by Sara Barry | Jul 15, 2015 | abundance, garden, noticing, summer, traditions, writing
Four tomatoes hung in a small cluster, orange-red, with a bit of yellow on the shoul
ders. The other plants hold hard only green stones or tiny yellow flowers. I picked the first, held it warm from the sun. Every year when I pick the first tomato, I want to hold it up reverently, slice it ceremoniously, share it in the celebration of the first tomato.
Every year I remember that my kids don’t like tomatoes and my husband would think the first tomato celebration silly and a bit much. So I savor it myself, slicing it and sprinkling the ribbons of basil, drizzling the olive oil, sitting at the picnic table to eat because that burst of summer should be eaten outside. Or I stand in the garden, sun-warm tomato in my hand and eat it, slowly, juice dripping down my chin. Either way, a celebration.
I walk through my garden regularly, seeing what’s ready to be picked, what needs some attention, what’s going to be ready to pick. (Keep an eye on those zucchinis.) I enjoy all the foods that come out of my garden, but I don’t look forward to many of them the same way I look forward to tomatoes.
This year, four came ripe together and I bit into one in the garden, bursting its skin, the juice coming out with almost a pop. I ate the others under the pear tree, ignoring bickering at the dinner table and licking a bit of juice-flecked oil from my thumb.
More tomatoes will come and I’ll enjoy them fresh and slow-roasted with garlic. I’ll make sauce and simmer them into salsa. I’m looking forward to tomato bounty (fingers crossed against late blight, a problem I haven’t had yet, and septoria spot, which I have), but I celebrate that first tomato.
What part of summer are you celebrating right now?
Celebrating tomatoes is really about slowing down and savoring. It’s about find
ing and holding joy in small things.
What can you celebrate today? What can you notice? Think small and focus on your senses. Enjoy!
by Sara Barry | Jun 13, 2015 | abundance, finding time, summer
I ate my first strawberry of the season standing in my garden surrounded by weeds. 
I spotted it, red, plump, and perfect under green leaves as I reached for a handful of grass trying to choke out my garlic. For a moment I thought about calling my girls, but there was only one ripe. I savored it myself.
Yesterday, four more ripened, and I called the girls up to find the little red treasures. We’ll only get a handful as I try to re-stablish a strawberry patch, but what we get is so good.
Most years we go to a pick-your-own place and bring home pounds and pounds (or quarts and quarts). I make jam and ice cream and core and freeze a lot of berries.
The past few years, June has come on fast and strong, and I find myself swamped when I should be picking strawberries. I’m in that place right now—getting through field trips and field day and music shows and end-of-year picnics while trying to wrap up work projects so I can really take the vacation I’m taking at the end of the month.
Still. Strawberries.
Strawberries remind me to make time. Blueberries and raspberries and peaches will do the same later in the season.
We need to make time to go pick before the season’s done. In the meantime, my neighbor dropped of a box of berries and I’ll be making strawberry ice cream later. It’s going to taste good with my chocolate birthday cake tomorrow.
Strawberry Ice Cream
1 pint strawberries, cored and sliced
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup + 2/3 cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 cups heavy cream*
1 tsp vanilla extract
equipment: ice cream maker
Makes about 1 quart
- Combine strawberries, lemon juice, and 1/3 cup of sugar. Stir gently to combine. Let sit for about 2 hours so that the berries macerate . (A little longer fine, a little shorter and you’ll miss out on flavor.)
- In a medium bowl, mix together milk and sugar. Drain the juice from the strawberries and stir it into the milk-sugar mixture along with the cream.
- Put the mix into your ice cream maker and run until thickened (in my machine that’s about 30 minutes).
- Add the sliced strawberries and run the machine for 5 minutes.
- Eat it soft or let it set for a couple of hours.
* Light cream will work too. I’ve also used a little half and half instead of milk.
by Sara Barry | Dec 30, 2014 | abundance, holidays, what I love
I think my favorite gift this Christmas season is wrapped up here. It isn’t for me or even from me. It’s from my big girl to her great-grandmother.
It’s a crudely sewn cardinal crafted of felt because as she told me earnestly, “Big Nana loves birds, and I think a cardinal is her favorite.”
Big Nana who taught me patiently to sew many, many years ago. Big Nana who sews so neatly you’d think a machine did it—front and back, inside and out. I can’t wait to see her open this little stuffed bird with it’s big, uneven, loving stitches.
