I’m Back Baby!

We’re eating enormous amounts of fresh raw food from the garden.

Daily Harvest

Every day we take a bushel basket and head down to collect the daily harvest; we come back with our bellies full and our basket wanting. No dishes! And the kids love it because they think there’s something naughty about ‘stealing’ food right off the plant and gobbling it up before anyone sees.

Just today, the youngest discovered kale; she sat on the porch with a giant curled leaf and pulled off bite-sized pieces to pop in her mouth. This is much the way I remember eating cotton candy at the Ex when I was a kid (without the stickiness. . .and the toxic overload).

But the fact is, I love to cook. I won’t even claim to have any talent, but I love to do it. So, we’re eating plenty of fresh raw food and staying meat-free, but there’s a part of me that likes how the smells of the kitchen meander into the rest of the house, and the gapped out feeling I get while stirring a cream sauce to a boil, and fish! I really, really love fish. So I really think I will always eat one cooked meal a day. (But that’s easy to say when the nights are getting cooler, the days are getting shorter, and there’s a feeling of autumn in the air. It’s almost stew season.)

So, to recap and bring myself up to speed, in a manner of speaking:

My range shattered early this spring. I was still able to use the oven.
A few weeks after, I bought a two-burner cooktop to ease some of our burden – boiling pasta, rice, etc.
About a month ago, the cooktop shut down.
Then the computer on the range starting acting up so that I couldn’t turn the oven off. A little Fonz action would sometimes correct it, but I got to the point where I was afraid to turn it on again.
I received a final kick in the head about 10 days ago, when the barbecue suffered a bad transport and broke into pieces.

The signs were all there: This girl should just go raw and be done with it.

But it’s really not that simple. And exactly how stupid do I have to be before I realize that I can’t write a cookbook without some properly functioning cooking device?

So last week I decided I couldn’t take it anymore – it is canning season after all – and I bought a new range. (Clap hands with glee!)