Food – Jenny Wren

Tuesday Update – Feeling Fruitful

23 June, 2026

Happy Solstice! My corner of the Pacific Northwest welcomed midsummer with unending days of sunshine and heat advisories. Yes, in some parts of the world 85+ degree weather deserves a heat advisory!

Writing has been going well, but I don’t have very many (interesting) updates.

There’s a new essay over on Medium. If you want to learn the secret of life, you can read about it here (no subscription required).
I completed about 4500 words for The Ragman.

Summer is hard for writing, because I have so many other tasks I must tend to so we can cope with late stage capitalism nonsense. We have also had a few new responsibilities on our plate for this beautiful homestead that we are able to call home, as the owner has been dealing with a few emergencies and we are helping all we can. Thus, although the writing isn’t too difficult, finding the time is.

I have set a personal goal to publish on Medium once weekly(ish), and to keep up with Tuesday updates here on the blog. Otherwise, my limited writing time will be dedicated to churning out around 5,000 words on the Ragman project every week. I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t achieve these goals every week, but I am going to try to stay accountable via this blog.

As for daily life:

Today, Mozy and I bottled the rhubarb wine. It needs to age for six months, so it will be ready to drink around the winter solstice. I foresee breaking open a bottle for the holidays!

We also transferred the cherry wine from the fermenter into a carboy fitted with an airlock. We will rack it again in two months, as cherries need a couple of rackings for clarity. After four months of further fermenting in the carboy, we will bottle it and then age it for one year. Yes, cherry requires a bit more work and time compared to rhubarb. It will be ready in October 2027.

Everything is clean and sterilized, ready for whatever we brew next, I’m not sure what, quite yet, but will update once we decide!

Cherry and strawberry season is also upon us. I spent the morning hulling and slicing 8 lbs of strawberries. They are in the dehydrator. I’m debating on whether or not to make strawberry jam. It is the least popular jam in the house and for gifting, and we still have 10 half-pints left from last year. The dehydrated strawberries are excellent for snacking, and I also use them for making dessert toppings and in baking throughout the winter. I may do some more, if the patch produces more than we are able to enjoy fresh!

As for cherries, right now there are 30 lbs in the fridge in need of pitting and preserving. These will become both cherry jam and pints of plain cherries (for use in pies or simply eating as a side, like one would with canned peaches). I have a couple jars of each left from last summer, but we go through a lot of cherries. Possibly because they are my favorite fruit!

Otherwise, life is quiet. We do the usual chores of a household trying to live minimally off the broken systems that rule our current world. We garden, forage, and tend to the property. We bake bread a couple of times a week, and do it ourselves with found objects as much as we can. We look out for our neighbors, help those whom we can, and commiserate with those whom we can’t.

Life is hard, but that is no reason to compromise on the values that make you a beautiful and unique person. Yes, we all make mistakes and sometimes allow circumstances, rather than what we believe in, guide our choices. I know I do it sometimes. That doesn’t mean we make excuses for it — part of being a part of the solution is accepting responsibility for, or at the very least acknowledging, our mistakes. We simply accept our fallibility and try to do better next time.

Two steps forward and one step back is still progress. We all must do our best, especially when it is hard. The good news is, we don’t have to do it alone. I got you!

Always yours in hope,

Tuesday Update — Time Off

I took a week off, simply because we all sometimes need to take a week off. A week off from blogging or publishing an essay doesn’t mean a week off from life, of course. I fit a lot of living into the week, although most of that wasn’t with a pen in hand or in front of a keyboard.

No, my week “off” was spent tending these beautiful 12 acres that we are privileged to share with the owner, our good neighbor and friend. We cleaned up the orchard, so that it can continue to flourish and provide 90 percent of our fruit needs (and desires). We did battle with the blackberry hedges lining the lane before they devoured all.

{Note: I have a deep belief that blackberries will eventually be classified as carnivorous. They envelop and ensnare all who venture too closely to their thorns. As their hapless prey writhes and dies in the bramble, the bodies then decompose and feed the soil, and thus the (carnivorous) blackberry canes can feast.}

We cleaned up areas of our neighbor’s property that he has trouble tending to, because aging is a bitch. We weeded and trimmed, and swept out areas where accumulation tends to, well, accumulate. Much of the debris was organic, with the worst bits going to the brush and mulch pile in the woods, and the best bits going to the compost pile. What wasn’t organic was sorted, cleaned, recycled, or disposed of, as was fitting.

I can look out my window and see the results of our labor. It feels good. This is why I will never be anti-work, although I am anti-pointless work for profit instead of for good sense. There is a difference and there is nuance. It is best that we remember that.