We’ve had a flurry of projects here lately. Some were done before Christmas, but since we celebrate with my family closer to New Year’s, we had extra time to wrap up some of this gift making.
I didn’t direct any of it. I offered suggestions when asked and helped locate materials. I threaded needles and knotted the ends of seams. I spelled words and read recipes. And when I found myself frustrated by the frequent requests, I reminded myself that this is the spirit of Christmas, thinking of others, offering something you think they will love, giving of yourself.
So there’s been sewing—a penguin for her cousin because it’s her favorite animal and two pillows because my little girl wanted to get in on all this present making too and felt pillows are what she can do right now. We’ve made a book, molded and baked a clay ornament, braided fleece into a snake, and baked coffee bread.
Quietly one day, by herself, my big girl found one of the pearl beads leftover from her birthday party and a scrap of gold ribbon. She used a glue stick and some clear tape an made me a bracelet.
My bracelet makes me smile with the remembrance her excitement watching me open it. The coffee bread, a favorite family recipe, was received with enthusiasm. I don’t know how they the other gifts will be received. I do know they were made with love and thoughtfulness and care, and there was great joy in making and the giving.
May these simple gifts—the love and caring, thoughtfulness and joy—find you in the new year.
What was your favorite gift this year? What simple gifts do you cherish?
Follow up:
Not surprisingly, Big Nana loved her cardinal. She was impressed with the sewing. “You can teach her the overcast stitch next.” I remembered suddenly learning the overcast stitch myself, the word sticking with me. I don’t remember what I was sewing, but I remember sitting in my grandmother’s living room and carrying my project into the dining room so she could rethread my needle for me.
The other gifts were met with kind enthusiasm from the cousins. The kitty ornament my big girl made for her little sister was not met with such kindness. The little one pouted that she wanted a sewn cat, not a clay one. “I’m going to color on it,” she scowled. She hadn’t changed her tune by the time we put away the tree. One of the things I love about putting up the tree is telling the stories behind or different ornaments. This kitty in tea cup has a story to it.
by Sara Barry | Nov 19, 2014 | abundance, it takes a village, traditions, what I love
Sometimes community is rooted in place, feeling part of where you are.
It’s the librarians knowing my name and running into friends while we’re checking out books. It’s the cashier at the market asking my little one where her big sister is. It’s my three-year-old having a “usual” at the coffee place.
It’s saying hi to all the other people out walking their dogs or their kids. It’s a quick walk around the block taking twice a long as you intended because you ran into one person and then another and then another.
It’s the shared work of clearing snow and helping those who can’t. It’s meal trains when a baby is born and the neighbor who takes your trash or lets your dog out or ties up your tomatoes when you can’t.
It’s watching a high school senior go off to the prom or a kindergartener get on the bus for the first time—even when neither one is your child.
It’s working together on the playground at the end of the street or the garden/greenhouse at the school. It’s leaving toys in the sandbox for others to play with (and finding them there when you go back) and picking up trash whether it’s yours or not.
It’s traditions like first day of school muffins and our neighborhood egg hunt and the Halloween gathering across the street.
All this is my community, the one grounded in place and people who take care of each other and what they share.
What does community mean to you?
Tell me about your community—one built around people and place or one built around shared experience.
What’s one thing you can do to build or strengthen your community today?
by Sara Barry | Oct 22, 2014 | abundance, cooking, fall, grief, use what you have, what's for dinner, writing
Some people waste away when under stress or grieving.
I eat.
When my son was in the hospital, I ate cookies and candy because I had them, big, heavy restaurant-sized meals. I ate whatever plate or dinner people brought me. It didn’t matter how hungry I was or if it was what I wanted (don’t get me wrong, people brought us good stuff); I just ate.
But after he died, when I was home, I cooked.
I made soups and stews, mac and cheese, scalloped potatoes, chicken pot pie. I sautéed greens that I got at the farmer’s market. I toasted bread from the bakery, rubbed it with garlic, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled coarse salt.
Maybe I was trying to satiate a hunger not related to food. Maybe I just needed food from home after not being there for three months. Maybe the rhythm of the kitchen soothed me, kept me busy enough without requiring too much thought or energy.
I cooked and I ate, and although the grocery store was a gauntlet of anxiety—ignore the birthday cakes, don’t go down the baby aisle, hold your breath hoping the cashier won’t ask anything about kids—I shopped for food. I went to farmers markets. I paid more for cheese than I should have. I got a farm share of meat and bought local eggs and honey.
