Crazy Stable

Here it is: Hope for the future, and only $349!

It's a nifty triangular raised bed from White Flower Farm catalog, the premier supplier of garden porn to torment us as we emerge from the Yuletide (the only good excuse for winter's existence) into the hard Arctic glare of January. Each year, I stew in an agony of desire when this catalog arrives. I want everything. Some years I spend scarce dollars on some particularly irresistible goodie, and usually, it dies--usually because I neglect to dig a hole, plant it and water it. But this raised bed (which my dad would have knocked together out of old lumber in an afternoon for free, yes I know)...it represents infinite promise.

And this 25-degree day, when the garden looks like a glacial moraine, is not the time for reality. Not the time to contemplate the likelihood of my sledgehammering up more cement to create a happy substrate for this raised bed...or the fact that I'd still have to fill it with 24 cubic feet of topsoil after "pounding the clever hinge-pins." Now is the time to imagine myself, all radiant and earth motherish, plucking my ripe heirloom veggies and dewy herbs and tucking them into a trug for that night's casually tossed summer salad.

I found this little guy between the leaves of a Greenmarket bok choy a few weeks ago and scanned him. That's the spirit I'm looking for. "Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies..." Imagine if that Scriptural metaphor turns out to be real, and literal, and we really are destined to exist in a state as radically (no pun intended) different from our mortal selves as the sprout is from the seed. I hope that thought, rather than "Oh, crap, I still never decluttered the attic," is my final one on this earth.

Should I buy the cold frame, so I'd finally have one and quit pretending I'll make one out of scrap?

I think we've got a new New Year's Eve tradition: smoking a pork butt.

Thanks to the lunacy of signing up for shares of a happy heritage pig from The Piggery, we came into possession of a substantial-looking "Boston butt"...and smoked it over hickory chips for our little New Year's gathering. We're non-smokers in every sense, but I followed a recipe from Epicurious.com including a spice rub, soaked hickory chips, and sent Spouse out into the snow.

About an hour later, while preparing Hoppin' John upstairs, I stuck my head out the back window and nearly wept with joy. The garden smelled like Blue Smoke. I half expected to see people wafting up the driveway, airborne, like in Loony Tunes. Still, I was worried; the barbecue obsessives (who call it "cue" and are all over the Internet) would have you believe it takes 12-15 hours to achieve falling-off-the-bone, pullable tenderness.

No need to worry. The butt shrank significantly (the only one around here that did, harhar), but it was...exquisite...and pullable...after about 2 hours on the grill and another hour in a slow oven, and even sported the mystical pink interior ring of 'cue perfection. As I tugged the mouthwatering strands apart, Daughter stood nearby like a velociraptor for the scraps. It got doused lightly in vinegary North Carolina-style sauce, and consumed on buns to rapturous acclaim.

Whichever of you guys gave your life for our festive fare, we thank you. With this newly personal connection to our meat, we fantasize about giving the pigs an ennobling tribute before eating them, like Chingachgook gave to the deer he brought down at the beginning of Last of the Mohicans. (We tried something like "Brother Pig, we salute you for your good nature and marbling," but it didn't have quite the same effect.) Sharing it with our oldest and dearest friends made for an excellent end to the decade.