Letter that I sent today:

Destinataire Androulla Vassiliou, Mariann Fischer-Boel, Stavros Dimas, Manuel Barroso, Jacques Barrot
Sujet Les Commissaires européens doivent refuser la culture des OGM en plein champ

Madame, Monsieur le Commissaire,

Je vous écris afin d'exprimer mon entier soutien à la proposition du commissaire en charge de l'Environnement, M. Stavros Dimas, de refuser l'autorisation de mise en culture en Europe de deux maïs génétiquement modifiés (le Bt11 et le 1507) développés par les firmes Syngenta et Pioneer/Dow. Des scientifiques ont en effet récemment démontré que la culture de ces OGM pouvait provoquer des impacts négatifs sur notre environnement et provoquer plus de dommage que ce que l'on pensait initialement.

Je vous prie donc urgemment de bien vouloir prendre en compte ces nouvelles données scientifiques et de vous assurer que ces plantes, présentant des risques dont les conséquences sont imprévisibles, ne soient pas cultivées commercialement en Europe. Une telle approche de précaution serait également conforme à l'attitude d'un nombre croissant d'Etats membres qui ont interdit ou suspendu la culture d'OGM sur leur territoire.

En rejetant ces demandes d'autorisation, la Commission agirait conformément aux exigences légales européennes requises en matière d'OGM, notamment en appliquant le principe de précaution et en matière d'évaluation des risques. La majorité des citoyens européens réclament depuis des années qu'ils ne veulent pas que les OGM soient mis en culture en Europe.

J'estime que la Commission européenne doit placer la sauvegarde de l'environnement et la santé de ses citoyens avant les intérêts commerciaux de deux firmes agrochimiques.

Je vous demande donc de placer l'environnement et la santé en tête de vos préoccupations et de soutenir la proposition du Commissaire Dimas de rejeter l'autorisation de ces deux maïs OGM.

Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur le Commissaire, l'expression de ma considération distinguée.

Before you think, wow, Riana's French writing skills have improved miraculously, it's a letter that you can ALL write to the EU commission by going to and signing the petition, it is easy, even non French speakers can do it. We can say No to GMO's

Genetically engineering of the food we eat is an inherently risky process. Current understanding of genetics is extremely limited and scientists do not know the long-term effects of releasing these unpredictable organisms into the environment and people's diets. Don't let them poison our food and control eventually the world's food supply.

Basically, they want to allow Bt corn into the EU, who is they? Dow, Monsanto the usual billion dollar bully suspects. Bt is that nasty stuff the resists earthworms, kills butterflies and other flying critters, it renders down stream frogs into hermaphrodites. And its pollen has crossed the borders and turned Mexico's native plant into a frankenstein monster. France's cows, chickens and pork are all eating Bt corn from Argentina though GMO are not allowed to be grown here. Yet. That Bt goes into our systems via the animal that we eat.

Every cell in plant GE foods contains genetically unstable DNA from the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) promoter. This DNA is suspected to be carcinogenic. Moreover the CaMV is related to human viruses that cause serious diseases (AIDS and Hepatitis B). The corn grains on one cob of GE corn contain hundreds of millions of such CaMV DNA. As this viral DNA may end up in our cells, it cannot be considered sound science to approve such food without finding out if it is safe to ingest large amounts of it as occurs when GE foods are eaten. No such studies have yet been done.

Don't think that you are eating Bt corn? Do you ever take vitamin C?

99% of the Vitamin C used commercially in supplements in the U.S. is derived from genetically engineered corn (Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt Corn) and comes from manufacturing plants in China, where the quality of raw materials produced for supplements tends to be less than optimal and the toxic solvents used to extract the Vitamin C, such as toulene, xylene and dioxin are allowed in residual amounts in up to 100 parts per million in total

A beautiful spring day presented itself, our laundry was hung on the line, my husband finished making me a cheese box and the baby was up from her 2 hour nap, so we headed to the woods to search for morels. I was dreaming that they would be ready, they aren’t. We had just a sprinkle of rain, but we need a big downpour then perhaps they will push up out of the Oak leaf strewn humus.

But the amount of plastic bags that I saw was what caught my eye each time I looked for a mushroom. Blue, white, clear thin plastic sacks garlanding branches of trees and scrubs. On the way to our little spot in the forest (grandpa owns a little tiny square of unconstructable land) trash was littered everywhere on the sides of the road, bottles, cans, mostly plastic this or that. How can we let this happen? I didn't notice it before and we have been there more than a dozen times.

I am a fan of soups, I am making another soup tonight with leeks and potatoes, but the amount of plastic soup that we are making is quickly becoming the primary ingredient and not some kind of spice in our seas. Did you know that there are trash soups that are growing at a rapid pace in each of the major oceans? See photo below.

We started our walk, found grandpa’s land marker, the foundation of a stone ruin. The land had been littered with old tires and an oven door sat rusting on the path. It was so sad. I came to the woods to forage for food, but instead I loaded up our car with bald Firestones. “What are you doing?” my husband asked as I hefted them into the trunk of our car. “I’ll make another compost pile out of a stack of tires and a potato planter out of four others,” I said. I stacked the rest near the path (yes, with my bad back, it hurt like hell). I told him, it only takes us two minutes to clean this place up. 120 seconds of my time to liberate the wild rosemary and sages. To let the pine needles fall to the ground to become a carpet for animals without human trash.

Nature rewarded us with stalks of wild asparagus and thick green moss under out feet. The baby ran to the trees and hugged them, she touched each plant even the wild holly and collected sticks. She looked up at birds in the trees and imitated their calls. I collected sacks that we can use for our trash. I’ll be back after the rains to collect morels, tires and bags again. As we drove off, we saw loads of people hunting for asperges savage along the side of road where it grows the best; it is a French national pastime in March. Did they see the plastic bags swinging in the wind from the bushes and trees above the coveted vegetable that is so hard to see? Did they comment on it to their significant other? Or were they blind to the soup that we are all making.

When I see photo essays like this (all the links are photos that chill me to the bone, that make me cry and make my stomach ache), it makes me think of really how horrible the Depression was and how our families survived and how we let other humans suffer. Every scrap counts, whether it’s fabric or food. Why do we waste so much and how soon do we forget. Is there another depression coming? A water shortage that could hit worse than our fears about oil. I ponder that situation as well as I look at the cheese that I made ripening on the counter next to me. Will I be able to feed, cloth and shelter my family? Not to be doomsday-ish, but you never know with everything that is happening in this world today.

