You guys!

After the success of the 30 Pounds of Apples 2014 calendar, I’ve spent some time over the last couple of years trying to figure out the next step for pulling my photos out of the digital universe and into the printed one. So at long last, I’m pleased to announce the grand opening of the 30 Pounds of Apples Store!

I’ve been uploading, designing, and organizing for weeks a variety of products that I think you’re going to like. I ordered a few samples to check on print quality, and I am thrilled with the results! Check out the store to find your favorite 30 Pounds of Apples photos on a number of printed products, including:

• TWO different calendars
• note cards
• canvas wraps
• photo prints
• posters
• coasters
• … and more!

You can sort by Product Category, by Collection (think seasons and type of product), and latest. I recommend the Product and Collection tabs!

So as you plan your holiday giving, please consider some yummy-looking photo art from 30 Pounds of Apples! And if you have a photo or product in mind from the blog that you don’t see in the store, send me an email and I’d be happy to create the product for you with a high-resolution image.

PS: To kick things off, I’d like to give away all the samples I ordered to one of you! One calendar and six tasty note cards… it’s a good way to start off the holiday, no?

How to Win the 30 Pounds of Apples Calendar & Cards

1. Leave a comment on this post to answer this question: What is your favorite gift you’ve ever given
2. Enter by 11:59pm MST on Sunday, December 6. Winner will be announced on Monday, December 7.
3. Open to US residents only (sorry to my international readers, shipping is so pricey!)

The truth is I have struggled over the last few months. Despite the fact that I work fewer hours, have more days off, and enjoy a kitchen filled with natural light, I’ve found myself groaning over the notion of cooking even familiar meals and not in the least bit interested in climbing atop a step stool angling for a shot. The muse that once perched on my shoulder whispering words, recipes, and stories into my eager ears seems to have folded her arms and sealed her lips. I’ve become increasingly frustrated that I can’t seem to get back into the productive rhythm to which I had grown so accustomed in North Carolina and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. Did I really manage to pack up everything I owned but forget to bring with me my inspiration, my drive for sharing this locavore’s story Is it still sitting on the counter in my dimly-lit kitchen, or perhaps hiding in the grass next to my ever-fertile community garden plot?

Or did it survive the move after all, frozen but intact despite this deeply unpleasant winter, but is simply too nervous to peek its head out for fear of another frost?

Part of it, perhaps, has been the stark contrast in growing seasons between Ohio and North Carolina. For all the pleasant surprise I experienced in a place where strawberries flourished in April, I’ve experienced just as much disappointment at how long is has seemed to take fresh produce to make its way to the farmers markets here.

To be sure, there are some benefits to the local fare in the north: I’ve been happily buying apples since I arrived in January, stored from the prolific orchards that seem to do well here in the cooler climes. There’s a fair amount of locally-raised meat available, and I pretty much have my pick of any kind of local cheese I could possibly want. But each week of the last month or so, as I’ve walked into the indoor winter farmers market north of Columbus, I’ve thought, this is the week I’ll walk home with a grocery bag heavy with asparagus, radishes, sweet peas, strawberries, and rhubarb.

It has yet to be that week.

But I think it might be coming soon. The trees have burst into blossoms in the last couple of weeks, the days are warmer, and I attended the first outdoor farmers market of the season this weekend: sure signs that the farms and gardens that wreathe the city are beginning production once more.

It’s going to be quite an adjustment to keep up my quest for local eating in a colder climate. Not impossible, but harder. I’m already looking ahead to August and September and contemplating what I may need to can to get through the much longer winters. I will probably need to get more creative with my recipes from January through April since a bounty of fresh local produce simply won’t exist.

It’s funny how these things become a part of you. How these ideas turn into hobbies, the hobbies become quests, and the quests begin to define you. I’ve been worried that the renaissance I experienced as a cook, a writer, and a photographer in the early days of this blog has passed, but instead of deciding to throw in the towel and turn in my domain name, I feel guilty when I realize how long it’s been since my last post. Like I’ve abandoned someone I love. Or worse, myself.

