Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Pear Pastry a la Paris!



Although, there may be nothing French about it....

About 6 years ago I was introduced to this modest little bakery in Long Island called Malverne Pastry.  This was a wonderful thing when I was living nearby and had a car.  I would make a weekly jaunt over there for a sublime little pastry called "French Apple Tart."  The first time this crossed my palate, I turned giddy with ecstasy.  Light puff pastry with a thin layer of tart, thinly sliced green apples (skins on!) and a very faint, nearly undetectable flavor of almond.   Not too sweet and just flaky enough to melt in your mouth but crisp enough so you could also hold it in your hand.  This was my one weakness for many years. After we moved further away from the pastry shop, but closer to the city, I would still find a way to make it to the pastry shop a couple times a year...even though I'd have to rent a car to do it.

One day late this past August, having  received a bumper crop of Bartlett pears with a fruit share in my CSA, I decided to try my hand at making my own.  (Thanks, most certainly to the generosity of an generous friend of mine who gave me her share of pears!)   It was a smashing success!  Instead of using hydrogenated-oil filled puff pastry (I haven't mastered the delicate are of making my own yet) I used an organic fillo dough, layered with butter, as the crust.  The result was a crispy flaky heavenly pastry.

Here is the recipe.  I will try it with apples as soon as they are here. 

Preheat oven to 400.

1 package organic filo dough, thawed
1 tube of Almond paste (rolled out as thin as possible, the size of your cookie sheet)
1/2 cup softened butter (you may not need it all)**
2 tbs apricot jam, warmed with a little honey (approx. 1 Tb.), or apple juice and a splash of cognac or brandy.
1 cookie sheet lined with natural parchment
4 - 5 bartlett pears, not too ripe, or tart firm apples, cored and sliced very thin (1/16 in.)  You want them to be like thick potato chips.
1/8 tsp. cinnamon powder to toss with the sliced apples.


** note on the butter:  if you have a pastry brush, melt the butter and brush it on.  I don't, so I spread softened butter instead.

Carefully, on a tea towel, unroll the package of filo.  (Aha! just like it says on the package...they do know what they are talking about.)   Place your parchment on top the cookie sheet and spread a little butter over it.  Then, begin layering your filo, a couple sheets at a time, spreading (or brushing) butter between each layer.  

After you have layered your final sheet of filo, now it's time for the almond paste.  You'll want to place it between two pieces of parchment or waxed paper and roll it out as think as possible.  (I can't give you any hints on this procedure really, because I am still struggling with this bit.  If anyone else knows how to get a thin coat of almond paste onto a thin, fragile pastry, please let me know.)   I can never get it as thin as I'd like, so I tear off tiny pieces and place them over the top of the filo.  Now for the art- carefully layer all of your fruit over the top. When you are satisfied with the appearance of your tart, fold over the raggedy edges of your tart so they look like the picture below.  This keeps them from burning too much. (Stick them down with a little bit of butter, used like glue.   Finally, in a small pan, gently warm your jam, honey and cognac until they are runny.  Add a little water if need be.  Brush your entire pastry, crust and all, with a very fine layer the jam.  Bake for about 20 -25 min, depending on how robust your oven's heating mechanism is.  The crust should be a nice golden color on the bottom and never fear, my edges do sometimes get a little dark, but it still tastes delicious!  After you remove it from the oven, carefully cut yourself a slice and sit down with a nice cup of something warm, put up your feet and relax...dream...and think up your next project.





With Love, and Autumn Blessings~

Carey



Monday, July 18, 2011

Garden Tour over at The Essential Herbal




Hey Everybody!

Here is a link to a tour of my city garden which Tina Sams of the The Essential Herbal has generously hosted and posted!

The Essential Herbal's Summer Garden Tour


I hope you have fun!  Happy Summer!

Carey

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Woods



Near Penzance, Cornwall Trevaylor Woods




That's when she found the tree,   
the dark, crabbed branches   
bearing up such speechless bounty,   
she knew without being told   
this was forbidden. It wasn't   
a question of ownership—   
who could lay claim to   
such maddening perfection?   



~Excerpt from~"I have been a stranger in a strange land"




Sunday, March 13, 2011

Too late for the Blog Party: Herbal Hugs

(This was supposed to be part of an Herbal Blog Party two months back at Whispering Earth, but as seems to be my pace, I was too late and so abandoned my article.)


Herbal Hugs.   I need those daily it seems.  Right now as I post, my upstairs neighbor is angrily stomping around, which she does incessantly.  Sometimes I want to run out of the apartment!  Perhaps she needs an herbal hug herself.

