Category: another day in the life

Highlights from yesterday.

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The Fall Fiber Festival and Sheepdog trials at Montpelier.
More of those luscious ultimate chocolate cupcakes from here.
Stewed okra & tomatoes with brown rice.

A batch of cinnamon raisin bread & english muffins for breakfast this week.

Not shown: Planted some seeds for late fall and (maybe) early spring greens. Spent some quality time going through boxes of stuff I keep meaning to go through and purge at some point. (Finally!) While I was good and didn’t buy any yarn for future projects for myself at the Fiber Festival, I did buy Edie some angora yarn for her first knitting project, at her request, so there will be knitting lessons in our future. And I think I’m starting to resign myself to fall and winter coming. Sigh. I’m not really a cold weather fan, but it is more conducive to baking. And I do love to bake….

October already?

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September was filled with lots of being a mom time. First the kiddo was sick, then her dad, with this nasty virus going around that lasts a week or more. Multiple upheavals at school on top of her being out a week sick made her not her happy little self, and so I devoted a good bit of time to just being there as a mom. I miss the baby and toddler days, when it was more physical, this mental and psychological stuff is just hard. I really do not have a good blueprint for it. I don’t have a relationship with my own mother, most of what I go by is instinct and just respect for my little girl. I want her to feel loved and like she can always talk to me, but admittedly, I’m not always sure how to go about that. I really cherish my mom friends, especially the ones who have older daughters, who don’t mind sharing that third grade was hard for them too. I’m not quite sure how I would get through without them sometimes.

So while I didn’t get as many things accomplished as I would have liked, my girl is much more her old self again, thanks to alot of mom time, a good number of playdates I forced upon her, and some good old cupcakes. I know this motherhood thing is just going to get harder, but if there is one thing I know I’m good at, it’s motherhood. Even when it’s rough. That and baking chocolate cupcakes.

Kid’s clothing week challenge.

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It’s Kid’s Clothes Week Challenge over here this week. I really was going to give it a go, but here is it Tuesday and I haven’t done a thing. I did bake cupcakes for Rebecca’s birthday last night, so that’s something nice and productive and thoughtful, right? And tonight I ordered some kid’s clothes from Land’s End (I got her the jacket she’s been asking for for months), so while I didn’t make anything, I did get her some clothes and that counts for a wee bit of something, right?
I’m going to go with that. And tomorrow I will try again to make something. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Two in one day.

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I had just finished posting about the dress I finished for myself when suddenly, someone decided she needed a new dress for the first day of school the next day. It was 4:15 in the afternoon and I was about to crack open a bottle of wine….but how can I say no to that?
So, in a burst of super productivity, I whipped this out.
It was going to be chocolate brown linen at first, then I realized that she is no longer of the size that I can scoop up remnant pieces from the fabric stores and whip it up into dresses for her. Her legs are simply too long. So, I reached into the stash for some purple linen that I’d been waiting to make something for me out of. Admittedly, I scooped it up on sale somewhere and made myself a skirt quite a while back, so I suppose I could share and make her something too. And purple is her favorite color now as well. I really should share.
And share I did. I whipped that thing out in a matter of hours – it’s really quite a simple dress and thanks to not only the stash, but my love of the color purple, I had everything on hand to do so.
She claims it’s ‘pretty good’, but a little too long. Given the way she grows, it might fit her halfway through next summer….she’s already told me how great it’s going to look with T-shirts and leggings underneath.
And as for the super-productivity required to make it as well as my dress? “It’s not like you’re that productive every day Mom.”
Thanks kiddo.

What a difference a year makes.

