A couple of weeks ago, I talked my darling wife into venturing forth into the unknown to a tiny little park I had found via Google Maps. The park is Seven Oaks Park maybe a mile from our house. It made for a very nice leisurely bike-ride on a sunny afternoon.

I had done enough research after finding the park to know that it is a legitimate park maintained by (or at least listed on the website of) the Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board, but that it has no amenities. No building, no picnic tables, and certainly none of the new-fangled fancy stuff like a wading pool. I wasn’t surprised by that, since it takes up less than a square block in an odd little oval of land right in the middle of the Cooper neighborhood. What I didn’t know was what we would find when we got there, besides, most likely, some oak trees.

We biked up to the site and found a small grassy area and, yes, a lot of trees.

It took some looking, but we found a street sign to lock up to, then headed down into the park. That’s right, down. The park is essentially a bowl, a little valley carved right out of Longfellow-Cooper. You descend down a pretty steep slope, which made the wife fairly nervous, and there you are.

At the bottom of the path down was a sweet rope swing with a board for a seat. When we were on our way down, there were a couple of kids playing on it, showing off for grandma.

Once at the bottom, the dappled light played across what has clearly been used as a fire pit by neighborhood youth (or not-so-youth). I imagined them coming here on summer nights to build fires and smoke cigarettes where their parents, or kids, wouldn’t catch them. If you sit on one of the smooth fallen logs at this fire ring, you can see no sign of civilization. No power lines. No street lights. No roofs. Only by turning your head and craning your neck can you glimpse the corner of one roof through the trees (a cape cod, sadly, and not a mansard).

Then we went walking up the other slope towards something we had seen on our way down. It looked like an enormous, crazy nest or something out of Where the Wild Things Are.

It was a bit of both. It looks like countless kids, or maybe just one determined individual with a flair for the dramatic, created an amazing fort out of fallen branches and limbs. It has a door that leads to an entry room with a window, then a main room with a sunken floor and a “skylight”.

Amazing!

Right next to the Fort was a tire swing, which my wife gamely leapt onto for a few pictures. Or because she loves swings. Take your pick.

It was a wonderful afternoon, and such a gorgeous little oasis of calm. We will definitely visit again!

At the beginning of the month, Eli and I ventured South to our CSA, Big Woods Farm, for their annual Midsummer Farm Festival. We had a wonderful time, visiting with our farmers and their family, as well as some of the other families that are members of the farm (even one other member family from the Twin Cities!).

As everyone gathered, we chatted and introduced ourselves, then began shucking corn for the potluck dinner. The corn from Big Woods is so delicious, even fresh-picked and raw. We found that out our first year at this festival, when David brought us out for a farm tour and had us eat ears of corn right in the fields. I had never known that you could eat corn raw! But it was amazing: so sweet and cool and crisp. Quite a fun new experience!

This corn, however, was destined to be cooked for dinner. And there was plenty of it!

David also cooked up some hot dogs over an open fire, and there was an amazing spread of dishes to choose from for the rest of our meal. From salads to coleslaws, lasagnas to New Orleans-style dirty rice.

It was so wonderful to see how many of the dishes were made with ingredients grown right where we were gathered, and by people who cared so deeply for the land and for local food.

And did I mention there were tons of freshly-picked cherry tomatoes?

And then there were desserts…

We brought my curried zucchini bread, there was a delightful fruit crisp and some tasty cookies. And there were s’more fixings for later.

But frankly, I was so full after eating my dinner that I didn’t have much room for dessert.

Giggly, my photography book that collected images from the glorious Giggly Hills area near the Mississippi river in South Minneapolis, is now available on Issuu. You can view the entire book online, without having to download the rather large PDF file.

You may still download the book, of course, from the Giggly page on the SoFoBoMo site. It remains under a Creative Commons license, so please feel free to share it, with a link to my site so people can find more of my work.

