Exhibit A

In light of my recent post on making life choices mindfully, with focus and bravery thrown in for good measure, I present Exhibit A. We’ll call them Josh and Missy, mostly because those are their names.

The thirties are still young on them, and they don’t have kids, although they’re the type of non-parent people that amaze you with just how good they are with small folk, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes some day. But not anytime soon. They’re a little busy right now filling their years with undertakings of the mindful-focused-brave variety.

Art by Missy

She’s an artist and teaches at a small private school. And has collected some serious metal at about every triathlon she’s ever entered. And has more energy than ten people, and fits more into her life on a daily, weekly, monthly basis than seems humanly possible.

He made his way from a liberal arts degree to journalistic photography, and works for our small (circulation ~100,000) daily paper. And last year was awarded Photographer of the Year for papers of that size. And this year received a Fulbright to do photographic work in Guadalajara, where he’ll be getting up close and personal with poverty on a whole different scale than we know it here in the USofA.

She’s going with. (Which, in case you didn’t know, is proper sentence formation in Minnesota, where she hails from.) They leave in August. And so their summer has been a whirlwind of arranging details — the dog care, the house care, the general we’re-gone-for-a-year care — and fitting in a few other things. You know. Conducting workshops. Triathlons. Trips to see family. Arranging a sendoff “Friends Appreciation” party for a hundred or so of their closest friends.

And oh, a little jaunt to France the other week. Where they made the trek up Alpe d’Huez to see the Tour de France riders go by at near-warp speed, factoring in the length (~8mi) and overall grade (~8%) of the climb.

If you have any passion at all for biking, which I do, being on the most famous of the mountain stages the Tour de France serves up is probably a box somewhere on your list. And since I’m not sure I’ll ever make it enough of a priority to actually get around to being there in person myself, I’m grateful to have this from Josh so I can vicariously check it off, in only 4 minutes:
Tour de France Alpe d’Huez 2008 from Josh Meltzer on Vimeo.

We’re really going to miss having them in town. But I can’t wait to hear the adventures. And we scored Josh’s home brewing equipment for the duration of their time away, so we’ll be sure to drink a toast to them in absentia. Here’s to mindful, focused, brave — cheers!

my parallel universe

I have a good life. A generally fulfilling, happy, even joyful life. But … there are some things I’d like to have done before getting to this point. You know, if I’d planned better. And maybe known 20 years ago what I know now.

I’m not talking about buying Microsoft and selling it at the right time. No, these are the roads I could have knowingly taken, if I’d thought about it a little more, or been braver, or more focused.

So. In no particular order, I wish I had at some point chosen to:

• Take up kiteboarding. Pursue life as a wind junkie/bum for a while. Bonus: Title9 photoshoot.
• Go to college and major in something math-related. I love math; I used to be good at it. My inner geek.
• Live in another country for at least two years. Bonus: Poignant and/or torrid foreign love affair.
• Achieve proficiency in language of said country, if not more.
• Ride for a sponsored bike team. Bonus: Substantial supply of cool schwag.
• Learn to play guitar or piano well enough to enjoy it. (Yes, I know; this book isn’t quite closed.)

For today at least, that’s the list. What dreams haunt you, just a little?

count your pennies

Today I was lying in bed, sneaking a few extra minutes of time on the horizontal after getting LittleBit out of her crib. In the summer we all tend to sleep largely in the buff, leading her to this morning’s query, as she clambered around and over me: “What dat?”

“That’s mommy’s nipple, honey.” (Two-year-old brain registers this.) Enlightened mother seizing moment, I point to her: “And there’s YOUR nipple.”

(emphatically) “No! Thass my… PENNY!”

Of course.  5 pennies = 1 nipple

summer fare

If you’re disappointed to click and get yet another food post, I apologize, but not much. It’s summer, and summer is my favorite eatin’ time of year. Don’t get me wrong; I love me some soup too, fall through early spring, and okay, it’s not much of a secret that I like to eat all year round. But passion? Passion I save for the fresh stuff, preferably right out of my own garden, or someone else’s in my same area code.

