I’m back. Another year older and with a new prefix: Mrs.  It feels amazing! Can I say “Best Spring ever?” Yeah, I think I can.

I have no idea how much you want to hear about this whole wedding thing, so I’ll try to keep it to one thought: Getting married is awesome!  I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I was really dreading it. I have no idea why. I saw it as an ordeal that needed to be survived.  I was dreading our parents meeting. I was dreading the emotional bomb that the ceremony was going to be. I was dreading the reception and dinner.  Turns out, I’m a freak.

Our parents seem to genuinely like each other, and while I did find the whole thing incredibly emotional (I was so busy crying during the ceremony I have no idea if it was emotional for everyone else, but I think it was) I felt so light and bright and buoyant afterward. And then it was time to eat, drink and be merry. And eat and drink and laugh we did.

There was champagne and beautiful Burgundy. A pretty little salad, a perfect pea soup, lamb with ramps, mint pistou, spring vegetables and roasted potatoes and raspberry cake with lemon curd and buttercream frosting.  There were stories and tales and even a few toasts.  My bouquet was full of tulips, anemones, hydrangeas and sweet peas.  It was as springy as Spring can be. It was the perfect way to start a new life.

And now, finally, we can get back to just that: living. Back to digging in the dirt and grilling and hanging out and chatting with friends and making potato salad. (Yep, potato salad. Again.)  But this is a potato salad with a twist.  For my birthday Isaac grilled us oysters, asparagus and steaks (N.B. mignonette is good on oysters, but it is outstanding on grilled hanger steak).  And then, after dinner, washed down with a fancy bottle of Spanish wine, we tossed a few foil-wrapped potatoes on the still-glowing coals and left them there while we watched the sun set and lounged about, blissfully not thinking about getting married.  And then, before bed, we grabbed the potatoes, unwrapped them and tossed them in the fridge.

On Sunday night when we got back to the city I chopped the sweet, smoky potatoes and tossed them with thinly sliced celery, a finely minced onion, chopped olives, a handful of slivered basil, a spoonful of a blood orange and fennel tapenade that was lingering in the fridge and an aggressively sharp vinaigrette with a pinch of pimenton de la vera (to enhance the smokiness) and served it next to broiled fillets of mackerel.  And boy oh boy was that good!  The salad is great and unusual, but even more than that I loved the mackerel. Me, a fish-hater, loving mackerel! It really is a whole new world!

We found another one last weekend, White Bridge Road, about three-quarters of a mile down Route 13 from the ridiculously picturesque hamlet of Old Chatham.

To get there you pass a spooky old graveyard and a mysterious little building set into the hill, filled with water that I think was maybe at one time a spring house (does anyone know?).

And then you turn right at the big ochre sugar maple and you’re lost in a world

of quiet horses, silently staring chipmunks

and a dirt road so infrequently used that fallen leaves have time to make lasting impressions.

White Bridge comes to an end when it intersects with Albany Turnpike, the old coach road.  Turn right again, and as you walk along the Turnpike, if you look closely you can spot an old mile marker in someone’s front yard.  When I pointed it out to Isaac he initially thought it was a bathtub Mary, then he saw “17 Miles to Albany” carved into marble with an elegant script.

Aside from the beautiful foliage and lovely horses, this walk has another advantage: It ends back in the center of town.  So, depending on your proclivities, you can either go to the left and cap off the brisk little walk with a little nip of something brisk at Jackson’s Old Chatham House, or, you can veer right and end your leisurely stroll with a leisurely cup of tea and a cookie at the Old Chatham General Store.

Happy trails!

The weather has been dreadful and the hours at work long and exhausting, and that has meant that finding the time to keep the Granny Cart up to date has been nearly impossible.  I begin a post and then it sits for a week, sometimes two, until I find the time to complete it.  And then, when the post is finally done, it’s nowhere near as good as I had hoped it would be.

So, in an attempt to not dwell on the negative, allow me to paraphrase Juliet:

Swear not about the rain, the near constant rain, that daily changes good dirt to mud, lest my prose prove likewise dour.

In a move that may surprise those that know me in real life, I’d like to stop complaining for a minute, and focus on the good things, because in the rare moments when the rain has stopped, it’s actually been quite an awesome summer.

So, in no particular order, Things I’m Loving, Summer 2009.

The Red Barn‘s Tiny ‘Tinis. 2 oz Martinis. Perfect in both concept and execution.

Another Fork in the Road Diner. Seasonal, local food done oh so very very right.  Anyone that reads this blog for the food should be sure to stop at this new diner for breakfast or lunch the next time they find themselves on the Taconic State Parkway (be sure to note their hours though, no dinner).

