vanessa jean & co

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:04:00 +0000

i don't need to eat...i just need to look at the pictures.
yum. look here at TasteSpotting.

yoga to be!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:30:00 +0000

soon i will be teaching yoga in boston...yay! i am thinking of making a little website to help get the word out about class...and that lead to lots of daydreaming (not studying) about what to put on the website...and the aesthetics of it. and it might need a name...and maybe some pictures...anyhow, i'm not that far along yet, but i did find this lovely poster by thewheatfields on etsy that i may just have to pick up for myself.

adios (and back to the history of agricultural policy in the us from 1930-1990.)

omg...longest ever...

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:24:00 +0000

i am still working on the world's longest and most time consuming take-home midterm exam. Even if I knew all of the answers to all of these questions off the top of my head, it would take at least three hours to scribble them out on paper. And that doesn't include everything I have to look up and want to learn in the process...and things like proper grammar and good writing skills.

almost done. at least i can edit it down tomorrow.

sigh.

too bad this mid-term does not include any references to, 'a laddle".

cheese what?

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:32:00 +0000

thank you woman's day magazine for these photos of cheese sculptures.

happy halloween.

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:06:00 +0000

happy halloween. i don't know who these crazy people are...but i LOVE them!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:57:00 +0000

it is warm and snowing yellow-orange leaves. it is whiny the pooh and the blustery day. it is the quiet after the song is through. it is smiling at strangers crossing the street and their smiling back at me. families putting their beds to rest at the community garden. and enormous, furry poodles. and flocks that look like swifts, but no chapman chimney in sight. it is strangers who, from behind, look like all the people you love and miss and the warmth that thought brings. it is the thought of a bowl of french onion soup on halloween night and the hope of frost. and simultaneous laughing and crying...and that everything is exactly as it should be.

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:21:00 +0000

i pass through the hospital as a short cut from school to the new england medical center t station. it's a blur of scrubs and revolving doors and an intersection of cars and pedestrians that rarely follow the rules. as i revolved out the last door to the street, i spotted something very familiar. a purse of robin egg blue, orange, yellow and avocado...tucked under the arm of a woman who was about the age of my mom. i don't see a lot of duct tape purses on the streets. i never really have. occasionally i see a duct tape wallet pulled from a pocket, but to see a real, live duct tape purse...never before. i knew right away that it wasn't one of mine and that it looked fairly well constructed. i followed the woman through the hospital and out through the curb. she was in a hurry and i was hot on her tails! i risked life and limb to cross the street against the light to stay afloat with her. she descended into the t station and we both barely made the train. she was practically sprinting to the front end of the station and i was so curious to ask her about her bag that i kept up with her. i wonder if people know that they are being followed? she sure didn't seem to! the train pulled up right as we stopped on the platform and we both piled inside, taking up space standing next to each other on the crowded train. i smiled, and asked her where she got her bag. a conversation ensued. she was so lovely and happy to talk about her bag. she bought it at the pike place market in seattle, along with a wallet for her husband. it was one of the better crafted duct tape bags i have seen (cough, second to mine, of course) but it lacked any kind of closure on the front flap...which she listed as her major complaint. anyhow, it was a fun and energizing interaction to have at dusk after a long and draining (but still good) day. duct tape, hoorah!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:21:00 +0000

argh. I am so good at missing the train by about 15 seconds. planning, not planning, hurrying or not...I seem to not make the train about to leave the station. oh well.

exciting things in the works...

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:26:00 +0000

yes, it's late. i'm still not in bed, nor am i studying. i wouldn't call it procrastinating either...maybe just somewhere different now?

anyhow, there are a few exciting projects in the works right now. and if i don't write them down somewhere that will make me accountable for them...they might just poof into the ether and be gone.

one) i mentioned the yoga teaching. that is exciting.
two) kirk and i are taking on a fun writing project. it's nice to have a writing partner who is my brother. very excited for this inspiration and honored for the collaboration. lovely.
three) i am realizing that if i want to do more writing (the kind the gets read because it's good or interesting...not because your friends read it for giggles) that i should probably start doing just that. so, in the near future i plan to start fresh with a new & slightly more professional blog. it will be writing and photos about food, the food system, agriculture, food preservation, cooking, sense of place through food and maybe some pieces from my personal collection and the 'writing our bellies full' series last year...and much more along those lines. i hope to polish up a few of the pieces here and gives them a shiny, more finished life at a different address. oh, fun. writing and developing the aesthetic of a new site. in my spare time, right.

that's all. i will keep myself and everyone else up to date.

long time...

