The Tangled Nest

It’s a wet blustery day here in Seattle–a good day for braised kale and quinoa with tahini sauce, or a nice plate of kale chips fresh from the oven.  Kale is one of a few veggies that can overwinter in Seattle without a cold frame or garden cloth tunnel (we can also grow broccoli and [...]

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This may be the highest wisdom I’ve heard in support of the Food Revolution–it’s not just about Kale, is it?  It’s about life, art, celebration, wildness. “Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — [...]

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Here in Seattle, we like to repeat the words of Mark Twain:  “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Seattle.”  (Don’t quote us.  For one thing, the original phrase read “San Francisco,” not “Seattle,” and for another thing the quote is apocryphal–Mark Twain probably never said it at all.  But let us [...]

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Well, one thing growing in this cold Seattle spring is lettuce!  Last night while picking a head of Romaine for the dinner salad, I saw the familiar “milk” rising from the cut.  Such amazing organisms, the plants among us–full of life and secrets.  I decided that as long as my photographer-husband is on a little [...]

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My daughter and I are both vegetarians, but my husband Tom, and the rest of my family, are not.  We usually celebrate Christmas day at my house, everyone gathered about our dining table, made long with the addition of two leaves.  I love it.  For years I dreamed up celebratory meatless dinners designed to make [...]

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As autumn settles in, I am getting busily to work on my new book called, in its working-title,  The Urban Bestiary. It’s a wonderful project (if I may say so!) that explores our constant continuity with the wild earth through our daily coexistence with wild animals (as well as other animals that are breaking down [...]

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In her book, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, the wonderful desert nature writer Ellen Meloy wrote, shortly before her sudden death  (a great loss to us all) about a flicker that had been incessantly drumming her house.  She had named him Stalin, and one morning she found him trapped in her [...]

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Amdist the brown branches of February woodlands and urban forests in the Pacific Northwest, one native shrub always turns out the first flowers and bright new leaves– the Indian Plum.  The pendants of tiny greenish-white flower clusters fall beneath glowing green leaves that stick straight up, like the ears of a rabbit. The flowers will [...]

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Every morning it’s the same.  I wake up in the darkness while my loved ones still sleep.  I tiptoe into the kitchen to make coffee.  The Pot sits there on the stove, in the shadows.  And out of the silence, it speaks:  “Well, Haupt, what’s for dinner?”  What a rude question before I am even [...]

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