I hadn’t worked for almost seven months and was limping along trying to get my sluggish brain to function enough to get through the projects that fell on my desk. B. was going to quit his job come fall to go back to school. I had no business spending extra money on food, and months later when B. actually did quit his job and I readied for another self-paid maternity leave, I gave up the farm share, started buying conventional eggs more and more, cut back on the cheese.
But still I cooked. Still I ate well, and I still took comfort in food.
These days, I still cook, still like to choose good food, still like to do something with the veggies I bring in from the garden. Though with little ones pouting, “I won’t eat that” without even trying it, some days I want to go on a hunger strike, holding out on making food until they are hungry enough to eat whatever it is.
Last night I made potato leek soup with potatoes and onions and carrot and herbs from our garden. I served it with garlic toast with cheese. We started dinner with two whines, but eventually one ate the soup and one at the grilled cheese (it worked better when we put the toast together and called it that). I sat back and enjoyed both.
It was a chilly day, and soup was comforting and warm as the darkness gathered. Comfort food isn’t just for hard times; sometimes we just need to feel cozy at home.
What’s your favorite comfort food?
Potato Leek Soup
olive oil or butter
1 stalk celery, diced
1 large carrot (or equivalent), chopped in half rounds (or quarters if the carrot is fat)
1 ½ cups chopped leeks* (approximate)
salt and pepper
2 quarts broth **
5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 sprigs rosemary
2 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
large splash heavy cream (optional, but recommended)
- Sauté the carrots, celery, and leeks until softened. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- Add the broth, potatoes, and herbs. Bring to just a boil and lower the heat. Simmer for a long time until the potatoes start to break down.
- Look at your soup and debate whether to bother puréeing it. Take a taste. Wonder if you should add milk like you usually do. Take a Facebook poll.
- Use an immersion blender to smooth out the soup, leaving some small chunks. Taste again. Add a hefty splash of heavy cream if you have it.
- Serve with garlic toast, cheesy or not, and hope your kids will eat it without too much of a stink.
Notes
* I actually used Egyptian walking onions in this version. I included any green parts that looked vibrant. They fade as they cook, but still taste good.
** I used homemade chicken broth this time, because I happened to have it in my fridge and wasn’t in the mood for chicken soup, but I’ve made great soup with canned/boxed chicken or vegetable broth. I went heavier on the salt because I knew my base was lower in sodium.
by Sara Barry | Oct 17, 2014 | abundance, cooking, fall, use what you have, what's for dinner
It’s Harvest Feast night at my kids’ school.
Families bring food pot luck, and each class makes a food based on what they grew in the school garden. I’ve helped my girls’ classes make jam and thumbprint cookies and soup.
Our family is bringing this squash mac and cheese to the potluck. It’s one of my favorite fall foods. The squash adds fiber and a little sweetness. I’ve this from adapted from Elie Krieger’s recipe.
Squash Mac & Cheese
1 lb macaroni (I used a slightly smaller box)
1 quart cooked squash* (2 10-oz packages frozen)
2 cups milk
8 oz grated cheddar cheese (or other sharp cheeses)1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. powdered mustard
dash cayenne
1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp olive oil
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Cook the macaroni and drain well. Pour into a buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.
- In the meantime, heat the squash and milk together until it starts bubbling. Stir frequently to prevent sticking. If your squash was not pureed previously, you may want to use an immersion blender at this point to smooth out the sauce.
- Stir in the salt, mustard, and cayenne.
- Add the cheddar cheese and stir until just melted in.
- Pour the cheese mixture over the macaroni, stirring to make sure the sauce spreads over all the noodles.
- Mix the bread crumbs, Parmesan, and olive oil together. Sprinkle over the macaroni.
- Bake for about 20–25 minutes.
Sometimes I add a meat like ham and/or other veggies like peas, broccoli, or kale to make it a more complete part of dinner.
* I cut my squash in half and place cut side down in a baking dish. I add about an inch of water and bake at 350 degrees F until the squash is soft. After it cools, remove seeds and scrape the squash flesh out of the skin. (You can simmer the seeds and skin to make a mild vegetable broth if you wish).
ders. The other plants hold hard only green stones or tiny yellow flowers. I picked the first, held it warm from the sun. Every year when I pick the first tomato, I want to hold it up reverently, slice it ceremoniously, share it in the celebration of the first tomato.
ing and holding joy in small things.