Some of the week was spent on indoor pursuits. I dehydrated a metric ton (slight exaggeration) of rhubarb for snacking and baking. We started a batch of cherry wine. I baked bread, lots of bread. Our daily loaf, of course, along with a standard loaf for grilled sandwiches and lots of buns for summer use. These go in the freezer, a useful contraption. The mending pile is empty, all the socks darned and the seams repaired. I even began working on the gift list items for the latter half of the year!

You see, I spend a lot of time working with my brain, for what it is worth. Sometimes it is better to work with one’s hands. This is the type of week it was, and my hands and body are grateful for the chance to be useful.

Life is for living. Go live it!

As always, yours in hope,

Tuesday Update — Discombobulated

26 May

Remember the change I mentioned last week? It has discombobulated me a bit more than I thought it would. Side note — isn’t discombobulated a simply delicious word? I love it!

Anyway, here I am, a full week in and I made the mistake I always make, I thought I could do everything with a dash of even more. Usually this starts well enough, but ends in flames. I think, maybe, perhaps, I caught this before I exploded into a fiery ball of burn out and exhaustion. How did I do this? I’m taking a day, today in fact, to sit around and restructure my time and to freaking relax.

It’s raining, that pleasant and invigorating rain of early summer. Playing hooky today is also invigorating, as any sort of rebellion tends to be. Wish me luck!

Writing Updates:

No weekly Medium essay this time. This is part of my playing hooky and reassessment of my time usage. I fully expect to be back in fine fettle next week, so I shall deliver an essay then.

My other main writing work has been either for our friend the Ragman, or it has been personal exploratory work as I figure out the shape of my life for the next few months, at least. Not the sort of stuff I share publically, although it is the sort of stuff that future essays are often born of. Think of exploratory writing as the Orion Nebula — a nursery for the future words that will ignite into new stars.

Reading Updates:

I finished rereading Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. I’m still working through my reread of Mark Boyle’s The Moneyless Manifesto.

In new reads, as in I haven’t read them before, I am chugging away at Sanderson’s Elantris — I adore this book, but it is slow going because it is a heavier epic fantasy with lots of moving parts, and my summer brain isn’t quite up to the work. So a chapter a day, most days, is my limit. Still, read Sanderson if you haven’t. He’s a nice break from the “romantasy” that has taken over and watered down my favorite genre.

Of course, three books isn’t enough, so I also started reading Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach. I read his classic Ecotopia years ago, but wasn’t aware that there was a follow up. The suggested reads on openlibrary.org revealed it to me, and lo and behold, it was available to borrow for free!

Survive & Thrive:

Two words for you — rhubarb candy! We have so much rhubarb and it is mainly useful only when heavily sugared in a dessert. True, I like it sliced fine in a slaw, or stewed down as a base for a barbecue sauce or dressing, but its usage is fairly limited.

On a whim, I tossed some sliced rhubarb with some honey and chili powder, then dehydrated it in the electric dehydrator. Oh my! It’s a lovely tart treat with a flavor reminiscent of Mexican chamomile candies and a texture like a gummy bear! A delicious addition to certain rice and wild rice dishes, chicken salad, or any salad really. I even sprinkled some on top of a pesto pizza and it was divine. Anywhere that you would use dried cranberries, raisins, or a bit of tart fruit in a savory dish works well. I imagine it would do really well with pork dishes, too!

The rest has been standard — we transferred the rhubarb wine to a carboy to finish out over the next three weeks, then we shall bottle it. Our next decision is what to get into the fermenting bucket next! I gave all of our herbs a haircut and dried the excess for future use. The beans, peas, lettuce, mustard, and spinach germinated, but my cucumber and zucchini seeds may be too old so I will likely be picking up seedlings somewhere this week.

We had to put netting over the strawberry patch because the squirrels are eating all the leaves! Usually we don’t need to protect them until they start to produce berries. We also tended to a lot of chores. Like weeding around the trees, mainly to remove blackberry vines that tangle around the trunks. We also cleaned the moss and tree debris off our lane. I like how it looks, but that much debris is hard on the asphalt and it can become slick to drive on, so needs must.

There is also the usual weekly stuff I don’t really talk about — making all our meals at home, baking bread, tending the garden, foraging, fixing stuff that breaks, hunting down or making replacements for things that can’t be fixed (and preferably doing this without spending any money), drinking beer on the deck, chatting with neighbors and friends, playing darts, and practicing my fiddle. You know, the stuff of living.

As always, yours in hope,

Tuesday Update – Compromise

A harvest from a year or two ago. Hoping for another abundant summer!

Everything can and will change. It doesn’t matter if it is our own hand that sets change in motion, it can still be a bit discombobulating when it descends with one fell swoop.