We found an organic beef farm about an hour from us yesterday, and they only sell by the 5 kilos which is great for stocking up, we can get a mixture of different cuts, livers and tripe. The homesteader in me was excited. And the doomsday hoarder was thrilled to order that much beef for our freezer. They don’t deliver until April 30^th. Nothing is instant around here, you have to wait, just as people did historically following the seasons. We are lucky that we have this opportunity at all. I wouldn’t have found them if I wasn’t doing “meet your meat” this last month. I remembered too that I can fish from near my house and collect mussels and oysters. It’s been eye-opening to go to the source of our food and really eat local.

Speaking, of that, my CSA farmer told us last week during some small talk that he also raises Ostriches for meat. I would really be interested in buying some from him as well. He said we can come and see his farm and meet the animals, including his five dogs, a barnyard of cats and horses (all not for consumption). We didn’t spend any money for the last two weeks (my budget now is 50 euros per week for food shopping) that way we would have enough to buy some basic supplies. Now I know what those supplies will be: beef and ostrich. When I last spent money it was to stock up on pantry staples: flour, sugar, chocolate (hey, a basic for me!) butter and milk. Wonderful sourdough breads and chocolate tartes galore at our house right now.

Wouldn’t it be great to fill up our freezer in a month or two with enough food to last us a year? Between my cheap and easy and so satisfying sausage making from the organic pig farm and the chickens and rabbits from our local farmer we could be set. That is why I am making sour kraut. My next endeavor to fill our home with crocks of goodies to eat all year ‘round no matter what the conditions including Beet Kvass, Kombucha, Kefir d’Acqua, buttermilk, fermenting beans and seeds. As I was laying in bed last night with the water bottle under my pulled back (I have a doctors appointment today about that, because three weeks is too long to have a backache and it feels tingly sometimes right where Benji jabbed with his elbow by accident) Anyways, I thought about what if the power went out for days and days or weeks and weeks and I have all the meat in the freezer. What would I do? I would take all those gnarly wonderful grape vines and our half barrel and smoke it all after I cured it with salt. Funny, that I would play out these obscure scenarios in my head. It must mean something. I hope it just means that I am learning... not that it's coming.

I have the worst lower back pain ever. It could be because we are meeting with the bank today to see if we can afford our dream sustainable living, fixer-upper stone ruin with some land for chickens More likely, it's because Amaya is getting heavy and she wants to be held a lot. These medical sites tell me what I should have known. I have been holding her on my hip and stirring the sauces. I can't sit down today, it hurts way too much, I'll do some yoga and make sourdough English muffins standing up. Wish us luck

Ensure proper lifting technique when picking up the baby. This means bending at the knees-not at the waist-to lift the infant.

When possible, avoid lifting the baby with extended, outstretched arms. This may mean removing the high chair tray, letting down the side of the crib, or kneeling on the back seat to lift the baby out of a car seat.

Avoid carrying the child on your hip. This results in uneven stress distribution to the low back and overloads the muscles (this can also occur from carrying the infant on the same side all the time).

I hardly have time to blog about all the interesting things that I do during the day as I fall zonked out onto the bed at 9pm after uploading the days photos. I thought about this today as I pull weeds with Amaya in the garden at 8:30am, I bet people wonder what kind of things we are doing, how does a slow life run? What do we do all day? (People ask me this a lot)

So, if you are curious, I have started a running list of what I am working on each day. It will be on the side bar of my food blog and I will update it daily, once it's updated though it will be gone. I'll try to cross a few off and leave them up for inspiration or to give you some ideas. Underneath What Am I Doing Today, is a list of "what I am cooking?" with links to recipes if I have them. A fun way to get a sneak peak into our lives without doing a slow life cam (that is not happening, folks!)

Prank Phone Calls from ohlala on Vimeo.

A good time to buy a swimsuit is in the dead of winter, that is when they are on-sale; just as picking out a winter coat in the sweltering summer is a good idea if you can bare to try it on for size while the sun blazes over head. I worked in retail clothing sales for seven long years; it’s hard to not think in seasons of clothing. But that is all changing as you know.

The best time to collect free firewood is the first day of Spring when your woodstove has licked its last flame of the nutty wreath and laurel decorations about the house (kind of smells like marijuana) . The dried pine cones and orange peels have ignited their last blast. The full moon is the best time to pull up a weed or uproot something (especially bad habits in your life). We live in an area with a wine glut. There are too many grapes, too much cheap wine flowing, thus poor farmers starving. The French government is offering them money to uproot their three decade or more old vines in exchange for money and a fresh start to plant a new crop. Most are choosing to take the money and plant olive trees which are native to this area and are a cash crop if you have the time to wait. Most vintners already know about patience as it takes at least four years until you can use the grapes of a new grapevine to make a decent wine and most need decades to make a truly great wine.

Armed with our chainsaw, gloves and a hunters jacket we head off the road in our station wagon with the baby firmly strapped into the back seat. We plow onto the freshly cleared fields to collect firewood. If we don’t act fast the farmers set the piles into bonfires when the city gives them the go ahead. They have to wait for the heavy winds to die down. Then they pile it high and watch it blaze. It’s such a shame to see a wonderful smoking wood go up in flames. At least through a spit with a pig on there! So we bring home our gnarled wood and store it away for next fall when we kindle the flame again.

Here are your questions with Benji's answers, this was really fun! Thanks everyone.

What has changed the most?: my wife

What is the hardest thing to get used to?

The TV, we only have two channels now and we had 300 before. Sometimes, I miss watching my rugby games, but we might get rid of the tv altogether if the tv tax goes up. It doesn’t seem worth it to pay 250 euros or whatever the cost will be just to watch two channels. I would rather read anyway. And I can walk to the Charley Bar and watch the match on a flat screen tv there.

The easiest?

Not shopping. I hated grocery shopping and that used to be my chore. At Christmas time it was great, because we didn’t go to the malls or grocery stores with all the masses of people. I never liked shopping before anyways. I have only bought myself one pair of pants and a sweater ever, the rest have always gifts from my mom and the majority have been hand-me-downs from my brother or father. When I was younger, our house was robbed and they stole everything from my mom, my dad and my brother, but they didnt take anything of mine because it wasn’t worth anything.

Do or DID you cook?

I know how to cook and I make a great coconut curry, but she only lets me cook when she is sick and that is very rare. During the summer, I do a lot of bbqs. I was a simple cook before nothing elaborate. Grilled sausages, mashed potatoes, and salads. I used to lie to my mom and grandmother when they would call and ask what I was making myself for dinner, when I lived alone. I made the same thing every night for weeks: some kind of charcutierie, salad and a baguette with cheese and but I would tell them, “pork chops with green beans” or “veal marquez”. Grandma used to give me canned food so I would tell her that I was opening a can of whatever she gave me.

It's obvious Riana is a great cook...how would you describe how her meals have been impacted by these lifestyle changes? (more rustic? more elegant? inventive? involved? tasty? odd?