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This time, one year ago, I came home from open house at Edie’s school to several messages from my doctor, to please call him as soon as I got in. I had had a CT scan before meeting up with her & my husband to attend said open house and when I left the test, they said it would be 3 days before I heard anything. So imagine my surprise at getting the results so fast. I’ve heard that good news waits, and I can say, indeed, it does, because bad news travels at light speed as far as I’m concerned. It was literally, 45 minutes between my leaving the lab and the phone call. Talking to him on the phone that day, it was one of those moments where it was like a movie, where someone yanks the needle off the record all of a sudden, where you hear a big scratch and then it’s suddenly all silent and everyone is standing around looking at who just walked in. You know that scene. It was one of those moments for me. I had to hand Pat the phone because I couldn’t really comprehend what was being said to me. It was a moment that changed our lives forever. Thankfully, all turned out well, but it was a nerve wracking and terrifying few months. Over the course of those months, I learned who I could count on and who I couldn’t. It struck home what mattered and what didn’t. I learned doctors don’t know as much as they think they do and some of them can terrify you with their pretending they do. Doctors, even the best ones, make mistakes. Health insurance, the good kind like we have, is nice to have. It really should be available to everyone, regardless. I learned that if you really tell people what’s going on with you, they don’t always walk away. In fact, I ended up with a much better surgeon than my original specialists had recommended, thanks to friends who cared. I had never before leaned on other people quite so much, I’m not one to open up easily and quite honestly, it was terrifying for me. Members of my own family walked away, while I had friends rushing up to help. Most importantly, it changed me and just about everything about me, in an instant.
I am, slowly but surely, still finding my way back. I am still learning what my new stomach likes and doesn’t like. I lost my creativity there for a while and it’s coming back in spits and spurts, but isn’t entirely restored yet. I’ve gotten pretty lax about the state of my house – not that I was ever really super uptight about it, but I had my moments where I liked a clean house and frankly, I didn’t have too far to slide backwards in my lax standards, and yet, I did. I used to have alot more energy than I have now, I definitely lost some of it, but a few of my kinder friends have suggested it might be because I’ve turned 40 and not the results of losing part of my stomach. I’ve learned to tell the people I care about the most that they are just that, and more importantly, I’m learning to show them that. I’ve learned to let go of what I cannot control and that’s quite a bit. And just in case I didn’t get the memo, mother nature hit it home again to me twice this summer.
Sitting here, a year later, I look and feel a different person. I made a vow to myself to not forget the lessons I learned in what I went through and so far, so good. I’m ready to see what the next year brings. Great things I hope.

Canning everything in sight.

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It was a cool, grey weekend. I had a fridge full of seasonal goodness, some of which was fading fast, but most of which we had no hope of eating it all in time. So, I broke out the canner.
First up, ever since Ryan was here and sang my green bean pickle praises, I felt the urge to make a new batch this year. I don’t make them every year, we don’t eat them much, but we seem to have friends who love them and clear us out of all known inventory. I usually make them with basil from the garden. The other night, out at Leni’s, she gave me a handful of her lemon basil – she grows it, but doesn’t eat it. It has this incredibly wonderful lemon taste – I threw it in with some boiled, buttered potatoes the Friday night and it was out of this world – and I really wanted to see what it would do to some green bean pickles. So, a few jars of the pickles have the lemon basil and the rest are regular basil. I have some of the lemon basil left – I think it will make a fabulous pesto and I’m tossing around the idea of using it with artichokes in my artichoke lemon pesto….I definitely will be growing that next year, as I have lots of good ideas of how to use it…Gail suggested it with a nice sherbet as well.
Next up, were cherries. I love cherries, hands down next to apples my favorite fruit, but unlike apples, they don’t keep well, so there is a small window every year where you can get good cherries. And that window is fast closing. Normally I prefer all my produce be local, but for cherries, I make an exception. They just have to be grown in my hemisphere. As I’m getting tight on freezer space, I wanted to experiment – normally, I buy a big bag of cherries at the grocery store every week, eat a bunch, then chop and stew the rest, and freeze them, and then eat them in my yogurt all winter. I filled a pot with chopped cherries, stewed them up, and then canned them. We’ll see how they turn out. It’s a bigger portion than I usually freeze them in, so I’m thinking there might be a nice cherry cheesecake in our winter future….
And lastly, our peaches. Pat planted a peach tree in our front yard and we tend to battle the squirrels for them. This year, I actually got to pick an almost ripe one and realized we had a tree full of peaches….not quite ripe….and if I didn’t act, it wouldn’t last long. So, I picked every last one and watched gleefully not 20 minutes later some poor squirrel wander around the tree wondering what happened. Served them right. Anyway, having canned a mess of peaches last week, I needed to do something different. A comment a friend left on facebook the other day got me to thinking about making peach butter. All my attempts at jam have been a bomb, so as I read about making a fruit butter, I thought, oh yeah, I can do this. Even better, I found several overnight crockpot recipes that meant I wouldn’t damage any of my pots (I came very close to ruining a very nice and expensive stock pot by having the heat too high on one jam attempt.). I altered the recipe a bit, so I was totally winging it, but, it seems to have turned out okay, in fact, even better than okay.
I opted to go the no-spices route. These are peaches, and I wanted it to taste like peaches and not an apple butter wanna be. (I have no room for wanna-be’s anywhere in my life, but that’s an entirely different conversation.). So, I peeled and chopped all the peaches, filling my crock pot. The recipe I was vaguely following called for 1 cup of sugar per 5 peaches….about 15 peaches into it, I altered it. I think next time I’m going to try for 1 cup to maybe 10 peaches. I followed the suggestion of laying 2 butter knives across the top of the pot and then resting the top on that, to allow moisture to escape and your peaches to cook down. This recipe also suggested water, which I skipped, and I’m glad I did. I left them on low overnight. All the recipes I found said to cook them 6-12 hours, knowing mine were under ripe, I checked them about 4 hours in and realized, they needed much longer, went to bed, and by the time I got up to check them, they had been in there about 14 hours or so. They were cooked down quite a bit, but there was an awful lot of juice. I strained them and threw them in the blender to puree, adding just enough liquid to make that process easy. When it was all said and done, I had a big bowl of peach butter and a about 4 cups of Peach flavored simple syrup left over. Of course I canned all that, because that peach syrup will come in handy. Also, I admit, I hate to waste anything. Pat suggested the syrup would be good on pancakes, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a peach julep – like the mint version, only, using a peach syrup with my bourbon. Might have to try one later, as there was a smidgen of syrup that didn’t get canned….
All told, I put up 2 cases of produce and am feeling quite productive and pleased with myself. Up next, I think I might try watermelon rind pickles….I just happen to have a watermelon sitting there and a case of canning jars I just bought….any recipe suggestions? I have about 6 in my cookbook collection and can’t quite tell which one is best….