There are so many types of hugs aren't there?  There are the friendly ones that we give to each other when run into each other on the street.  There are the deep, full embrace hugs that we give and receive when our hearts are aching.  There are the safe and reassuring hugs which are like warm hearth fire on an icy day.  These are the kind that say "ah, my dear all will be well, but in the meantime here, come have a cup of tea with me and tell me all your worries."   Hug therapy.  Herbal therapy. They go hand in hand.  I watched a documentary on  Mother Theresa the other day, and in it she said  'The worst disease today is not leprosy; it is being unwanted, being left out, being forgotten."  Feeling unwanted is to truly feel alone.  How healing is a meaningful hug.

I have several herbal hugs that I go to when in need, or prepare for others in need of them.  Many of these blends contain oatstraw or milky oats.  These two herbs soothe right through our nerves, into the spinal cord, and all the way into our very marrow, reviving our essence.  The spring green of an oatstraw blend is healing in and of itself.  Color therapy.

However, my all time favorite go-to herbal hug is Kukicha tea with warmed milk and buckwheat honey.


For this brew to be truly nourishing to the weary, afraid or frazzled spirit all three elements really need to be there.  The milk absolutely must be warmed or the beverage looses it's soothing creaminess and gets a little too airy, and any honey other than buckwheat is too sweet.  Buckwheat honey has a bit of a taste to it, sort of reminiscent of minerals, and it's really dark in color.

Kukicha tea was at one time (and still is in Japan) considered the poor persons tea, or was the tea drunk by the peasants and farmers.  It is made with the aged, sun-dried twigs (or sometimes stalks) of the Camellia sinensis plant.  The twigs have much less caffeine than the leaves and because they are the stems, lend us their strength, giving us a little inner shoring up when needed.  I find it much more grounding than other tea (by this I am referring to Camellia sinensis.)


I recall one time when my son was attending a 5 day/half-day nursery school.  I'd collect him at noon, myself rather frazzled from a morning in a separate Waldorf Nursery class, and he'd be wired from exhaustion and sensory overload. (Yes, even in  rhythmic Waldorf school the sheer number of children can overload a child's senses.)     I recall one day, I gathered him up and he was nearly in tears, I  wrestled (yes, wrestled) him into his car seat and handed him my pre-prepared mini thermos of this magic brew.  Relief flooded over him as he took the first gulp.

My husband and I drink a mug of this after dinner each evening once our son has gone to bed.  It is so soothing and the warm milk adds to the relaxing deliciousness of it.  It goes just as well with little cookies as it does sandwiches!  And a thermos of this pulled out of a backpack on a chilly day's walk has no compare in my opinion.   Next I'll share my recipe for crispy thin sesame crackle, or brickle depending on where you are from.  It goes delectably with that!

Prepare the tea with hot water, but not boiling, and allow to steep for three minutes.  For children I suggest a tea to milk ratio of 1/4 tea steeped lightly, and 3/4 warmed milk. For adults this is probably too milky.  I do a smallish mug filled 3/4 way with twigs and then filled the rest of the way with the milk.  Sweeten with buckwheat honey to taste.  I've enjoyed the bags (Haiku or Eden brands) or the loose (I like Mountain Rose Herb's).

I do hope you'll give it a try.  Truly all the people I've given this to are all kukicha junkies now.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

John Lennon - Power To The People



May all the people standing up for a dream of a better world be Blessed, Protected, and Honored!

Power to the People!!!!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Health, Healing, Balance, to heal ourselves

What is healing?  Is it the irradication of a specific set of symptoms, or a return of vitality, or is it perhaps something more complex, different, mysterious? Whether in our own quests for self-healing, or as midwives to others healing journeys, this question invariably comes up.   I looked up the definition of "to heal" and according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it means "To make or become sound or whole."  What is whole? Is "whole" the body and organs we had in youth?  Or is it something more like a merging and interweaving of our emotional bodies, our spirit bodies and our physical bodies - the physical bodies we are present in today?   I wonder if we are confusing healing with cure?

In this modern society, one in which we are on a daily basis seeped in images of "perfect, young, and athletic" that we can perhaps forget, or miss what we are really trying to do.  Our bodies in their myriad of expressions of our physicality are beautiful! Round, soft, crooked, slow, spunky, rough, wrinkled. Just as we all have unique walks, we all have unique ways that our bodies indicate if we are living in balance.   Recently I was re-reading the book "Healing Wise" by Susun Weed.  In the wise-woman tradition healing is something that can and does exists even when physical variations remain.  Healing comes when life-spirit is ignited, when our muscles are relaxed, our curiosity is present, and we feel connected with ourselves, each other, and the Divine forces that Are.