I was swooped by change, which I set in motion, on Friday. The swoop came in the form of a job — wage pay — which was something I had hoped to be done with when I left the plant nursery last autumn.

It’s only part time. It is at a bookstore, thankfully. It will eat up some of my writing and living hours. I’m ambivalent, but right now a wage is integral to survival on our own terms.

Wish me luck.

Writing Updates:

My weekly piece on Medium is live. I took it easy this week and simply polished and printed one of the rambling pages from my journal. If you read it, you can see how I tend to organize my thoughts on paper when I think no one will ever read it.

How Can We Opt Out of the System That Is Killing Us All?

Most of my words this week, those not destined for my personal journal at least, went to my friend the Ragman. Literally. He finally stepped out of the shadows fully alive and ready to chat. Over the course of thousands of words, he revealed who he was (mostly), how he was, and even a bit of why he was. Not all of it, of course. A fellow has to keep a bit of his mystery.

He showed me the rules for his universe and introduced me to the web of hope, which stretches out along the Ley lines that connect time and place, moment by moment. I finally understand the world he has been inviting me to see.

I don’t really understand him, but I’m not sure if anyone really can. I’ll share a bit soon, but not yet.

Reading Updates:

I finished Katherine Hibbert’s Free. I will no longer link to it, nor will I give it further press after this. It was an engaging read, but something about it was setting off alarm bells. Perhaps it was the way that she scrounged after money the entire time she was squatting. Perhaps it was her refusal to hold any sort of ideology beyond getting whatever she could for free. Whatever it was, I decided to look up the author.

Ooooh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Seems to me that she is a sell out and traitor of the worst kind. Apparently, her squatting adventure was simply a buildup to launching her own “guardianship”company, which has been in the news for fee/rent-gouging “guardians,” who are basically tenants with absolutely no rights who are “hired” to live in empty properties to keep squatters out. Hired in this case means unpaid. In fact, the guardians pay a fee (rent, if we are honest in our nomenclature) for the privilege of “guarding” the property. I find it sickening.

For nonfiction, I’ve moved on to re-reading two books: The Moneyless Manifesto by Mark Boyle, and Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. Since I have read these both before, I can already recommend them. Both books have some issues. Boyle’s only issue is that one needs a healthy dose of idealism when reading his words, which is only a problem if the reader lets the idea of perfect get in the way of good enough. The issue with any of the Nearing’s writing is well known, and based off the fact that they glossed over some important details on how they financed the “good life,” but there is still so much good information in there (and I believe their hearts were in the right place), that I still recommend it as foundational reading.

As for nonfiction, I am still working through Sanderson’s Elantris. As I mentioned last week, I am on a nonfiction kick, so I am only reading a chapter or two a day.

Survive & Thrive

Beyond a wage job, we’ve been thriving a bit around here. The rhubarb wine gets siphoned into a demijohn today so that it can start its long ferment.

I’m working through the last of the fruit I canned last summer. A jar of blackberries went into two batches of scones, which I shared with some friends when I attended a get-together at one of their homes last week. I also present these friends with some jars of jam. As for me, I came home with a bottle of nice sparkling wine.

The garden is planted. Unfortunately I didn’t start any seeds this year, since I was unsure how I was going to garden with no existing beds and a deer issue. The procurement of the raised deck beds from the local Buy Nothing group solved the challenge. I planted lettuce, spinach, peas, cucumber, beans, carrots, and zucchini from seed, as I always have luck direct sowing these plants. Our older son’s partner gifted me tomato starts (and I returned the favor with some young raspberry canes and plant pots).

I visited a local grower for the rest, and did well. For minimal cash outlay ($8.71) I was able to get eight cabbage starts, four pepper starts, and 24 onion starts. We already have garlic growing in the raspberry and blueberry beds, as well as a healthy strawberry patch. For herbs we have sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil, and tarragon. There are also elderberry and currant bushes, although these are still young and not very productive yet. I’ll expand more next year, but this is a good start.

We are still harvesting nettles and rhubarb, of course. Life is good, with the only thorn being the need for a wage job. That is the cost when one is on rented land, though. As much as I despise it, cash — not effort nor personal worth — is king.

Yours in hope,

Good Food Sometimes Means Doing Hard Things

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 30-Dec 6

Winter often drives me indoors more frequently, which in turn means I spend more time in the kitchen. This is an odd December, though. Although I still find myself in the kitchen most days, it is at the comfort of my desk with a pen and paper in front of me, instead of before the stove and dusted with flour.

In other words, cooking has been a chore rather than a delight. An odd December indeed.

It is easy to compromise our goals and our plans, to literally go for broke, when the body and mind rebel against what must be done. It is easy to frame poor decisions as giving oneself grace or as self-care.

