Green Beans are good for you, M+Ms are good for me

daphne on September 14, 2009

I realize that the following admission might call into question my rightful ownership of the domain Greener Biener (it IS pronounced bean-er,) as indeed it is true that no green beans were consumed by me in the making of this site.  Green M+Ms? For sure.  Green Beans? No thank you.

I was not a kid who fluttered with thoughts of a perfect wedding, nor did I trace the names of my future children onto my notebooks.  The stuff of my dreams was heftier:  One day I would be the boss of my vegetable domain.  I would choose which healthy stuff to eat and which to show the door.  It would be glorious.

When I grew up I would not eat green beans.  No one could make me.  So there.

In those early dreams of a bean-free future, I didn’t figure on joining a CSA as a ploy to convince myself to sample otherwise ignored vegetables.  Nor did I factor in the possibility that I’d be surrounded by a bunch of green bean-eating traitors.

Yesterday I had a day.  The kind of day that should only be concluded with a dinner of red wine and M+Ms.  But it was not to be.  For there was a family to feed and daughters for whom an example must be set.  Apparently there was also a husband who thought it’d be cute to add green beans to an otherwise innocuous spinach salad.

I kid you not.  He added green beans to my salad.

Normally he’s a decent guy. A really good guy who pitches in and spends time with the kids and helps with dinner and all that jazz. He’s even agreed to dress as a cowboy for Halloween, so you know he’s got my best interest at heart.  Of course I was blindsided  by his staggeringly despicable bean transgression.

I did what any whiny toddler self-possessed woman would do. I wrinkled my nose and plucked the offensive things from my plate. Oh, I was sly. The children would never know that mommy gets dessert without finishing her veggies.

“WHO’S BEANS ARE THESE?” Dave bellowed, in a blatant attempt to rat me out.  I glowered at him, expressing with one evil eye how I felt about his egregious choice of broadcasting my action around the kitchen.

The kids remained oblivious.  Kira shrugged and munched contentedly.  Acadia dipped a bean in ranch dressing.  I played like I had already devoured my share.

But now they’ve got me rethinking this whole anti-bean campaign.  After all, the girls really seem to enjoy the snappy green things.  And they are loaded with all that good stuff that makes for heart-healthy, bone-strong little bodies.

Ahh, what the heck?  Let them eat beans.

But please, oh please, leave me to my M+Ms.

Here it is, your moment of Zen

daphne on November 2, 2008

For those of you who aren’t obsessive fans of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, let me explain.  At the end of each of his faux news shows, Jon Stewart features “a moment of zen.”  Typically it’s a funny quote or a ridiculous image from the day’s news.  The point is to send the viewers off with a smile.

Just the other day I was, as usual, frantically scrolling through polls and predictions. My heart was racing to and fro, so I took a break to read an email from my mother.  She forwarded a link to a blog she reads from the Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm, which calls itself the “home of the county’s first fiber CSA.”

CSA, if you remember, stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Monroe Organic Farms CSA provided our family with farm fresh fruits and veggies all summer long.  Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm keeps my mother and other members in organic wool.  My mother, in turn, keeps her grandchildren cuddly and warm in handmade sweaters.  It works out pretty well for everyone. Well, everyone except those chilly little goats, I suppose.

In the final days leading up to this historic election, I have a challenge for you.  Relax, it is one that does not include knocking on doors or calls to mysteriously undecided voters.

Nope, here’s my challenge to you: I challenge you to click on this link.  Baby Goats Wearing Sweaters. Go on, click it, and try not to smile.

It’ll only take a second.  Positive results guaranteed.  It’s a crowd pleaser, something for everyone, regardless of the color of your state or the state of your mind.

Go on, click it:  Baby Goats Wearing Sweaters. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

And away we went…

daphne on August 16, 2008

I feel awful. Just as you were getting used to a regular dose of dry wit and a side of brilliant recipes, poof, the green Bieners just up and disappeared. My sincere apologies. Thing is, I’m pretty new to life in the blog-o-sphere and while I did remember to pack 18 pairs of panties and 35 bathing suits, I somehow set out for our annual east-coast extravaganza without my passwords. Come now, surely I could have gained access from my remote vacation locale? Perhaps this quaint state of New York has even heard of cell phones and emails and techno gizmos? Well, good point. Why didn’t I think of that?

I feel guilty for neglecting the site. And I feel guilty for guzzling high fructose corn syrup 35,000 feet up in the sky and recklessly burning fossil fuels in our selfish quest to visit family, friends and foaming oceans. And yes, I felt a twinge for each plastic bottle of imported agua and individually wrapped snack-food that wrestled itself down our throats along the way. Despite wild swerving off the greener path, we still received this amazing reward–

That’s best friends, loving family and pure joy, all wrapped up beneath the third rainbow of our trip! We weren’t all bad. We patrolled the beaches, pulling beach glass and abandoned sea shells from the shore. We harvested fresh fish and clams with our own sea-wrinkled hands.

Best of all, we each got a turn setting sail in this incredible nut-shell pram hand-crafted for the kids by their talented Grandpa Mikey.

That’s me, ensuring its sea-worthiness before launching the little ones.