And for a tiny preview of the Issuu version of Giggly, you can flip through the preview below. Click on the center of the preview to view it in fullscreen mode, or view it on the Issuu website. Ah, the wonders of the internet…

It is well and truly CSA season. And with the season comes knowledge that we have a lot of veggies to eat. Every year, Eli and I figure things out a little more quickly. I think we’ve got it down now; when we make our list on Sunday morning we make sure to include something (or multiple somethings) from the share for every meal.

Last night it was turnips. I love the spring turnips we got a couple of weeks ago. They are lovely, little darlings. About the size of hacky-sacks, maybe 1 1/2″ to 2″ in diameter. Because they are harvested early in the season, they are milder than the bigger turnips we’ll get later. They are very tasty fried up like the traditional pan-fried potatoes my mom used to make when I was little. And towards the end of the season, we’ve been known to use them in baked strata, like au gratin but with turnips in place of potatoes.

But last night, we wanted something a little different. You may be sensing a trend here, but we turned to the potato again for inspiration and decided to make turnip latkes. They were so simply to pull together, but absolutely delicious. The turnips brought a complexity of flavor you just can’t get from a potato. We also threw in some surprisingly sweet yellow onion and whole wheat pastry flour. I just can’t resist exchanging whole wheat pastry flour for all-purpose when cooking; it adds a delightful nuttiness to my recipes and makes things just a little bit better for me. An egg, salt, and fresh ground pepper rounded out a very easy recipe. The only thing that took time was frying them up in my cast-iron skillet. Next time I think I’ll use the two-burner griddle. I’ll probably have them done in about half the cooking time.

Served with a dollop of plain yoghurt on each latke and a sprinkling of slivered garlic scapes, these are divine!

Tasty Turnip Latkes

inspired by Deb’s recipe for potato pancakes at Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

• about six 1 1/2″ – 2″ spring turnips
• about 3.5 ounces sweet yellow onion (I used about half of a medium onion, but if you have a small onion of this weight, use the whole thing)
• one quarter cup whole wheat pastry flour
• one large egg
• one large pinch salt (sorry I can’t more exact, but that’s what I did! You can try about 1/2 tsp if you need to measure, then salt them after you cook them if it’s not enough)
• one small pinch fresh ground black pepper
• oil for frying (I used olive oil because it’s what I had around, but use any oil you prefer, or even butter!)
• garnish: yoghurt, sliced garlic scape, or whatever you desire

Equipment

• One medium mixing bowl
• One grater
• cutting board and knife
• skillet or griddle

What to do

1. Grate your turnips. Then squeeze out as much liquid as you can. I usually put them in two layers of paper towels and wring. Works like a charm. Put your grated turnips in your mixing bowl.
2. Slice your onion fine. Then cut your slices to about 1″ long. You should end up with thin onion slices that are around the size of your turnip gratings. Neat! Put them in your bowl, too.
3. Add the flour, egg, salt, and pepper. Mix until combined.
4. Over medium heat, heat oil on your frying surface (skillet or griddle).
5. When a drop of water dances on the pan (or however else you decide that it’s ready), place mixture on pan in rounds about 3 1/2″ to 4″ in diameter.
6. Cook until brown on one side, about 2 minutes or so, then flip and cook the other side.
7. If cooking in batches, keep warm in the oven set low or in the toaster oven set at about 200-250°.
8. Serve warm with your chosen garnish. We loved them with plain yoghurt and sliced garlic scapes.

Enjoy!

Just a few shots of the wonders that surrounded us at Winter Witch Camp last weekend. Most of these were taken during a photo walk I took out onto the lake. It was one gorgeous afternoon among many. I know those of you that were there know what I’m talking about.
Enjoy!

This afternoon we made tomorrow’s breakfast… apple cider doughnuts, from this recipe at Smitten Kitchen. Oh my goodness, they are divine!

We made just a couple of minor tweaks to her directions, by adding a teeny bit more cider (but still reducing it to a quarter cup), using a little more cinnamon, adding a little allspice, and frying in canola instead of shortning. But that’s just because I can’t leave a recipe completely alone. You know me…

We now have 18 doughnuts and 16 doughnut holes. Well, we had 18 originally, but we couldn’t very well not test them when they were still warm, could we? This gets to be breakfast tomorrow, and the rest get frozen for the winter. Yippee!

