Farm Photo: 3/5/07

Zelda & Her Twins, Age Two Hours (Give Or Take A Few Minutes)

But they're yesterday's news.

About four hours ago, during a (thankfully) much more humdrum afternoon than yesterday, eleven-year-old Doll Face (who is from my very first lamb crop in 1996 and is also Liselotte's mother) had a healthy baby boy covered with tight gray curls of wool. And about 30 minutes ago (after a lightning speed labor--thank you!), Tana gave birth to a beautiful black boy.

Mothers and sons are resting comfortably, along with Zelda and her twins, in private quarters at The Bonding Suite Inn. Ready for some rest myself, I hightailed it back to the house before anybody else could decide that tonight was the night. (Yes, that would be foolish farmgirl logic in action. At the rate we're going, I wouldn't be surprised if there are one or two more lambs by morning--and you know when I wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. I won't be able to go back to sleep before throwing on jacket, hat, gloves, and boots and trekking down to the barn to find out. But just to exert my authority, when I go back for one last check tonight, I'll order everyone to please cross their legs until morning.)

Lambing Season 2007 officially begins this coming Saturday, March 10th. Joe is starting to think I can't read a calendar--and I am beginning to think he might be right. All I know is that I only have one blueberry bran muffin left, and life is getting very unpredictable. I think I'd better make another batch. Or two. Or maybe three. . .

Did you enter the Group Recipes $6,000 Kitchen Giveaway yet?
Click here to join Group Recipes (it's free and takes about two minutes), and you'll be automatically entered in the contest, which ends Tuesday at midnight (Eastern time I think). Click here to read more about Group Recipes, a delicious new place for foodies to hang out.

And speaking of foodies. . . Thanks for all the great comments you left on my recent Finding More Foodies post--this 'project' has been so much fun. And for those of you who object to being called a foodie, my pal Beth (aka kitchenMage) has t-shirts and more fun stuff at CafePress for foodists and the foodarazzi. (But, like it or not, her best selling item is the 'foodie in training' infant creeper, which I adore. I've been bugging her for months to make adult-sized 'foodie in training' stuff, but she still hasn't gotten around to it. Please feel free to go over and harass her--because turnaround is fair play, right?)

3/6/07 Update: Ha ha! It worked! Click here to see all sorts 'foodie in training' items for adults. And I forgot to mention that Beth also has stuff with snappy slogans created especially for all you food bloggers out there, including 'i cook, therefore i blog' and 'eat, drink, blog.'

A year of Farm Photos ago:
3/5/06: Lounging Lambies
WDB #24: Bear The Babysitter

Finding More Foodies& A Chance To Win $6,000

Hand Delivered California Sunshine

A few weeks ago my mother flew in from California for a week-long stay on the farm. Despite the fact that I was 45 minutes late picking her up at the airport, it had started to snow, and she really, really needed to pee, two seconds after a big hello hug she said, "I want to show you something!" and excitedly dove into her carry-on bag.

With a triumphant smile she pulled out a square plastic container the size of a sandwich and carefully pried off the lid, murmuring that she hoped "they didn’t get smashed." Nestled inside the container were six exquisite petits fours. Three looked like tiny pastel-colored, gift-wrapped packages, and three were shaped like animals. If I had squealed any louder I probably would have been escorted from the terminal by airport security.

Because I provide my mother with everything from overalls and turtlenecks to work gloves and rubber boots during her farm visits, there is plenty of available space in her luggage for transporting other, more important things. So along with the petits fours she arrived bearing two boxes of See’s Candy (custom-packed with my favorite varieties), The Garlic Lovers’ Cookbook Volumes I and II (which look absolutely delicious), a couple of baking books, the empty container that had held her homemade lunch, and 26 freshly picked limes from the little tree in her front yard. She never travels without an ice pack and a small insulated zipper pouch and once presented me with a chilled piece of pink and white wedding cake she'd nabbed from a recently attended wedding reception.

