Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Strawberry Moon!

There will be a full moon tonight -we won't necessarily see it, but it will be full. Each month's full moon actually has a name (if there happens to be two, the second one is called a 'blue moon'). June's full moon is The Strawberry Moon -AND today marks a full year for Sheep, Spinach and Strawberries! Wow, I think we should celebrate! A homemade strawberry shortcake like my grandma always made (click here) would be a great way -IF we had strawberries, which we don't, which is annoying. Anyway, I'm looking forward to another year here of food, farm and fiber -and sharing it with you!



Food -reading, writing and thinking about food, raising, sharing, cooking, and of course eating food. I can't help it, I think about food almost all the time: farm-raised, store-bought, home-cooked, potluck, take-out, the occasional fine dining restaurant experience, or the equally indulgent 'standing over the kitchen sink' experience; whatever the occasion (or non-occasion) might be -celebrations (click here) both big and small, the everyday family (or solitary) meals, new recipes from somewhere else in the world, old childhood favorite made by our mothers and grandmothers- I'm all about the food.



Farm -I refer to this outfit as my 'sexy green rubber rain suit' because it is SO NOT sexy. It is though, incredibly useful when doing daily farm chores in the pouring or drizzling rain, walking through waist high wet grass, weeding in the mud, wrestling with wet animals, and being nuzzled (affectionately or otherwise) by muddy little pig snouts. I would be rather cranky, and almost daily soaked, if I didn't have my sexy green suit to wear this time of year. Mid-June and it is raining (again) with the temperatures (mostly) hovering around 60 degrees. The season for daily salads from the garden is full on (hurray!), but the reality of us actually having our own strawberries at our table is still a few weeks off yet (sigh). The lambs, ducklings and chicks are all growing, the hens are laying (well, some of them are laying), the new little rabbits for breeding look promising, and the garden is (mostly) in and coming up. On the other hand, the weeds (I am seriously losing my battle with them), my TO-DO list, and my long list of 'works in progress' all keep growing at an alarming rate. I try and not let the fact that I will NEVER actually get caught up depress me too much.



Fiber -World Wide Knit in Public Day is next Saturday. I don't know if I will knit in public at The Seattle Center with the skg (click here), at a friend's house with a group of knitting friends, in the car driving along I-5 with my husband, or here at home with the farm animals -but I will knit! My niece Sherece took this photo of me back in November during our Crafts and Cocktails weekend (click here). She is one of those dedicated knitters who knits whenever she is not at work or sleeping -and this is no exaggeration! She was knitting during her younger brother's high school graduation ceremony last week. She also told me that when she went to the casinos in Las Vegas with her husband, she sat in the corner and knit while everyone else gambled (I laugh every time I think about it)! Though I have knit while attending meetings, the Farmer's Market, riding the ferry, waiting for and/or watching my kids at various activities -and last winter while everyone else went to the top of the space needle in Seattle- I am in an entirely different class of knitters than Sherece, the four 'knitwits' at Girls in Sheep Clothing (click here), and all the other REALLY AMAZING knitters that I know, and I'm OK with that!

Happy Strawberry Moon to everyone -and a big 'THANKS' to everyone who's stopped by here at Sheep, Spinach and Strawberries this past year!

Talking About Food

"When I'm talking about food I am talking about life." -Nigella Lawson



We had a fabulous long weekend over the Memorial Day holiday with family and lots of good food...four went to the Mariners vs. Yankees game Friday night, five played a rousing round of the boardgame LIFE on Saturday night, and nine were here for a cookout on Sunday...grilled pork chops in an Italian marinade, goat ribs and a salmon fillet cooked over the fire-pit...a rustic cherry jam tart, gelato in coffee mugs with an assortment of tasty embellishments, and a ridiculously easy and incredibly yummy Apricot-Pineapple Icebox Pie...Nutella cupcakes (click here) from The Quince Tree blog...My Baja-style Shrimp Meatball Tacos (click here)...Eggs Benedict for breakfast one morning, and 15-Grain pancakes the next...a huge Caesar Salad, my Grandma Leona's Baked Beans (click here), an amazing potato salad with lots of diced celery and Zucchini Relish made by The Soup Queen, and a radish salad I made out of The Victory Garden Cookbook...our first spinach from the garden this season...ten Pekin ducklings and seven little rabbits to raise...several bottles of good wine, mojitos in wide-mouth Mason pint jars and orange Fanta for the teens...mangos to make Mango Chutney with...and since Monday was National Cheeseburger Day, we had (Duh!) Cheeseburgers! I hope you also had a relaxed and enjoyable food-filled weekend.

The Haves and The Have Nots

"Try to make it real. Compared to what?" -Les McCann and Eddie Harries

My two oldest children have moved out on their own recently, one to Austin and one to Seattle, making the contrast for the lifestyle they had with us, and the lifestyle they now must provide for themselves, starkly apparent. My son was living at home, while very actively looking for work for ten months, before he found his current job -it was discouraging, but not the financial crisis if he'd been on his own. As our children living with us, they had access to health care and dental care. Living on their own they don't, and when it's been available to them through their work, they couldn't afford to buy it. Living here they had the use of our cars (not that driving a Plymouth Acclaim with sheep bumper stickers on it gave anyone a thrill), and all the usual basic things we take for granted -clean laundry, a heated house, a safe bed with plenty of blankets, and plenty of food.

