he does the actual work this time, instead of oohing and aahing over these very cool brooms.

Here’s a video interview I did with Linda (owner of Moonwise Herbs and a wise, wonderful woman in her own right) explaining a bit more about the brooms, which you can order from Little John’s website, and which I think would make great gift ideas for weddings, showers or the winter holidays.

If you buy a broom, just don’t stick a fork in it – a comment that will be much less mysterious if you watch the video. :-) 

Suddenly last week – and I do mean suddenly, as in overnight – my enormous backyard sunflower plant did two things at once. First, it drooped over and lost its stature as the tallest non-tree plant in my neighborhood. And immediately thereafter, it exploded.

OK, it might have taken another day. But within hours, the plant had gone from having a few lonely sunflowers at the very top where no one could see them, to being this sunflower extravaganza:

I think it got tired of being appreciated only for its height and decided to bend over and show me what else it could do. And now I know the identity of this amazing plant. It is indeed the ‘Lemon Queen’ variety handed out by our friends at Your Garden Show, as part of their citizen science project to track bees.

I haven’t seen any bees, but man, do I have some blossoms. And I don’t think you could find a more heat-and-drought tolerant flowering plant anywhere. As you can see, it’s a forest of flowers.

So, that offer of seeds – if the birds don’t get to all of them first – still stands.

And once again, I am filled with awe and wonder for the miracles of daily life. Just when you think things – in the garden, in relationships, in life – are going one way, shazam! A corner is turned and an entirely new game opens up.

L’chaim!

Last month I was one of more than 600 agricultural editors, writers, designers, photographers, publishers and other communications professionals invited to New Orleans for the Agricultural Media Summit . I hadn’t been to New Orleans for more than 20 years and I was going there to teach a couple of writing workshops, which I enjoy, so I was stoked about the adventure.

And besides, New Orleans is home to one of my favorite sandwiches in the world: The Muffaletta. (Of course, for my money, you could spread olive tapenade on cardboard and I'd consider it good eating. Anything with sufficient quantities of olive tapenade gets my thumbs-up.)

I got to the Kansas City airport at a leisurely pace, with plenty of time to get through the security check point. I had remembered to put socks in my handbag before I left home so I wouldn’t have to walk barefoot through that icky security area, so at the checkpoint I dutifully put on my socks, stuck my shoes in one tub and my laptop in the other and off I went to my Louisiana adventure.  

At the St. Louis airport, I had a two-hour layover so there was plenty of time for a leisurely lunch. Except ... when I reached into my purse to pay for aforementioned leisurely lunch … there was no wallet. Knowing for a fact that this couldn’t really be happening, I calmly took everything out of my purse, stacked it all on the table, literally turned my (very large) handbag inside out and discovered that, yes-indeedy-roo, it was utterly true: My billfold was gone.  

Suddenly I remembered the two or three moments I had left my purse on the floor while I went to fetch the tubs and put on my socks. Exactly enough time for someone to reach into the open purse and adopt my billfold as his or her own.  

This meant, of course, that my credit cards were gone, along with my debit card, my driver’s license, my checkbook, my insurance cards, random scraps of paper that I once thought were important enough to keep in my wallet, and two adorable photos of my brand new grandson. I was completely without money and without identity. 

Looking back, I can say that this moment of complete flat-out broke anonymity was one of the more interesting moments of my life. For one thing, I had to look that poor waitress in the eye and tell her, “I can’t pay for my lunch. I don’t have a penny to my name.” And, of course, within minutes, I got to have the same conversation with the manager, all the while trying not to look utterly pathetic.  

I must have looked pathetic enough, however, because my hands were trembling and I know my face was telegraphing the panic I was trying hard to tamp down. The manager looked at me for a minute and said, “It’s OK. I’ll just comp you the meal.”

 Thank you, God, that I don’t have the look of a dash-and-diner. 

Then the manager waggled a stern finger and said, “But you better get to your bank and credit card companies fast and cancel everything.” Since I still had my cell phone and had at some point had the presence of mind to put my Mastercard, Visa and bank numbers in the address book, I could do that.  

All I could see in my mind's eye was a long train of unpleasantness on a beeline in my direction, beginning with getting  from the airport to the hotel. I called the hotel to see if there was a free shuttle, forgetting the insistent truth that in New Orleans, nothing is free. Once I got to the hotel, how would I eat? How would I get back to the airport? How would I get on the plane with no photo I.D.? Then, oh rats! My car needed gas. How would I get my car out of airport parking and full of gas?  