And now, despite efforts to the contrary, it’s time. Time to get back. Back to Colorado, back to school, back to the much neglected garden. I should be out there right now, freeing up the tomatoes from the weeds and unwinding the ambitious cucumber vines, but it’s raining and it’s fifty degrees and so the poor veggies will have to make it on their own yet one more day.

Rain or not, we are busy. Check out the CSA bounty we picked up yesterday. Yummy corn, melons galore, and enough jalapeños and tomatillos to have me googling salsa recipes. Eggplant parm, anyone?

Jam on it

daphne on July 25, 2008

As readers of Mama Bird Diaries may have heard, our venture to the farm to pick strawberries was a roaring success. I came home not just with thirty tons of delicious fruit; but a bonus. I now held visions of my husband filtered through a dusty new light.

Just a couple of hours with the chickens and voila, Dave had morphed into the farmer of my dreams. A precious vision.

Do not be fooled though, picking is tough work. We squawked, we squatted, we picked and we tasted our little hearts out for well over an hour.

We sweated it out beneath a still-blazing setting sun, but oh the berries we picked. Late into the night strawberries covered every horizontal surface of the kitchen.

And sadly, mosquito bites covered every inch of Dave and the girls. I’ve warned them about being so darn sweet. The flying bloodsuckers took a pass on me; I just knew good things would come of my bitter skin and foul tasting blood.

While the girls and dad got down to work on the farm, I got busy with my camera. Somehow poor Bessy got it into her cud-chewing brain that I was the big agent she’d ordered up from Hollywood. You know I love the cows, but this bountiful bovine kept striking poses until I agreed to click-her. She hopes to make it to the big screen one day.

But really, enough with the gratuitous pictures of the cow. Word on green street was that these berries had to be handled, and quickly. The shelf life of a fresh, red-all-the-way-through berry is teeny tiny, which left me up way past my bedtime sorting and handling when really what I required was a soak in a whirlpool and a decent massage for oy my back was aching! Never-the-less come morning I woke with the crowing roosters. I donned my bonnet, knocked the clothes against some rocks in the stream, churned the butter, and then got down to work:

We made strawberry jam.

And strawberry puree (with visions of strawberry daiquiris dancing in our heads.)

And strawberry bread.

And strawberry ice cream with dark chocolate chips.

We froze about a gallon or so of the berries straight up, and left the rest to sit smugly on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Every minute or so I walk by and reach in to grab one. As the berry bursts on my tongue I think of Grandpa Terry. For years my wonderful grandfather bemoaned the state of the supermarket strawberry. ‘In the old days,’ he’d say, ‘berries were red through and through.’ Oh Grandpa, how I wish you could see the bright red juice dripping down the smiling faces of your great-granddaughters.

Kohlrabi, Princess Warrior

daphne on July 8, 2008

Warning to the faint-at-heart: This post contains terrifying images of unfamiliar roughage…

Q–How are we supposed to eat local, encourage the kids to consume their veggies, and support the efforts of small organic farms?
A—Join a CSA!

A CSA? What is that? Give me a sec, I always mix up the acronym. It’s Communal Sex At last. No, that’s not it. Crazy Seventies Afro? Nope, wait, I got it: It’s Community Supported Agriculture, and here’s the gist: They grow it, good and green and healthy, and we eat it. No questions asked. No veggie-virgins allowed.

We signed up with Monroe Organic Farms in February. Then we wrung our worried hands as we read farm tales rife with predators in chicken coops and icy frost on cucumbers until at long last it was time. Eagerly the girls and I went to collect our first infusion of straight-up born-in-the-dirt vitamin goodness. While the visions in my head of lettuce, potatoes, and carrots were not exactly dancing, I’ll admit it, I’m a dork. I was pretty darn excited to gather our bounty.

Then suddenly, the sky darkened, a cold wind howled around our ankles. Horror! Yikes…this tumbled out onto my kitchen counter:

Run away! Save yourselves!

Voracious vegetable on the loose!

I took a step back–this was highly unusual. Would the aliens that hatched it be back to claim it? Surely they’d be displeased to learn we had consumed their freakish love child. Better I just coax it back into the bag.

No wait, I’m tougher than that. I, who has collected urine samples from a 2-year-old, can surely handle this. Breathe in, breathe out. Do not let the children smell my fear. I am an intrepid explorer bent on providing my family with nourishment in the wild (you haven’t seen my kitchen.) I am an explorer, determined to unearth new food sources for a struggling planet.

I bravely smiled at the, um, purple thingy, and then I consulted the paper that accompanied our order. Yes, snap peas, I recognize those. Lettuce, check. Onions, yup, I know onions.

Ah-hah, here it is: Kohlrabi. This no-eyed, many-legged flying purple people eater goes by the name Kohlrabi, Princess Warrior. Here she was, in my kitchen, ready to, gulp, be eaten. Ok then, here we go.

I scoured web sites in search of answers, while the girls enthusiastically devoured the entire bag of uber-sweet sugar snap peas. Maybe this vegetable thing would work out after all. I swear their happy munching was accompanied by song.

“Mother dear, might we have yet another snap pea, please?”

Yes, my darlings, you may. Enjoy your veggies. Just remember to save room for our new friend Kohlrabi.

(So what happened with the kohlrabi? My brave, brave eater. We ate it alright. Here is what we made.)