And my very very favorite thing that comes out of my garden? Well, long before they started appearing on chichi restaurant menus everywhere — under the fancy-nancy name of “edamame” — I was eating plain ol’ green soybeans, boiled in the pod for 9 minutes with plenty of salt. Best thing ever under the late-July sun. If you’ve tried them and thought they were just “meh,” I’m sorry to say you have been duped with the equivalent of a supermarket tomato in January versus one straight out of Grandma’s garden.

Fresh, never frozen, green soybeans (and you can call them edamame, I don’t even care) are a world apart from anything you’ll get in a restaurant or the frozen-food section of your grocery store. Trust me. And the funny thing is, no one grows them. Well, maybe they do around where you are — and if you can buy them on your farmer’s market I’d love to hear about it — but I personally have never once seen them for sale fresh, anywhere, anytime. (Though, because I am lazy and such, I haven’t made any trips to like other continents or even many cities specifically in search of).

And I find this lack curious, because though they differ from field soybeans in the same way that your delectable Silver Queen differs from high-as-an-elephant’s-eye field corn, they ARE soybeans, after all, and soybeans are a commodity crop for a reason: they are prolific producers, easy to grow and tolerant of pathetically poor soil, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, devoid of any major afflictions or predators. (Although I’ve learned to take measures when the seedlings first start to pop out of the ground because the #*!(%&(#ing, um, adorable chipmunks will behead every single last one when they are tender and young.)

So since you can’t buy them, the only thing is to grow them, and for your own gustatory pleasure I hope you’ll consider it. I’ve had fantastic luck with the Butterbean variety sold by Johnny’s Seeds out of Winslow, Maine. (And not to worry; I’ll remind you next spring too.) I recommend planting a lot of them, because they will be popular. BigSis is the champion at extracting them from the pod, and we occasionally have to remind her to breathe, BREATHE, while she attacks, in order that the rest of us can have our fair share.

And now my problem is how to keep the neighbor kids from picking them clean, because they’ve gotten hooked too. It’s starting to look like I may have to resort to a combination lock on the garden gate.

Steve & Allison

I snuck out one night a while back to go see Steve Earle at our local small venue hall. You remember Steve, or at least you might remember his song “Copperhead Road.” He’s a fun guy with a huge repertoire and some fairly left-leanin politics. He also has a wife, name of Allison Moorer, who opened for him. While not my usual taste, I really liked her voice, and seeing her live — well, I have to say the girl has got some performin’ style. And you can listen to her new album in its entirety right there on her site. I love that in a musician.

Have knives, will travel

We had a whirlwind getaway earlier this week. Nah, not the romantic kind where you dump the kids out at the accommodating inlaws’ and drive off feeling giddy and free. I’ve heard about those but I don’t know about them firsthand because, regrettably, I don’t have those inlaws.

No, this was a whirlwind involving packing the getaway vehicle with enough toys and books and snacks to last the 2-plus hours for us to make it down to meet friends at their rental cabin near Grayson Highlands for a couple nights.

The trip wasn’t intended to be so short, but circumstances changed and our choices were a) don’t go or b) go for 2 nights. Having looked forward to it for months, ultimately I couldn’t bear the thought of not going at ALL. This is my closest friend and her husband and two children, and we all know the rarity of the friend+spouse+children equation where everyone gets along famously and the husbands are fully aware that it is their destiny to monitor the kids while the two of us run away and hike for hours without hearing the word “mommy,” not even once. And this cabin totally rocks too, with the right remote feel but close to great hiking trails and a fabulous, crawdad-filled creek that enchants (read: occupies) the kids for endless hours, right in the front yard.

Well-known truth: a 2-night trip requires the same amount of gear as a week-long trip. The list for the girls is long, largely because we’re still in crib mode for LittleBit (cribmonitorblanket. whitenoisemachine. sippycupsbibsbinkie. etc. etc.) My list is short: Sportsbra. Shorts. Boots. Keen H20s. Bug spray. Life Is Good cap. Knives.