Compromising values, giving up on goals, and taking the easy way is not self-care, no matter what your influencer-guru tells you. Hurting your future self is never self-care. To throw away money — and the life energy we spend acquiring it — on food choices that go against our values and drain our wallets is not self-care.

Continue reading for free on Medium…

Eating Through Life’s Seasons

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 23–29

Life, much like the wheel of the year, is an ongoing cascade of different seasons. Usually, we cycle through busy seasons and slower ones, but recently, life around here has felt like one busy season after another. True, each one is busy for different reasons and in different ways, but busy nonetheless.

It makes cooking even more challenging when one has mixed feelings about the winter holidays. The dominant culture around me celebrates three main winter holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Of the three, the only one that raises no misgivings in my heart is New Year’s Eve and day.

I struggle with the colonial roots of Thanksgiving and the Christian appropriation of various solstice/midwinter celebrations that evolved into our modern Christmas. I am sure I am not the only one who finds this challenging.

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Tight Belts, Full Bellies

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 16–22

Although it is both physically and figuratively impossible for one to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, it is possible to tighten one’s belt. Whether that is a good thing depends upon the individual’s need, of course. In general, though, it does all of us a bit of good to tighten our belts periodically — whether necessary or not.

When life becomes too easy for humans, we begin doing stupid things — like running monopolies, hanging out on private torture islands, and engaging in senseless cruelty against the underprivileged. I know I don’t want to begin on that path.

For many in the US, the end of November is the theoretical release of said belt, allowing it to stretch to its utmost as we stuff ourselves with good food and cheer (and, for some, a lot of shopping). Of course, this loosening of the belts often continues into December. This is why so many of us wake up on January first feeling desolate, indebted, and afraid. For the fortunate, there are credit card bills to deal with. For the less fortunate, being short on rent or another important bill may be their lot.

Well, let’s say balderdash to that!

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Living within Your Time and Money Means

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 9–15

We are in a lull right now, here at the always cozy Sequoia Cottage. It is a financial lull, as our income continues to hover at its lowest since 2009, and a time lull, as few outside responsibilities are tugging at me.

Having little money but plenty of time is preferred over having little money and little time, of course. With time, we can invest in those actions that make the most of small means. Whether unfortunate or not, our time will soon be in high demand, but there is no guarantee that our income will rise with it.

All is well and all will be well, though, for we are experienced at living large on little — whether that little be time or money!

One way to control working-class folk is to make their survival all-consuming. The workers can’t organize for better pay and improved conditions, for example, if their waking hours are booked full with scrambling for a few meager crusts to make ends meet. Without time, who has the energy to trace their difficulties to the feet of the elite, or to change something about it if they do?

Money-deprived folk with time revolt; money- and time-deprived folk simply struggle to survive.

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The Threat of Famine

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Nov 2–8

One would have to be a rock, rather than simply living under one, to be living in America and unaware of the threat to food access that 41 million Americans faced last week. As one whose family was somewhat affected, famine has understandably and unfortunately been on my mind.

I have not studied famine in depth, but my lay opinion is that famine comes in a few different types. There are natural famines, caused by disasters like flooding, droughts, and pestilence. There are the famines of war, which occur directly as an attack on the enemy’s food supply or indirectly as there are fewer and fewer people left on the farm to grow the food needed. And finally, there are famines of political control, where food access is prevented by the ruling elite in order to control those they see as beneath them.

The famine that was threatened last week was one primarily of political control, of that I have no doubt. Another example of such a famine would have been the Great Hunger that struck Ireland in the mid 1800s. Most Americans know it as the “Irish Potato Famine,” a horrible misnomer that was designed to relieve the perpetrators of their rightly deserved blame.

You see, the Great Hunger was in part due to a potato blight, a natural famine if you will, but why does no one ask the most obvious questions — why didn’t they eat something else?

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Let’s Return to Living, and Eating, With the Seasons

The Homespun Foodie’s week in review, Oct 19–25

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to live outside of the seasons. Flavorless tomatoes in December, short sleeves in January, cherries from half a world away in February.

I imagine that it must be a tedious, bleak sort of existence to be dependent upon climate controlled rooms and transport-hardy foods. Dare I say it? Perhaps it is a shallow, dissatisfying way to live, this life protected from the seasons. Perhaps this is why so many try to find happiness in the shops, instead of closer to home.

Sure, there are the commercial seasons. Pumpkin spice season, shopping season, tax sale season, vacation season, and back-to-school season. The true seasons — autumn, winter, spring, and summer — have been taken from us, like so many things, so that they can be repackaged and sold back to us.

Sold back in a less satisfying and life affirming way. Sold back so that the billionaires can profit off the seasons that were once our birthright as simple animals on this earth.

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