When it’s hard to take on big projects, we take on small ones. This year has slipped through my fingers like sand; Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so too, another birthday. When I look back on the last 11 months and think of what went right, one of the first things that comes to mind is the food. This was a great year for food. We joined a local farm share which provided us an abundance of organic vegetables in varieties we’ve always loved and many we’ve never tried. We supported a local farm by paying in advance for our seasonal vegetables, and received the structure and time outdoors of weekly trips to the farm to pick-our-own produce. We started a compost heap to handle the scraps, and committed to more time cooking at home. All while reducing our carbon footprint. I tended our own vegetable garden for some extra favorites, and Jake enjoyed arranging farm flowers to fill the house with.
With so many extra vegetables around, we had to come up with more creative ways to use and preserve our abundance. I spent a lot of time this year pickling, making stock, and drying fresh food. It might not have been the perfect year for everyone [see the ongoing pandemic], but good things still came out of it. I am excitedly shifting my culinary focus to good-keepers. I successfully kept a half-bushel of apples from spoiling in a cold dark closet for over a month. The turnips and squash and potatoes in the pantry are making hardy winter meals for us already. I’m thinking more about baking. The Great British Baking Show is back on our television every Friday.
To honor and celebrate all this food and the good things it’s done for my body, the Thanksgiving holiday, and give myself an easy sewing project to feel good in tackling, I made myself another apron. It’s a floral cotton, constructed of rectangles or near rectangles, and of a pinafore-style with crisscross back. I patterned it myself to make the most efficient use of the remnant I had on hand. Cooking or baking in a homely apron that I made myself makes me feel glamorous…or at least industrious.