My Charmed Life.

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I have this theory that I operate under and it goes something like this: If I just leave it up to the universe, I will eventually get whatever it is I want. It might not be on my terms, but, in the words of Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need”. My husband simply says I have the ability to tell the universe which way it moves. I don’t think I’m quite that powerful, but I do like the way he thinks.

Lately I’ve been thinking I’d like to have another freezer in the basement, because I’ve filled the one we have down there up already – and yes, we do cycle through it, I clean it out at least once a year, but it’s still early August, there is so much more seasonal produce I’d love to put up myself and let’s face it, freezing is easier and cooler (no pun intended) than canning. I mentioned this to a friend and yesterday morning, there was an email from her, connecting me with someone who has a freezer to give away free to a good home.

I like to say we have a charmed life – there are alot of great things about our life, but flush with cash is not one of them. Sometimes getting through a month has it’s frustrations. Alot of what we have I have somehow managed to score a deal on. Our big splurge is food – fresh, local, organic. If I could get over wanting to know exactly where my food comes from, we might have a little more cash in pocket in every month. But I’m not quite there yet.

Part of our charmed life are these little reminders, like a free to a good home freezer. My house is full of things others have discarded because I still find life in them. Our living room curtains? Found at a yard sale this spring for a whopping 50 cents. My closet upstairs is chock full of my favorite label Talbots, 95% of which has been purchased for under $5 at some thrift store around town, usually with the original tag still on it. My sewing machine went kaput? Uncle Kevin thought it would be a great idea to buy Aunt Jenny a new one for Christmas and apparently bought her a few until he found just the right one and so I got a new one out of the deal too, because he had already wrapped it and it was too much trouble to unwrap and return. I wanted some peaches, but couldn’t quite figure out when I was going to find time to go pick them when Betty called and offered up that box sitting on her porch she couldn’t deal with, so I got it and canned a little over a case of peaches and got a huge cobbler out of it to boot.

Occaisonally I do have small meltdowns worrying about how I’m going to make this or that happen. And when I do, my dear husband always reminds me that if I just sit back and not worry about it, whatever I think is a problem will resolve itself. I just have to be open to the way it happens. And usually, it happens in a way that is win-win. Like my free freezer.

Roadtrip.

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I joke that my world is between my house and downtown. Anything outside of that circle is too far to do on a regular basis. So, anytime I head out of town, even just to visit friends ‘out in the county’, feels like a roadtrip. July has had all sorts of roadtrips – near and slightly far, solo and the entire family.

The air conditioning in my car is busted, but honestly, I prefer to drive without it. I LIKE it, especially on roadtrips. Okay, so during the day, it might be nicer to have the air on. But at night? There is just something sweet about driving down a back road with the windows down. And just the right music. I have a certain fondness for R.E.M.’s Green album during the summer at night. Coming back from Baltimore the other night, I had the distinct pleasure of driving under the light of the full moon to that soundtrack. Many a spring and summer night I’ve driven home to that – to the point where I’ve worn through at least 5 copies of that album over the years. Probably more.

There is something about July that encourages the love of the roadtrip in me. I’m not sure what….I’ve completely neglected my house, I’ve watered the garden but probably (no, I know I have) given more attention to weeding friend’s gardens when I visit them and I have more sewing projects half done than I care to admit to. And yet, I go on the road at the drop of a hat, promising to tend to everything when I get back. In alot of ways, it refreshes me. After all, I do need to expand my world between my house and downtown – that circle is only a mile and a half for crying out loud. And I have August to catch up….although I do feel the need to plan just a few more roadtrips before summer comes to an end, because once school starts and everyone’s schedule kicks in, it’s hard to go out of town at the drop of a hat.
And you can’t drive to the light of moon to the soundtrack of the cicadas.