Today I’m missing:

• my family (pictured above are Grandma, Grandpa, and an assortment of cousins, aunts and uncles seated around the table)
• lounge chairs
• eating outside
• tourtons (incredibly delicious fritters filled with mashed potatoes and leeks and eaten dipped in honey, with some salad on the side for good measure. They’re a specialty of the Champsaur valley in the High Alps)
• our old house
• everybody sitting around together reading and having their coffee after lunch (with lots of dark chocolate for me)
• France
• summer

You may not know this about me, but I love to garden. I love to garden as much as I love photography (and that’s alot).

There’s something incredibly satisfying about being so connected to what you eat. Someday, I want to have a full blown mini-farm and produce most of the food my family consumes. In the meantime, I’ve managed to grow decent quantities of food  for my husband and I  in the small spaces available to apartment-dwellers like us. These last two years, I’ve been incredibly lucky because our landlord is also an avid gardener, and kindly gave me two of his garden beds as well as a strip along the edge of the house.

Here’s what we’ve got growing:

Butternut squash, Marina de Chioggia squash, strawberries, cucumber, zucchini, about 8 different tomato varieties, green beans, purple beans, wax beans, peas, this beautiful striped eggplant, potatoes, artichokes, peppers, broccoli, lettuce, chard, ground cherry, and carrots.

Do any of you have gardens? What’s your favorite thing to grow?

I’m headed off to the motherland (or fatherland, in my case), where I’ll be hanging out with family, gallivanting around my favorite lake in the world, eating my fill of unpasteurized cheeses, celebrating this guy’s 80th birthday, and (of course) taking tons of photos. I’ll also be starting a new project that I can’t wait to share when I get back.

I’ve got a few posts set to run while I’m gone. You can also check out the shots I took the last time I was in France here and here.

You can still contact me by email, but I won’t be able to answer my phone.

A bientot, mes amis!

(The scene outside my kitchen window)

I’ll be signing off today to spend time with family and enjoy the holidays! I’ll be back toward the end of next week with a beautiful wedding to post, but in the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

As many of you might be aware, October was National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now that the month is over and many of us move on to prepare for the Holidays (yay!) I’m reminded that for those who are living with Breast Cancer, the fight is far from over.

A very close family member of mine is fighting Breast Cancer; she’s about halfway through her chemo treatments with surgery and radiation scheduled for the months ahead. We’re all doing what we can to help, and my sister in law Juli is giving 100% of the proceeds from her Etsy shop to help with medical bills. She makes really fun aprons and car seat covers, so if you’re in the market for anything like that, check out her store!

]]> http://www.clairemarika.com/blog/2010/11/04/october-is-over-but-breast-cancer-isnt/feed/ 0 http://www.clairemarika.com/blog/2010/08/18/from-the-garden/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-the-garden http://www.clairemarika.com/blog/2010/08/18/from-the-garden/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:37:42 +0000 claire http://www.clairemarika.com/blog/?p=1250

We’re in the middle of a surge of tomatoes and zucchini and though I’m scrambling to find new recipes to use them all, I totally love eating fresh from the garden.

I woke up my first morning in Montreal to find a bunch of jars like this one in the kitchen. I guess my dad lets his jam cool upside down.

More photos from the trip are coming up soon.

I’m heading out of town and won’t be reachable by phone. If you need to get ahold of me, feel free to email (claire@clairemarika.com).

Let’s just hope the tail section of my plane will be in better shape than this one.

Ok, so I know this is supposed to be a photography blog and not a food blog, but I’ve been enjoying spending time at home during this little break so much that I couldn’t resist letting a little of my personal life seep onto my work blog.

This is possibly my favorite summer dinner, second only to tapenade on garden cucumber slices and gazpacho.

The fish tacos are Nie’s, and the lemonade is Azucar’s.