Rachel Mills

Hiawatha Music Festival

Hiawatha Music Festival

Building Community Through Music

Marquette, MI – How do we build community in the digital age, when so much of our communication occurs on a handheld device, and not in person? Attendance of community oriented institutions and events, especially for young people, is down across the nation. Fear of the unknown, fueled by mass media hysteria, has created declines […]

 Rachel Mills

Vagabond Kitchen: Sunsets and Sunrises

Vagabond Kitchen: Sunsets and Sunrises

8-4-15 Sunsets and sunrises layer color lines across my memory. Summer days beach basking, evening speeds into morning faster than hummingbirds in flight. Our car and belongings are full of sand, tiny pebbles, lake water layered, collected from too many places to count. Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Manistique, Crooked and countless rivers and streams toe-dabbled along […]

 Rachel Mills

Vagabond Kitchen: Bliss Remix

Vagabond Kitchen: Bliss Remix

Memoirs and recipes from the Vagabond Kitchen experience at Bliss Fest 2015 7-27-15 I sat outside the home-tent, sun slinking, still hot, behind untidy pines. Carp fed ten feet away in the shoreline’s shallow, reedy, lily-pad laced water. Their mouths made quick “Snap!” noises as they snatched bugs from the surface. Their spotted bodies seemed […]

 Rachel Mills

Vagabond Kitchen: Gus

Vagabond Kitchen: Gus

8-3-15 My written updates from the Vagabond Kitchen — essays and recipes detailed and recorded—have been sporadic. I’ve paced around my notebooks, taking food pictures and writing down ingredients. I’ve finished an 800+ page novel and begun another lengthy fictional diversion. This is the essay I’ve been avoiding—the aching loss spilled in ink, then typed […]

 Rachel Mills

The Vagabond Kitchen: Sleep, Bread, and Brie

The Vagabond Kitchen: Sleep, Bread, and Brie

6-24-15 Being a vagabond means sleeping in many places: guest bedrooms, deep woods, decrepit farmhouses. Means plastic bags of dirty clothes. Toilet paper rolls on the dashboard. Damp, bundled tents in the back seat. Vagabonding means sleeping in many different beds: the rental house, down blankets on the hardwood floor because the bed was in […]

 Rachel Mills

Culinary Ride: Food, Farms, and Fermentation

Culinary Ride: Food, Farms, and Fermentation

On September 6th Marquette hosts its first Culinary Ride—a food, farms, and fermentation bike tour pioneered by Audrey Wiedemeier and her partners in RadTour Partners LLC. The idea began in Iowa City in 2011 and since then Audrey has brought her exciting concept to cities from California to Iowa City and now to our very […]

 Rachel Mills

The Vagabond Kitchen: Mosquito Song And Hard Ground

The Vagabond Kitchen: Mosquito Song And Hard Ground

6-23-15 Even inside the car and tent, the no-see-ums still bit me. Their little bodies are so tiny they’re barely detectable amongst the freckles and moles peppering my body like constellations in a clear night sky. Mosquitoes hummed, swarming tenderest bits of skin every time I exposed myself to pee. Blackflies attacked my ankles, leaving […]

 Rachel Mills

The Vagabond Kitchen: Last Year’s Seeds

The Vagabond Kitchen: Last Year’s Seeds

6-10-15 We ate our first outside meal by the lake last night. Keith, the kind of dear friend who helps you say, “Yes” to the next adventure, brought lemony tabbouleh and we roasted gourmet hotdogs as the sun dipped its round face below the tree line. I picked arugula for a salad in the garden […]

 Rachel Mills

The Vagabond Kitchen: Last Week of Moving Meals

The Vagabond Kitchen: Last Week of Moving Meals

Foraging Forest and Freezer

We were cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer in preparation to move. The last Rock River Farms chicken rested in the freezer’s meat drawer. I stared at it anxiously. Should I cook the last chicken before moving, or save it for a summer meal? Cold freezer air undulated around my feet as I surveyed the […]

 Rachel Mills

The Vagabond Kitchen: New Homes and Peach Bread Toast

The Vagabond Kitchen: New Homes and Peach Bread Toast

6-9-15 The mist on the lake rose in spectral tendrils. A dazzle of sparkling sunlight stretched like a glittering crown across a pale brow. Exhaustion tugged at me from one direction and excitement from another. This was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. My partner, Orson and I packed our belongings into […]