a little red hen

July 3, 21009, QUEENS: Farm Museum & Main Street, Flushing

  

Queens Farm Museum  

 

Flushing Queens

July 4, 2,009: Eighth Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn

SUNSET PARK                            

Ron Bloom Celebrates Another Birthday!

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived,  children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

  All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

Grilled Cheese Still-Life

Roxie Reads New York Times...Style Section, thank you

 

Poem in Your Pocket Day: What's Yours?

How just-right this casual window at the Bank Street Bookstore --usually carefully arranged with children's books.  For April 30, last day of National Poetry Month, they chose to celebrate "Poem in Your Pocket Day," a New York thing, with an offer of just that.  Don't you love the vintage manual typewriter --much like the one I lugged on the train to  college.

Got my poem, "A Rabbit Reveals My Room" by Nancy Willard:

    When the rabbit showed me my room/I looked all              around for the bed./I saw nothing there/but a shaggy     old bear/who offered to pillow my head....

I'd been on a walk through Central Park's Conservatory Garden, with the Thursday morning walking group (reconvened from last year).  We thanked the volunteers who keep the place so gorgeous. 

Then back to Broadway, past the bookstore, the street seller reading his own merchandise.

On to the Columbia Greenmarket for my favorite wholewheat doughnuts.  And a little lemon thyme plant to try for cooking and keep my yellow begonia company.

FIX-UP NOTE:  Thanks to Kay and her Thinking Cap, the links have been straightened out very early Friday morning.

Knit, Eat...Winter's End

The brightly colored red, yellow, blue yarn that Ron's knits here was all spun on his wheel.  He's making a  simple pattern that I talked him into trying for our youngest grandchild, Elianna.  He  prefers  producing more hats but agreed this time.  Because the sweater I tried to make, Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous "Baby Surprise," proved too painful to my right arm.  It required  many, many stitches on a #11 circular needle.

  Meanwhile I'm trying to finish a pink and black version of the little hen sweater knit for Roxie, our local grandchild last year.  This one is for Zoe in Portland, the three year old.  I've completed all the pieces.

 It's a little odd since I decided to carry the pink yarn across the back of the sweater rather than use a separate ball on each side as I did on Roxie's.

This has produced a puffy surface on the front.  You can see how the pink knitting around the black hen has been stretched out.  I'm not sure how cross-stitching a feather design on the front will work out on a not-flat surface.  I'm trying to decide if each piece should be blocked before putting it all together.  Time to visit Knitty City for more input from Aryn on the next step.

In the food department, we've focused over the past year on eating at home.  Mostly this is about liking our own cooking better--except for two Vietnamese restaurants--one in the neighborhood, the other in Greenwich Village.  Oh yes, and  weight control is an excellent "excuse" for eating in our own space.

 A very long time ago, I bought this packaged soup.  Later realized it required coconut milk.  Turned out quite well.  Spring for Ron is about buying a box or two of Matzohs; this is a new one from Israel.   Nothing religious here; we do not observe Passover.  He has explained that this is when they are freshest.  Matzohs went well with  the coconut ginger soup.  Definitely  but would have tasted really good with the addition of real coconut from Hattie's Web in Hilo, Hawaii.  A long trip.

Columbia Greenmarket: neither rain, nor snow...

Sunday we connected with our local greenmarket for the first time since returning from Portland.  I do hope that the Columbia and Barnard and Manhattan School of Music students understand how lucky we are to have this small representative of New York City's Greenmarket program . 

This first stand had just what we needed for a damp, sometimes snowy afternoon:  hot cider at this stand where this woman is dressed less intensively than the last time we saw her in December.   Wholewheat sugar donuts--too good--consumed before I could take their picture.  This is also the stand with my favorite pear cider.

On to a dozen brown eggs.  These farmers also produce their own pasta.

We got adventurous and tried the goat cheese made by Judith Mae and her spouse (seen here).  They farm in  northeastern Pennsylvania--21 goats in a natural environment where sustainable practices are valued.  Like composting the goat bedding, recycling grey water.  Judith also produces goat milk soap which we'll try another time.

We stopped to check out greenhouse-grown spinach and ended up with (after trying a peppery leaf) buying this delicious salad mix.  Next time I'll be more organized and write down the names of all the leaves.