At that moment, I did the only rational thing: I went in the ladies room and bawled as silently as I could. Then I heard my mother’s voice clearly in my head saying, “All right, Kathryn. Go splash some cold water on your face and snap out of it!”  

So I obeyed Mom’s command. I realized that I could either be a mess about this or I could come up with a plan. Blanche Dubois’ line from A Streetcar Named Desire popped into my head and I decided that the new context for this trip would not be business-as-usual, it would be about depending on the kindness of strangers. 

 Almost instantly I remembered that I had the cell phone number of the Ag Media Summit coordinator, the competent and kind-hearted Kenna Rathai. As I explained the situation to her, she paused for about five beats, then said, “Well, just get yourself down here, we’ll sort it out.” So I did. I took a cab from the New Orleans airport to the hotel, texted her when I was a few blocks away and there she was, standing in the doorway with cash in her hand to pay the cab driver.     

“No worries,” she said about my concern over how I was going to eat. “There are meal events throughout the summit.” And then, that merciful angel from Heaven gave me two drink coupons. My dad always told me never to take a drink when you feel like you need a drink. In this instance, I ignored my father’s counsel.  

Looking back at the experience, a couple of things strike me. One is that the context of depending on the kindness of strangers somehow had me encounter a lot of kindness, beginning with the staff and volunteers at the Ag Media Summit. I called my neighbor, who kindly went into my office at home and found my passport, then kindly went to his church and faxed it to me. My kind friend Nancy (whom I rousted out of bed at 7 a.m.), wired me sufficient cash to get myself home. The guys at the Western Union place couldn’t really tell from the fax that the photo on the passport copy was actually me, but they eyeballed me a few times and figured no one that Midwestern could be much of a criminal. I got the cash and practically galloped down the street to find that muffaletta sandwich – I had to have some New Orleans flavor. On my way, I did some unintentional sightseeing and actually ended up right in front of Jackson Square. Ta-DAH! A tourist moment! 

 And even the Transportation Safety Administration agents at the airport, while not exactly kind to me, at least did not beat me with sticks and ask me about that letter I wrote to the President 20 years ago. The worst part of their questioning me for 30 minutes was the looks I kept getting from other passengers. All in all, it could have been much, much worse. I have no idea how this might have turned out if I fit one of their profiles.  

The other takeaway from this experience was just how weird it was not to be able to buy what I wanted when I wanted it. Nothing extravagant, mind you – I don’t live that way – but just thinking in the airport, for example, that I’d like a magazine to take on the plane and not having the money to purchase one, or wanting a latte instead of the airline’s coffee and having to say, “Nope.” For me, the condition of wanting and not being able to have was temporary. It’s sobering to have a gut-level experience of that need and to realize that for many, many, many people in this world, that’s a way of life, not a transitory and surmountable inconvenience.  

I had been reading a magazine article about the famine in Africa just before this mess occurred, and just as my emotions were ramping up for a great big hissy fit after I discovered my loss, I saw the image of a mother holding a child she couldn’t feed. And I said to myself, “Seriously? You’re gonna get all bent out of shape because you’ve lost your credit cards?”  

Sometimes all it takes is a little perspective to dramatically shift the way the world occurs.  

A giant mutant sunflower is growing right outside my back door, in the whimsically named “garden” around my fence. There’s really not much to say about this giant mutant sunflower except, “Holy Moly, that’s some honkin’ big sunflower plant!!!” I hardly ever allow myself the indulgence of exclamation points, but if ever there were a time for them, the appearance of this sunflower would be it. 

Please note: From the “All Hat, No Cattle” Department: This bad boy is all plant, no sunflower – so far, at least. If it does finally work up an actual flower or two I’ll never know it because it’s now too high for me to see to the top.

This plant is, without exaggeration, at least 12 feet tall now. That fence beside it is 6 feet tall, and the plant has grown another foot or so since I took this photo last week.   

I have no idea why this particular sunflower developed a wild hair and started reaching for the sky. Maybe it always dreamed of being a beanstalk. Maybe one of these days fairy tale characters will come tumbling down it into my yard. Maybe a little speck of radioactive dust landed on that one piece of ground just as it was starting to grow. Maybe smokin’ big mutant sunflowers like this are fairly common and I just don’t know about it. If that is the case, I hope Constant Reader will let me know (with photos and we’ll share them).

