Happiness is a restaurant supply store!

I'll just say that when ever anyone asks "want to take a walk to the restaurant supply store?" JUST SAY YES. Nough said. The fruits of my labor:

Yellow cupcakes with hazelnut chocolate (Nutella) frosting.

I am totally in love with whipped cream frostings. They are delicious, smooth, not too sweet, and you can put any kind of flavoring in them that you like. Way lighter and more versatile than a butter cream. This one 3/4 cup cream, 1/4 (generous) cup Nutella, 1/4 cup sugar. Topped with toasted hazelnuts and chocolate shavings.

#10 Saturday. Don't feel like doing anything.

Escargot taste like dirt

in a good way!! There is real value in a solid neighborhood restaurant - someplace fairly causal that has tasty and affordable dinners. I believe this falls into the category of affordable luxuries or mini splurges - which most often get spent on food in our household. In Boston, our neighborhood spot was the deep, dark comfort food spot Zon's. I always have the mac and cheese. Even when I go in saying "I think I'll try something different this time..."

The new Zon's or the current contender for the role of neighborhood restaurant is Loie Fuller's on Westminster St. A hop and skip through the park from our new place. The decor is intensely art deco complete with fantastic sconces and woodwork undulating across the walls. The beer and wine list is tremendous, says V who knows these kinds of things, and the prices are entirely reasonable.

Anyhow, we were seated next to some young gents who were enjoying a plate of escargots and we immediately thought "when in Providence..." and ordered up a plate for ourselves. After what seemed like a half hour of coaxing them out of the shell, I got my first taste. Something like mushroom meets calamari - dark and dirty tasting but in a good way. Slightly chewy but definitely not tough. The snails pace was followed by sole and brussel sprouts for me and wild boar and apples for V. We rounded out the evening with a strawberry lambic float. Yes please!

#8-9 Getting in to the rythm, slowly. Keeping balance between new and old.

#7 So calm and content. Right now.

In a smaller apartment, the animals Olive (read more about Olive the dog) Butter the Tabby, and Freja the Scrappy one, seem to have come to terms with the fact that they live together. Up until recently it was rare to find them all (peacefully) in the same room. I've always wanted a family portrait of them to put on my desk - to send me love when needed. Et voila...here it is! Thanks guys!

#6 Breath. Exercise. Eat well. Look inward.

#5 New orientation slowly creeping towards North.

#4 Low blood sugar. Too much happening.

#3 Caravan of friends and family. New start.

#2 Packed up and leaving. Bye Beantown.

365 of 6 words

Aight, I started this blog as an exercise in writing every day. So far, I've been a huge slacker. I write for work, almost every day, but I rarely write at home. Recently, I was very inspired by SMITH magazine's project to publish six word memoirs, by professional and amature writers alike. They adapted the idea from a possibly mythical challenge to Ernest Hemingway- write a story in just six words. His read "For Sale; Baby shoes, never worn."

I absolutely love the simplicity/complexity of this challenge. The more I write, the more verbose I seem to get. So... I am challenging myself to write 6 words every day. If I miss a day, the next day I'll write two. Two sets of 6.

#1 Your big scary love changed everything.

No corkscrew? No problem!

After a long hard day of saving family farmers and promoting local agriculture, a girl just wants to come home and have a nice glass of white white. Yes, earlytwentysomething self, I've become the lady who orders wine, over beer...frequently! Trouble is, when 90% of your life is packed in boxes, a corkscrew can be hard to come by. Luckily, V knows my need for cold white and was prepared.

Tools required: a screw, electric drill and a hammer.

O baby! Hammer meets wine, what could go wrong.

Nothing today, the gods are on our side.

Ah........

Thank You Boston

Well V beat me to it but I feel the need to write my own list of "Things I Will Miss About Boston". Here goes:
1. Being a phone call away from lots of good friends - like it was in the good old days
2. Carpooling with A to the barn
3. Eating junk food while carpooling with A to the barn
4. Smirking while walking by the atm where V and I first smooched
5. The skyline
6. Following baseball games simply by listening to the tone of noise on the street
7. The T
8. the 66 bus and watching the hipsters on it
9. Toad in Porter Sq.
10. Delivery from Bella Luna and Food Wall

Um...I think that's it. Time to pack!