Apples, apples, (sharp photo by another blogger) from  the far end.   Stannard Farm,  South Cambridge, N.Y. has so very many choices of apples butfortunately only one kind of Pure Honey--the elixir that's Ron's habit. 

Carole Foster of Foster Sheep Farm is usually here with  yarn spun from her flock of sheep.  But it's lambing time right now, so I wont be seeing her for at least a month maybe.  Back in November 2008  she spiced up the Greenmarket's first Knit/Spin event right there on Broadway at 115th Street.  (The impressive gates to Columbia University are up the street.)

You are viewing Carole's demo of how to spin with a drop spindle.  A very special and ancient art.  I'm working on Carole's own pattern for a Multidirectional Hat that she was wearing when I saw her in December just before we left for Portland.  I'm using worsted yarn she dyed and spun-- purple and two shades of gray.

It has always been important to our family to support small farmers where we've lived.  They were closer to us geographically in northern Ohio and Baltimore, so we take great pleasure from the Greenmarkets bringing them closer to us here in the City.

An email came today from the Farmland Trust, hanging out in the left column here all the time; last Fall I joined their Action Center.  Here's a letter you can sign to the new administration to thank them for their recent efforts.  Their latest campaign,  "No Farms, No Food," would benefit from your support whether you live in an urban, rural, or suburban place.    We all need to eat!

MARTHA & KEITH, dynamic duo does pie + politics

Only by chance did I learn of the political pundit Keith Olbermann  appearance this week on the Martha Stewart Show.  No longer a virgin:  I have now watched an entire daytime TV show, or almost.   Tuned in a little late as Martha and Keith were talking about the election.  Commiserated on homophobia in California--link here is to his inspired rant about Proposition 8 in California.  They admired Obama  campaign's use of the internet, "He's thinking modern," Martha noted.

Great fun to watch Keith, the cooking novice, try to follow along with Martha to make a Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Pie.  Carried away at one moment--I can all relate-- she poured in too much ground cloves.  Keith gamely tried to use his fist, as she instructed to move graham cracker crumbs around the pie shell.

Martha Stewart has always impressed me as

basically a home economist.  First time I saw her program was in a hospital waiting room on my way to eye surgery.  First she did one of her detailed drills on how to set up a laundry room--what should be in it, the best arrangement.  I thought at the time she was providing a service for  at-home young women who never had a Home Ec class.  These began to fall out of favor in the 1980s, I believe.  Not that everyone needed ALL the detail Martha is so fond of providing. 

This was followed by an interview with a collector of antique irons.  Fascinating:  Home Ec as it should have been with history to add richness and context.

 In a similar way, Martha followed the hilarity of the pie-making with a long segment about the program, City Meals on Wheels, "No homebound senior should go without a meal on Thanksgiving or any holiday."  [Very  satisfying voluntary stint when I  delivered meals last year.]  Martha has been honored for her support of the program, a national one.  As pointed out in "Elders' Unique Economic Difficulties,"a recent post at Time Goes By, seniors are a very vulnerable, often little noticed population in our continued shaky times.  In New York City,   senior center programs are facing cutbacks.  They  could use  Martha Stewart's advocacy because  the City threatens to cut many of them.  

Disclaimer:  Ron Bloom, spouse, was chair of Home Economics at Morgan State University in Baltimore. I was very proud of  innovations he brought to the program--particularly a class on substance abuse.   In one of many unnecessary retrofits, so popular in academe, it had been  re-named "Human Ecology."  Please.

Kew Gardens, Queens New York...Two blocks, Lefferts Boulevard

Visiting Kew Gardens takes us back to another time.  Manhattan's streetscape has become one of banks, chain stores.  Here delis, restaurants, bakeries, hair salons and barber shops line the streets.  Flight attendants gather to take the bus to Kennedy or LaGuardia airports.

  

The five-screen movie house with the latest films, is next door to the place that serves bagels twice the size of the one in Manhattan--some might choose girth over flavor.  We thought W. was dull and lacking insight.

Around the corner at the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) station is Bliss Cafe.  Joanne, the owner, now wears my  Obama button with "Hope" in Korean.  This is one of Roxie's favorite neighborhood places. Seven-Eleven joins the political mood.

 Kew Gardens keeps its village flavor with  many locally-owned businesses, a small post office. Plus a natural food store,  a new Cuban restaurant--next door to the comic book  store.