I have several relatively tall sunflower plants back there (nothing like the giant mutant), a foot or so taller than me, and here’s the really weird thing: None of the sunflowers on that side of the garden has grown a single blossom. A couple of buds are straining to blossom now, but that’s pretty much it for the dozen or so plants on the east side of my yard. On the west side, I’ve cut lots of pretty sunflowers, both ‘Moulin Rouge’ – my new favorite variety – and several ‘Lemon Queen’, which I harvest every few days for flower arrangements for my house. But on the east side? Nada. Zip. Zilch.
 

 For numerous reasons, my garden sort of didn’t happen this year. After moderate self-recrimination (“Bad gardener, bad, bad gardener…”) I have now chosen to be philosophical about that fact and use what actually did happen as coaching for next year. One lesson is that sunflowers are quite transitory when used as cut flowers and only last a couple of days indoors before they go all droopy and sad-looking and spit pollen all over the table. Next year, the garden going to be all about flowers (no, I really mean it. NO TOMATOES), so any suggestions for cut flowers that stay nice and grow in an extremely neglectful home would be welcome. I’ll still do sunflowers, but enough with the mono-crop already.

 My friend Taylor  tells me that my eastern crop is growing plants without flowers because I have too much nitrogen and need some phosphorus.  Another lesson learned is to test the soil before I plant, and to test several areas of the garden when I do. I could swear I treated all the tilled-up space equally, but apparently the chemistry on the east side was significantly different from that on the west side to begin with. So, next year, I’ll be methodical. No, really.

 But look at it this way: If I had been all methodical and scientific about how I approached my garden this year, we would have missed this great occasion for Wow!!! So at the very least, my haphazard, inconsistent ways did have a silver lining.

And who knows? Maybe Jack will come tumbling down that sunflower stalk any day now. Maybe he'll love dogs, be about my age, have most of his teeth, a reliable source of income ...

 Bad gardener. Bad, bad gardener.    

Well, I am now dug up. Not that I personally have been buried -- except under mountains of paperwork and random stuff undone. But that patch of lawn in my backyard that I've been glaring at for a year -- OK, nearly two years -- wishing without action that it would become a flower garden, has now been tilled. As you can see, something was needed: 
 

My plan isn't for a lot of edibles this year, except for herbs. I don't have time or energy for much maintenance, so I am going to broadcast  flower seeds madly and hope for much color -- though I'll broadcast in a somewhat orderly fashion, now that I've learned the pollinators are better served by groupings of color. This weekend the weather took a turn to the warm, Barney the Lawn Guy had a few hours to dedicate to my list, and off we went.

Because I live in a fairly new residential area where the soil has been scraped and rearranged to suit the builders rather than the green, growing things, I needed to add some amendments. So I went out and bought bags of top soil -- I know, I know: People GIVE that stuff away. This was easy, and remember, this is to be the lazy person's garden -- and I wanted to get it started. A few bags of Miracle Gro for Vegetables went in the mix, along with three bags of Moonure. I'm certain you can guess the active ingredient on that one.

After Barney had tilled the 4-foot strip around the fence and worked in the topsoil and compost, it didn't take my little pup long at all to notice that something had changed in the backyard.  

And from that realization, it didn't take but another three seconds for him to drop down and start rolling in it. Although he looks like a Teddy bear, in significant ways, CP is all-dog, all the time. One of these ways is his deep affection for getting up close and personal with the stinky and the icky.

 So now, there's a new game at my house, called Let CP Out Long Enough to Do His Business But Not Long Enough to Start Rolling. So far CP is winning large.

 Here's me with serious hat-hair, having perspired and dog-wrangled for a couple of hours. My plan is to fill that gnarly space behind me with lots of sunflowers, coneflowers, rudebekia and varoius balms -- plus, of course, a couple of tomato plants, basil and other culinary herbs just because one must. I hope the bees and butterflies like it because this season, it's all about the pollinators. And I hope I don't end up strangling my Cutie Patootie puppy before the summer is over.

Stay tuned ...

Last night in the raging blizzard that has complicated our lives here in the Midwest for the past day and a half, my car got stuck in the snow two blocks from my house. Two stinkin’ blocks!

I rocked back and forth so much I was afraid I would tear up my transmission. No neighbors seemed near (though I secretly wonder if they were peering out of their curtains saying, “I am NOT going out in that mess to get her out of the middle of the street…”) and I was feeling truly abandoned and miserable. Finally, I bit the bullet and called Caleb, our associate editor here at GRIT. I whined and threw myself on his mercy.

