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.

small pleasures

 This morning I awoke well-rested to bright sunshine  in the spare bed at the top of the building that holds our school and my classmate Lauren's apartment (last night we had an indulgent evening of movie-watching, yummy food and red wine). Sleepovers are the best. woo!

I am very tired of driving, so it was refreshing to ride with Lauren to the farm for a mason jar of sweet-silky-creamy milk this morning, before heading to birthday brunch for Abby, our second oldest classmate (she seems to think thirty is old...). Bacon-bloody marys and mimosas all 'round.

Baby midwives. Some awkward smiles, some sincere ones...

Also in the news:
One of my pet peeves is the lumpen graceless awkwardly shaped cutlery that came with the house. Today I bought $3 worth of 25-cent forks and spoons at the local thrift store: smooth rounded edges, good balance and variety, far more aesthetically pleasing than their predecessors....my satisfaction is almost indecent. Now maybe Andriana won't mind so much when I hide the old set.

Sunday stitch and bitch at the hilltop has petered out somewhat, but as the ranks have dwindled and the homework-doing has increased the menu has stayed pretty tasty. Today I was reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, assigned for nutrition class, and we ate seaweed salad, sweet potatoes, spaghetti, licorice chai....I don't have a picture of any of that but last week was a lovely fresh taste of summer: Caprese salad a la Bridgton grocery store (i.e. they had no fresh basil but spinach and thyme compensated admirably- thanks Lauren for braving the tomatoes!)

fresh mozzarella is such a treat!

I finished knitting the incredibly luxurious baby alpaca hat* I've been working on (thanks to dear mum for the yarn splurge). Not usually one for patterns, this one caught my eye and I just couldn't resist: cool hat, adorable child. yup. Another hat with similar (brilliant) architecture can be found here and may or may not be next on the list.

Claudia, me, beaver pond after Abby's birthday brunch, and a mediocre view of the hat of glory.

The irresistible pattern book.

Missed yet another birth thursday night, which bites, because I drove an hour and forty five down to the mama's house only to be told she was in very early labor and I should go home. So I did. The following evening (after I had already been asleep for a good half hour) I received a text message asking which postpartum appointment I'd like to attend. Mama had her baby after all, but I wouldn't have made it in time so they didn't call. urgh.

Plans for summer are bumbling along. I got an interested call from the farm I've been hoping to work at over the summer, but I was crestfallen to learn they would need me to start in April, and the earliest I could possibly start is the end of May.
Back to the drawing board. Please, if you know of a promising way for me to spend the summer outside making decent money, holler in my direction.
I am burnt out on children, but I'm willing to do pretty much anything else!

As usual, thanks to Lauren Romero for taking sweet pictures and letting me use them :)

*disambiguation: yarn made of baby alpaca fur knit into a hat, not a hat for baby alpacas.

March? February?! who cares!

Finally started arriving at births before the baby is born. The most recent one was all night followed directly by two full days of school- including 2 presentations and an exam. Making decisions about sleep vs homework vs personal hygeine is nothing new for me (as a recent university student), but it's never been this extreme before. I think here is where I finally learn to stop procrastinating like hell, or break under the impossibility of doing the week's work while sleepless at a birth....

Been pondering options for my summer. The ideal summer involves a midwifery placement, lots of time outside, minimal time in the car and a respectable income...dream on? Maybe, but this place has my hopes up.

In the meantime, the piddly marchlike winter continues (I'm absolutely not complaining. I've never been one to beg for snow). Last week we took a class on prenatal yoga. It involved doing yoga with pillows stuffed under our shirts and impromtu after-lunch naptime, pictured below for your enjoyment.

 Someone said something about spooning? http://www.flickr.com/photos/larlar1286/sets/72157629222430435/with/6838442981/

I've picked up my uke more than once this past week, practising this song:

Hello, world.

Check out the cute people I hang out with. Also, check out the sleep sack I knit (with washable 100% wool!)

My lovely darling classmate Anna, and the newest addition to our class: Alexander :)

A student's work is never done

Sorry it's been so long. Call it an extended holiday?