Knives?

Well, yes. Don’t you pack knives for an overnight?

You don’t?

Oh.

All right then. I’ll admit it. I’m a knife snob. Some might say my affinity for a sharp blade verges on the obsessive. Be they ever so judgmental. Okay, I once dated a man for a few months years months years who could put a burr edge on a blade that would make you weep. And looking back, maybe, just maybe, that was one of my problems in letting go of the relationship. Various wheels would come off, the whole thing would end up in the ditch, and we’d go our separate ways. And then my knives would get dull. And I’d call. And he’d bring his whetstone by. Or something like that.

But I digress. You see, I can tolerate crappy cookware. Flimsy flatware. The ironic inconvenience of a poorly designed electric can opener, or one of those horrid 79-cent ones that require the hand strength of a lumberjack to operate. But I cannot bear to try to slice an apple, let alone prepare a complete meal, with the sad, straggling excuses for cutlery that invariably inhabit a kitchen stocked for rental or vacation use. I’d rather eat Chef Boyardee cold out of a can for three days straight.

So I pack my knives. No, not all of them. Really, I’m not a total wack job; we’re talking one paring knife and one chef’s knife. And would you believe, my friends make fun of me. Yes, ALL of them.

Oh, except when I show up with my Wusthofs in hand and the only other knives in residence are a laughable white-plastic-handled one with a two-inch-blade that wasn’t even sharp the day it was born, and a serrated item once sold as a bread knife that pops out of the handle every time you bear down on it. They don’t laugh then. No, no. Then you are a HERO. A GODDESS OF ALL THINGS SLICEABLE. And they hate to see you and your knives go, oh yes, they do. Especially after just two nights.

(Love you, CL. Hated to leave…)

7/25

I owe a lot of things to a man in my past: Where I live. My ancient cat. A huge part of my music collection. A portion of my personal growth. And, to some extent, the timing of my first child.

I moved here to the smallish southernish city I call home because of him, and we lived together for two years. But don’t get yourself settled in for a big breakup story, because the man in question was my cousin (and this ain’t a West Virginia tale).

Someday when I can take the time and emotional space I’ll tell the EP version (hankies required), but for now I’ll just share the pieces that explain the first paragraph up there.

We’d lived together once before, under his mother’s roof, when I was 18 and he was 16. Though we’d spent our childhood as sworn enemies (you’ll have to wait for the EP to get the full back story), it didn’t take us long to became allies and friends, and that time together, something shy of a year, cemented a bond between us.

Fast-forward seven years to May 1990. When he’d come close to dying in ‘87 (backstory, EP) , I’d made a vow to reconnect with him if I ever had the chance. And here was the chance: I’d just graduated and could move anywhere I wanted to. And his roommate had just moved out. So I packed up all my worldly goods and belongings in two UPS boxes and flew east. He picked me up from my parents’ place in Pennsylvania and we drove south into the mountains, and I fell right smack in love. I’d come from the desert, you see, six long years of muted desert beauty, subtle tones of color, and I thirsted for lush, blatant, Mae West Dolly Parton fullblown verdant GREEN. And May is a big beautiful blooming time of year here.

So I moved in. And almost immediately started lobbying for a kitten. He, owner of new leather furniture, was opposed. Then my car got broken into and my months-old Totally Awesome Sound System was stolen, along with a bunch of great CDs and (okay, temporarily) my trust in the universe. He came and sat down next to Morose Me on the new leather couch, classifieds in hand. “Hey… wanna go get a kitty?” And here she is, 18 years later, The Cat With 900 Lives, a reminder of Tad’s sweetness, all he could think to do to make me feel better.

The music. Oh, the music. The Denon changer got racked up every morning and it ran until we went to bed. He owned over 500 CDs at the time and knew every one of them by heart, I think. And he was always listening to stuff no one else had found quite yet, though I don’t know how he did it (e.g. Barenaked Ladies… in 1991??). Even after I bought my own place, and he moved back to upstate New York, I’d get calls. “Radiohead. Buy it. {click}.” Oh, god, I miss those calls.