Since there is no point in returning home with an empty suitcase, when I dropped my mother off at the airport, her various bags were painstakingly crammed with four blueberry bran muffins, ten cranberry scones, a bag of baby coconut cookies, two dozen molasses ginger spice snaps, four chocolate walnut streusel bars, two apricot almond bars, two blueberry almond bars, half a dozen experimental ginger crunch things I’d made using a recipe clipped from a 1999 issue Gourmet magazine, a hunk of Chocolate Emergency Cake, a homegrown lamb salami sandwich on Farmhouse White (I swear I really will get around to posting this much requested recipe one of these days) with thinly sliced sharp cheddar and lots of mayonnaise, and two cans of pie cherries she found at the supermarket (because they cost so much less than they do back home). She once carried home a container of leftover roast leg of lamb and four loaves of my sourdough bread.

As you can see, foodieism runs in our family--and the secret is out. Knowing I would no doubt have the answer, last summer I received this concerned comment:

"This may sound a bit ridiculous coming from someone who has only just made her first batch of granola, and who only recently discovered breadmaking, but...... what are some of the symptoms of becoming a foodie? I fear I am beginning to develop them. Please, do tell!"

Rather than simply list a few of the characteristics that I personally think classify someone as a foodie, I decided it would be much more fun to put the question to Farmgirl Fare readers--and it was. Here are some of the responses I received. (Click here to read the rest.)

You know you’re a foodie if. . .

--You’ll only eat chocolate your Dutch friend brings you directly from Holland (unless it is a DIRE emergency, and then you’ll resign yourself to a local specialty shop).

--You own five or more kinds of vinegar.

--You own five or more kinds of salt.

--You put the final touch on a dessert by saying "It just needs a little orange blossom water," and you actually have a bottle of orange blossom water in the cupboard.

--All the magazines you subscribe to are about food.

--You’re lying awake at night because you can’t sleep from the excitement of conjuring up a new recipe.

--Your first word (before "mama" or "dada") was "cookie"--and your spouse’s first word was "cheese."

--You work at a bookstore, and when one of your colleagues excitedly tells you that five gorgeous young men have arrived, wearing only aprons and tight boxer shorts, to promote a new cookbook, your response is: "Ooh, did they bring food?"

--You return home from a family Christmas and take your entire bag of presents straight to the kitchen to unpack it.

--Your husband is embarrassed to take you out to eat because of the moaning noises you make while eating something incredible.

--You just won’t stop fiddling with old family recipes--and your mother actually thinks your versions are better.

--Before traveling to a new destination, the first thing you do is scour the Internet (and your friends’ brains) for information on the local dining scene.

--All your friends who are traveling call you first to ask if you know a good place to eat at their destination.

--Your husband has put you on a condiment moratorium, telling you that you must use up all the fancy-ass stuff you buy when you travel before you bring home any more.

--When you walk into Sur La Table with your teenaged daughter, she calls it "The Mothership."

--Some of your best friends are farmers, ranchers, and chefs.

--Your family knows better than to touch a beautiful plate of food until you’ve had a chance to photograph it.

--You’ve caught yourself dreaming of food and chewing it in your sleep.

Let's add to this list. Are you a foodie? How do you know? Was there some defining moment in your life when you realized you had crossed over the line between living on food and living for food--or did you gradually just keep coming down with more and more symptoms until the diagnosis was blatantly obvious?

Do you routinely harvest dinner in the dark? Has it been suggested to you that if you want your salad that fresh perhaps you should be out grazing with the sheep? After a week long visit with your mother, did your significant other turn to you and say, in a slightly uneasy whisper, "All you two talked about was food!"? Those would all be me. So what about you?

Win A New Kitchen Contest!
Now, what foodie couldn't use some extra cash to upgrade the state of his or her culinary preparation space? There's a wonderful new place for foodies to mingle called Group Recipes, and they're giving away $6,000 toward a new kitchen to celebrate their official launch.