Caleb has four-wheel-drive, broad shoulders and a big shovel. He also has a can-do attitude that helped get him the editing position in the first place and is a good hand in a crisis. He said he’d be there as soon as he could, so I turned my car’s heat up and waited. After a few minutes, I got bored and thought maybe-just-maybe … what? That the snow had suddenly shifted around and it would be smooth sailing to my driveway now? That I had been mistaken and the car wasn’t REALLY stuck and even if it was, if I only turned the wheel this way and held my mouth that way, everything would be copacetic and I’d be on my way?

But no-o-o-o-o. This was not the case. I was actually quite stuck. However, by rocking and gunning it and rocking and gunning it, I managed to move myself down the block about another 300 yards while waiting for Caleb to ride over the hill on his charger. This put me in front of my neighbor Adam’s house and when Adam heard me, he came out with his shovel and started the snowy equivalent of earth-moving to try to move some of the avalanche from in front of my car.

Then Caleb showed up with his friend, also broad of shoulder and bearing a stately shovel. They shoveled and pushed and shoveled and pushed and soon my little Saturn Astra (“Astra” is a Latin term meaning “lousy on snow”) scooted to the bottom of my driveway and lodged in the snow there. This outcome was fine with me – at least I wasn’t in the middle of the road, begging to be run over on the rare chance an actual snowplow showed up on my street.

I thanked Caleb profusely. And get this: I offered him and his friend a strong adult beverage to take the edge off the cold … and they refused. They had to make it back home and they didn’t know who might need help on the way back, so they’d better keep their minds clear. If you’d like to see a definition of character, you don’t need to look any farther.

I turned off my car and went in to warm in front of the fire. After an hour or so, my doorbell rang and it was the neighbor on the other side of my duplex, Tyler, telling me he’d shoveled my driveway off, dug my car out and he thought we could get it in the garage now.

I wanted to cry. Not because I had been worried about my car’s precarious perch, but because it was just so great that this young guy – whose face was so cold I could barely make out what he was saying – had busted his butt taking care of me without being asked and just because he wanted to help out.

After we got the car rolled into the garage (whooo-hooooo!) I texted Tyler’s wife to say, “You married one of the good ones.” We texted and laughed back and forth and she said he was a “work machine,” and that his dad is just like that, too.

My dad was like that, too. My son (who lives in Seattle) is like that. And men who are “just like that” – men who do what needs to be done, who work because there’s work to do, who like to be useful and challenged and know that their strength and ability can make a difference in other peoples’ lives – are my favorite kind of people. Life goes better with these kind of men.

One of the biggest problems in our society these days is that we have such a bizarre understanding of what it means to be male. Macho is the order of the day, and the cultural message to little boys is that you have to be tough as nails, intolerant of any weakness, unemotional and unfeeling and maybe with a big streak of mean if you’re going to call yourself a man.

But this is the dark side of the best that men are or can be. They’re hard-wired to be heroes. It’s in their DNA to rescue and assist and lend a hand and do for others. Tapping that quality in a positive way could transform our world.

And me? I’m hardwired to make pies for men who do kind and beautiful things for me. I’m going to have a busy weekend.

People trying to lose weight or maintain weight loss frequently turn their back on nuts because the fat content puts them in the high-calorie-food category. However, nuts offer a lot of nutrition, not many carbohydrates and plenty of flavor. Small wonder some diet scientists now recommend we make them a bigger part of our diets.

Nuts are dense packages of protein and fat, but it is healthful, unsaturated fat, not the kind usually drenching French fries. And though they don’t have many vitamins, nuts do give us good amounts of potassium, magnesium and several other essential minerals. Eaten in moderation, they help us feel full and even might offer some protection against heart and vascular disease.

In one recent study, for example, Yale researchers reported that a daily dose of walnuts improved the blood-vessel health of type-2 diabetics.

After eight weeks on a diet containing about two ounces of walnuts daily, endothelial function (blood vessels doing their work) improved significantly compared to an unlucky control group that didn’t get to eat walnuts at all. In addition to improving the blood vessels, the walnut diet also somewhat increased fasting serum glucose, lowered total cholesterol and reduced LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) over the course of the trial. There was no weight gain during the trial.

According to the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Newsletter, these findings are in line with another recent study that showed walnuts associated with reduced cholesterol levels. Other research reports heart-health benefits for other nuts, including macadamias and pistachios.