Living with someone over time invariably brings growth, if one is open to the notion and communication occurs. Tad was an at-the-surface guy, sensitive in a good way. Of the many things he taught me, I remember most that he would forgive anyone anything. Not immediately, but he could let go of hurt like no one’s bidness. I guess when you know your time is short, it comes easier. We should all.

And he brought to my attention a Really Annoying habit of mine: constantly suggesting a Better Way to do things. I’d start out like this: “Yeah, but what if we did x, y, z?” After a while, he’d just look at me and say, “You got the Yabbuts again, cuz.” Stopped me cold. (After a while it became an elbowed, “YABBUT!!” and we’d both start laughing.) I confess that this is a habit that dies hard; I’d like to think I’ve honed a sense of when it’s helpful and when it’s not, but friends, keep on me please.

March 2001 saw me married to the Most Prudent Man in the World. Per plan, I’d gone off the pill January 1, 2002. At the age of 37.5 we had no idea how long it would take us to get pregnant; I had May targeted, and thought February was an ideal due date, per plan. But when I came back home from my weeks in Florida at the end of January 2002, sitting on Tad’s bed as he breathed his last slow breaths, the hunger I had went beyond comfort in the arms of the man I loved, somehow, to what I can only describe as a primal need for coupling, for undoing the diminishment to the species just done. And BigSis was born in November. You do the math.

Happy birthday, Tad. You’re still part of my world every day.

Sir Elton

I’m only slightly embarrassed about the fact that it took me until last month to burn my first CD (find out what gave rise to that monumental occasion here). Fact is the whole music download thing got legs about the time that I got pregnant with BigSis. And perhaps in part because the computer I had during that era would levitate and fly off my desk and onto the floor every time any sort of media file was opened, the entire concept just passed me by as my life was consumed by, oh, this and that.

This. And That.

But now — stagnation, get thee back! — I’m hooked. And I’m in the process of gathering up, digitally speaking, all the music I once owned that went astray somewhere. (And yuh-huh, I know just where some of those CDs went. You know who you are. Though if you’ve found my blog I’m a little nervous about that whole stalking thing.)

I’m also trying to rectify a few of the glaring holes in my music collection. Like, how could I live through three four decades of Elton John hits and not own a single one? I don’t need every Greatest Hits album he ever released (and there are a slew of them) but I thought one compilation really is a must, and I’m seeking input: If you’re a big Bennie and the Jets fan you can probably keep that to yourself, but otherwise I want to know your top EJ picks. Maybe especially if they’re not hits. And if you’re not an Elton fan at all, well, I feel a little sorry for you and we’ll leave it at that.

And here’s my tentative list so far, mostly off the top of my head, though feel free to vote yea (or okay nay too) on anything included:

Can You Feel the Love Tonight
Candle in the Wind (maybe)
Circle of Life (ditto)
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Empty Garden
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Levon
Pinball Wizard
Rocket Man
Someone Saved My Life Tonight

And yours??

Bonus question (extra credit if you didn’t have to Google it) : What’s the Rocketman’s given name?

holy bookends, Batman!

We are a bookish family. I am a Borrower; my husband is a Buyer. And we do a sizeable amount of both for the girls. Steven Levitt assures us, via Freakonomics, that our girls are likely to Perform Well on Tests (the be-all of my dreams for them, ohtobesure) due to the mere fact that we have so Freaking many books in our home, supposedly regardless of whether we read to them or not. Though most assuredly we do; I will attest that my tally on Blueberries For Sal alone is around 600, and rising.

Levitt’s book, by the way, is one of only a handful, relatively speaking, that I personally own, and reading it made me think I should have studied economics in depth somewhere along my educational path, because apart from the money aspect I think it’s absolutely fascinating stuff. (That’s not quite as antithetical as saying you’re good with Christian theology other than the dying-on-the-cross-for-my-sins part, right?)