Pasta with Peas and Greens. We’ve tried every combination, Peas and Lettuce, Radicchio and Peas, Kale and Peas, Lacinato Kale and Peas, Turnip Greens and Peas, Arugula and Peas, and every one of them has been delicious.  Make sure to change up the seasoning based on the flavor profile of the greens though. Radicchio needs taming, so use long-cooked garlic and some anchovies and lots of ricotta.  Peas need nothing more than a hint of garlic and lemon juice.  Kale can stand up to lots of garlic and chile flakes and Parmigano-Reggiano.  Wilt the greens, add the peas and toss with pasta.  Couldn’t be simpler, couldn’t be tastier.  Makes an excellent lunch to take to work too.

This tart. I made mine with some pate brise I had stored in the freezer, and if I made it this way again, I wouldn’t use the egg wash. It made the crust too chewy.  But do make this tart. It is so easy and beautiful and will impress the hell out of house guests, or if you’re the guest, your host.  Serve with delicious, loosely whipped cream.

Seeds and Plants from Christina, My garden is bursting at the seams, and though I’d like to chalk it all up to my superior gardening skills, I’m smart enough to know that it helps to start with good product.  The beautiful Blue Coco beans and various greens and herbs good blog friend Christina sent me as a house warming present are growing their little brains out.  It’s so fun to muse on the flexibility of nature.  The seeds she sent me were grown in such a different location from where they’re growing now.

Monticello, And then there’s the mutability of time that seeds provide.  The seeds that I bought from Monticello are descended from stock first grown in the United States by one of our country’s great men, Thomas Jefferson.  Without meaning to sound like too much of a teenager, I mean, that is like, so cool!

and Silver Heights. And finally there’s the variety of nature, evident in the varying sizes and shapes and foliage of the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and squash that I picked up from Silver Heights after weeks of agonizing over who to choose.  Not every plant is turning out to be ideal for my garden, but it’s a fascinating experiment.

Grazin’ Angus Beef. Beautiful steaks and “interesting bits” from cows I can see from the road and pat on the nose if I ask nicely.  The steaks aren’t cheap, but you know what? They shouldn’t be.  Most people eat too much meat as it is. I mean, this weekend I was in a Price Chopper and they were selling 18 chicken legs for $3.  How is that right?  I’d rather they sold 18 eggplants for $3.

Ocean State Job Lots. From pricey to crazy cheap, I love this weird store.  It’s like an old fashioned Woolworth’s rolled in with a Trader Joe’s and Century 21.  Some things are well priced, others are loss-leaders and some are just outright plays for money, but it’s worth the trip for the cheap terracotta pots and excellent cracker selection.

Flickr. My deep appreciation for this photo-sharing website grows on a weekly basis.  I love being able to keep track of my friends’ lives in a visual way. I love being able to leave little notes for people and to hear feedback on my photos.  If you’re on flickr too, I’d love to be a contact.  My username is martine266.

Equine Advocates. I just started doing volunteer work at this equine sanctuary, and ye gods! it’s good for the soul.  If like me, you need a horse fix, but don’t have the time/money/physical strength/balls to ride anymore, volunteer here.  A few hours once a week, or more if you have the time, is good for you and great for the horses.

Borage in my Cocktails. Pour a large shot of Lillet into a high ball glass.  Add two shredded leaves of borage, a dash of Peychaud’s bitters, a dash of lemon juice and three ice cubes.  Swizzle and then top with seltzer.  Swizzle again.  The cucumber flavor the borage imparts is refreshing and surprising.

So that’s it!  Well, of course that’s not actually it, there are many other things keeping me happy on a daily basis, too.  There’s Isaac, of course, and my family with whom we’ll soon be spending our annual week up in the mountains, and my friends and the birds up at the house and here in the city (the chipmunk that insists on tearing up the pots of herbs on the patio is, however, not making me happy) and iced coffee and sunsets and runs in the park and so, so, so many more things.

So I ask you: What’s making you happy this summer?  Please feel free to share in the comments.

Unfortunately, not in a culinary sense.  There was a frost warning Sunday and Monday nights, so my mom told me to put up-turned terra cotta pots over the two tomatoes I had planted.

But what turned out to be even worse than the frost was the two days of 90°+ heat on Wednesday and Thursday.  My poor helpless tomatoes fried in their own little pizza ovens.  By the time we woke up on Saturday morning they were shriveled and dead, dead, dead.

And then there were the beans.  Also dead (not sure if the frost or the heat got them), except for the ones that survived and are infested with aphids.  Where are all those ladybugs that lived in our house with us all winter long when I need them?

It’s kind of a relief though.  I knew something had to go wrong in the garden eventually, so I guess I’m hoping that this will be the extent of it.  For all my cranky, curmudgeonly complaints, I’m still a wide eyed optimist.