Bear in mind that 2 ounces of walnuts (about 25 halves) contains roughly 300 calories, so these little tidbits aren’t “free,” if you’re watching your weight. But considering some of the stuff we could be snacking on for the same number of calories, this sounds like a pretty good nutritional bargain to me.

This study was done with a group of diabetics, but I’m completely willing to extrapolate its findings right into the palm of my hand and into a few walnuts or almonds on my morning yogurt. I like tossing a few toasted nuts – whatever I have on hand – into my pasta dishes, and I’ve reached a point where salads just don’t taste complete without a few nuts thrown in.

As you might imagine, I’m mightily relieved by the articles I’ve read today justifying my nutty behavior.

Here’s one of my favorite salads:

Small jar pickled beets
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (white balsamic is pretty)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large package fresh baby spinach, well-rinsed and drained
2 small oranges, peeled and separated into sections
Small red onion, sliced paper thin
½ cup gorgonzola cheese
¼ to ½ cup walnut pieces (toasted tastes better, though I rarely take this extra step)

Drain pickled beets. Blot the beets on a couple of paper towels to absorb any extra juice and slice in oblong strips. Toss beets, spinach and oranges with olive oil and vinegar to coat thoroughly. Sprinkle onion, cheese and walnut pieces over top of salad. Mangia!

Over the weekend, I had one of my favorite kinds of days – listening to music and cooking in my warm kitchen as the cold winds snuffled around the doors and windows.

My companion for this day of delight was my New Favorite Book, The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. I love this book because it isn’t a collection of recipes, just an idea book for what flavors play well with each other – with plenty of surprise suggestions to keep it interesting. When you’ve spent as much time in the kitchen as some of us have, recipes are just guidelines anyway. I prefer jazzman Charlie Parker’s approach to cooking: “You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

So on Sunday, I wailed in my kitchen with some organic butternut squash and fresh sausage from my friends’ farm. A friend had given me a bag of “Forbidden Rice,” lovely black rice that I assumed would cook up like any other chewy rice. (The “forbidden” label comes because apparently emperors in China used to be the only ones who could eat this beautiful rice.) So I cross-referenced to see what flavors would work with butternut squash and with wild rice. I looked in my refrigerator to see what other likely culinary suspects I could round up, I put some Maria Muldaur on iTunes and I let the jazz commence.

What I came up with was completely presentable and actually quite lovely. Thanks to the dark rice, squash, red quinoa and shitake mushrooms, it also was quite nutritious. The black rice turns dark purple when it’s cooked, and the combination of that dark blue-purple against the orange of the butternut squash is one of my favorite color combos (like mango and blueberries!). I always feel a little bad when one of my experiments turns out so well. I was only feeding myself, but I wanted to go round up some mouths to feed. So I’ll do the next best thing and share the “recipe” with you so you can replicate it if you wish.

K.C.’s Forbidden Squash 

NOTE: I cooked the black rice just as I do any other rice – 1.5 times as much water as rice, with a little salt to bring out the flavor. Bring rice and water to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer until it’s chewy – about 35-40 minutes. Stir it frequently so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

I also used some leftover cooked red quinoa I had in the fridge. If you haven’t discovered this lovely little grain (or its regular cousin, which is whitish or beige), I urge you to do so. It’s a protein-filled grain, with itty bitty kernels and it cooks in about 15 minutes. Perfect for those come-home-from-work-and-flop days.

Another note: All quantities are approximate. I just make this stuff up.

1 medium-sized butternut squash (about 2 lbs.)
1 cup cooked rice (black, wild or other)
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 pound sausage (optional)
2 tablespoons olive oil (if you don’t use sausage)
½ medium sized onion, chopped (about ½ cup)
1 cup mushrooms, sliced (I used shitake)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1 cup Greek yogurt (or sour cream)
Chinese Five-Spice Powder (mine came from Mountain Rose and it’s available from numerous sources)

Slice a few little slits in the squash to let the steam escape. Place it in a glass baking dish with about an inch of water in the dish. Bake for an hour @375 degrees, or until it gives when you squeeze it.

While it’s baking, brown the sausage, brown the onion with sausage, add mushrooms and brown them. (Or skip the sausage and brown the onions and mushrooms in olive oil.)

When squash is done, slice it in half and remove the seeds and pulp. Either compost or save to toast the seeds later (I never remember to do this, though my intentions are always good. This time, I just went ahead and composted them without letting them turn bad in the fridge first.