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:55:00 +0000

hi lovely readers. (ahem, i mean the two or three of you who may read this to procrastinate...). here are some things that have happened in the last week. i had a nutrition exam on friday, it went well. i had my first evening of work with the new entry sustainable farming project on tuesday. it was fun, i am supporting the people teaching the 'how to write a business plan and start your farm enterprise' class to a bunch of super eager farmers-of-tomorrow. and, yes, it's in lowell...so i get an hour to drive north and look at the beautiful leaves changing colors. roger dorion of gardeners international and a force behind the white house garden was our seminar speaker last week and that was pretty inspiring. i taught my last garden education class at the elementary school across the street from school. it was nice to be in the classroom again...but it also makes me remember why i want to take my garden ed experience and keep moving it forward (and not be in the classroom all the time). i went to a school in somerville to help take height and weight measurements for bmi calculations for their fruit and veggie project. that was exciting. the kids in pe were playing a game on these tiny scooters that totally took me back to elementary school. did anyone else have these? they were plastic 1'x1' squares with a wheel (more like a caster) in each corner. the kids did relay races, with their bellies to the scooters and pushing with their hands and feet to move around. a total throwback. especially when the pe teacher said, "make sure your hair is up, so you don't roll over it and get it stuck in the wheels." i totally remembered that. thursday was a long day (with a fairly dry, hard-to-keep-the-eyelids open lecture all afternoon) and i didn't make it to cranioyoga...which has been the best shoulder therapy to date. friday i ventured to somerville to make cheese with friends. attempt #2 did not work (we sort of ended up with paneer, not mozzarella) but we did make butternut squash ravioli...yum! and there were cookies and pie and quince and delicious salad. i also got a hint that a fun yoga studio (near school!) was having a open house (aka free class) on saturday. i got a recommendation for a good class (power! who knew) and i went and the teacher was lovely and i think i might have found a real home for saturday morning yoga. they also had homemade vegan cupcakes...that was another good sign. ain't no bhaktishop though... on the yoga front here, i have two teaching opportunities that have popped up...teaching at the community center by my house and in an empty classroom at school...i am so excited to start teaching again. today was a lovely day of bopping around and procrastinating studying for my stats test. a two hour dog walk and lots of yoga and a really, super fun birthday party for a classmate who lives in jp. we decorated lanterns for this annual event where thousands of people walk around the pond (the jp pond in the center of town) with lit lanters. the kiddies wear costumes and it was lovely. and the weather is great and it's hard to believe it was snowing a week ago. i also re-met a woman i met when i was looking for apartments. i met her in july and it looked like i would move into her place...but turned out the dog was a last-minute no-go. small world. she's great, so it was fun to make a new friend. (plus, i think i have pretty good luck re-meeting people i met over craigslist for housing...aka liz & cleo!). this week holds a stats exam, a take home policy mid-term and part one of a nutrition project (which i already did, yay). work on tuesday, bmi collection on thursday and hopefully firming up some yoga teaching plans. yay. and dinner with darcy! and the next week will be social with two parties and sara coming to town. i get to help with wedding dress shopping. life is pretty good. the bike riding in the crisp air is great. i like having a cold nose and tingling fingertips when i get to my destination. i have started wearing tights. i am also digging on the song "all night" by sam phillips that keeps popping up on pandora. wow. life is pretty good. however...i really miss my portland pals and all their lovely comfort...but i think i'm headed home in dec/jan since i have a month off from school.

over and out and off to start the week...
happy everything!

fiercely cute.

noreply@blogger.com (fierce) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:27:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:25:00 +0000

first time in a while I can say I'm glad it's Friday. nice to have a breather before another round begins! happy weekend.

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:33:00 +0000

I heart osmosis.

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:59:00 +0000

36 degrees and smiling!

i heart snow at the arboretum.

noreply@blogger.com (fierce) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:36:00 +0000

what is this white stuff falling from the sky?

noreply@blogger.com (fierce) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:40:00 +0000

musings from the preservation kitchen...

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:17:00 +0000

ok, there's nothing special about the preservation kitchen. it's the same kitchen as usual, it just happens to have a canning pot on the stove and a few pots with mish-mashes of apples and quince. and the table is covered in jars, fresh lids and bands. and the floor is messy...but i guess that's normal.

the upside of being in a new place and not having a posse of people to hang out with all the time, nor a calendar chock full of events, is that there is plenty of time to actually do all the things i have on my to do list. especially the in-the-kitchen food preservation to do list. the fall only comes around once a year, and that means an annual shot at preserving gleaned quince and saucing u-picked apples and maybe candying a few other goodies. i can't think of a better match. the weather starts to chill, the storm windows come closed just in time to fill the kitchen with the steamy warmth and cozy smells of cooking fruits, their juices and the best spices. it's nice to have this time to waltz around the tiny kitchen, playing all my favorite slightly moody, batten-down-the-hatches for winter music and enjoy. (sidenote, i had big plans to study today, but after a nice yoga class, decaf coffee, apple pastry and a stop at the coop for greens...a lovely crispness to the air...i came home inspired to set aside some time to finally sauce the apples. and then i found the quince juice in the fridge...and i just went for it).