I am, however, optimistic. It might have been foolish to think that I could just pick up where I left off, that my adjustment to an entirely new city, new job, new apartment, and new foodscape would be seamless. Perhaps I just needed some hibernation, some time to accept what I no longer have access to, before I could really appreciate what I do have here. A sunny, light-filled home that overlooks a park and a gently flowing river. A vibrant city filled with fascinating restaurants, cafés, and food trucks. A balcony with enough sunshine to grow food (though maybe a bit too much wind, more on that later), and a rooftop garden at my job (more on that too).  An entirely new climate to learn about, new farmers to meet, and a new understanding of what is in season and when.

Like spring, I think I’m waking up now, and ready to get back to it.

This year, I’ve spent my New Years Day considering not the past year, but the coming one, which starts off with a tremendous amount of change. I’ve spent the last three years in the same city, the same apartment, and the same job, but within the next two weeks, all three will be left behind and replaced with something new.

Since graduating college five years ago, this change marks my third city, my fourth move, and my fourth job hunt. Part of me finds this constant change exciting, and I wouldn’t trade it. I’ve gained a strange and wide variety of job experience, from door-to-door political canvassing, to opening a new performance venue at a major university. I’ve learned to eat locally in both the urban Mid-Atlantic and also in the prolific, fertile South. I’ve developed so many dear friends and met such interesting people, more than I ever could have hoped to meet had I stayed in one area.

Yet despite my drive for new experiences, new friends, and new places, I also ache for a sense of home and a connection to the community in which I live. I put down roots quickly and whole-heartedly as a desert ephemeral whose time to bloom is brief, immersing myself deeply in the experiences offered by each area in an effort to create home. The value I find in this is immeasurable, giving me a sense of stability despite my somewhat migrant behavior.

But it does make leaving harder. Just when I feel like I finally have close friends and enough knowledge to give someone directions by road number, it’s time to go. It’s hard to start a completely new job when you know your current one so well. It’s hard to make new friends, chatting over introductory small talk while your old friends start to move on. It’s hard to organize a new kitchen, damn it!

I find, however, that the struggle is worth it. Home is a powerful thing. It’s something I want in every place I live. I refuse to believe it would be easier if I simply never took the time to make connections, to exist in each new city without trying to know it, and to just keep my head down until the next inevitable move. Because you know what Someday, one of these moves will be my last. One of these cities will be where I grow old. One of these jobs will become my life’s work. What benefit is there in not diving in right at the start?

I don’t know what 2014 brings for you, but for me, it’s almost entirely new beginnings. I am sad to be leaving Durham, the Duke Box Office, the friends I’ve made here, but I’m thrilled about what awaits in Columbus. We have a gorgeous apartment in a lovely neighborhood, walkable to many of the cities attractions. I have a new job in an entirely new venue, presenting new challenges to meet and new puzzles to solve. I’ll be re-learning to grow food and eat locally in a dramatically different hardiness zone. I’ll build some new friendships, but I’m incredibly lucky for the chance to rekindle some old ones. I’ll have a kitchen with windows. WINDOWS!

So bring it on, 2014! Here’s to something new!

And the winner is CathieJ!

As to her favorite month, she replied, “February. Both my husband and I were born in February. I also love to stay inside during the cold snowy month and indulge in my favorite things: crafting and baking.”

Congratulations Cathie! (Please check your email so we can arrange shipping.)
Thank you to everyone who participated. I hope you’ll consider ordering a copy of the calendar, available now on Lulu! Use the discount code FBC18 to get 18% off, or FREESHIP to get free shipping!

Since I started this blog two and a half years ago, it has been solely a digital enterprise. Oh sure the cooking and the gardening and the eating exist beyond this little corner of the internet, but my writing and photography and recipes live only here. Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing some of that work to life, creating something that could live on a wall or a desk or a shelf. And no, I am NOT attempting to write a cookbook: I have neither the talent nor the time to take on a project of that scale.

So how about a calendar?

It seems only appropriate: the available local produce marks seasonal changes for me just as strongly as weather and leaves and hours of daylight. I’ve sifted through hundreds of photos in the last few weeks to find my favorites for each month, and I am thrilled to present the final product to you. I’ve already received a proof, and I am very happy with the result: thick pages, bright colors, and a clean, simple month design make a good calendar in my mind, and this one has all three!