In a quart-sized bowl, toss the rice, quinoa, sausage, onion, mushrooms, garlic and seasoned salt.

Place squash back in baking dish (no water this time) with the hollowed out side up. Mound up rice-quinoa mixture in hollow of each side of squash. Add a dollop of yogurt to the top of the mound and dust with Chinese Five-Spice Powder. Put back in the oven and bake for another 12 minutes or so, until everything is nice and hot and the flavors have had time to introduce themselves to each other.

Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting. I had it with a glass of Chardonnay, and it made me happy.

Mangia!

Photo: iStockphoto.com/Debbi Smirnoff 

Over the weekend the weather began to cool down and my mind turned, as it often does, to thoughts of soup and something that would warm the cockles. If I ever open a restaurant, it will be "K.C.’s Soup Kitchen," and I will only serve bread, soup and pie. This is because, once you’ve made a few, they’re all really easy — yet so impressive, guests think you’ve done something really special.

This was an ad hoc soup, prepared from whatever I could find around the house. It was so easy, simple and loaded with nutrition, I think it will now be added to my list of favorites. In the future, if I wanted to bump up the nutrition or was feeling threatened with a cold or flu, I’d add some shitake mushrooms toward the end of the cook time. But this was good enough to share anyway, and I’m glad I have a bowl in my lunch box to tuck into as soon as I post this blog.

Here you go. Mangia!

K.C.’s Sweet Potato Chicken Soup 

• 6 to 8 chicken thighs  [I used boneless. You could use breasts, but I think thighs are more flavorful and they're cheaper...]
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut in bite-sized pieces
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut in rounds
• 1 tsp. Frontier Thai seasoning [a tasty combo of onion & garlic powder, coriander, paprika, basil, black pepper cilantro and white pepper—if you don’t have it, you can just sort of dash in any of those ingredients that appeal to you]
• 1 Tbsp. fresh orange thyme [or 1 tsp. dried thyme of any variety: lemon would be great. I just happened to have orange fresh in my container garden.]
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic [I used 6, but that’s just how I roll!]
• Kosher salt
• 2 cups chicken broth [I had a large jar of chicken broth I’d made the last time I roasted a chicken. I think it was about two cups, but basically, enough chicken broth to make it soup]
• Zest of one lemon
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 cup of wild rice, cooked

[I started this on top of the stove in my Dutch oven then put it in the oven after I’d finished browning the chicken and onion and had added the other ingredients, except the lemon and wild rice.]

Brown chicken thighs in olive oil. After they’ve browned, add onion and stir until translucent. Add other ingredients down to “Zest of one lemon.”

Put in oven, covered, and cook at 300 degrees for one hour.

While it’s cooking, boil wild rice al dente and add a bit of salt. [I like mine a bit chewy.]

When you bring the soup out of the oven, add the lemon zest and lemon juice; drain the rice and add to soup. Salt or adjust flavors as you see fit. I added more garlic. :)

I love the slightly sweet flavor the sweet potato provides, plus the citrusy zing of the thyme and lemon zest.

I ate this with some fresh whole-wheat bread Hank’s wife Karen baked last week. The bread had gotten a little hard, so I toasted it, then tore it into pieces and put it on top of the soup just before I served it, ad hoc croutons for my ad hoc soup.

The dish was hearty, scrumptious and left my cockles thoroughly warmed.

The Farm to School bill has so much win-win embedded in it, I have trouble imagining why any legislator wouldn’t be willing and even eager to support it. The program would increase sales of farm products and improve child nutrition by making locally raised food available in our schools.

A farm-to-school program was first authorized in 2004 in the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, but funds were never actually appropriated for the effort. Earlier this year, Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) each introduced farm-to-school bills that include $50 million in mandatory funding for a program to be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Representatives Farr (D-CA) and Putnam (R-FL) included $50 million for farm-to-school in their Children's Fruit and Vegetable Act of 2009 (H.R. 4333), as did California Sen. Barbara Boxer in her Growing Farm to School Protection Act (S. 3144).

On Monday, 41 national organizations delivered a letter to House and Senate Congressional leaders urging them to include $50 million in mandatory funding for programs linking farmers with local schools as part of the 2010 Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. Farm to School programs have been shown to increase farmers' incomes while improving the nutrition and food literacy of school children. Considering that an alarming number of our school children think food actually originates in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, this seems like a truly valuable program.