I have finally managed to make a perfect soft, chewy ginger cookie. Don’t get me wrong. Ginger snaps can be quite tasty. They definitely have their place. But when I want a ginger cookie, I want soft and chewy, with the deep earthiness of molasses and just the right amount of ginger bite.

Thus was born the Triple Ginger Cookie (inspired by a recipe from Alton Brown). And here I’ll make a small detour to chat a bit about my cooking philosophy and recipes in general. If you’ve seen any of my other recipes you may note that I play a bit fast and loose with quantities and that sometimes my recipes are more like vague guidelines. That’s because that’s how I view most recipes. They are a basic framework, a technique to start me on my path towards what I might be making. I freely change ingredients, sometimes for the good and sometimes… not so much. This recipe was one such rambling tour through one of Alton Brown’s techniques. Feel free to use what I’ve written exactly as I’ve written it. If you do I’m pretty sure you’ll end up with some mighty tasty cookies. But please feel equally free to change things up as much as you please. Add more ginger, use a different flour, or a different kind of sugar/molasses, or add some extra ingredients to make something uniquely your own. That’s my kind of kitchen magic.

Triple Ginger Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 stick softened unsalted butter
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp and 1tsp blackstrap molasses
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In large bowl, mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger, and salt. Set aside.

In bowl of stand mixer using paddle (preferred) or in another large mixing bowl using a hand mixer, cream butter with sugar, molasses, and grated ginger.

Reduce speed to stir/low and add the egg, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Mix until fully incorporated.

Add the flour mixture in three installments, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Stir in the chopped crystallized ginger.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Portion cookies using your favorite method. I use two spoons to form a little cookie dough blob, then flatten it slightly on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cookies have soft-set (so that the centers have set, but the cookies are still soft), rotating your pans after 4 minutes.

Once done, let cool on a rack and enjoy!

If you make your cookies between 3/4 and 1 oz you’ll get about 3 dozen 2″ cookies from this batch. They’re really nice sized, not too small that eating one feels unsatisfying, but not so big that eating two feels like too many. But it is a big batch. If you don’t want to bake quite so many many cookies at a time, you can always freeze your cookie dough blobs on a cookie sheet until solid, then bag them up and bake them later. That’s what I did!

A great while ago, you may remember my mentioning my joining a site called Spoonflower, where designers can have their own work printed on fabric. They are really lovely people. Wonderful fabric options, fun owners and employees, cool community of designers, great customer service.

Well, just a few weeks ago, they put out a call for Halloween themed fabric designs for their weekly design contest. I’ve never entered one of their themed contests before, but I figured who better to enter a Halloween design contest than a witch!

So this week, my design is in the running for votes. If you like the design, below, think about voting. I’m not very good at self-promotion, and I hope that I’m not being completely shameless by asking. But just take a look…

We completed the labyrinth! At long last, and just in time for last weekend’s party.

Here are some pictures of the labyrinth completed. We were able to not only finish construction, but also set up our planned altars within the labyrinth (the central altar and altars surrounding the priestess point, one for each direction/element). This has truly been a labour of love, creating such a sacred space here on our land. Hard work, but more than worth it.

Yup… I’ve just gotten my decision letter from the University of Minnesota. I’ve been accepted into my graduate program. So now I’m officially going to grad school. Woohoo!
Except… now I have to go to grad school….
Seriously, though. This is pretty cool. It’s just going to be a lot of work. I need to get in touch with my advisor next week and figure out what I’ll be taking in the Fall. Then registration and actually taking classes. Depending on what I take, I may be in classes as soon as September 8th. Sheesh! I wish they had given me a little more notice. But right now it looks like one of the classes I really wanted still has seats open and it doesn’t start until October, so that’s nice.
Here’s hoping this endeavor goes well…