So if you’ve ever wanted some 30 Pounds of Apples swag, your moment has arrived.  If you think this looks like something you want on your own wall, or something you want to give to someone else, I hope you’ll order one! I really think you’ll like it. Everyone needs a calendar, right?

PS:

I also want to give away a copy to one of you. I get so much out of this blog, but my favorite aspect continues to be the conversation, the question-asking, the story-telling from those of you reading. I’m so glad you’re here.

How to Win the 30 Pounds of Apples 2014 Calendar

1. Leave a comment on this post to answer this question: What is your favorite month, and why is it your favorite?
2. BONUS! To enter twice, head on over to 30 Pounds of Apples on Facebook and like the page. Then, come back to this post and leave me a comment saying you liked the Facebook page, and you’ll be entered twice. Fancy! (New likes only, but thanks to all the early adopters!)
3. Enter by 11:59pm EST on Monday, December 2. Winner will be announced on Tuesday, December 3.
4. Open to US residents only (sorry to my international readers, shipping is so dang expensive!)

I keep all the photos I take when I shoot recipes, sorted into folders, and let the folders sit in an “Unpublished” folder until a recipe is posted on the site. It turns out that I have almost as many unpublished recipes as published ones. Sometimes they sit unpublished because the photos are hideous, sometimes because their moment in seasonal cooking has passed, and sometimes they are abandoned on my hard drive because the recipe itself (or my execution of it) was a total failure. Here is a sampling of some of those disasters.

Maple Pecan Muffins

Pretty, right! Ooooooh I was so looking forward to this recipe. Maple syrup, chopped fresh pecans, a thick, warm crumb supporting a pat of melting butter… how could they possibly be bad This is one I wanna try again because seriously, I still don’t know what happened. The muffins were far too dense, flavorless, hard as hockey pucks on the outside, and crumbling to pieces when removed from the wrappers. See how the batter is sitting far below the top of the muffin wrap They hardly raised at all! Things only got worse the second day, at which point the whole batch was virtually inedible. So much for the world’s best muffin I was hoping for.

Simple Winter Fruit Salad

I suppose, in terms of scope, this doesn’t totally qualify as a disaster. Just more of a meh. When I discovered that someone at my farmers market grows kiwi that ripens in early December, I flipped out. How could such an exotic fruit grow somewhere that I live In an effort to use up fruit already in my fridge before heading to Colorado for Christmas, I decided to feature the kiwi in a little fruit salad. And in truth, it didn’t taste bad. But it was way, way, WAY too acidic. Kiwis, I discovered, are used in some areas as a substitute for tomatoes in salsas. Pomegranates and apples, of course, are also fairly tangy and acidic. The combination of the three, with nothing like a peach or banana to break them up, made this a really, really tart experience that made my mouth feel the way too many Warheads does. Not a condition I would wish on anyone else.

Stuffed 8-Ball Zucchini

Wait. Don’t be fooled by this tasty-looking little dish. It does NOT taste good. I’d been wanting to try a stuffed zucchini recipe for a while, and as I was considering it, these crazy-shaped zucchini appeared at the farmers market. Seemed like the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, this round zucchini does not have the same flavor as the standard and was difficult to cook all the way through despite quite a long time in the oven. And the filling, which I based on a number of different recipes, tasted neutral at best. In an attempt to be fancy, I used artichoke hearts in the mixture, but it did not go well. Finally, to really top off my day, it was nearly impossible to eat. My first attempt to cut into the zucchini tipped the whole thing over, spilling kind of gross rice and cheese and artichoke hearts all over the plate. Ugh.

Tri-Color Gnocchi

Is gnocchi supposed to be smooth and satiny Yes. Was mine Nope. Not even a little bit. My first attempt at potato pasta was a total bust. Though it was fun to grate up purple potatoes.

