Making our daily bread

I spent the last few weeks reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir of a year the author and her family spent as locavores. They gave up all industrial foods, instead embracing seasonality and self-sufficiency. What they couldn’t produce themselves or find locally grown, they mostly learned to live without. I’ve been reading a lot of writing in this vein lately, ruminations on the economics of the American food industry and celebrations of organic farming and clean living. This story could very easily have devolved into self-righteousness, but I found Kingsolver’s account very humble. While I don’t have the means to grow all my own produce or raise my own Thanksgiving turkey, this personal story helped inspire me to eat more thoughtfully and simply live better. If nothing else, I’ll think twice now about eating industrially farmed meat and poultry and scoff less at the price of organic potatoes. 

In related news, Jon and I just found out we got our spot in the 2015 Brooklyn Grange summer CSA. (What’s a CSA? Here.) I can’t wait to forget the frost, to get back to warm weather and our weekly visits to the farm. For now we’ll continue to wait out winter, then spring will take us to Armenia. Our flights are now booked, and we’ll be spending the last two weeks of April in Yerevan, for the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at its centennial and for me to see where my ancestors came from. While I regret that my first trip there is so long overdue, I’ll be glad to share that experience with my husband.

My husband. My husband of two whole years. Two years ago today, this room was a pile of moving boxes and unopened wedding gifts. Now I look around and I see Jon’s photos on the walls, plants growing in the window, the framed Armenian alphabet my mother gave me at my bridal shower, and a colorful collection of dice in a mosaic tile dish we found on our honeymoon in Malta. We have one of those cliched Armenian household mousepads that looks like a little Oriental rug, and a closet of coats we never wear. These two years have gone by so fast, but in some ways, our home feels so much more lived in.

And so it was perfectly fitting that we honored our anniversary with a relaxed romantic dinner in our neighborhood, an impromptu Tuesday night meal at Milkflower just around the corner. We shared peppers and pizza and gelato and talked about work. It was low-key and lovely. And I came home to find this little guy on the table. Jon had him sent here all the way from Japan:

We saved the big fancy outing for Valentine’s Day, with an unbelievable dinner at MP Taverna on Ditmars Boulevard. Here are the requisite dinner photos to incite envy.

Roasted pepper and garlic eggplant dip, cucumber dill yogurt, and sundried tomato and herb hummus with pita

Roasted beet salad with haricot verts, fennel, grapefruit, and almonds

Grilled octopus over chickpea salad–easily the best octopus I’ve ever had

Fusilli with roasted tomatoes and feta

Mussels with gigantes, tomatoes, spinach, and feta

We came home with plenty of leftovers for the next day, watched Blue Jasmine, then went to bed with a heart-shaped Reese’s peanut butter cup each. Just right.