including the satisfaction of slicing apples and watching them cook down...and milling them to sauce and watching their volume decrease by over half and tasting the first bits of warm sauce (cold apple sauce tastes so much better)...the best part of the whole entire process is surely the the tiny popping sound as the lids seal on the cooling jars. sometimes it's instant when the jars get pulled out of the boiling water bath...sometimes the tiny pop with an emotional echo comes 30 minutes to an hour after the jars have been cooling on a towel or wooden board. little reminders, little firecrackers reminding you of all the goodness and all the work that were just put into those little jars.

i will be the first to admit, as i balance the importance of local food with the weight of resource conservation, that preserving your own food at home is not energy efficient. i had two burners on (sometimes on high) for at least three hours today. that's probably a lot of natural gas that just went in to the quinces and apple sauce. there is something valid about the industrialization of our food system and it's ability to do things like make apple sauce with possibly (i'd like to do the math one day) a smaller footprint that what i made at home. but that's where i'd like to advocate for the moderate scale producer. yes, someone who has the capabilities of producing a product in large enough quantities to be somewhat energy efficient, but also uses locally sourced raw ingredients (ie. produce/meat from local farms) and environmentally friendly packaging and modes of transit and distribution. and what did happen to those community food preservation centers that used to exist in most communities...and what about extension in urban areas...

anyhow, the joy if food preservation is not lost. i am excited to have a bit of my first new england fall in six years careful saved in adorable and tasty mason jars. i'm excited for more cheese making adventures...aided by the gallons of raw milk we are getting through a local raw milk share. oh, sweet, sweet ricotta...you are just the beginning.

back to doing some of the things i 'should' do today (we all know how i feel about 'shoulds') like homework and reading. (but would you choose stats homework or apples? that's what i thought).

the dog is talkative because she hasn't had a decent walk today. little does she know she gets a long run around the pond in an hour!

let's just pretend...

noreply@blogger.com (fierce) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:24:00 +0000

that this is beautiful and tasty quince jelly. sure looks like it, right? well, this was my first jelly making attempt, and i have four lovely little jars of quince syrup! i'm sure it will be tasty on ice cream (and there is no shortage of ice cream consumption here...although not too much lately) and mixed into baked goods, but i can't hold any pride on the jelly front...yet. but they still are pretty to look at. and there is a bunch of quince paste and quince puree left for enjoying. yay! yay! yay!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:36:00 +0000

who bikes to the DMV at 4:30? I do! the line was forever long and people were overflowing the building. as soon as I took my number, a nice gentleman came out to say that the statewide licence system is down...and 3/4 of the place cleared out. good thing I just need to register my ca-h (I'm practicing my Boston accent!).

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:05:00 +0000

42 degrees and raining. the heat was turned on and we did some instant weatherizing. brrr and exciting. I took my bike home on the t after yoga...and it seemed as if no one had ever seen a bike on the t before...that or I had three heads based on the incredulous stares.

we have work to do

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:28:00 +0000

In the United States, where the vast majority of
people were farmers at the time of the American
Revolution, fewer people are now full-time farmers
(less than 1 percent of the population) than
are full-time prisoners.

tomato hands!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:12:00 +0000

we have a tiny school garden here at tufts. it's adorable and we just put it asleep for the winter. which means we pulled down the huge tomato vines and pulled off all the green tomatoes (hmmm, fried green tomatoes anyone!). the best part is that my hands and sleeves have that delicious tomato plant smell mixed with a wee bit of marigold. yum. and a nice spirit lifter on this very gloomy day.

local pizza dinner with friends...

noreply@blogger.com (fierce) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:47:00 +0000

inklings...

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:49:00 +0000

i am hoping that this will turn into a longer post. the idea at least. this is the first time i have blogged at school...and i am mildly embarrassed by it and hope none of the cool kids catch me...i am also tired and hungry and putting off my bike ride home...by blogging. although i am going to stop at a not-yet-explored natural food store on the way home and that should be fun.

anyhow, i spend a lot of time thinking about the current ethic of 'disposability' that's pretty pervasive in the u.s. maybe you don't know what i am talking about, so let me explain...