We can really let ourselves off the hook here, take the pressure off of what "healed" will look like.  We don't realize what pressure is exerted on the system in the quest for healing!  Especially when we, or the ones we are caring for are in the stream of allopathic medicine.  Perhaps the blood panel will not indicate a change, or perhaps it will, but we will nonetheless feel strong, and vital and enthusiastic.  Perhaps we will need to walk slowly, or with a cane, perhaps we will need to employ the help of anti-cancer therapies, but will do so with dignity and the grace of a Wise Queen, and in the process slow down enough to share and see.   Healed is vital, vibrant and constantly changing, and is something which comes from deep within our very beings.  Healing radiates from within like the loving and brilliant Sun itself.

Our physical symptoms are part of our healing...not something which need be fought against and attacked, but rather surrendered into a slow and gentle dance with, where we can hear what is being whispered to our inner being.  This takes courage! It takes the courage to not succumb to fear.  Our bodies begin relaying wisdom to us subtly sometimes, and we are unaware of these gentle messages.  So many do not take notice until full blown conditions are present.   Our healing comes by opening our cosmic center to our spirit selves, which in many of our cases happens via our health "issues."

We find healing when we approach ourselves with tenderness, hold our healing selves, and each other's in our hands as we would a new born dove and then take the steps of courage knowing that we are in the arms of the Divine.

Dr. Stephan Harding - Part 1 / 10 - Gaia Theory & Deep Ecology



For the record.  I haven't ever seen these two videos on youtube before so I am posting them here for future reference and for those of you who haven't heard either of these two people speaking about Gaia.  We've been studying Space in our homeschooling studies this past two weeks, and I just happened upon these videos when searching for footage of Joanna Macy speaking, a truly inspiring speaker.  As a child, these ideas were not part of my education, and I've been reflecting on how much of my post-university life I've spent catching up.  My dream is that the for the children of today, and of the future, this knowledge will be part of their "culture" part of everyday acceptance.

Deep Ecology-Satish Kumar

Monday, February 7, 2011

A whispered fragrance of Spring.






Nothing speaks to my spirit like awakening on an icy February morning to the delicate and heady wisp of Hyacinth.  Before I even open my eyes, their fragrance excites my joy within with their perfume.  I have made it a tradition to adorn my home with Hyacinth on the Eve of Imbolc.  Just as I feel the turn of Joy from within the Earth as She prepares for the exuberance of all Her crazy and wild sprouting, the fragrance of Hyacinth wafts its way delicately and with surprise through the rooms of my home.  Each time my senses register their fragrance my heart leaps! "Spring is coming!" Wooooo Hooooo!!!  I can barely sleep in the mornings now.  (this is a bit of a bummer because I did love the months of sleeping until 8 on the weekends.) Now, I am even awake to hear Mr. Cardinal chip chip chipping around the perimeter looking for breakfast.  Gee, at 5 a.m., I am awake for everything.

I have discovered that daily reminders like blooming indoor bulbs, ordering seeds (if you've managed to hold off this long!) or even purchasing cut cold-climate flowers like tulips and daffodils brings the hope we are craving to February, whereas without such hope we can be lured into depression, and discouragement, and downright frustration at the two more months of COLD!

What do you do to celebrate February's seed turning?  How do you kindle your pre-spring inner fire?

Monday, January 31, 2011

Raindrops on Roses, Whiskers on Kittens...

Yes, I've been climbing out of a pit of discouragement for the past couple of days.  In the wake of the news about the big-money organic companies, Whole Foods Market, Stonyfield Farms and organic Valley, and their public statement that they will no longer fight the use of Monsanto's round-up ready alfalfa being mass-used across the nation, I have had to do a lot of attitude-lifting.  All this can seem so overwhelming.  Money talks.  There is a thorough account of the situation here. And also, as I have just seen written today an article by the CEO of Stonyfield in the Huffington Post.  How did I miss the USDA agreeing last November to the widespread use of this alfalfa?  (I am still stinging from the fact that this slipped by me without even one single e-mail to the government!)  According to the CEO of Stonybrook, they fought for an outright ban on the GE crops until the USDA removed outright ban as an option and were forced to choose between "co-existence" and deregulation.  Who knows what's really happening.