Veering safely off religion and back to books: This morning I went on something of a Book Rampage and declared life would not begin again until every last book with a picture in it, even a tiny one at the chapter headings, was put away, stored somewhere OTHER than a bed or a chair or a table or a counter or any floor or anywhere at all in a bathroom.

I actually took photos of the tidyrrific results of the rampage but realized that no fewer than 6 allowable repositories for books = 6 photos of books in baskets and bookcases = total snore for you. However, I am grateful for photographic evidence that this state once existed, just so I can look at the pictures late at night and get all hot and bothered.

So here’s my question, because I’m coming slowly to terms with the reality that there will never be fewer than several hundred kids books in our house, and the number is likely, given BigSis’s utter fixation at a fairly tender age on the written word, to rise before it ever falls. And I don’t, not really, want to make them inaccessible in any way. But having them everywhere, EVERYWHERE, is making me just a teeny. tiny. bit. INSANE. Does anyone have a solution to this? I find myself torn between wanting order and wanting untrammeled literary freedom, damn the chaos.

Moms, dads, anyone? How do you corral the books? And let me say here that putting one book back before you get another out is a lovely, not to mention entirely sensible, notion, and I’m working toward that. But we’re pretty far, perhaps galactically so, from getting there because there is daily a LOT of looking and reading going on around here, much of it unmonitored.

So send some wisdom on over. And while we’re at it, how do you do the shelving/storage aspect? One location? Multiple locations? Do you weed arbitrarily? Shuffle?

Friday

Every once in a Wednesday while, I get a notion that I am in some kind of bikin’ shape. As in, yuh, I can hang with the crazy boys, the ones who race on the weekends and have way less stubble on their legs than I. And off I go down the hill from home, waving to the ones I’m leaving behind for a few hours, to join Ron’s Classic Wednesday Ride, now in its 15th year. Maybe half the times I hang, barely, by dint of nothing more than sheer stubbornness; the other half I get spit off the back, but they do regroup and when I draggle on up they smile and say nice things to ease my huh-miliation. Boys who get dropped don’t get this kindly treatment, I notice. But there are advantages to being a Girl, particularly a Girl on a Bike.

I had that kind of a Wednesday. Which led to this kind of a Friday, wherein I was attempting to do the Green Thing and ride-not-drive to my coffee date with a girlfriend a scant two-three miles away. Come the first rise off level in the road I had the distinct thought I might be rolling BACKWARD, my legs were so fried. Hmm. Somehow made it to the coffee date, though dared not drink coffee as I was already feeling a wee bit on the shaky side.

So this is a newish friend, but one with whom the conversation flows. Not a simple stream; rather, a river of thoughts words sentences, complete with eddies and tributaries and branching diversions, all of it tumbling past, and us occasionally coming up for air, gasping, laughter — “How did we end up on that?!?” — and back hurtling downstream in our craft of conversation, yare and free.

It was a lovely morning. Her little one slept and slept and slept and we talked and talked and talked. And my legs, along with the rest of me, felt refreshed and lively for the trip home, the driveway climb, the clamor awaiting inside.

(get blogging, newish friend!)

post-dinner post

We had about every last inlaw I own for dinner tonight. These events are Perfectly Pleasant (for which I am duly grateful) but they are a good day’s drive from deeply engaging or raucously amusing. So I concentrate instead on the food, on making something that I’ll enjoy while working within the confines of what others will. The cousins were having a blast playing together, and I made some entertainment for myself by creating a new pasta salad recipe to accompany the safe grilled chicken and fresh green beans (I do grow my own but have been fairly accused of some stinginess about sharing them with Just Anyone; the ones we passed around the table tonight came from friendly and fascinating Tim Belcher, down on our Farmer’s Market).