Setting up the food

Foodie by trade, and association, many discussions with V about moving to Providence have been about food. We've been reading up on where to have our big celebratory "we survived!" meal. All bets are on La Laiterie. Can't wait - they specialize in stinky cheese!

In setting up the details of life on Sycamore, I started with the utilities and immediately moved to setting up local food sources. First, a CSA. I wrote to three farms in the area and was impressed with one farmer who wrote back immediately with a cheery note. I was sold. For twenty weeks this summer we will enjoy fruit, herbs, vegetables and eggs from Zephyr Farm in Cranston. I was particularlly excited about this connection because I have been driving by this farm for years, on my way to my aunt's horse farm, and the chickens live in the cutest coup. They make me smile every time we pass, especially when it is nightime and there is a buttery glow coming from the windows. I like to picture the hens with their feet up, knitting and kvetching about the day. Looking forward to the fruits of your labors ladies!

I was wondering about meats and other staples and whether or not there were some networking that I could do in that departnment. So, I asked my new local farmer farmer who else I should be talking to about food. She referred me to Urban Greens, a co-op buying club soon to be storefront. Turns out, Urban Greens is on the same street that we are moving to - so we'll have to go vistit to learn all about what it takes to set up a natural foods store. Seems like our food sources are in good shape. Other food plans include: being tickled to buy Rhody Fresh Milk and visiting Rhode Island's own Kenyon Grist Mill where they grind a variety of flour and meals.

DeLish.

List of things I won't do in my new lfe

I like to use any big life change as an opportunity to step back, name the parts, and decide which ones are invited to the next phase and which I would like to leave behind. Nothing like packing up all your stuff makes this more comical. Like, maybe in the next apartment the hankerchiefs and spice jars won't live in the same drawer just because they landed there. Or, does one really need 25 AAA batteries but only one Dansko clog? Yeah... So, while I was packing up this morning I decided that a list of things I won't do in my new life would be an excellent diversion from the job at hand.

1. Won't ever have dirty dishes because there is a DISHWASHER!!
2. Will never, ever let the laundry pile up beyond one load.
3. Will say Goodbye to cable.
4. Will say Helo to Hulu.
5. Will never buy meat that makes me feel guilty.
6. Will make sure that anything that takes up considerable energy or time also makes me more of the person that I want to be.
7. Will not keep things that I don't love/need/use.
8. Will finish things that I start, within reason.
9. Will read more.
10. Will write more.

No problem. Right?

Paying Attention Brings Me Full Circle

Some of my very earliest childhood memories are framed by a quest. Unlike most, however, the prize or nature of the mission was entirely unknown. My dearest friend Maile, and I, would wander the woods, dirt roads and playgrounds of our truly small town looking for "clues for the case." The words were very specific. I don't remember when we felt the calling or how it came to be that two five year-olds had a deep and mutual understanding of such an amorphous journey but so it was.

Clues manifested themselves in nature - a pile twigs that had fallen exactly in parallel lines, a perfect oculous in the canopy of oak trees, tree bark in the shape of letters. Each happening of an unnatural, or seemingly so, shape in nature indicated to us that we were aware of the very moment that we needed to be to learn from our surroundings. The best clues would point us in the direction of the next mystery. Our journey gave us focus for several years until the mystery because too overwhelming, or cursive letters too all consuming, and the case slowly faded away.

Recently, though I've been feeling the pull to draw sense from the universe. Find reassurance that being in the right place at the right time isn't merely accidental. It has been a rocky year. I left my job of 6 years without a plan, planned a wedding on a shoestring, and most recently joined many other Americans in a "down-turn" when my husband was laid off. Flip side, I found two wonderful jobs and when Vance lost his job, possibilities opend such that we could imagine a life we wanted not merely one that would pay the bills.

So, off we go moving to Providence (where my folks grew up and the rents are markely cheaper than Boston) where I will support us for a time, while Vance learns to make bread. Ever since we dared to consider changing our lives to travel a few steps closer to a the life that we think we want (some kind of righteous foodie, family business) clues for the case have populated the atmosphere. Today's clues happen more in synchronistic conversations with people where unrelated relations have crossed over in strange and complicated ways but the impact is the same. It feels very much as though clues for the case are shaking our hands, giving us encouragement, and keeping the faith.

It feels good to be back on the case!

Coming soon to a monitor near you!