She never cooks the same thing twice, so its hard to compare one meal on the woodstove and one without. But mostly, the food is tastier. It is a lot healthier, we don’t eat a lot meat. I have to say more “weird” too, but I don’t mean that in a bad way! It's more inventive, she makes things up and makes up her own recipes. I wouldn’t have thought to put that with that like green beans in a salad or a pesto of nettles because that is what we have on hand. And then she somehow makes four dinners with one duck. More rustic, yes, because chicken feet soup, that is something that a grandma would make.

What do you miss the most about our old lifestyle, if anything?

Buying books on Amazon. It’s nice to have new books and fun to buy books. I have been reading ones from my mom and grandpa because our library in town doesn’t have much. The books I am read now are interesting, more intellectual and histories. Right now, I am reading about Mythologies which I wouldn’t have made time for before. I also miss Nutella. A lot.

Would you like Riana to get pregnant during this slow year?

No, but she has been eating so much bacon lately, maybe she is. I don’t think our lives would change with another baby though. We have everything already.

It seems like you have been a great sport in your willingness to modify your habits--has there been or could you imagine an issue at which you would draw the line? What would it be and why?

If something happened to our car, we need that. But that’s part of our “we can buy it if it’s for our safety and security” rule. If she wants to keep all of our trash for one year, I would have to say “no” to that. And I told her “no” to having goats. (ed: for now at least!)

Which, if any, of the ideas that your family has implemented during this slow year lifestyle came from you?

Canceling the satellite dish. And maybe getting rid of the TV altogether. That is a challenge to myself.

Do you have any ideas that haven't yet been implemented?

Yes, solar energy or some kind of renewable energy, could be wind power and an electric car that runs off of that.

Do you think that this slow year lifestyle has been easier for you since you spend time outside of the home at work, and thus are among and perhaps making use of modern conveniences that you don't have at home?

For me, my life hasn’t changed really. I think it's harder for Riana because shopping was her thing. I use toilet paper at school and the microwave to heat up my lunch, life doesn’t seem different. Once, I bought some cookies and potato chips when I went to see my grandpa in the hospital and I hid the package from Riana but she found it in the car and she devoured the rest of them.

Do you think you could be living slow the way you are now... in the US? I'm thinking of cultural attitudes, especially the lack of reverence in the US for "old ways" and the emphasis on 'bigger is better". Would you want to try?

Yes, if we were in the middle of nature in an environment like Montana then it would be easier than in downtown Manhattan or Los Angles where people think about big cars and how much money they can make. If we move to the San Francisco area, which we might in the next 7 years, it might be the best place where it would be most accepted. People would think that we are silly scrapping things off the streets in a big city, but I don’t really care what people think about me. We are in a part of France where it’s easy to hunt and look for mushrooms, we are surrounded by farmers so that makes it easy, people can understand us better because they are right next to use looking for wild asparagus, hunting, fishing, etc.

Are there French people who do what Riana does in terms of slow living?I mean, is this totally strange behavior in comparison to the other French folks you know?

There are a lot of old 68’ ers making goat cheese. Supporters of Bové who leave their jobs in big city, give up all their belongings and live on yurt farms. They are what you call in America, "Hippies". They are viewed as weird. We are not quite there yet, because we live in a single family home, and I have my job and my car. None of my friends have said my wife is strange. One of them has offered us a chicken and a duck.

We are already odd because my wife is American and that is exotic for this area. But we are not cultural outcasts. We just don’t buy stuff, people can’t see that we are living a slow life from the outside. We don’t wear buckskins, we are clean, we look normal. It’s just a part of our personal time when we make the decision not to buy anything.

What would you most like to have back in your life when the slow year ends?

Toilet paper. But, seriously, it will be nice to not have that fear if something breaks that we can’t buy something to replace it. My computer broke recently and for two weeks I didn’t have one while I fixed it. That sucked. But it made me think that it would be a waste of money to buy a new one when I can fix what I have and I feel like I learned something while fixing it.

And lastly, do you feel that the lifestyle the two of you have been building is one that you would like to continue?

I think that the idea is that the slow year is not going to end.

It’s Spring! Just as the dawn is the time of new light of day, so the vernal equinox is the time of new life of the year. But what does a bunny and a basket of eggs have to do with it?

Egyptians dyed eggs for religious celebrations before 500 BCE and their great Sphinx pointed directly at the rising sun of the Spring equinox. The Romans dyed red eggs since that is the sacred color to the God Mars. The month of March is, of course, named after Mars. Eggs are one of the symbols of the Saxon fertility goddess Ostara. Pre-dating Easter, her festival emphasized the maiden aspect who is represented by fertile rabbits and the symbol of soul as egg.

Imagine a time without clocks and weathermen predicting partly cloudy skies. A time where we watched the skies for messages from the heavens, something that I do before going to sleep each night. As so above as below, the saying goes. I looked for the leaping white hare in the big full moon last night, but all I saw was a panda bear. I asked Amaya, where is the moon and she pointed to the window at the bright light that was shining down on us. We are assured that life will continue.

I hear my big, round bag of white cheese dripping while I write this. Thinking of the milk that flows from mama animals everywhere like lambs and goats (like my sisters goat that had twins) that bless me with my cheese (France has a cheese festival next week). I look to nature now more for our nourishment. Those first stalks of wild asparagus told me that is was the vernal equinox, not the chocolate bunnies (Amaya received a chocolate chicken from the cat lady neighbor) in the shop windows. Fresh green new grass sprouts for the animals; fragrant buds burst forth on lilac bushes which we saw on our walk outdoors in the fresh air and birds with their mating calls singsong outside my window.

Culling eggs and baby animals was a fact of life during this time. Traditionally it was a time of separating the weaklings from the livestock, sacrificing and symbolically resurrecting them to ensure the strength of the entire herd. It’s why we would have a profusion of eggs, lambs and milk. It is a time of nest building, you can put out materials for the birds. Clean out your hairbrush, bits of yarn and thread, and tufts of wool, and put them outside all around the yard for birds to find and make soft nests for their eggs.

Spring is a season of fertility and the rabbit symbolizes this succinctly. Rabbits are abundant procreatory animals and the Easter Bunny or more correctly, the March Hare, is used to symbolize that. In mythology worldwide, rabbits are associated with the moon. Since the hare can sleep with its eyes open, the Romans equated it with vigilance and believed that rabbits watched over everything—just as the moon appears to. Ixchel, the Mayan Goddess of the moon, midwifery and weaving has a rabbit totem. Mexican panels of 600-900 AD illustrate this moon goddess giving birth to and suckling a rabbit, while another shows the rabbit symbolizing phases of the moon.