Strawberry Orange Smoothie Pops

Ew. Just ew. Strawberries, orange juice, carrots, greek yogurt, and milk. I was nervous about the carrots, I admit, and then all my worst fears were realized. I might be able to blame the blender: there were still little gritty bits of carrots that made this smoothie more like a grittie-chunkie. Gross. And grittie-chunkie aside, it just tasted bad. Not at all the fruity, quenching flavor I was hoping for. I probably should have stopped once I tasted the mixture itself, but I pressed on to make popsicles. They froze, but they definitely still tasted bad. Woof. I guess I need a little more practice tossing fruits and veggies into a blender to produce something worth eating.

Pesto Pizza with Fresh Mozzarella

Okay, this actually tasted good. I took advantage of my bushy basil plant and made a batch of pesto. Coupled with a tomato from the garden and a knob of fresh mozzarella, I wanted to try a really green pizza. The disaster here really was more of an issue for my oven than the palette. The moisture in the mozzarella, combined with probably a little too much pesto, melted ALL OVER the place, leaking off the edge of my pizza stone and sizzling on the piping hot base of the oven. Also, this pizza, while delicious, was so ugly. Pesto, like apples, turns brown when exposed to air, but it blackened in the oven. And the melting mess of cheese sliding around on top of the pesto didn’t help matters. Oh well. Sometimes all you have is flavor, I guess.

So yeah. Kitchen disasters are for real! Does it make me a bad person if I want to hear about your disasters too Solidarity, or something What have you tried in the kitchen that went horribly wrong?

Wow guys.

As the clever among you have likely already deduced, I haven’t been posting much lately. Haven’t cooked much, haven’t edited photos, haven’t written many words about food or the silly stories relating to it. I would love to say that this is due to a lengthy and lazy vacation in the far reaches of the Caribbean or the Pacific. It’s not. No remote islands lacking internet access for this lady.

I knew it had been a while, but I was stunned, frankly, to discover that my last post was a month ago. A whole month. What happened to the thirty-one days of May?

I’ve spent a couple of days reflecting on the veritable evaporation of the last month. Some of you are already familiar with the highlights: Brad graduated law school, bringing his 10-year journey in higher education to a close. Spring semester, the busiest three-months I’ve EVER worked, finally ended, and the relative calm of the summer has arrived. Brad and I took an 11-day, 3,000-mile trip to the Midwest on which we completed two major missions: find a new place to live in a city that I will be calling home by this time next year, and, bake a grooms cake and wedding cake for a pair of dear friends in Wisconsin and also be a bridesmaid in their wedding. The long, late, cool spring has transitioned into a hot, humid summer. Yesterday, after nearly forgetting it was time for this to happen, I turned 27.

The truth is that the May was full of things that pulled my time and attention away from my little corner of the internet. In the hustle and bustle of it all, there was little time to cook, and the creative energy normally required to support this blogging endeavor was diverted elsewhere out of necessity. There were actually a few moments when I sat down to try to write a post, but simply felt I had nothing to say. What tale could I possibly weave about glazed carrots, or homemade popcorn, or new potatoes when some urgent deadline was looming over my head?

I’m looking forward to getting back to it. Even after I finish writing this post, I have an afternoon full of cooking projects I can’t wait to start. My desire to write has returned. It’s a beautiful sunny day, which should make for good photos of the rhubarb, berries, garlic scapes, and other tasty treats waiting in the fridge.

I think I’ll go get started.

The New Year always offers such a nice, fresh start. A blank slate. New calendars, a few months with no plane tickets to buy, no approaching major holidays (or holiday parties). But I don’t exactly believe in New Years Resolutions. You can probably guess why. I don’t think I’ve ever made one that really worked. Often, my goals and resolutions are tied heavily to a season, a school year, a semester, or a show. But at this point in the year, I do like setting a few little goals for myself. Some specific, some general, some philosophical, some pragmatic.

At the risk of over-sharing, here’s a list of some little wants, needs, goals, and plans I have for the coming year.

