The round-bottomed wife has been irritable for days. She got a project in her teeth like a puppy with a juicy marrow bone, only begrudgingly stopping to eat and sleep as she saw it through.
I know what to expect when this happens. I dumped two sets of baby back ribs (Jesse's good, clean pork) into one of Mary's ubiquitous giant pots and filled it with filtered water. Putting it to simmer, I added bay leaves and salt, then set out for Boulder to pick up the coop's refrigerated box truck, newly acquired from Rowdy Mermaid Kombucha.
Six hours later I returned to find the determined needlewytch still pushing her curved harpoon through thick, handwoven and hand-dyed indigo wool. In the magick of the kitchen, though – somehow she'd managed to nestle the two rib racks in a blanket of velvety brown apple butter, made last month from apples I gathered in the yard, first having stirred in powdered ginger, honey, cayenne, and apple cider vinegar, then dousing the lot heavily with olive oil. (Now don’t ask me for proportions. Both my wife and I learned to cook as children and we do almost everything by feel. We may occasionally consult a recipe, but as reference not law.)
Jars of bone broth from the big pot were stacked in the fridge. The ribs lasted for several meals.
Today, we ate the last of those ribs for breakfast, right after she put the final stitches in her work of many days. Thinking there might not be enough food, I also prepared a mess o’ greens, using a big bunch of collards from Kilt Farm.
I split the thick stems and threw them into a large saucepan with a quarter inch of water and some salt. As they softened up, I added the coarsely chopped leaves. Meanwhile I almost burned the chunks of garlic in olive oil and more salt, before I got red onion slices in to calm things down. When those were translucent, I moved the now tender collards out of the water and into the frying pan. I also eked a bit of the pork fat/olive oil combo out from under the ribs, which were warming in the oven, dribbling this into the collards as well and stirring to coat the greens with the garlicky onions and oil.
We feasted on the greens and the ribs, then went to try on Mary’s finished cape and liripipe hood. We happened to have a pomegranate in the house… and a hand-carved medieval-ish door… so I took a picture.