Each month, I have been keeping a diary of sorts, a color diary of the flowers, trees and life that inundates the senses each month. I have noticed this pattern vaguely out of the corner of my eye before but now I have really have the time to record my findings, to think of it as I see nature showing me her colors. This all relates to food and seasons and the circle of life. December is Black like the burnt embers of our Yule log, we savor the rich dark truffle during December, the bare tree trunks are shades of black bringing on introspection. January is White with the thrust of snow bells from the freshly melted snow and heady almond tree flowers are the first to show. We eat white roots like turnip and parsnips and make fresh new starts on a clean slate for the year. You get the idea, the list goes on and on for each month.

March is Green, and I don’t mean St Patrick’s day drinking green beer, nor its birth month stone of Emerald, but we all seem to be on the same page here. The third month is life springing forth, verdant and vif! I save the run off water for my cilantro and tomato seedlings as I wash a pound of spinach. Straight the farmer to me, a basket that was all things green this week as it was last week: swiss chard, big heads of lettuce, a weighty pointed cabbage, little light green baby fennels, and asparagus. Which I thought would be in there since we found our first wild asparagus on our walk yesterday. I had already started heating the broth for the risotto before my husband came through the door with our woven beach bag laden with greens and more greens.

Grabbing the dark emerald bottle of nettle rennet to pour into my goat cheese making this morning, I am reminded of all the edible weeds that we have been eating this month: stinging nettles, lamb quarters and purslane. The young shoots of pine trees glisten a day glow green in rainy weather and taste like bitter lemon. Darling buds burst forth on fruit and nut trees that will evolve into lush, garish flowers of spring. Furled fig leaves and buds glisten green. Time for me to eat baby spinach, chives, celery, ramps and artichokes. Dandelion leaves with prosciutto and bacon braised greens are on my March menu.

Beets don’t work. I dreamt that I was harvesting red golf balls from a stream and woke up in anticipation to see my latest experiment of hardboiled eggs in beet dye. With nervous excitement, I dipped my fingers into the crimson vinegary beet blood to find: three brown farm eggs. Slightly more brown then when they went in. Not red at all, though my fingernails are beet red as I type this.

Then I read about how beets don’t make a good dye on the first site that I found: Beets don't Dye

Now, if I had a personal homesteading assistant with a blackberry I would know this. Or perhaps Mamie knew this and didn’t pass it on. Actually she would not have made Easter eggs at all because she wouldn’t have wanted to waste a valuable egg. Something I know about after my two month of no groceries shopping (and why I want chickens so badly) eggs are precious.

Do you know what I mean about thinking something seems so right but then it isn’t. You would think that you have a sure winner, but in the end there was a snafu and a part jutted out contrary; something doesn’t quite fit in the equation and it’s all thrown off kilter. It can happen with people too like a chemical reaction there are molecules that bond and others that fly off into their own electrical field, it’s part of the Collision theory.

Our Parisian friends with a baby who now live an hour from us in a big new house are not really part of our lives anymore, they live a faster paced life. We used to shop at Ikea with them and eat snack-paks of bacon flavored puffs as an apèro. We don’t have anything in common anymore. We spend our free time these days with my husband’s coworker. He has three kids and they have an urban farm, ducks, geese, chicken and a tree house. We grilled homemade pork sausages outside in December on their patio and then they gave us directions to the organic pig farms run by the mom and sister that is my favorite place now. He is a physics teacher that helps my husband with designs a windmill for electricity and has offered us a chicken and duck for when we have a place for them. We hunt for mushrooms together, we discuss when the wild asparagus will show.

Living a “slow” life is anything but slow, it’s a lot of hard work and when I have a spare moment I am going to spend it with people that make me happy, who inspire me, who make me feel comfortable. We still see the Parisians once or twice a year, and we enjoy catching up with them. We spoke to them last night and they are pregnant again so today, I am going to mail a box loaded with maternity clothes and goodies. But when we have an extra day this weekend, we won’t be driving to their house, we will be in the forests hunting wild asparagus with our foraging friends. So, it’s a law of chemistry. You can’t fight the structures of our make up and reactions of other people’s compounds. Either they stick or they don’t. Me, I’ll be making egg salad sandwiches, looking for a house with land for chickens and packing that gift box.

(ed: it was not my intention to belittle the gift of thin mints of which i am very thankful for, i ate them like a starved animal they were that good. i appreciate any gifts which have so much value to us, even cookies. my mockery of the cookies, not the person that gave them to me, was only to show that i am not a perfect eat-only-homegrown-veggies/make-my-own clothes granola, that i am fallible. i realize this post sounds ungrateful and i would want to kick my ass if i read this. i didnt mean any harm to my sister in laws family who were so nice with us and of whom i enjoyed being with, nor did i mean to upset/slander their name by referring to them as a popular hbo series family. that was only to protect their identity. i am sorry that she is p-ed off at me for repeating what she said to me. she is not the only one that thinks "what is that bitch up to" i know that most of my family and friends think the very same thing. i took absolutely no offense to it and i am sorry that she is offended by me mentioning it. this post is not about anyone besides myself, it is not a comparison of me with anyone that i know. as is most of this blog, it's about me and how i feel and how i live, not anyone else.)

Maybe people are affronted by my happy go lucky, embrace life, live slowly, sew your clothes, too busy for reality tv attitude. My sister-in-law told me, “some days I go to your blog and say what the hell is that bitch up to this time?” She was very drunk when she said that. But it rings true, most people are able to say what they really mean without an inner editor when they are sloshed. Am I that herb growing, toile-de-joie loving Martha Stewart that everyone hates? I am making Easter egg dye from beet skins today, so I guess I qualify.

I am here to tell you that my shit does stink, my house is a pigsty most of the time, I don’t have Mexicans weeding my garden and for lunch I ate half a box of girl scout cookies. (They were horrible, that gross slimy fake chocolate on the thin mints, but I ate them all regardless. By the way, a friend pressed them into my hands as we were leaving for the airport in NYC.)

Am I that bitch that makes everything, yes. It’s not all pretty and glossed over, perfect circles like those crap cookies though. I started more seeds yesterday, because I killed the sprouts from last week by using pure clay dirt that I scrapped from grandpa’s house that turned into cement. This time after getting advice, I made a better mix of compost and sandy soil and a touch of clay for nutrients. Learning everyday. Living everyday. Loving everyday. If that makes me a bitch, so be it.

