I am co-hosting two events coming up at Wild Goose Creative ( 2491 Summit Street Columbus, OH 43202)!  Please come fill out the audience so I’m not talking to myself. First, I will join Holly Davis of PlumLife for the Farm to Table to Freezer event from 3 – 5 pm Sunday August 16.  We will be demonstrating several methods for preserving local harvests without canning. Then, from 12:30 – 3 pm Saturday August 22, [...]

Last Sunday my parents unexpectedly watched Lillian for the day.  What a treat! Instead of slothing around like we usually do, I wanted to get some kitchen remodeling projects wrapped up.  Our Japanese guest Kayoko arrived to stay with us Thursday and that motivated me to get a lot of things done last week! After a delicious, inexpensive, large portioned lunch at Lavash Cafe, Alex and I measured, measured, measured, then cut and installed the [...]

On Thursday we welcomed Kayoko to our home.  She is an adult chaperone for a group of 110 Japanese students visiting Ohio for the next four weeks.  The Japanese youth are organized through the Labo organization and host families are organized through the Ohio 4-H International program. My family hosted several Japanese youth when I was young. In 1994 I traveled to Japan for two months with the Ohio 4-H International Program.  This early exposure [...]

Lillian desparately wants a cat.  Our number one excuse for not getting one is that Alex is allergic. Number two reason is that Devie (the big hound) is terribly curious about cats and scares them with her howling.  (Literally Dev once scared the shit out of  my parent’s tomcat!) For ease of arguing, we usually go with number one.  “Mama, can we have a kitten?”  “Sorry, dear, Papa is allergic.” The other day, after meeting [...]

When we first became members of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), we received plenty of produce that we had never encountered before.  CSA managers are getting better about identifying everything in the share, but in the very beginning, we were given some veggies we couldn’t even name! Here’s my quickie guide for using your CSA share to full potential when you aren’t even sure what you have. Taste it raw. Not sure what part is [...]

Way back in the fall, we started the bulb vegetable journey by planting some garlic cloves.  Because they were already growing in our onion bin, there was really no downside to planting them to see if they would grow. Alex thought shallots would be fun too so he bought some starts and planted those alongside some onion sets in a raised bed. I never expected how pleasant and easy they would be to grow.  Requiring [...]

Yesterday we drove through Ohio to visit relatives in Napoleon Ohio.  Once off the four lane highway, we were driving past commerical farms on the left and right. There were only two crops: field corn and soybeans. Every field looked exactly the same, except for differences in the seed/chemical branded signs at the ends of the rows. The only farmers I saw working were using huge machines, some visiably spewing exhaust. Only one farm house [...]