i see it on the streets of boston when people put perfectly good furniture (or maps or electric organs or tables or computers) out on the curb for trash collection. yes, i was warned about this. (portlanders, really...you have never seen anything like this...). maybe the idea is, i'm moving and i don't want to take this with me and it's too hard to take it to good will (maybe you don't have a car) or to post it on craigslist. i know there are a million reasons, but the best is that throwing is out and buying a new one later is the easiest. electronics: upgrading to a new phone...not because your old phone is bad, but because the new one comes with your plan and is just a few dollars more. then we can get into the nitty gritty like throwing away perfectly clean ziplock bags after just one use, or even using a plastic water bottle and recycling it. (hello! it doesn't become another water bottle, it gets turned into a railroad tie or plastic lumber and virgin plastic is still used to make a new bottle.) anyhow, why is this so pervasive? i had a talk with my grandma about it a few christmases ago. she's 80 now, and she grew up on a farm on long island. so, yes, she had it hard and had about zero luxuries as she helped her family raise lots of kids and run a farm. so, for her, these modern conveniences are such a relief and they exist for her use...so she's going to use them because she can and because they are easy. i see that train of thought, it makes sense. but what about those of us who didn't grow up in resource hardship, but rather with all of these modern conveniences. did not enough people watch that episode of sesame street where they show all that footage of waste haulers and the dump to know that all of our trash gets buried in the earth (or burned...)? what makes us so willing to buy and use and dispose (especially before something is even past it's prime) [sidenote, now i remember what brought this to the front of my mind: i went to an economics talk last night and one of the speakers talked about the american ability to always pay that extra $30 to get the upgraded phone with the features you'll never use. he was talking about consumer spending and confidence and how it's coming back, but in small ways. i then came home to find the french-press style travel tea mug (that had been sitting dirty in the sink all week) in the recycling bin. not only was it still full of coffee-grinds...but it wasn't broken. the screened plunger had just come unscrewed from the pusher pole (technical terms, i know) so it may have looked broken...but clearly it wasn't). so i fished it out and fixed it in about 3 seconds and almost considered taking it since it was going to be thrown out anyway...but breathed and put it back in the sink so it could be washed and enter back into the swing of things. anything that is threaded means that it screws into something else...which means it's probably not broken...] which takes me back to my point...what factors make it so easy for us to view everything as disposable? is it because replacement is cheap? because discarding in cheap and easy? or maybe because we don't understand how things are made, what goes into them or how they work...and this lack-of-connectedness makes us less attached? maybe there is no craft and therefore no appreciation? maybe we have devalued everything because it can be made cheaply? or maybe it's something else, maybe it has to do with a certain ethic in our country, something that goes back to our roots as americans...

i passed by this quote in a reading for my history of us agriculture class and it made me pause...maybe our birth as a frontier nation, one that allowed for easy growth is tied into how we operate today. "food production in much of the continental US began, therefore, in a context of labor scarcity that gave rise to wasteful and destructive land-use practices. Thomas Jefferson himself recognized the relative value of land and labor on his farm by refusing to fertilize his land since, "we can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can manure an old acre." (Gate, 1960: 101) what this is referring to (at the basic level) is that it was cheaper to buy, plow and plant on new (nutrient rich, never been farmed) land instead of paying for labor to fertilize land that had already been used for agriculture and had a depleted nutrient content because of it. fertilizing would mean pasturing animals on the land or collecting and hauling in manure to the 'used' land. and i think that's pretty interesting. sure! it's cheaper to go to payless to buy new shoes instead of fix them...if one is even in touch enough to realize that things like shoes can be fixed (and not just thrown away). a bit of that 'new land is cheaper' idea is in contrast to the european landscape in which every inch of land was already in production, therefore there was no such thing as new land and different steps had to be taken to care for the soil (not that they always were maximized), but you had to do the labor because there was no other land to use.

i wonder how one investigates this further to draw out other historical connections between then and now.

ok, energy regained. headed home by bike.
it's a beautiful day. sunny, but quite brisk.
as i was sure would happen...i would come to terms with the fact that my favorite hat is not going to be sufficient through the winter...since it won't keep my ears cold past october. first frost this morning, tucked into the still-shady clover patches in the arboretum on the morning dog walk (along with an amazing cache of tiny pears i want to put in syrup and can. yummers).

really good birthday weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (vanessa) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:26:00 +0000

yay for birthdays. sort of. sometimes birthdays can be complicated or bring about complications...or if life is not-so-great...a birthday can just make the bad stuff overly-obvious. well, who knew that having a birthday when new to a city would be such a great idea! because it was. not only did i feel so much love from portland and north carolina and rochester and other places...but i also had a lot of people to hang out with here who helped me celebrate. what a fun little shindig on saturday with college, farming and new-school friends! it was like a retrospective of the last 10 years of my life. even better, everyone seemed to have a good time, the treats were tasty, the wine and beer delicious and the night just flowed and i didn't have to worry about anything! we even got to see stella the pup wear the new sweater that her mom knit for her. talk about awesome. anyhow, thanks everyone for a splendid birthday.

life is pretty darn good. which is magnified by the fact that tomorrow is a holiday.
wahoo.
lots of hugs from boston.