The Yellow House

The room I’m sitting in has a bizarre, spartan atmosphere. There is a mountain of boxes still waiting to be unpacked, but I have managed to shove them out of sight and out of mind for the time being. I love being in a new space, but hate the actual moving part. This means I tend to put the proverbial cart before the horse, scribbling garden plans and designing the label for our house ale before I can even find a hairbrush (I am, sadly, serious…but who am I kidding, it’s not like I brush my hair very often anyway). The kitchen, however, is one place that is unpacked and has been in use since our first morning here. » Click to read more

The evenings stretch out ahead these days from such an early hour. By the time I leave the office, it’s already dark, and those wonderfully mammalian curl-up-in-your-house-and-eat-and-stay-warm instincts kick in pretty quickly.This three-grain chili fits the bill nicely on these evenings (I’m calling it three grain even though lentils are not a grain, technically. Oh well.) Chuck stirred it while it was on the stove and exclaimed, “There’s so much in there!” And there is. I find that a meatless chili needs a good variety of textures to reach that not-quite-soup, not-quite-stew grey area that chili must straddle. Millet in soups is a recent discovery and is fantastic; but with all these liquid-sucking grains, beware that upon reheating, you might need to add a bit more liquid to reconstitute it. It’s also a great canvas for any mixture of your favorite beans; here, I threw some adzuki beans in with pinto. » Click to read more

As I write this, I’m keeping vigil on the back deck. Every once in awhile, I venture from the glow of the laptop screen and descend the three stairs down into my little city garden, and peer down at two dishes full of beer nestled in a cluster of greens.

I should explain. About a month ago, I checked on my fledgling collard greens, which up until that point had been the most verdant, happy plants in the garden. Overnight, the biggest leaves had been turned to lace—-munched away so that only the veins of the leaves remained. The next morning, two more leaves gone. And again, the following morning. After some desperate consultation with the garden experts (Louise and…Google), I was pretty sure I had a slug problem.

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