We live poorly, meagerly doesn’t even describe it. It’s not a life for everyone. I love being a frugal 1950’s housewife, you may love making 6 figures and riding in limos (Martha lives both sides of that pendulum of life). I am not saying you should live like me freezing your buns off to save energy, killing your tv to stop the insanity, swaddling your bebe’s butt in cloth nappies to keep 500 year old dirty diapers out of landfills, curbing consumerism to zero, curing and smoking your own bacon and god dammit—loving every minute of it. I have ripped out that media force fed IV and chosen to embrace and cherish my food and lifestyle (not just to re-use stuff in life, but to REFUSE) that doesn’t make me a bossy idealist.

This bitch lives mindfully. Meaning that I live in the here and now. People try to put wet blankets on my shoulders all the time by nit-picking my life or telling me that they don’t have time to boycott Nestlé or save the rainforests. But these people are passing their days in a stupor of depression fueled by empty society driven ideals. In my honest opinion. Me, I revere in my six (yes, all six) senses. Because you can’t have a decent life if you aren’t fully awake! I am not going to pollute my soul with apathy, negative people, blame and judgment. I am going to take care of things: my family, neighbors, animals, strangers, the oceans, the earth and that involves making Easter eggs with beet juice for me.

Did I live today as free wheeling and loving every moment as I would have if it was my last day on the earth? Yes. It’s trite to recommend living each day as if its your last, but really with the slow year that is how I feel about my family life, my career, my friends and what I am giving to this world.

Indulged in making the best dark chocolate tarte ever. That's what I am up to. In case that wasn’t enough chocolate before 8am I rolled cinnamon rosewater truffles between my palms and then into a coating of cocoa powder as a gift for a friend.

Amaya and I played on the beach, my calves ached as I pushed her stroller to and fro on hills and on the beach, we talked to the fisherman who was catching sea bass and mackerel. I took a thousand photos of her running on the beach, falling on her butt, and eating sand collecting seashells in her mouth.

While she napped, I wrote feverously and had fun with it. I made plans for our upcoming trip and I called my sister and talked to her for 108 minutes. She gave me some great gardening advice so I set out and planted more seeds, arranged my little gardening “chais lounge” on the terrace. Then I hung her cloth diapers outside on the cloths line. If I was to die tomorrow, she would have clean diapers. Also brought out an old trunk to fill up her toys in the living room, that way at least my house would be clean for the wake.

At least ten times, I was on all fours with the baby chasing her on the beach, in the kitchen, on the terrace, in her room, in the kitchen blocking her from the oven. I filled the oven to brim since it takes up the same electricity as a load of clothes in the dryer. Besides the chocolate tarte (with leaf lard crust to die for), roasted three beets with olive oil and garlic (the bright red beet skins saved to make Easter egg dye), a butternut squash cubed and roasted, duck broth and carrot top antioxidant soup (in the oven!) for our duck won ton soup tonight, a millefeuille of golden carrots, sweet onions and fish for lunch and duck l’orange salad. Amaya ate both with gusto.

My family is well fed. They are happy and tired from the beach. I did my puttering of work and feel accomplished, my house is some semblance of clean, the world has more black krim tomatoes on the horizon and I feel like I have lived my day as best as I could have.

I was a sewing machine today, LOL. It all started because I had some fragments of jeans left from the diaper bag. So I made "denim and diaper" dish washing sponges. Then that lead to making a pot holder (which sucked and I tore it apart three times and it's still not done!)

While, I baked a blackberry with leaf lard crust pie, my husband looked for houses on-line and the baby quietly dismantled the entire house. We found one house that we love, but it's too far from my husband's work. Sad, because it was soooo perfect and had three acres of land. Then we found a cheap ruin that needs to be fixed up and sent an inquiry. Can you imagine after the slow year is over, "a slow house renovation" with all recuperated parts?

Then I made five menstruation pad bags for Goods 4 Girls, a charity to send eco-friendly menstruation pads (instead of disposable pads and tampons) kind of like luna pads, but relying on people to make and donate supplies. Well, they need bags to carry their soiled pads into to and from school, and I had 10 zippers and some pink waterproof fabric. They were a snap to make. I used the leftover seams of the Levi's to make loops to carry the bags.

(Someone asked where I learned to sew. I just started a couple of years ago sewing square things first, pillows, curtains, I cant sew straight, it looks like I am drunk driving sewing. But little by little I figure out how to do harder things like button holes and zippers and then making my own patterns. Its all trial and error and lots of practice.)

All the while, I smoked our slab of bacon with grapevines in a wine box. Adding coals and burning vines, closing the wooden box which was smoking, then layering the box with cloth diapers and then covering with a cardboard box. By dinner time we had three entrees with bacon. Curry leaf and Lettuce soup with bacon, baked Boston beans with bacon, and orange and feta salad with bacon. It was heavenly. Back to the sewing. I tried to make the pot holder again, but it was too thick and awkward, I want it to fold over. It's pissing me off. I put it aside and make five gallons of laundry detergent.

Sarah gave me this farmers wife fabric a long time ago and today it was moooing my name from my scrap fabric closet. I love the apron that dustpanalley gave me, but what can I wear when I wash it? Sarah-- look its an apron now, with more jeans off cuts! Tomorrow -- pot holders if you are listening, come hell or high water, I will make you into cute moo pot holders!

Half of what I was working on yesterday. The other half is on my food blog, Garlic Breath.

An internet friend, Janice sent me this adorable fabric awhile back and I have been aching to use it. I used every last bit of it and a pair of Benji's old Levi's to stitch up a new diaper bag which we were sorely in need of. Four hours later, an adorable bag for all her goodies, bottles, diapers, medicines and travel items. It is the one thing that we do use all the time. It was very satisfying to design it and make it myself with everything on hand.

After I took this photo, Amaya went and got the bottle and brought it to me to filler' up. Then she took the teddy bear into bed and fell fast asleep. Dreamy!

good:
My sister told me that I would like her latest article in the SF Gate.

Correct! It's an interview with a woman after my own heart in a way... living well on real food on a very slow food budget. Eating wholesome, quality food is an important issue and should be on a high priority for all of us.


bad:
Last night, there was a program on french tv about the evils of Monsanto and how they are about to reach their goal of world domination from India to Africa and Brazil by controlling ALL of our food with Monsanto's pesticides, genetically modified "foods" and owning the rights to seeds. It made me look at my stash of non-terminator, not sold by Monsanto seeds as if they were gold. Forget bin Laden, these greedy ag-bullies are the real terrorists about to steal the worlds food supply out from under our own eyes with their seed police, government cover-ups, bribes, and revolving doors with the FDA. It fuels my concerns about genetically modified seeds and crops grown from them (bT soy beans grown in Argentina are what France's livestock eat!)

While I am not much for spending money at the moment, I am up for learning new things. Especially if that means supporting women owned businesses.

