If the Label Fits

It’s purely coincidence that Argylesock and I were having a dialogue about GMO labeling just last week. Then, last Monday, Connecticut, a blue state with the highest per capita income in the U.S., became the first to require food manufacturers to label products that contain GMOs. Well, they almost did. IMG_1008

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Red Ingenuity

If you’ve been hanging out here for any period of time, then you can count on two fingers the number of times that I’ve brought you sweets. Never having developed a sweet tooth, I’ll trade my post-meal pastries for a savory salt and vinegar chips any day. Today is different however as this treat works with my CSA and comes with a history and a lesson.

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Decorating the Day

As a child, we always went to the cemetery on Memorial Day. I grew up in a community where my parents had also grown up so we had a history there. None of the neighbors or relatives who’d passed were lost in battle and few were in the military but we went, regardless. We cleaned up the grave sites and placed peonies grown in my grandmother’s yard.

Photo courtesy of Photographer, Poet and Teacher MagicalMysteryTeacher.wordpress.com

Photo courtesy of Photographer, Poet and Teacher MagicalMysteryTeacher.wordpress.com

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Asparagus Aspersions

Don’t be casting aspersions on my asparagus! Or said another way, please refrain from tarnishing the reputation of my flowering perennial vegetables.

Aspersion Seeker

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She’s Quite the Tart

Is it any wonder that the English language is difficult to acquire? When I say “tart”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it a pastry or a woman?

Let’s go with this: A pastry shell with shallow sides, no top crust, and any of various fillings. She may be a bit shallow and lacking upper crust but put on the lipstick and heels as this promiscuous girlfriend is worth the trouble.

Quite the Tart

Quite the Tart

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D-Day

At a recent leadership class, I was asked to take the Gallup organization’s Strengths Finder. I like their practice of focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses as it truly a way of achieving breakthrough performance in both work and non-work activities. The feedback was plentiful with adjectives to describe me; adaptable, independent, connector, maximizer. Unfortunately, in the days that followed, I received another label.

Making up for Deficiency

Making up for Deficiency

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The Vinegar Girl

A Poem about Ending Hunger and Creating Happiness

In the wee morning hours, I saw a peculiar site,
A sour frowning girl coming out of the night.
She pulled her belongings on a blue vinyl sled
while a vinegar scowl covered her face and her head.

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A Terroir-ist’s Manifesto

Terroir (French pronunciation: ​[tɛʁwaʁ] from terre, “land”) is the set of special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place, interacting with the plant’s genetics, express in agricultural products such as wine, coffee, chocolate, tomatoes, heritage wheat, cannabis, and tea.

I begin today’s post with this Wikipedia interpretation so that no speedy reader inadvertently assumes that I’m commenting on terrorism.

Occasionally the tapestry of life weaves in coincidental ways and when it does, it can spark delight. Such was the case on Saturday.

My Food Hero and Poet - Gary Nabhan

My Food Hero and Poet – Gary Nabhan

 

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Haiku for Dinner

We all have to make choices and frankly, offering choices is a trademark of my parenting style. So, when I told my children that they had a choice of doing a family Harlem shake or writing dinnertime haiku, each sharpened their pencil.

What Goes Best with Haiku?

What Goes Best with Haiku?

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Poetry at the Farmers’ Market

“A poem is the record of a discovery, either the discovery of something in the world, or within one’s self, or perhaps the discovery of something through the juxtaposition of sounds and sense within our language. Our job as poets is to set down the record of those discoveries in such a way that our readers will make the discoveries theirs and will delight in them.” - Former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser

Farmers’ Market

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