Unfortunately, even concentrating on the lovely parts of life aren't distracting me from my despair.  However, (and this is a huge however!) there are still things we can do.  Here is my list:

Shop at local stores, green markets, join a CSA (Link to JustFood) (link to localharvest).

If it does turn out that Whole Foods, Stonyfield and Organic Valley have acted in the interest of their bank accounts.  Boycotting Whole Foods Market, Stonyfield and Organic Valley immediately. (I already get my milk from a local farmer and I don't really shop at Whole Foods at all because I'd rather support my local tiny shop which carries organics...but I do get my butter from Organic Valley...I'll need to find a local butter pronto and it will hurt my pocketbook because Ronnybrook's butter costs a lot more.)

Writing a letter to the CEO of Whole Foods Market.  Here is a link to John Mackey's blog.


This is all I can come up with at the moment.  I'll be adding to this list as time goes on.

Let your money speak, even if you are on a tight budget, it is perhaps worth it to forego a larger amount of a product and buy a local variety?  (I'm obviously thinking of my butter at the moment, but perhaps I need to just use a little less.)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Very Important article from Gail Faith Edwards

Here is an article (link to her blog) written by Gail Faith Edwards of Blessed Maine Herbs, which I am respectfully  and with permission, quoting as my post today.  I have tried to write the heart of her message in my own words, but all of it is coming out much too dilute for the message she is bringing.   If you have never read her book "Opening our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs" or have never listened to her speak, I highly recommend you look into it.  Her love of plants and their healing abilities is tender, deep, and is beautifully conveyed through her voice.  You can listen to her podcasts on her Blessed Maine Herbs website here.
It’s November and most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. All of nature is saying it’s time to let go of what you’ve been holding on to. So, I am working on letting go of my worries. At least for now.
I’ve been worried a lot lately. Worried about the earth. Not the earth in the great, big, wide, global sense, but earth in the heart-achingly local sense; as in the woods and fields right here in Maine where I live. This particular bioregion – my little corner of the world.
It’s the woods, and in particular, the delicate woodland plants that inhabit our woods, that I’m particularly concerned about. They are under enormous pressure. Their habitats are shrinking daily. We’ve got logging operations here in Central and Northern Maine like you wouldn’t believe. If you stand on Route 201 or any other major thoroughfare in Maine for just one hour, you’ll see truck after over-laden truck filled with spruce, fir, pine and birch logs cut from our forests rolling by in a never-ending stream.
Our woodland ecosystems are disappearing at an alarming rate. As the dead bodies of trees are dragged, one by one out of our forests, they are raking up precious soil and uprooting delicate woodland plants and scraping them all indiscriminately out of the forest floor. We’re destroying amazingly fragile ecosystems in a few hours that took eons to create. This is happening every day and has been going on for many, many years.
As if that wasn’t threat enough, we’ve now got overly enthusiastic aspiring herbalists all over the place, eager to show off what they know about little known plants, writing and talking up the delicate woodland medicinals in our forests as if they were in a candy shop raving about tootsie rolls and lollipops. No wonder I’m worried!
Oh, I know, if you’ve just arrived here from somewhere like Kansas or New Mexico, it looks like we have plenty of trees. Trees are everywhere. But if you’ve been here for thirty five years, or a life-time, and have been aware of the constant procession of those logging trucks rolling through at a steady clip for the entire time, you’d be as convinced as I am that there is a silent disaster going on all around us.
Ever hear of the beauty strip? That’s a 20 foot wide swath of trees left along the roadside so that you, the uninitiated, will think those trees go on forever. They don’t. In fact, in many places now, they only go on for about as far as your eyes can see, literally.
What trees we do have here in Maine are young. Many are planted in monocultures, single species tree plantations managed by the paper companies. Most, if not all, of our old growth forests are long gone. And with them the mycorrhizal networks that extended beneath tree and woodland plant roots for hundreds if not thousands of acres, creating a network of nourishment upon which all life depends and sustaining the rich diversity and ecological balance that is also, unfortunately, long gone.