There is no better place in the world to do wine tasting, than in France. After a brief three year stint in the wine industry, I wasn’t into paying for tastings at California Disney-fied Wine Corporations, but here in France, it’s the real deal, old real wine making châteaux, salt of the earth wine growers for generations, and bottomless glasses! I met the most wonderful woman who has a Masters of Wine, something very, very hard to achieve. She blew my socks off with her wine knowledge and made me more curious to explore our wonderful wine region. She is doing two courses in my neck of the woods: March 27th to 31st, and October, 2nd to 6th.

My new family, the Sopranos have promised to make a visit this fall during the bull fighting season and they want to do French cooking! While I can teach them a thing or two, we are hoping to take one of Kate Hill’s wonderful Gascony courses, she is a personal hero of mine with her pig named Bacon and her savvy skills of stuffing sausages (oh, how I need her now!) just look at what she is cooking with her students this week:

• Pintade a la crapaudine truffée
• Gratin Dauphinoise aux truffes
• Gateaux Basque supreme!
• Saucisse d'Agen et Lentilles du Puy
• Clafoutis aux Pruneaux d'Agen
• Cœur de Canard flambe
• Cote de Bœuf Bordelais
• Crème brulée aux Diamant Noir

You can meet the Butchers, Bakers & Armagnac makers of Gascony in these year round cooking programs in Southwest France. For more program information

For those vegetarians out there, Julia (the female proprietress who also leads pottery, painting and yoga retreats) at Chateau Venetac is running a vegetarian cookery course: September 25th to 29th run by Demuth's cookery school from Bath

Wonderful, fun things to do right here near me and best of all, run by independent women that I admire. Here is more info on Juliet's wine course. (And on a personal note, she is the really cool lady that gives Amaya all her daughters hand me downs and has been a wonderful friend to me during the slow year, I should have given her a plug before, but had not though of it until now.)

From the Decanter ad for Wine tastings:

Take a long weekend break (27 to 31 March 2008) exploring the wonderful variety of local wines with Master of Wine, Juliet Bruce Jones

· Come to Chateau Ventenac and discover the fabulous wines of the Languedoc

· Revel in the diversity of local wines, from whistle-clean white Picpoul de Pinet to deep, brooding reds and fragrant muscats from St Jean de Minervois

· Visit top producers from 6 appellations and taste their wines

· Learn about the unique terroir of the Languedoc

· Stroll through vineyards and marvel at the views

Enjoy a weekend of fine wine and great food in the relaxed surroundings of Chateau Ventenac, a 19 Century stone castle. Sleep in a 4 poster bed, eat in the oak-paneled dining hall or out on the terraces and relax in the gardens with amazing views of the canal, the vineyards and the Pyrenees beyond.

Great value from just £425 per person including wine, food and accommodation. Locals can join tthe party for €85 per day (not including Dinner, Bed and Breakfast) We collect from local airports, cheap flights still available. For more details see our website

Dark Days of Winter from ohlala on Vimeo.
Amaya giggling through out dinner... very dark in our house! It's the dark days of Winter still.

"Don’t touch that stuff in the sink! It will sting you," I try to warm my husband who is in the midst of a kitchen witch's typhoon. A pig head* (grandpa’s favorite and I am still using up random frozen tidbits from the deep freeze) is boiling quietly on the woodstove with turnips, potatoes, carrots and herbs, along side it is a bunch of nettles in a bit of water to become a vegetable rennet (part 2 of my nature’s way of making cheese- I have not given up on the figs yet) and a couple of liters of milk are coming up to temperature to be inoculated with cultures. Also in a little pan is sweet condensed milk that I made previously that is slowly being converted into Dulce de Leche (for purely sinful streams inside chocolately rich brownies). Behind the stove are random sizes and shapes of jars full of kombucha and kefir d’acqua (baby and DH love it) flavored with floating blackberries and figs from our summer garden.

I had planned on going to the cheese monger today who probably thinks that long ago we moved off to the woods to an old stone house with no internet service (our goal, actually, but each one we look at is missing a key ingredient: a roof!). I haven’t seen them in months with our grocery strike which unfortunately included the cheese monger, the fish monger and the poultry guy who remarked to me last week, “haven’t seen you in a long time!” as he shook my hand and let me take photos of Amaya on his tractor. I hate not giving them my business, but I want to slash our food budget to an all time low of €50 per week. (Before A Slow Year we spent over €200). Surviving on nothing for 2 months showed me we can do it. Plus, I can fish about 50 feet from the fish monger's stand and catch my own wild loup de mer. (Literally means wolf of the sea, it's a kind of seabass)

Amaya chose to take a nap and my fate was pushed in the right direction. The 20 euros stays in our wallet and I am off to make my own cheese for the evening by the fire. With the nettles and nettle water that doesn’t become rennet, (there are 101 things you can make with Nettles) I’ll make a rich broth to add to Amaya's goat milk bottles, full of iron and nutrients. For dinner she will have french bread, an egg yolk poached, steamed nettles and cauliflower. For me steamed nettles are in order to kick the last of this cold and for those nasty cold sores. Nettle is an expectorant among hundreds of other things, it's used for mucus complaints, plus, it is also an aphrodisiac. Maybe we will go to bed early after our nettle soup, cheese and duche de leche brownies. wink, wink

From the Cheese of Antiquity: rennet with stinging nettle (urtica gracilis). To make, boil a pound of stinging nettle in just enough water to cover for twenty to thirty minutes. Strain off the liquid and add as much salt as will dissolve with agitation. With home-brewed extracts, it's difficult to know how much of the infusion to use because of the variability of its strength and the milk's acidity. A good starting point would be one-half cup of nettle infusion per gallon of milk.

*Per serving, based on pig's head: 625 calories, 43 grams total fat, 24 grams saturated fat, 150 milligrams cholesterol, 660 milligrams sodium

The inner organs are the best part, the most nourishing, that is why Amaya ate a rabbit heart yesterday with her broccoli and it's liver the day before to make her better rather than antibiotics. (If you have access to fresh organic liver you can make your own baby formula based on liver.) We also had some chopped liver with plenty of goose grease schmaltz on rye bread that I had brought back from Ben’s in New York. I have plowed through a dozen of the fresh from-the-farm-coated-in-shit eggs from Mayonnaise to heuvos rancheros with refried beans (for dinner!) we are in egg heaven. Even Amaya has had a cooked yolk or two for good health.

We don’t normally get the chance to kill our own food. The point were we thank our catch for nourishing us has been taken out of the equation unless you have bought live lobsters or fished before. For the most part we don't know - we don't want to know - where our food comes from and in this we lack respect for our food. I want to know where my meat is coming from so this month, I am only eating ones that I have met in some way or another. Cooking is my way of honoring the things that were sacrificed to gratify our needs. And "meet you meat" has reminded me (forced me to think outside the box) that I can fish from about 500 meters from where I live. Free fish! Sushi making party here next Wednesday!