And how could I help but feeling optimistic when all the seeds I planted way back in the frosty, grey days of March are thriving?  We’re eating some beautiful lettuces and the peas are about to flower and the China rose winter radishes are nearly full size (with huge greens for steaming).  All planted in mid-March on a whim.  Zany.

Which leads me to a bit of a denouement.  I think the garden grunt-work is done, or very nearly.  We went to the Troy farmer’s market on Saturday to buy some plants, and I picked up a final order Wednesday at the greenmarket and then ordered a few extra arugula and broccoli raab seeds because my first experiences with both were so successful.

But all the beds are now dug, and the fences are up and the plant decisions are made.  From here on out, it’s just maintenance (not that I’m anticipating the maintenance to be easy by any means, but it just has to be easier than hours and hours of back-breaking labor, right?).

I’m sure I’ll find some way to occupy my time.  Maybe I’ll actually cook again… . Or maybe we’ll just go to more parties, like the one we went to on Sunday night that featured a demonstration of duck herding.  Yep, you heard that right.  Duck herding, which might just possibly be the best way on the face of the earth to spend a half an hour while sitting in the grass and sipping really tasty, locally-brewed beer.

Another good way to spend a half an hour is to have a supper of perfectly grilled steak, asparagus, mushrooms, salt potatoes (all accompanied by a wedge of really good blue cheese) and a salad of parsley and radishes plucked straight from the garden, like we did on Saturday night.

Or, you could thinly sliced some asparagus and the first slender stalks of broccoli raab from your garden and toss them with a garlic and pepper flake-laced oil, whole wheat linguini and sharp slivers of Parmigano Reggiano, like we did on Monday night.

Or, you could sit on your back porch with a glass of sun tea, or a beer, or a fizzy vermouth cocktail and watch the sun move across the grass and listen to the bees buzzing in the blackberries and maybe, just maybe catch a glimpse of a hummingbird enjoying your much loved lantanas.

So I’m going to promise right off the bat that I haven’t moved April Fool’s Day or Halloween.

It’s often very hard for me to get out of work by 7pm-ish so that Isaac and I can get a jump on our drive Upstate, but this last Friday, I did it! I was so excited and ran to meet him.  I jumped into the driver’s seat and we set off, even managing to make it through the UN General Assembly mess and some very thick pea soup fog around Hudson without much effort.

And then we got to the house.  We opened the door, and it was cold, and smelled a little different, but it was late and we were hungry, so we continued to unload the car.  As Isaac cracked open a growler of beer, I headed upstairs to turn on the heat.  And then I stopped.  That odd smell was even stronger upstairs… And then I heard a little noise.  I froze and veeeeeerrrrry slowly turned my head.

There, on the couch, was… something.  I screamed (Isaac said later that it was so blood curdling that he expected to come up the stairs and find a hockey-mask wearing chainsaw-weilding mad man threatening me).  And then I looked again.  And then I screamed again, “THERE’S A F*CKING TURKEY ON THE COUCH!!!!”  Isaac laughed, and headed upstairs behind me, and said “Oh my god! Take a picture!!!”  All I could do was think, Oh man, he so does not get the gravity of the situation.

It was just at this moment that the turkey decided that she didn’t like the look of us at all and started trying to fly away, only to run repeatedly and with gusto into the ceiling and and living room wall.  It was awful.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.

I grabbed a towel and opened the sliding door to the backyard.  And then started talking very softly to the turkey.  Heeeeeere turkey turkey turkey.  Oh please stop flying into the ceiling turkey.  Oh turkey, how did you get in here? I used my most soothing voice.  I clucked and hummed and cooed and tried very hard to get her to come towards me and to please stop flying into the ceiling.

It didn’t work.  She started freaking out even more.  And then she ran.  Down the hall.  I followed her and almost fell.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaa! Glass! Everywhere!! That’s how she got in! Through a double-paned window at the foot of the stairs to our bedroom.

There’s a little nook there, with a window and beautiful wainscotting and bead board.  The window was shattered nd every square inch of the beautiful moldings were covered in mud, shards of glass and turkey sh*t.

This is where my mind began to shut down a bit.  I was tired, hungry, and at my wit’s end about what to do.  I have no memory of how she began running down the hall again, but she did, and this time towards the door! I was so happy! Yes! it was almost over!! But, no.  Apparently she didn’t want to go back outside where turkeys belong, and instead decided to go downstairs.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in case you’ve ever wondered, turkeys can use stairs.

So there we were, in the kitchen, the very place I hoped she would never go, and what does she do?  She heads for the laundry nook and wedges herself neatly behind the washing machine.  Great.  Now what?  She seemed happy and calm behind the washer, so I got a chance to think.  I spotted my gardening gloves and decided to take some decisive action.