The Senate Agriculture Committee passed its version of the Child Nutrition bill on March 24, including $40 million for Farm to School. Mark-up in the House Education and Labor Committee is expected later this spring. The full Senate and House are expected to take action on the bill sometime this year.

According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Farm to school programs improve nutrition for children who participate in the school lunch program and lead to significant changes in the young people’s eating habits – particularly important as our country faces an epidemic of childhood obesity.

“We know that we need to do a better job of ensuring that school food programs provide the best food possible for children,” Fitzgerald stated in a NSAC press release. “This is the rallying call of many prominent dietitians, educators and doctors, as well as First Lady Michelle Obama. Food sourced from local farms is freshest and, combined with teaching children about where their food comes from, provides children the knowledge they need to make good food choices for the rest of their lives.”

Farm to school programs also offers immediate and long-term economic benefits, the NSAC said. According to a study in Oregon, every dollar school districts spent on local food purchases stimulated an additional eighty-seven cents in economic activity.

“Farm to school increases farm sales and because the money stays local, it generates a ripple effect throughout the area's economy,” Fitzgerald said. “In addition, delivering nutritious food to local schools can bring producers into neighborhoods that are now ‘food deserts,’ creating an opportunity to expand good food choices to area stores and institutions. Farm to school is a winning idea nutritionally, economically and environmentally.”

Sen. Leahy's bill (S. 3123) was included in the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010 that was voted out of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee unanimously on March 24 and is waiting to go to the Senate floor. During markup in the Senate Committee, the bill reduced the funding level for farm to school to $40 million. In the House, Rep. Holt's bill, the Farm to School Improvements Act (H.R. 4710), is waiting for consideration by the Education and Labor Committee.

Concerns in both the Senate and House about how to pay for the funding increases have slowed The Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. Discussions of funding methods continue, with attention increasingly focused on the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee. The closing of tax loopholes was used to pay for improved food stamp benefits during the 2008 Farm Bill negotiations, and some suggest a similar maneuver to pay for improved school meals.

We’ll keep an eye on these programs as they make their way through the legislative process. We think they’re important for the health of our children, the health of our rural economies and the economic well-being of our farm and market-gardener friends.

When the doorbell rang on Saturday morning, I wasn’t expecting anyone and wasn’t looking forward to interruptions. I had plans, and Important Stuff to Do.

I went to the door and instantly had to restrain my bouncy pup, who simply can’t hear children’s voices without wanting to join the party.

And it was a party. Three little girls, hovering in the 8 to 10 age group, bobbed and weaved outside my door. One wore a pink tutu over her jeans and the other had glitter on her cheeks, remnants from whatever previous game they had been playing.

Cheeks all a-flush with excitement, the eldest – who had either been elected to or simply commandeered the role of spokesgirl – quickly explained.

“We’re playing a game with another team of kids and are trying to see how much silly stuff we can trade in the next 20 minutes!

“This is what we’re trading,” she said exuberantly, holding up a half-used bottle of bubbles liquid.

“Well, my house is full of pretty silly stuff, so give me a minute,” I said, not certain what I might dig up back in my “office,” which, looked at in another light, could be called “the catch-all.” As soon as I entered the room, I saw the grail and grabbed it.

It was a vintage fake Christmas corsage, all turquoise and white and feathery, that my beautiful, inventive daughter-in-law had affixed to my gift this year. I hadn't been sure what to do with it after the initial amusement on Christmas morning, but I liked it because it reminded me of my kids. I left it out on my supply cabinet where it gave me a brief smile whenever I saw it.

Perfect! And my son and daughter-in-law would love that it became part of this game.

I took it to the door and presented it to the girls, who were appropriately impressed. They thought it was really pretty but agreed with me that it was also very silly. So they gave me their bubbles, I turned over the corsage and they bounced back down the driveway. I heard them shrieking and giggling as they galloped to the next neighbor’s house.

There are so many levels of pleasure for me in this little vignette. First is just the happiness of being in the presence of giggly little girls with that mischievous light in their eyes. I don’t know these girls’ names, but I see them plenty, playing in their driveway and bopping around the neighborhood. In their shouts and cries I hear the echo of my own girlhood, when my sister and I were the ones tearing around, inventing adventures and challenges and trouble with the twins across the street.

I love that our neighborhood is safe and friendly and full of families, and that the kids are mostly sweet and appropriately managed. I love that this couple across the street plays with their children and lets them play outdoors – or insists that they go outside. I actually get to see them. They aren’t holed up indoors in front of electronic devices; they’re outside sharing the music of their laughter and the familiarity of their sibling fusses, just like children of old. Like, say, of my generation. The young ‘uns in my neighborhood have a freedom that I think is increasingly rare.

