I am happy to report that the plum wine has been coming along very well. This is my first foray into wine-making and it is thus far proving to be pretty straight-forward. The plum wine fermented for a week in a primary container and was recently racked into the secondary. The primary container was a sterilized plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid. I needed to
Late Summer Already
How did it get to be September already? Is someone playing a trick on my calendar? Here we are in the thick of tomato and squash season. I feel like it all happened overnight! I have been volunteering intermittently at the Urban Farm between summer vacations and it is just bursting there right now. I probably consume more food while I’m working than I help
Making Plum Wine
Plum season is finally upon us! I found a wild plum tree around the corner on an abandoned lot. Turns out the university owns it and one of their maintenance guys told me to help myself. Awesome! I began plotting what I would make them into as I plucked them from the tree. I have dabbled in brewing hard cider and thought plum wine sounded
Winter Harvesting
My outdoor garden beds have been providing me with a steady supply of the usual winter suspects: kale, swiss chard, spinach, collard greens, leeks, and tasty brussel sprouts. Oregon, especially the Willamette Valley, is fortunate to have relatively mild winters and we pretty much live on brassicas from November through February. This is the first winter I have had the pleasure of gardening with a
Slow down winter
Usually winter seems to drag on and on, but not this year. Time is flying by way too quickly for me right now. I’m forcing myself to slow down while the world continues to spin. It feels good, but it feels different from the frantic do-ten-things-at-once-pace that I typically operate at. I’m not doing all the things I “should” be doing right now. I’m not
Pork Tenderloin
We had a dinner party recently and I tried out a new recipe I found here for Burgundy Pork Tenderloin. It was very low maintenance and really tender. Thought I should pass along my version, as I changed quite a few things. Our Version Pork Tenderloin 4pounds pork tenderloin 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 cloves garlic, minced 4 shallots, halved Two
Holiday Prep
My amazing mother-in-law gets here next week and we have a lot of fun activities planned: wine tasting, a day trip to the Oregon Coast, hiking, brewery visits and plenty of time for long mornings drinking coffee and reading books. I am working on leisurely checking some to-do’s off our holiday preparation list. First up was getting a Christmas tree. We went to a local
Post Thanksgiving Recap
I’m a little behind, only now posting about how my awesome Thanksgiving was. I enjoyed a long, relaxing morning of cooking. Friends came over and brought delicious food. We drank a lot of wine – a lot. And, aside from a little school work that morning, I focused on being present in my life. It was wonderful, but then I had to jump back into
Our Thanksgiving Turkey
We are celebrating Thanksgiving quietly this year in Eugene and are excited to spend less time on I-5 that day and more time gathered around some delicious local food with friends. This is a graphic post that shows photos from our day on Laughing Stock Farm butchering our Thanksgiving turkey. If you are strongly against eating meat or have a weak stomach when it comes