Together, Isaac and I got the washer moved, and then, I grabbed her.  I didn’t get a good hold of her, but I had her.  I ran towards the front door, but she began to panic, and twist and freak out. I kept squeezing tighter and tighter.  Then I felt something under my fingers; the softness of her flesh, the hardness of bones.  She made a little noise, tried scratching me, and then I lost it and dropped her.  I felt nauseous.

She was hopping about like I had hurt her, holding her wing like it was broken and moving in a jerky fashion.  With a jerking gait, she trotted into the small room off the dining room, and stopped.  It was over. She had had enough. I calmly walked up to her, grabbed her wings very gently, kicked open the front door and set her down.

She ran away, but I was broken.  All I could think was that I had killed that poor turkey.  I’ve never needed a glass of beer so badly in my entire life.

I was covered in turkey sh*t and feathers, as was my house. I felt filthy and intensely depressed.  I had brought up two sandwiches for our dinner; ham & brie, and you guessed it, turkey.  Isaac gamely ate the turkey one, and I tried to eat the ham, but I couldn’t.  I couldn’t stop running the last 40 minutes through my head. I kept coming to the same conclusion, that I’d killed the turkey.  After a few bites, I had to stop and cry.

The next morning, there were no obvious signs of her anywhere, so I began to feel better.  Maybe she had survived?  Maybe she was faking injury?  We had to drive up to my mom’s house to borrow her vaccuum, and she, being an amateur wild life expert as well as gardener, thinks that was the case.

We have a few theories about how the turkey got into the house.  The window that she came through is under the deck off the master bedroom.  We think she might have been taking a nap under the deck when something scared her–the weather (it was very stormy), the volunteer fire department’s siren (which sounds like an air raid siren) that is near by, or possibly a coyote or rogue dog (there’s a lot of them)–she then burst from the ground, hit the underside of the deck and crashed through the top window.

After spending the day cleaning and vacuuming and trying to figure out how to get our very, very old window replaced, I whipped up a nice, vegetarian pasta for dinner; because, while this whole adventure isn’t enough to make me a vegetarian again, it sure has put me off turkey, and to a lesser degree, meat, for awhile.

Ed’s Note: One. I’d like to thank Lisa for the able assist on the title of this post.  My feeble idea was to call it Wild Turkey, but in an email reply to my story, Lisa said, “Oh my! You should start a second blog about your adventures Upstate and call it a Turkey In Every Living Room!”  And thus a post is born.

Second. I’m not a huge fan of swearing in my writing.  At work we eschew it because there’s usually another way to get the point across.  That said, there are certain people like Michelle and Carol who use it to such amazing effect that I bow down before their cute little cussin’ asses.  And, given that, in real life, I am a prolific, creative and liberal user of epithets, I figured, for accuracy’s sake, to leave the swearing in this post.

Head below the jump for the recipe for Pasta with No Turkey and Glazed Brassicas with No Turkey.

Pasta, With No Turkey

prep time: 30 minutes ~ cooking time: 1 hour

• Olive Oil
• 2-3 small Onions, sliced
• 2 Bell Peppers, sliced
• Garlic, minced
• 1 large or 4 small Eggplants, cut into small cubes
• 1 large bunch Broccoli Rabe, washed and cut into bite-sized pieces
• Water
• 1 lb Pasta
• Salt
• Chile Flakes
• Grated Cheese

Set a large pot of heavily salted water to boil for the pasta.

Heat a large glug of olive oil in your largest and deepest sautèe pan.  Add the onions and peppers and cook slowly over medium-low heat until soft, golden and fragrant.  Add the garlic, then the eggplant and turn up the heat to medium.  Cook until softened and tasty, 10-20 minutes depending on your stove and the eggplant.

Add the pasta to the water, stir.  Season the sauce with salt, pepper and chile flakes.  Add the broccoli rabe to the eggplant mixture and coat in the sauce. Cover and allow to cook down while the pasta is cooking.

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce with the heat still on. Turn to coat in the vegetable mixture. Turn off the heat and serve with a liberal flurry of your favorite grated cheese, a few grinds of pepper and a nice glug of very good olive oil.  Enjoy!

Glazed Brassicas With No Turkey

prep time: 10 minutes ~ cooking time: 20 minutes

• Garlic, to taste, but at least a few cloves, finely minced
• Olive Oil
• 3 small colored Cauliflowers and/or Romescos cut into florettes
• Salt
• Chile Flakes
• Dry Vermouth
• Red Wine Vinegar
• Honey

Add a large glug of olive oil to a deep pot over medium heat.  Add the garlic and brassicas.  Turn to coat in the oil.  Bring up to a sizzle and then turn the heat a little lower.  Cook slowly until the vegetables are tender, 15-20 minutes.  Turn the heat up to medium-high, season with salt and chile flakes.  Add a small glug of vermouth, vinegar and honey.  Turn to coat the vege and cook until the liquids become a light glaze.  Turn off the heat and enjoy!