I wish all the world – literally, all the adults everywhere – could stop whatever else we’re doing and devote ourselves to making life sweet and safe and free for the children. Not to make the children the center of attention, which makes them narcissistic and nuts, but to make the foundational value of every single community that the children are getting what they need to be healthy, smart and free. Just that context would give rise to the actions that would nourish our world and correct so much environmental, social and political lunacy.

Isn’t it strange that such a simple desire could be viewed by so many as far too lofty a goal?

What I love about our GRIT community is that I honestly believe that we are engaged in accomplishing precisely this. We are committed to diverse communities and families in which we get along, and to raising our food and conducting our businesses in a way that has worked in this country for generations and has the promise of workability for generations to come.

They don't know it, but those are thoroughly GRIT-ty Girls across the street.

This structure might look a little unsightly to the casual observer, particularly in its current unfinished state. To me, it’s gorgeous because it represents ... TOMATOES!!! Lots and lots of tomatoes. 

My neighbor, Ken Krause, has studied the market, tested the waters and jumped in to the heirloom tomato business this spring. The hoop house (also known as a high-tunnel greenhouse, I believe) will give him a jump-start on the tomatoes’ life-cycle, free of disruption by Kansas’ wacky spring and early summer weather. Aforementioned weather can include, but is not limited to, snow, sleet, wind, frost, hot sun, and rain that dumps out of the sky all at once instead of pattering gently on the landscape.

It was the latter that has kept the hoop house in this state of construction for more than a week. Last Thursday the skies opened and, off and on for several hours, “rain bands” whooshed through. They seemed more like flood bands because they absolutely drenched the landscape, then drenched it again and again.

I should have taken some photos the next day but I would have had to wear hip waders.  The row boat, which is usually moored on a little dock on the north side of the big pond, ended up in the second row of trees in the orchard – on the south side of the pond. 

What this meant for the hoop house project was essentially a standstill because the ground was so soaked that even a ladder would sink into the muck – and don’t even think about what the cherry-picker would do in all that mud and mire. 

The weather’s given us a little break this week, however, and the guys are supposed to be back today to finish putting the plastic over the high tunnel’s ribs. Good thing – a couple hundred little baby tomato plants arrived yesterday and they won’t live forever on top of Nancy’s big freezer.

I spent about 15 minutes in the orchard this morning, picking my breakfast. The blackberry bushes still are exuberant with fruit and OMIGOSH!!!, the peach trees actually have a few tiny, ripe, perfect peaches coyily beckoning from under their sexy, frond-like leaves. One sashay through all that richness and my day's fruit requirements were well met, though I picked up an early-ripening Lodi apple for good measure. Then, though I sort of hate going into the hen house (stinky, noisy, and what is that stuff on the bottom of my flip-flop?), I took a deep breath, dodged in and found a couple of eggs so fresh the hen was still cussin' as I shut the door and briskly walked away.

I try not to be a baby about those chickens, but I have to admit, they creep me out. When I lived here on the farm a few years ago, there were fewer chickens and they seemed sweet and manageable. Now, I worry that they might one day just have had it with all this egg-thievery and there go my eyes, pecked out by a perturbed hen.

Still, my piracy was effective and I whisked the eggs away while I still had my sight, back to the house where I made this breakfast.

The only thing I didn't pick up on my morning ramble was the fabulous Grains Galore bread from the Farm to Market Bread Co. in Kansas City, so full of whole-grain goodness, it's like eating baked bird seed. OK, it's much better than that, but nutritionally pretty similar. Best regular day-to-day bread I've found so far.

As I sat down with an anticipatory sigh to enjoy this wholesome repast, I smooth freaked out. Something huge and weird was crawling across my way-cool outdoor rug!

Something huge and icky and Loch Ness-y and ... wai-i-t a minute. Crawling slo-o-o-owly across the rug, crawling snail-like across the ... a-HA!

That was no Kansas Nessie, creeping back to our pond. It was only a wee little snail, viewed from a rare vantage point as it slid across my sliding glass door. I have now had the privilege of seeing a sidewalk's eye view of a snail – cute in a bizarre, slimy sort of way. 

I don't think I could face a plate of buttery, garlicky escargot at 6 in the morning, but this version of snails for breakfast suits me just fine.