As a practicing Community Herbalist who’s been serving my rural Maine neighbors for the past thirty plus years, I’ve done my fair share of wildgathering all around this area. But I’m proud to say that you would never know I’ve even been here to take a look around. The wild stands I’ve been quietly managing for decades have grown and spread and flourished. But then, the plants that I’ve been gathering have been the wild plants of the open fields, mountain meadows and woods edges. Abundant plants like red clover blossoms and yarrow, St. John’s wort, red raspberry, self heal and plantain, dandelion and yellow dock. Potent healers, all.
Sure, there are lots of medicinal plants in the woodlands here. In our cedar grove there are expanding stands of Smilacina racemesa, False Solomon’s seal, and Veronica, a common creeping woodland medicinal that is dear to my heart, also referred to as Speedwell. Along the stream we find bunches of Gaultheria procumbens, known as wintergreen or tea berry, and Coptis trifolia, commonly called goldthread or canker plant.
And we’ve planted Cimicifuga racemosa, black cohosh; Panax quinquefolius, American ginseng; Hydrastis Canadensis, goldenseal and Sanguinaria canadensis or bloodroot here.
But these wondrous woodland plants are the plants I tend to sit and learn from, meditate with, employ as teaching tools and use exceedingly sparingly, if ever. In my humble opinion, this is the only ethical and respectful course of action when it comes to our woodland medicinals. I think the same kind of “hands off” policy is called for regarding teaching and writing about these plants as well. Turn off the spotlights, please!
It has been my strict policy over the years to avoid bringing undue attention to our precious woodland medicinals, other than to point them out on an herb walk, discuss their medicinal benefits as well as the challenges they face for survival, and suggest other plants that may have similar properties and actions.
Why write exciting and enticing essays about the stunning medicinal uses of delicate woodland plants that are not commercially grown and available? Plants that we desperately need to survive and do not want to see disappear? Why focus attention on these forest medicines when there are so many others to write and talk about? And why, in the name of the blessed earth, lead the ever-growing numbers of people who are interested in herbs to such delicate, fragile ecosystems and plants? It just doesn’t make sense. In fact, doing so is just how the procession begins; it ends with the same sad ending we’ve seen over and over again; the decline of one precious, irreplaceable plant after the other.
Just think about what happened to American ginseng, once abundant, plentiful and easily found in forests throughout the Northeast down into Appalachia. Then the word got out. Try to find a wild ginseng root now…it’s a very hard thing to do. The ginseng we have growing in our woods has been deliberately planted there and is being carefully protected. Once in a while, I dig a root or two for medicine. The rest remain to nourish the forest floor, the other plants nearby and to spread eventually, so that at least our little woodland areas will once again be plentiful in this amazing healing plant. But what about all the other plants and forest fungi?
Suddenly there’s a flurry of interest in medicinal mushrooms. People are out in the woods hunting for Chaga and Ganodermas, birch Polypores and Reishi, and they are finding them. And gleefully harvesting all that they find. But where will the spores come for next years fruiting bodies if we take all we find this year?
Here’s the thing: Delicate woodland plants like Coptis trifolia and fungi like Piptoporus betulinus (birch polypores) may not currently be listed on Maine’s endangered or threatened lists, but why wait for that to happen? We already know that the places where these abundant woodland medicinals grow are shrinking daily. If there are 5 polypores going up a birch trunk, will you need all five or will just one suffice? If you find a beautiful, lush, abundant stand of Coptis in the woods somewhere, ask yourself, do I really need to dig any of it up? Maybe you could use a bit of oak bark or witch hazel instead.
Wouldn’t it be better to just sit, learn from and admire the plant, absorb the beauty and the medicine energetically? To go home knowing you defended the right of this sweet woodland medicine to continue to thrive, completely undisturbed? Now that is good medicine!

If you’re an herbalist or wildgatherer in the state of Maine you have a responsibility to our Maine ecosystems. This is true wherever you are. You have a sacred trust to protect our lands and the life forms that inhabit it. Please realize the power you hold in your hand, in your pen, in your voice. Please don’t misuse it, thinking these plants are abundant because you’ve happened upon a particularly lush growth. Please don’t be fooled into thinking these plants are not threatened or endangered because they are not listed on official lists. ALL our woodland medicinals are threatened here in Maine. All of them, bar none.
Soon a soft protective layer of snow will fall and the woodland plants will be safely tucked beneath it for the winter months. I’ll rest a little easier then. And my worries for the earth will perhaps become dormant too, like the plant roots, only to rise up with fresh new growth again next spring when life begins to stir anew. For some worries can be appreciated as valuable messages from the wild heart of the earth herself. They are calls to action and must be revisited time and time again.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Jack Lalanne so many years ago - Thank you Jack for daring to be different.

Did you know Jack Lalane opened a gym when he was 15 years old?  He was so very ahead of his time but his messages presented so long ago still have relevance today.  The thing that gives me hope though, is that today, more than when he first went live with his ideas, more people think like him.  He was the pebble than began a ripple that inspired the lake of our consciousness.  