My mother-in-law makes some mean yeasted dinner rolls. I don’t have the recipe because a) they are her standby contribution and b) I’m too lazy to make anything with yeast, but I’ll try to finagle the recipe from her sometime so you can try it, because they are worth the effort. As long as it’s your effort and not mine. For now, here’s this instead:

Greekish Pasta Salad

(all amounts are approximations, since I tend to cook by eye and not by measured line)

Cook in water as salty as the sea:
12 oz amusingly shaped pasta

steam for 3 min:
1 zucchini in bite-sized pieces (one is plenty, no matter the superfluity of your garden or your neighbor’s)

Chop:
1-2 lg tomatoes (or a double handful of cherry ones halved)
1 sweet pepper (any color will do)
fresh basil
handful kalamata olives
tender green onions if you have them

shake up well in an old peanut butter jar or somesuch:
1/4c seasoned rice vinegar
2T Dijon mustard
clove garlic, minced/chopped/mushed
2 grinds black pepper
glug olive oil

Drain and rinse pasta; add veggies and dressing; toss gently together. Sprinkle most generously with feta cheese (or serve on the side for palates unaccustomed/unwilling, of which I had both at my table tonight). Even MIL asked for the recipe.

Little things that please me

As a rule (save for them endless trips to the grocery store that I can’t seem to escape) I don’t shop, and I’m not much for Stuff. But I’ll go ahead here and confess that there are some Things in my life that bring me joy. Usually they simplify or enhance my day in some way, but that alone won’t carry it to the table. They have to have some elegance of design; to satisfy an aesthetic need as well as a functional one.

And yes, it’s true, I’m a treehuggin type from way back, born and bred to it. So this little item? Let’s just say I haven’t actually taken it to bed with me and put it under my pillow – but only because I exercised great restraint. And because I already store my current bedtime reading there.

I have to tell you that I went so far as to buy 6 of them a few years back, for the express purpose of giving away to anyone who evinced the proper covetous glance and admiring tone on seeing mine.

I’m pleased to say they’re all gone now, adopted by loving families. So if you can’t live another night without your own, you can buy it here.

Oh, it also collapses ingeniously for storage and fits handily in any drawer. Need I say more?

Shaving my legs and cleaning my house

The periodicity of both of these activities has lengthened significantly in the years since the arrival of my first, and now second, child.

Oh, to be sure, I’m doing vastly more picking up and tidying, not to mention logging way, way, WAY more hours in the kitchen and laundry room. But I’m talking about cleaning, real cleaning, under furniture and over fanblades and around lightplates cleaning. This kind of cleaning is so rare in my life as to be at risk of appearing on an Officially Endangered list.

Shaving my legs, something I used to do almost daily, has now been relegated to an as-necessary status. And, given that a) my hair is relatively fine and b) my husband just really doesn’t care (something of a blessing), “necessary” ranges from um well seldom in the winter months to, oh, once a week in the summer. It’s a sad fact that most of the guys I ride with have shaved their legs more recently than I have at any given time. And yes, I wear cute boyshort swim bottoms for One Reason Only and it’s not because we live a block from the beach and I’ll be headed out with my kiteboard any minute now. Duuude!

The parallel between housecleaning and shaving (surely you must have been wondering) comes from doing the task incompletely. In either venue, if it all gets done frequently and well, the occasional miss goes quite unnoticed. But good god! I think, as I move the couch to vacuum, surely I cleaned this room more recently than that incredible dust collection indicates. Perhaps I did – but if so, maybe I missed moving the couch the last time. Or two.

And, glancing down at my freshly-shaven legs (without fail this occurs when I’m already en route to my razor-worthy destination), I’ll see a small but righteously forested patch right there, that tetchy place by the ankle, or the tendon ‘hind my knee. Hmm, I wonder; how long since I made a clean swipe there? Last time? Time before? Last summer?

And there we are. With so many more-worthy things vying for my finite time and attention, the endless tidying and sweeping and other chores will continue to consume most of the time and energy that I care to devote to the notion of a pristine somewhat sanitary house. And my showers will continue to be hurried and sometimes public affairs, with this or that head sticking in for a view of Mommy takin SHOWAH! as the spray goes forth onto the floor. It’s all good, and it’s all right, for now.

