Eternal student

I learned how to make pie a couple of weeks ago. Apple pie is really the pinnacle, as far as I'm concerned, but, below, you will find a veganized version of the most decadent ridiculous pie I have yet experienced. The 24 hour diner down the street makes it and I think it's genius. I still have serious doubts about icing on a pie, but it tastes great.
If you're not vegan, and don't have a vegan desert fanatic in your life, you could make it using regular buttery crust, eggy lemon curd and lemon icing recipes.

...Also, there was another baby born this morning, 90 seconds after his mother's arrival at the birth center. He is welcomed by 7 older siblings some of whom were born in the car or in the yard, here. The family considers it an accomplishment that he was able to hold on till he made it to the birth room. Maybe the next one will get as far as the tub.

For those of you curious about the rash of recent blogging, I happen to have a new computer, a camera, internet and a scanner at my disposal right now. It helps.

another day, another babe

2 babies this week, so far. A boy and a girl. They usually go home when they are about 3 or 4 hours old, and we print their feet on the wall before strapping them into their carseats. 

It's normal for a baby's hands and feet to be blue for the first day, or so- they are getting used to circulating their oxygen from their lungs rather than their umbilicus. 

Fun fact: fetuses have a hole through their heart and extra blood vessels that allow them to largely bypass the lungs and liver, because the placenta acts as lung and liver in utero. As soon as they are born, the hole through their heart slams shut. The other two vessels take a little longer to atrophy and close.

Slings and arrows...

I am considering today my last day of the season at Ledgetop farm, in Wilton NH. It's been a grand season, with plenty of tomatoes, and the hornworms that eat them; plenty of raspberries, and the spotted winged drsophila that eat them; greens of all kinds, and the deer that eat them.....sweet potatoes and squash, and the rodents that eat them....basil, and the molds that blight it.....sensing a pattern?

Today I dug up the entirety of the ginger crop.  I don't think the ginger had any pests, but I also dug up the mustard greens and lettuce, because they were beset by aphids. I could see my breath in the greenhouse, but it was above freezing (barely) which is a lot warmer than it is outside right now.

Isn't the ginger pretty?!