Last visit my son said to me, "You know a couple of weeks ago I did something, maybe I shouldn't have, but well..." These are the sort of lead-ins that cause moms to hold their breath and really, really hope that what follows is not too dreadful. My son works the night shift at a seafood warehouse and gets off work in the wee hours. He lives in the International District of Seattle (its pretty 'sketch', pronounced his sister), where he is on a first name basis with the local dealers, knows which teen prostitutes work which areas and who their pimps are, and he recognizes the homeless men that live nearby under the freeway overpass, and sometimes gives them food and change. I try to not let it keep me awake at nights. He said he was getting off work, "and it was one of those nights when it was really, really cold." As he was going into his apartment he was approached by a homeless man, a young guy about his own age, who said he didn't want money or food, but if at all possible, he really, really could use a blanket. My son started to walk away from the situation, but he said he just couldn't. He told the guy to wait, went up to his apartment, took the new comforter he'd recently bought off his bed, and went back and gave it to the guy.

As a teen in the seventies, I remember talking with my grandmother about The Depression and asking her how bad it had been. "Oh honey, it wasn't so bad for us. We were on a farm and so we had enough food and we got by okay, not like some folks. We sometimes couldn't get gasoline and that sort of things, but we were all right." Now with unemployment being what it is (30% for the 18-25 year olds) there are many that are not doing all right -and not necessarily through any fault of their own. My kids have a safety net; if they aren't able to work and provide for themselves, neither of them will go hungry, or be out on the street (or working the street). We've told our daughter we'll pay for a plane ticket from Austin, if necessary. It will be okay, no matter what happens. I am proud of both of them: who they are, what they are doing, and how they are facing the challenges of not having, and how they appreciate and make work what they do have. Unlike another mother's son, cold and without a blanket on the streets of Seattle (and those other mothers' daughters), our kids can always come back to the farm if need be, where there is plenty of food and plenty of warm blankets.

Food Everywhere

So much food -growing food, raising food, cooking food and, don't forget, eating food- happens at our house. A few days ago my daughter was ranting, "I've been gone for two days and I get up in the morning and come downstairs and into the kitchen. There is a pan of Congo Bar Cookies half gone, pasta (with a Picchi Pacchi sauce), a loaf of homemade bread and fresh jam, and a piece of pie -ONLY ONE PIECE. Who eats an entire pie in two days? Oh, and stuff to make burgers, don't forget. I mean WHO lives this way!?!" I think she mostly was just amazed noticing how much food we cook and eat but I almost felt I was suppose to apologize. I make no apologies though and I feel I am so fortunate to have the time to cook, the best of foods to cook with, and people who (mostly) appreciate it -my husband runs almost 7 miles a day and my son is doing hard physical labor for 10+ hour shifts.

Today I was thinking about which food to talk to you about: making s'mores and grilled teriyaki salmon steaks in our fire pit last night, making blackberry jam this morning with blackberries I picked yesterday, cooking the 'variety meats' of recent farm butcherings, making Chinese plum sauce with my son yesterday, the cinnamon rolls I was planning to make and/or the soup I was just now putting together. Most of my family had just left for the day (Bumbershoot Music Festival), which might have meant no-cooking-dinner-tonight, but last time I jumped to that (erroneous) conclusion, they all returned home late with, "I'm STARVING. What's there to eat?" and my "I just had a bowl of popcorn for dinner" reply was NOT the answer anyone was hoping for. Therefore, a freshly baked loaf of bread and soup, waiting on the stove for whoever and whenever, came to my mind as the perfect answer.

Soup made in my pressure cooker, using meaty stock from the freezer, dried beans and barley, with lots of garden vegetables added, would be perfect. It would have been perfect too, except for my going to the garden to get the vegetables and leaving the beans and stock on high in the pressure cooker. Throughout my childhood, my grandmother repeatedly told the story of how she had been called outside to help with a cow emergency while canning vegetables in her huge pressure cooker. She returned to find her entire stove had been smashed in from the force of the exploding pressure cooker. You would think such a story, ingrained in someone practically from birth, would keep them from making the same mistake. You, of course would be mistaken. Luckily, my little Presto pressure cooker has a new-fangled (an improvement from Granny's time) safety valve that pops out. Not so luckily, it shoots the contents through the (relatively small) safety valve hole under GREAT PRESSURE which makes a rather spectacular mess. My (unharmed) 17-year old was nearby and quickly changed from terrified to disgusted, "Is this, like, meat juice in my hair?" I spent the next few hours cleaning the kitchen of its meat juice. I also added more stock to the pressure cooker (the unspewed contents were fine) along with the vegetables from my ill-timed garden trip -and continued my soup making. Now that I'm exhausted and ready for something to eat, soup IS perfect.