I remember my grandmother, in front of her faux wood television set on a wheelie rack, doing her exercises while watching his show!






Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sub Freezing Athletics







Okay, so it was freezing, and the Tundra wind was slicing through everything with its ice knives. Outside wasn't going to happen.  Both of us were climbing up the walls.  The 10 year old-literally, me figuratively.   The rules were these, "No jumping on the furniture and no running or throwing things in the kitchen."  I think he managed to find a remedy, don't you?  We need to think outside of that proverbial box too, and not only that, we need to look perhaps just on top of the lid or at the solution clinging desperately to the side.  The solutions to our dilemmas, to the Earth's healing, to finding connections, and connecting with our joy are right there, but we just need to look at things from a slant, not right on.  We need to close our eyes, open them quick and notice what our eyes first fall upon.   I take many lessons from my son.  This was one of the biggies.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

De-valuing the Mother

Warning...this post is a little cranky.  If you are having a lovely day and the sunbeams are following you in your very footsteps, please come back to this another day.

Should it be so surprising to me, in this world, where we ravage, strip, rape, sell for profit, and saturate with more and more toxic chemicals and sludge the Earth, our own Mother, that Motherhood is de-valued?   We have come a long way, so we tell ourselves, in women's rights and respect, that women can vote, run a corporation and be master of her self.  But isn't there a parallel between the state of our Earth, and the little value we place on Mothers?  I have had countless conversations with close friends, family, strangers about how one can't find affordable child care.  Hmm, I ask, you believe the person caring for and seeing to the needs of your Creation your child, should be payed less than you for doing something else?

For a time, our son was enrolled in a private school which held the philosophy that the health and well being, the soul growth of the child depended entirely on their environment and surroundings.  They need a calm daily rhythm, warmth, nurturance, simplicity,  no t.v, beauty, wholesome food, regular meal and rest times and calm, centered and nurturing parents.  They believed this so important that they would offer free evening workshops on developing these qualities.  But here's the rub.  Their tuition was high, as is the tuition of most privately run schools, so they offered financial aid.  However, only, only if both parents were working.  the mother was expected to hold at least a part-time job.  Hmm?  Who did they think would hold together the family?  Who would be the hearth-keeper?  Who would create nourishing meals and lovingly tuck the children into bed?   Would would be calm enough to hold firm to the no-medial policy of the school if Mother was also stressed out, strung out and deleted from working a full and part-time job?  What about the job of Mother, that unpaid, full-time vocation?

We live in a society that expects, and even is economically based upon two-income families. Yet, what is becoming of our children?  Who is available to be "present" for their children when each parent is employed outside of the home?

I do agree that some women really are meant to work, they are their best loving and nurturing selves when they do. They come home to their children re-vitalized and full of enthusiasm and creativity.   But many are not, and they would love to stay at home, and care for their families.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.  I would love to see a world where the stay-at-home parent is cherished by society.  Our children desperately need this.  Our world needs children who aren't rushed, who grow up feeling that lovely warmth of a cared-for family.

I'd really like to hear from you on this subject.  I sincerely hope I have not offended anyone here as I do believe each mother is doing what it absolutely the best thing for their family and children.  I do dream of a day when mothers have a true choice.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

2011 International Year of Forests

from http://www.focs.ca/logging/oldgrowth.asp
I've just learned that the UN has declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests.  This news brought joy to my heart!  They have a calendar on their website which lists the various meeting which will be held all year to discuss this most important topic of Forests.  I am really looking forward to see Gaia's people awaken this year.

We live near a forested park which is part of the NY Parks Department.  She is the gold of this neighborhood and I cannot imagine our lives without her.  Here, in a world of traffic, exhaust, pavement and steel-structured buildings, our forest is home to hundereds of tree species, a haven to migrating and local birds.  When I walk through her trails I can smell deep woodsy earth, and her soil rich and full of humus.   As hundreds of trucks barrel their way down union turnpike, spewing out their exhaust on their way to other parts of the city, her trees inhale the carbon monoxide and exhale pure fresh oxygen for us to breathe.

Yes, I am grateful for The International Year of Forests.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Wee can have some fun in NYC! or Vanilla Bean Pudding




This is from a fabulous NYC'ers foodie blog called the Smitten Kitchen.  I've just copied down her recipe for vanilla bean pudding.  Tomorrow I'll crack open a bottle of my own Ronnybrook Farm milk and prepare some. Yum!  I am imagining something akin to creme brulee but perhaps more conceivable as an everyday treat.  We need a bit of sweetness in this world.