1. Cultivate a garden worthy of hobbits.
2. Go outside every day (commuting and errands don’t count, no cheating).
3. Explore salads.
4. Don’t let the groundhog scarf up all the baby plants in the garden this year.
5. Don’t freak out if the groundhog scarfs up all the baby plants in the garden this year.
6. Join a CSA.
7. Floss, dang it.
8. Complete my watch-all-the-Disney-animated-features-in-chronological-order-of-release project (next up: Lady and the Tramp.)
9. Learn to cook Swiss chard. Also, eggplant.
10. Get. A. Passport.
11. Give generously.
12. Drive the Blue Ridge Parkway in October or BUST!
13. Throw a Harry Potter theme party.
14. Visit my sister.
15. Write more.
16. Read more.
17. Laugh till I turn a little purple more.
18. Call my grandmas more.
19. Send fifty surprise letters.
20. Don’t wish away any months, weeks, days, or hours. Each is rare if not unique.

That’s probably not all. But it feels like a start. Some things to look forward to.

What’s on your mind for 2013?

But I feel frivolous sharing. A little guilty, actually. My heart breaks for the families and friendships torn apart by yesterday’s horrifying shooting in Connecticut. It breaks for the pain that all of us feel as we hug our loved ones closer and mark one more place off the list where we thought we could feel safe.

So I’m not posting today. Recipes can wait until tomorrow. It may seem a token symbol, waiting just one day before jumping back in with a chipper and festive post, but it feels important to take a moment of silence. A moment to grieve for the victims and their families and their friends and their communities.

My thoughts are with you.

It’s sort of interesting how some posts come about. Sometimes I very specifically know I want to try a recipe, I cook and photograph that recipe, edit the photos, write a little something, and post it to the world. Other times, something comes wildly out of left field and I MUST move it to top of my posting schedule (yes, I have one) because it will either lose relevance or because I’ve made some food I desperately want to share with you.

I had no intentions of writing about this, evidenced by the fact that I took not a single photo aside from before and after shots. This post arose out of a weekend in the kitchen what was, for lack of a better word, grueling. So grueling that it threatened to bring on a veritable identity crisis for this little food blogger.

Just in case you haven’t picked up on this, I care deeply about eating locally. I started this blog, in part, to chronicle my quest toward learning what that means and figuring out just how much of my diet I could change to local fare. This has involved shopping primarily at farmers markets, foregoing produce that isn’t seasonally available, avoiding chain restaurants, starting a garden, and learning the art and science of canning to capture produce when it’s plentiful so that I can eat locally all year long.

I’d say my experience with canning up to this weekend could be firmly classified in the “dabbling” realm. For a while I just made jam. There’s a reason that jam is widely considered an entry-level canning project. Couple together berries and sugar, boil the heck out of them, and you’re left with pretty little jars in brilliant shades of ruby and purple that taste delicious on everything from toast to ice cream. I’d graduated to making a few kinds of pickles, and I tried an inaugural batch of apple sauce last fall.

But none of those things are life-sustaining. They didn’t replace any staples that I was hitherto buying from the grocery store. I’d procured a water bath canner before my apple sauce project, and I knew I wanted to go further this summer. So this weekend, I took my first real crack at canning food that could potentially replace some store-bought staples with homemade ones.

Well.

Having selected eight recipes to try (if you’re gonna turn your kitchen upside down, you might as well get a lot done) I came home from the farmers market on Saturday morning well-stocked: two pounds of okra, five pounds of peaches, two quarts of figs, several onions and peppers, large handfuls both of parsley and basil, and, most importantly, nearly sixty pounds of tomatoes. I dug every every sizable pot and bowl from my cabinets and cheerfully set to work.

Several hours in, the boxes of tomatoes appeared to refill from some bottomless spring. Every burner on my stove was ablaze to keep pots boiling, jars sealing, and lids warm. Tomato juice was everywhere. My shoulders ached from running batch after batch of boiling tomatoes through a food mill, and my lower back was growing angrier by the second. With only half of the tomatoes in jars, I finally turned off the stove after twelve hours and collapsed into bed, exhausted at the thought of returning to the project the next day. But those tomatoes weren’t gonna can themselves, so Sunday morning I was back in the kitchen determined to empty those boxes. Seven hours later , I finally pulled the last batch of jars from the canner, hung up my apron, and tried to coax my muscles back from the ledge.

I stood back to admire my work, a little more than 33 pints of food, but I found I was asking myself a confusing question.