On NPRs This American Life last year, they had a great show along these lines called a “Poultry Slam 07” give it a listen, it’s funny and moving and a lot of what I am all about.

peeling favas. work intensive food. amaya eats them as fast as we peel them! they are like candy to her. we have about 6 kilos in the freezer. fava pasta, fava dip, falafel yesterday for everyone even the cat who oddly really likes falafel. amaya even had liver and favvvva fava beans for lunch one day.

Yesterday, we meet our first meat for March. One of these chickens, organically grown just running around eating leeks became our dinner later. The French love leeks. Last time I talked with the chicken farmer he told me that he doesn’t have organic certification, because its too hard to get. Reminds me of the problems with America’s large ag corporations who have control over 98 percent of the chicken market and basically own the chicken farmer (chicken janitor) who just sweeps up behind them. While the zoot suits hold all the power to dictate everything from poultry prices to the levels of hormones and antibiotics in chicken. Much like what is happening with the organic vegetable market.

Out of his large barn holding tractors and tools, he lead us to the kitchen area with a walk in fridge and a deep sink. Above it had a chalk board of today’s prices. €3 euros a dozen large eggs. €7 a kilo for fresh rabbit from his neighbors that don’t have a “store front” like his barn operation. There are no signs to get to this farm, you have to drive down a one way back road and his gregarious black lab barks at your car following you all the way into the parking lot. When I explained my eat local challenge and eating meat that I have meet, he told me, “that’s a reality that will be soon for all of us. But when the oil runs out, there is no way that I can feed everyone in our neighborhood.” He also grows leeks, pumpkins, lettuce and other vegetables on his ten acres.

It's really important that we all do what we can to support small, local organic farmers -- through CSAs, farmer's markets, food coops, etc and press congress to pass a fair farm bill.

Between 1979 and 1998, more than 300,000 family farms have gone belly up and it’s continuing though there is a demand for organic produce, lines at farmers markets, and full CSA across the nation. Many of those that remain today are "family owned" in name only -- the production is controlled entirely by corporations. They have no choice because the ag-corperations own the food processing plants (the seller, the buyer and the distributor are all the same company!) and the distribution and it seems that they own the farm bill right now too.

The federal government, through the farm bills and other means, has supported this system of corporate control. To qualify for government subsidies, farmers must follow government mandates on what can be planted and how: corn and soybeans "fencerow to fencerow" with bonuses per bag for GMOs and they completely ignore sustainability issues like water pollution and the loss of soil tilth. Small scale family farmers who grow fruits and vegetables and do not have production contracts with large corporations get no subsidies at all, period. In fact, they are penalized. Read the NY times article to see just how chicken littled farmers are. Write to your congress person and let them know that this is unacceptable.

Dear Sir or Madam,

It has recently come to my attention, after reading the op-ed piece, "My Forbidden Fruits and Vegetables" in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html), that the Farm Bill is doing a disservice to the hardworking farmers of this country.

This article, written by a small farmer, illustrates the barriers that farmers have in branching out into other produce grown on commodity land and getting it sold in local markets. I find it disheartening, given the demand for healthy, local foods, that consumers do not have easy access to the bounty that could be grown locally. Instead, large growers seem to have a monopoly on produce grown thousands of miles away.

The author states:

"The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on 'corn base' acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future...

[Additionally,] the federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables. Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets."

As my local representative, I urge you to address this matter. If you are not familiar with the details of this issue, please read the complete op-ed piece.

Finally, this is not only an agriculture issue but an energy issue as well. For the most part, buying local produce rather than shipping it in from thousand of miles away, saves a tremendous amount of carbon emissions.

Sincerely,

John Q. Public
Your address here
City, State Zip
Email address

For a different take on the letter, check out the one on Burbanmom's blog.

Januaruy 9^th was a dooms day of sorts. It’s the day that I found out that my cooking all our meals on the woodstove and hanging the diapers to dry, turning our living room in to a make shift laundry area and general eyesore had not made the slightest dent on our power bill. My couple months of hobo living had still produced a yearly bill of over 7,000 kilowatts, and was more than last year. Double the normal household for France. And 7 times the amount of my energy conscious friends who have been able to keep theirs in at about 1100 per year or less.

Watt is killing us? We don’t use electric heat, never blow dry our hair, line dry our clothes, and never turned on the AC last year. We had a mild summer, thus we never watered the garden and stopped taking so many baths. Our water consumption bill was reflective with a cut in half. But not the electric, which is very expensive in France to boot. As I putter about the house at night unplugging every last appliance, I think about solar panels for the laptop (30 to 50 kw/month), but then I wondered exactly how much is eachone costing us and who is the electric guzzler around the house?

The most gluttonous of the three prong hogs? The ancient hot water heater is the biggest one. 589 kw/ month if it runs for three or four hours a day! We don’t need on-demand hot water all the time and she’s ancient (a tankless heater would be a great investment or solar water panels). That old crone might be heating more than 4 hours per day which is gouging us. The very, very old grandmother of all water heaters, in MIL’s apartment downstairs (all part of one house so there is just one electric meter) is probably doing the same thing when she has it on continuously for the summer).

Upstairs, we bathe twice a week so now we only turn it on an hour before our bath and then turn it off directly afterwards. (You can install a timer to do this). You would be surprised how much hot water is left for days upon days for rinsing dishes and washing hands. The dishwasher and the washing machine have their own elements to heat their own water. Which leads me to the next two biggest energy pigs: Washing machines and dishwashers. Ours each average 233 kw/month.

If we stop using really hot water to wash clothes (makes your clothes last longer as an added benefit), only do full load of truly dirty clothes then we can cut that consumption in half. Today, I sorted through the laundry and found things that didn’t really need to be cleaned, so what if I had some blackberry jam on my pant leg and things like my husband’s sweaters from NYC that we can washed in our used bath water. I still do a load once a week of the cloth diapers on boiling hot water with tea tree oil to sanitized them, the rest of the time I wash them every other day in warm water and hang them to dry. Ah, ha. Dry—dryer now that is a super sucker. As much as an electric oven and air conditioner. We rarely use our clothes dryer so that isn’t the culprit of our high bills.

I cook the food, my husband does the dishes, that is our agreement. Lately he has been doing a lot of them by hand (which is cheaper) and we can go every other day for the dishwasher and run it on the quick setting, 25 minutes and turn it off to let it air dry rather than heat dry.