All you have to do is join Group Recipes (which is free, takes about 2 minutes, and is something you'll want to do anyway), and you'll automatically be entered in the contest. The winner will receive a $6,000 gift card to their choice of one of the following stores: Lowe's, Home Depot, or Sears. (If you're outside the U.S. or don't have access to any of these stores, you'll receive the monetary equivalent.)

What is Group Recipes?
In their own words, "Group Recipes wants to be the world's neatest food site. The project's goal is to harness the tastebuds of the masses to create a really useful resource for food lovers."

At Group Recipes you can create your own food page, meet other foodies, have Roger the Recipe Robot learn about your tastes and predict recipes you will like or dislike, share & discover great places to eat in your home town, join and/or create groups of like-minded foodies (Food Styling & Photography, Chocolate Dreams, Comfort Foods, and Organic Sustainable Farming are some of the groups I belong to), and of course discover oodles of new recipes.

Don't want to commit to keeping a food blog? Share your recipes on Group Recipes instead!

Sounds pretty tasty, doesn't it? The contest ends at midnight on Tuesday March 6th, so don't delay--click here to join Group Recipes and enter the $6,000 New Kitchen Giveway today!

Five Things To Eat Before You Die

Thanks to Blue Plate at Table d'Hote, Alanna at A Veggie Venture, Ann at A Chicken In Every Granny Cart, and Riana at Garlic Breath for tagging me (weeks and weeks ago!) for a neat joint food project started by Melissa at The Traveler's Lunchbox. We're creating a list of food bloggers' top picks for things you've eaten and think that everyone should eat at least once in their life. Click here to read more about the project and check out the fascinating list of responses from around the world. (Nearly 1600 items and counting!)

My first set of answers came quickly. Like many other people, I thought of memorable meals and food-related moments I had enjoyed over the years, like High Tea at Harrod's department store in London. Or a hunk of Hula Pie for lunch (not dessert, but lunch) at the Kapalua Grill & Bar on Maui. Way too much breakfast (that had to include a pile of those signature home-fried potatoes and one of their enormous, freshly baked drop biscuits) in a booth on a crowded Sunday morning at Bubba's diner in San Anselmo, California. Black rice pudding at a table in the tropical garden of Poppy's Restaurant on Bali. A tiny taste cup of Cherry Garcia ice cream scooped right off the assembly line at the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont.

Then I changed my mind. I realized that all of these delicious memories were as much about the place as they were about the food itself. I once ate a perfectly recreated dish of that Balinese black rice pudding in a suburban Northern California kitchen, and it simply wasn't the same. So while I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any of these far flung delights (and doubt I would pass up the opportunity to experience them again myself), my new list is completely different--like my life is now. Less fuss, more flavor. It's all about the food. These five things will taste absolutely wonderful no matter where you are. Each one is a celebration in and of itself. I hope someday you'll have a chance to try them.

1. A thick, warm slice (or hunk) of bread from a loaf you made with your own two hands. No mixer or bread machine involved. Plenty of organic butter recommended but not required.

2. Something you grew yourself.

3. Homemade potato chips, preferably made with thin slices of freshly dug, organic red potatoes (scrubbed, not peeled), fried in homemade lard in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, and prepared by someone you adore who is willing to stand over a splattering pan of hot oil for an hour or two while you both devour batch after batch of warm, salted chips as soon as they are cool enough to touch. Serve with lots of laughs and plenty of iced tea or cold beer.

4. A grilled hamburger made from a freshly ground chuck steak (from grass-fed, naturally raised beef), served on a toasted, freshly baked bun & smothered with slices of vine-ripened, organic heirloom tomatoes.

5. A crisp, juicy apple you plucked from the tree.

And my Bonus Beverage Answer:
6. Champagne for breakfast. Just because.

Everyone is invited to participate in this project. If you're not a blogger, simply leave your list of five things in a comment on the original post at The Traveler's Lunchbox.