Why in the world am I doing this?

Not exactly the reaction I was expecting.

I figured I would come out of this weekend feeling euphoric. I had conquered a new jam!  A new pickle! Two kinds of salsa! Ketchup! Tomato sauce, in three flavors! Instead, I not only felt physically exhausted, I felt utterly deflated. The way you feel when you discover the tooth fairy isn’t real, or when you finally get rejected after the final round of a job interview.

I was finally exposed, truly, to the immense quantities of produce required to create the likes of ketchup and thick, red pasta sauce. The ketchup alone required four pounds of tomatoes, FOUR, to yield one pint. And those four pounds of tomatoes took several hours to transform into this favorite condiment. (Respect those little packets, friends…)

Then there is the flavor. I’m  not saying the final products taste bad. Maybe they don’t – to be honest, I haven’t cracked open a finished jar, and this is my first time making each of these recipes. But I did sample a spoonful here or a spoonful there to get a sense of what I was making and was surprised at what hit my tongue. The taste was so different (again, not bad, just different) from anything I’d had before I began to wonder: if this is what real tomato sauce tastes like, what the hell have I been eating all these years?

And finally, perhaps most importantly, there is the work. I’m rarely one to shy away from a productive day in the kitchen, but this weekend gave me a run for my money, especially when the yield seemed so very small for what I started with. I can totally see why farm families of yesteryear had so many children: imagine how much more rapidly I could blanch, peel, core, seed, chop, puree, cook, jar, and process sixty pounds of tomatoes with an army of my kin to help out.

For a gut-wrenching moment, just a moment, I wondered if my goals were folly. If all the energy I’ve put into taking local eating to the next level has been some futile, tilting-at-windmills sort of endeavor. Is my palette really so well-trained by massively processed food products that I can barely recognize that same staple when made from scratch How long will it take me to anticipate the flavor of home-canned pasta sauce rather than that of the giant bottles of sauce we currently buy?

I started pondering just how far am I willing to go to eat locally. When I might be satisfied that my diet is local enough. There are some non-local ingredients that will simply never go away. Lemon juice, required even to make my tomato sauce, is a prime example. Olive oil is another. And I highly doubt I’ll give up chocolate, which isn’t even grown on this continent. Does eating these things up make me a hypocrite And if it doesn’t, why not keep commercially produced salsa and pasta sauce, as well To make it myself, I’d weathered the cost of the produce, the jars, the time… was it worth it?

Since then…

The apartment has cooled down, the smell of tomatoes has dissipated, and I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the questions that flowed from my tomato-addled brain over the weekend. I always try to examine my actions, my emotions, my principals, and my reasons for doing things. On this particular matter, I came out pretty close to the same place I went in.

Why in the world am I doing this Because it matters.

Local food is so much more than baskets of fresh strawberries in June. It’s more than meals at trendy restaurants, more than free-range eggs and grass-fed beef. It’s not about foregoing foods that are processed beyond their raw forms, but about garnering appreciation for the enormous effort and artistry that goes into creating them, which is where canning comes in. Canning fills my pantry with local food, supports local growers, capitalizes on the bounty of spring and summer produce, increases my self-reliance, and reduces packaging waste. Less of my food is coupled with weird-ass chemicals I can’t pronounce, and more of it stands against an industrial food system that is, in many ways, hugely unsustainable. Imagine what might change if each us learned to can.

Is it a lot of work Absolutely. But for me, for my mission to eat locally, it is important work to do.

Next time, perhaps I’ll invite a friend so that the tomatoes chop twice as fast and I don’t awkwardly talk to myself. I’ll probably try some new recipes, repeat some favorites, and skip the ones I didn’t like. As the years go by, I’ll learn what is handy to have in my pantry: tomato sauce seasoned or plain Whole tomatoes or diced ones Maybe I’ll even advance to pressure canning to open up a whole new array of vegetables I can put up. The truth is I’ve only scratched the surface of this incredible craft, and I’m looking forward to digging deeper. In the meantime, I’ll get to enjoy the almost fifty pints of food neatly stacked in the pantry.

Who wants to join my zombie apocalypse team?