New these days:
I have started my clinical placement for the semester at Northern Sun Family Healthcare (If you click the link, you'll see the two midwives I work with at the top of the page!). I work at the clinic every Monday and participate in prenatal and postpartum appointments, as well as help out with paperwork, mix herbs for teas, make homeopathic remedies, edit the midwives' written work, and complete little assignments (right now I'm working on a list of celebrities who gave birth at home- Pam Anderson, for one...).
     In addition to clinic days, I am also on call for births. Because the clinic is almost 2 hours away, all my clients live at least 1.5 hours away and I have missed all three births I've been called to so far (it doesn't help that those moms experienced exceptionally short labours!). Sarah (the big boss lady- actually a tiny bird of a woman) promises that some women labour for more than 3 or 4 hours and I will make it to a birth soon!
     Northern Sun is unique and awesome because both the midwives are also naturopathic doctors, which means their scope of practice is broader than most midwives- they can do vacuum extraction and antibiotic prescription, for example.
     Another cool thing about the placement is that I get to meet people! I got my first taste of the public social life of a midwife last night when we went out in Portland for my classmate Lara's birthday. We were in this fancy tearoom casting about for a place to settle in, when we bumped into a nice-looking and vaguely familiar young man. He looked at me, I looked at him, he pointed and said, "Northern Sun!", to which I replied, "Yes! You're a dad!" and immediately felt silly. Turns out he was the entertainment for the night: guitar, harmonica, nice singing voice...

Here we are, seated on low cushions in the tea house, taking turns telling our birth stories. The birthday girl (who seems to be a vampire of some kind?) is telling us about how her mum pushed her out.

The sauna I keep mentioning? this is it!

I dogsat this pup a couple of times over the last 2 mo. Here we are out on the ice of highland lake, where I used to swim on lunch breaks. We went out there last saturday to watch the dogsled teams mushing around the lake.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

It's finally feeling like Christmastime, but there's still not a speck of snow and the weather continues unseasonably warm. I'm not complaining...

Yesterday (and every Sunday in December) was  Stitch'n'bitch time at the Hilltop (our house): generally lots of stitching, minimal bitching and a big pot of soup. Yesterday we also went christmas tree hunting, did some baking and eggnog drinking, listened to some christmas carols and did a christmas card photo shoot.

Classmates Talia and Lauren cutting down their tree.

Our cozy house in the sunshine, photo taken by the lovely Lauren.

The disaster that is our kitchen, partially justified by the excuse that we only have hot water when there's a fire in the wood stove.

The traditional christmas fruit cake that we all love to hate. This year I tried a new recipe, leaving out the sugar, substituting chocolate and crystalized ginger for the glacee cherries (b/c it's better that way) and whiskey/wine for the milk, to compensate for aging time lost (I should have baked it weeks ago so it could get properly old and boozy). Plus, I'm worried that the middle didn't cook enough b/c the oven was so hot....It could easily be argued that the finished product will have very little in common with the original recipe, let's hope it's still worth eating! Eating....What to make for Christmas dinner-for-two has been on my mind lately. Cornish game hens?

Just another autumnal day in December

Eating: woodstove cooked leeks in red wine sauce (because there was wine left over after thanksgiving).

Listening to: Trans-Siberian Orchestra play Christmas music on Pandora.

Working on: Developing labour and immediate postpartum chart forms.

Learning about: Placental variations and uses.

Wearing: some baddass bling:

see the rest of our placenta day photo shoot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larlar1286/sets/72157628325687579/with/6474106963/

In the news:
I attended my first birth as a Birthwise Student this past weekend. Also my first hospital birth, and longest labour ever attended. Mama laboured so beautifully I cried. Babe is adorable, of course. Went over to the house and made them all some pizza from scratch yesterday and watched the milk flow freely. Our bodies are awesome.

We cut down our christmas tree and it stands proudly in the living room festooned with odds and ends found around the place: jewelry, mardi gras beads, fake fruit....

That is all.

xox