For food in a world.

This morning dawned cold and clear. I lit a fire, ate a standing breakfast of Armenian string cheese and raw daikon (the things I eat often don't seem strange until I see them in writing...) and galumphed down my hill through the snow, mentally debating whether to go for a ski, walk or run (I keep all my gear in the trunk of my car down below because then I can do these things wherever, whenever). Walking takes less effort and more time, running is quick and feels good but takes a bit more effort, and skiing is kind of awkward but rewarding once I get going, and it did just snow, finally!

Thanks to Abby Hall for capturing the snowy twigs on camera.

Having decided to start with walking, I headed over to my semi-neighbour Sherri's place to hand over some egg cartons, pick up a book I'd loaned her and hopefully some eggs from her chickens as well. Sherry is a rockstar at feeding her family. A vegetarian, herself, she raises pigs and chickens for her family to eat, as well as laying hens (fed on pellets and the pulp from her juicer) and an epic vegetable garden. When I got there around 9:30 she had already baked a big batch of breakfast cookies that her family takes on hiking trips and a batch of blueberry muffins (sweetended with honey) and had moved on to pizza/calzone dough.

Sherri is that kind of mom. The kind who likes to stand and chat for ages. So we did that. She totally called me out on running on ice with eggs, too. Her house is about a half-mile from my house and sometimes I run over to her house, pick up my eggs, and keep on running another mile up her road before turning around and running home (running is faster than walking, and if I can do my shopping and exercise at the same time, great!). Running with eggs on ice may seem like a recipe for disaster, as well as just plain silly, but I've only fallen once, and that was in my driveway after I got home (only broke 2 eggs, but the hat of wonder was in the same bag and got egg yolk all over it. Not so nice.)

I so love being personally acquainted with the source of my eggs and dream of the days when I'll live in one place long enough to have a proper garden and some livestock again. It's part of the process of making food mean more than just that stuff I put in my face several times a day to keep my body running. Heidi, the director of our school feels the same way, and for that reason, our nutrition class has only one text book: In Defense of Food. The practical portion of that class revolves around all of us getting together at Heidi's and making a few epic meals from gorgeous whole ingredients. Photos from last Friday's epicurean adventure, taken by Abby, Lauren and whoever else got behind their cameras:

Heidi (and a mountain of ingredients) in her gorgeous classic New England kitchen

The babycatchers- check out all our sweet aprons!

I tried to get everyone to bring their favourite cookbooks for us to drool over (moosewood and nourishing traditions featured large). In the end only a couple of us brought books, but I still got to brag about mine- which was the main objective.

We made a TON of food. These two made smoothies, tempeh and tofu with mushroom gravy and this fabulous all-butter pastry berry pie, of which they were extremely proud.

Claudia and I made mile-high popovers (aka yorkshire puddings), rice and African groundnut Stew. The recipe calls for an entire dismembered chicken. Heidi has a marvelously sharp knife, so hacking off the chicken's limbs was no big deal, and it came with giblets (Heart-seen above, liver, gizzard, neck), so we were able to boil them to make stock for the stew and then feed them to Heidi's cats.

Ground-nut stew (actually peanut stew). Recipe: fry up a chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic and 3 inches of ginger, minced, with 2 T coriander seed and some cayenne. Add 2 pounds sweet potato chunks (skins on), 16 oz tomatoes, a cup of peanut butter, a 2 pound chicken in pieces and enough stock to barely cover. Simmer for 1.5 hrs. Pull the chicken out, remove bones and skin. Return meat to pot. Salt and more Cayenne to taste. Serve over rice with lots of chopped cilantro. yum.

The feast (part of it). Roasted veg, quinoa salad, gingerbread, tempeh, tofu, rice, pie, spicy kale stirfy. Missing from the picture are: popovers, potato-crusted fritatta, bread, smoothie, whipped cream, stew, mushroom gravy...just think "thanksgiving" and you get the idea.

The bread, made by Lauren and Abby. They used molasses in it and it was divine

We sat together and ate and laughed and it put me in mind of one of my favourite mealtime graces as a child:

For food in a world where many walk in hunger 

For love in a world where many walk in fear

For friends in a world where many walk alone

We give our humble thanks.

Bonus picture: While the food was cooking, Ashley gave me a private lesson on how to squat the right way: feet parallel to each other, heels down, chest open, tailbone rooted. It looks like fun but I could barely walk afterward.