But I’m definitely thinking a disposable razor in the glovebox until the era when I can reclaim that bit of my life: time alone in the shower with my soap and my soul. And my Schick.

some rules aren’t meant to be broken

Yesterday I broke a rule.

We’d gone to the inlaws’ pool, the one at their condo complex. This is largely a retired population, so the list of rules, prominently posted, is long and persnickety, and the likelihood of being busted for an infraction is high because though the pool itself may be nigh on deserted, you can be sure there are plenty of eyes on you. (And may I never, ever, turn into one of those people, please god grant me a life of my own until the day I die).

But the rule I broke isn’t one that’s on the list.

We’d just finished a bit of lunch; sunscreen had been dutifully slathered. Big Sis, officially Pool Safe, was playing in the grass with her cousins and I was chatting with their mom, my sister-in-law, who’s in town for the week from Way Out West. Little Bit was wandering around, splashing in the baby pool which is all of about five foot in diameter and one deep. She’s entirely capable of getting in and out of it on her own, and she loves it.

I’d moved my chair around under the patio table so I could see her without turning around, and my sister-in-law was facing the same direction. And then Grandma brought the youngest cousin, just up from her nap, and we proceeded to pay the proper attention to her chubby legs and sweet skin.

And then a woman who’d been sitting over yonder was walking our way, holding Little Bit, hair-soaked and crying.

She’d slipped off the edge, gone completely in and under. And I hadn’t seen any of it.

Maybe she would have righted herself, come up spluttering and fine. But maybe not. Point being I hadn’t seen any of it. And wouldn’t have looked that way for who knows how long.

Stupid lucky. Thank you, Lady.

I didn’t shake and cry until later, at home. The most prudent man in the world, though he’d never, ever, do such a thing himself, only held me, not a word.

On Eggs

We get our eggs locally, from the wonderful Shannons of Weathertop Farm. These are great people. And these are incredible eggs, with yolks of a deep golden-orange hue and a flavor to make you swoon. And they are fresh with a capital F.

A fresh egg is a joy and a delight. Except when you’re hard-boiling it. There’s something about a newly minted egg that makes its shell stick, so that the shelled product you end up with (after far too long at the task) resembles an ovoid, crater-pocked moon. Hardly the stuff of photogenic picnic-dinner deviled eggs.

But I’ve learned a secret. Wanna know?

Freeze them. Yes, I know it sounds wackadoodle crazy, but trust me here. Before you boil them, stick those babies in your freezer and set a timer for 15 minutes. (And if you’re me, the timer part is really crucial. Those who know me well will share my personal amazement that I actually HAVEN’T conducted an unintentional Freeze-the-Egg-Solid experiment, at least not yet. It isn’t that I’m exactly scatterbrained; I just have a tendency to get Fully Immersed in whatever activity I’m engaged in, to the occasional detriment of the activity I may have begun just prior.)

After their time chillin out, boil them as usual and then marvel at how easily the shelling goes. Oh, and it’s best to stand them on end in the freezer, or the yolk will end up jammed against one side, which is again suboptimal for deviling.

And if you have your own foolproof method for boiling eggs you can skip this, but here’s mine: Put your eggs in a pan of cold water (handily eliminates scalding yourself as you try to plunk them into boiling water as some techniques call for). Apply heat. Wait for the water to come to a boil. Cover and turn off heat. Set timer for 13 minutes. When it dings, pour off the hot water and add cold, plus a bunch of ice cubes, repeating as necessary until completely cooled. Voila – perfect boiled eggs, and no nasty green tinge to the yolk.

Enjoy. And a little nudge: if you don’t already, treat yourself to local eggs. You’ll never go back to the supermarket variety, with their dizzying array of cage-free, free-range, organic, Omega-3 labels, none of which guarantees you flavor or small-farm sustainability, both things worth having in your life.

Your local co-op or farmer’s market will have them, or find a source by entering your zipcode at localharvest or eatwild.