The oven and electric range. At 155kw per month *if* I only use one of them an hour per day. Just as much as a clothes dryer! It’s March 5^th probably one of the last of my woodstove top cooking days until the end of the year. I am cooking leftover tagine (still have leftovers in the deep freezer after no grocery shopping for two months) and a soup stock on the woodstove and plan on making some other stocks to make the most of it. (Yes, the diapers are drying by the fire). During the summer, I use the stove less by making salads and fresh vegetables and we bbq a lot. I plan on only using the oven to cook a lot of things at one time. Like a pie, granola, bread and baked potatoes all in one go. We kept all the branches when we trimmed our mulberry trees and we still have a lot of grapevines for 7 months of backyard bbqs. My husband loves to get outside and roast like he did with the half barrel and piglet. Getting creative with this will be a good opportunity this year, adding tagines, terrines even flans to cook next to our typical grilled chicken and cross hatch charred eggplants.

Then our inefficient fridge is killing us softly yet loudly. It runs all the time, creates sheets of snow on the inside if one errant lettuce leaf touches the back wall. It uses 300kw/ month. It’s partners in crime: the fridge in MIL’s apartment and the one that FIL brought over and stuffed with wine and plugged into the garage tripled our consumption of watts in one fell swoop. The excessive wine fridge was terminated this summer.

The future plan is to separate the electric of the in laws apartment from our burden which is probably a big part of what is killing us. Until that day happens, there are things that I cant control like my MIL who washes anything that has been worn for 3 seconds, her constant house and clothes washing (obsessive compulsive) and thus constant ironing. (A French housewife thing, they iron everything from A to Z; flat sheets and to dainty underwear). Clothes irons are huge energy vampires, watts used are more than using microwave on full power. Three times more than an electric blanket and more than a refrigerator. Makes the 2 dollar clean and press shirt at the cleaners seem worth it all of a sudden, just for the ironing alone! Or refuse to iron anything like we do. Three years of suggesting to her to please wash clothes after 9pm on our half price contract (we pay €90 a year for Peak Schedule) with the electric company have fell on deaf ears. During the summers, at 8am I find her in our garage each morning loading three loads of laundry separated into colors; whites; blacks into our washer and then minutes later she is at the ironing board while watching tv for the most part the morning until lunch complaining about all the laundry she has to do.

What to know watt is killing you? Check out the calculator for your appliances. I'll be reading my meter each month now and trying to figure out how to zap the guzzlers along the way.

Even a nasty head cold doesnt stop her from playing with her food and swinging noodles around the house. She stuffed her face with spagetti, spinach and fava beans. Feed a cold!

One of the best things about New York was that I got to take many long walks with my sister. She had a meeting downtown and my relatives wanted to see the MET which I have been to before. I figured Amaya would prefer Central Park so we got out the “sharing center” aka from the dump stroller and hit the swings.

Novella met us there with a pastrami on rye in hand and Amaya tasted her first Jewish food. She loved the pastrami and the big dill pickle and thought that the coleslaw was not that bad either. Later in our trip we went to Ben’s and she had more pastrami on rye, about a quarter of a dill pickle (the customers and employees kept making turns to come near our table to see this baby in a high chair munching on a Kosher dill like it was a candy bar) until she dropped it onto the floor. Her spinach knish had arrived at the table.

At the park we fed the birds and some Japanese tourists taking photos of the squirrels saw the cutest baby and swarmed to take photos of the American baby who hammed it up with her funny “fake smile” that she does to please people. It’s this quick wide grin to show her six teeth and lasts for 3 seconds. She uses it on anyone to get cookies or chocolate with great success.

I led the family through the labyrinth that is the Central Park and got lost and had to ask a dog walker how to get out. But it was sunny and fresh and blue. Not like it would be the next day. Later that afternoon, my sister and I looked at each other and said, lets run down to the Lower East Side. We left the baby with Benji and my mom and Novella and I took the subway to Chinatown. We took in the sights and smells, ended up in the Bowery area, navigated the subways some more, this time with a map and made our way home in time to take everyone to a curry place for dinner.

We woke up to a quiet, still city and I just knew, it had snowed! Benji and I ran out to get bagels and coffee for everyone in our room. Then Novella and I hit the park to take photos, tramp through the layer of fluffy stuff. We talked about life. We had a lot of catching up to do, it has been a year since I had seen my sister. It made me wish that Amaya could have a sibling to keep her grounded for the rest of her life and to take walks with of course.

I am from the West coast so I don’t have a lot of first hand references to New York and its environs except the Sopranos. I loved that show. I could almost hear the show intro music playing while we were on vacation.

I first met the Sopranos at a fabulous "zen loft" looking restaurant, called Dovetail

From now on, I will call them ‘The Sopranos’ and I mean it in the nicest way. I am sure that they don’t kill people, but I want to respect my brother-in-laws new family and keep their true identities a secret…they might just read this some day. So, no offense, I am a West coast, French transplant hick and don’t know anyone from Long Island, except yous guys.

I call still hear their accents bouncing around my head. What was not to love? Jolly, happy, extravagant people offering me dinner in a posh restaurant. Keep in mind that I had been eating food with freezer burn for two straight months (no grocery shopping for January and February) and the night before some mystery meat soufflé from AirFrance’s catering company.

At Dovetail, our taste teaser was a vodka gelee with salmon caviar in a spoon, seared mackerel, and pickled salmon along with a fresh baked white cheddar and corn mini loaf. I had the blue point oysters with pine apple and sea urchin followed by a lovely pistachio encrusted duck breast cooked medium rare to perfection. All washed down with some extraordinary wines. I loved these people, I loved their food, I loved their contagious happiness. I loved that they made me order that chocolate dessert.

If you can imagine anyone that would be my extreme polar opposite, it would be Mr Soprano. A staunch catholic, suburban-driving, mogul-making, blow up Iraq, Bush-voting Republican. Other end of the pendulum from pagan, rural, liberal, slow-year-living me. But we had something in common. And it surprised me. He was actually into the Slow year. In his own way. But already on the road to achieving it. He had just bought a farm and told me while we were freezing in the cold waiting for the valet that he was going to teach his spoiled urban kids how to fish and hunt and how to survive sustainably off the land. We discussed it all weekend, while I cooked deer that he had shot, he told me that he wants to get some goats and chickens and some beefalo and build a wood cabin by the stream. We talked about canning tomatoes (he gave me his Italian grandmother's recipe), building a root cellar, recycling and making less trash. His motives were the what ifs of this war torn world and his advancing age and wanting to pass on something useful to his children and grandchildren.

Bravo. Once again, I felt my faith renewed in mankind and the impossible doesn’t seem so far off anymore if we are all connected and can see ourselves in our opposites. Maybe everyone has a little inner Slow life inside of them? Even Mr Soprano.