a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • On the Board Today – May 24, 2014

    It’s lunch time and on the board today are onion scapes, asparagus and garlic stalks, fresh kale, lettuce and mustard leaves. All refuse from an hour of weeding and thinning. The nice thing about cleaning out vegetable beds is that nothing gets thrown away. The weeds and stems you don’t want to eat, the bugs and bacteria in the compost pile are always ready to accept. The pretty stuff ends up on the lunch table in fresh salads and sautéed dishes.

    How many restaurants can you go to where you get to taste greens that are just minutes out of the garden? People pay an arm and a leg for such exquisite fare. Here at a man and his hoe® it’s what’s for lunch every day.

    Onion Scapes
    chopped asparagus and Garlic
    Fresh Kale
    Lettuce and Mustard

    The Trellis Restaurant in Kirkland, Washington, serves fruit and vegetables harvested daily at Executive Chef Brian Scheehser’s 10-acre farm in Woodinville. This is what they say on their website:

    Experience Seattle’s most pure “farm-to- table” restaurant dining experience at Trellis. Executive Chef Brian Scheehser practices sustainable farming on his 10-acre farm in Woodinville. He grows and harvests fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs featured on the Trellis menu, including his signature “Two Hour Salad” with ingredients harvested within two hours of being served. Enjoy a down-to-earth wine country cuisine, lovingly planted and artfully prepared with our hands.

    Eating greens picked within two hours isn’t bad. It’s not quite up to my standards, but it’s acceptable. The next time you are eating out, ask how long ago the greens were picked. Find out where they came from. It would be interesting to know.

    On the Board Today – May 18, 2014
    On the Board Today – May 10, 2014
    On the Board Today – May 9, 2014

  • Cancer Strikes and Now I Miss the Cows

    Nearly every day, I bicycle past this farm and enjoy looking at the peaceful Simmental cattle foraging on the idyllic pasture. Every year there are new calves and I get to watch their mothers raise them. I’ve been enjoying them for nine years. A few months ago the cattle disappeared and I wondered what happened to them. Today I learned that the owner of the farm has cancer and is no longer able to care for the cattle. They are at his brother’s farm not too far away.

    FavoriteCows
    FavoriteCowsC
    FavoriteCowsX

    A farmer I don’t even know gets cancer and suddenly, the beautiful cattle I enjoyed watching nearly every day are gone. Everything changes.

    So many people have appreciated the beauty of this man’s farm. Besides the cattle, I enjoy looking at the stacks of firewood the farmer makes each year. Some years as he stacks the firewood along the side of the barn he makes patterns with the firewood. One year he “drew” a tree on it’s side using different shades and sizes of firewood. A single person can bring so much happiness to others without even realizing it.

  • Beauty in the Grass

    Biking home from the post office yesterday, I was climbing up Bow Hill, when I noticed some bright purple vines snaking through the grassy hillside.

    RoadsideGrass

    The color of the purple vines was so intense, I had to stop and admire them.

    BerryVineA
    BerryVineB

    They were new berry vines. I never would have noticed them if I had been in the car. Four years ago I made a decision to stop driving when I made my daily errands. I mostly did this to work exercise into my daily routine so I could lose weight. That I managed to do, but bicycling forty five minutes to an hour each day as I went about my errands, also opened my eyes to seeing things along the roadside I missed when I sped by in the car.

    When you are on a bicycle, it is much easier to stop and enjoy beautiful things than it is when you are driving a car. For those of you enjoying breakfast or lunch at Tweets Café this weekend, there is a good chance that the eggs you are eating and possibly the salad you are enjoying were delivered by bicycle from just up the hill. And that the person who pedaled those eggs and salad greens to Tweets, stopped to enjoy the beauty of purple berry vines on their way home.

  • Everything Moves, Everything Changes

    EverythingChanges
    While at the post office yesterday, I noticed that the line of concrete curb blocks there was helter-skelter. I’m pretty sure that when these curb blocks were first placed, they made a straight line. The workers who placed them may even have been proud at how straight a curb they had laid.

    Over the years, they have been bumped by vehicles so many times that they look like they were just tossed out the back of a pickup and left where they fell.

    It just goes to show that everything moves, everything changes. Even inanimate, heavy concrete blocks with feet crawl over time.

    The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last — that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security. Pema Chodron ~ When Things Fall Apart p12.

    If you can’t rely on a block of concrete to stay still, what can you rely on?

  • Why Is Mayonnaise White?

    Mayonnaises

    When I see mayonnaise in the store, I always wonder why it is so white. The typical recipe for mayonnaise starts with egg yolks, adds vinegar or lemon juice, salt, pepper, mustard (I prefer to use ground mustard seeds). After mixing these ingredients, you start adding vegetable oil drop by drop by drop until you have a thick emulsified dressing.

    MakingMayonnaiseA
    MakingMayonnaiseB
    MakingMayonnaiseC
    MakingMayonnaiseD
    MakingMayonnaiseE

    And this is what my mayonnaise looks like. Starting with egg yolks this rich and bright, the mayonnaise I make at home always comes out quite yellow. So what are the food companies doing to make their mayonnaise so white?

    A look at their ingredients reveals the answer. A check of commercial mayonnaise reveals that they are adding water to their mayonnaise. In some, water is even the first ingredient, which means there is more water than any other ingredient.

    Mayonnaise recipes usually call for a ratio of one egg yolk per cup of oil. However, by using water, you can actually emulsify up to a dozen cups of oil with just one egg yolk. Commercial mayonnaise makers also often use the whole egg, not just the egg yolk. As a result, the ratio of egg yolk to oil is much less than in home made mayonnaise which is why their mayonnaise is so white.

    What Makes Store Brand Mayo White ~ Stack Exchange