Photo by Edie while at camp.
Our girl is home after three glorious weeks at camp.
Pickle Fest.
The idea of having everyone over to sample my vast inventory of pickles one evening came out of the girls night I had a few weeks ago with what I refer to as the PTO crowd. I’m not entirely sure why I refer to this group of women that way – perhaps because we are all the sort of women who step up and run things and at least a little bit of our friendship is based on strategizing who’s running what – school events, girl scouts, soccer car pools and the like. At least, that’s how I began to get to know them and then we realized that we all like wine. Also, our kids are friends and it would appear we are all the sort of moms who like to be friends with the parents of our kid’s friends. As we sat there on the patio at Bang! that evening, we locked in a date on our calendars for an evening where they’d come over, see the finished dining room that I’d been whining about for months, I’d break out all my pickles for sampling – and we’d include our husbands. Along the way, it was decided that everyone would bring wine & something to eat as well because by now they know the standard Calvert family entertaining mode is that everyone is welcome at any time, as long as you bring your own food & beverages. We had a party once where we tried to supply all this ourselves and our guests, so used to our mode, went ahead and brought tons of things anyway, so I’ve just thrown my hands up in the air and decided to own it.
Honestly, it makes entertaining far easier.
In which I get a bushel of peaches.
A few of you who sat in my early canning classes this season were so knocked out by the sample of my pickled peaches that you had to go home, make them and blog about it. Which I think is actually way cool, but everyone along the way has mentioned how much work peaches are.
11 Questions.
The thing about blogging is wondering exactly what people want to read- for instance, I almost didn’t publish that last post on cantaloupe jam because I had this second thought after writing it that no one really cared two cents about cantaloupe jam. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that indeed some of you actually like hearing about cantaloupe jam. I always get a little thrill when I hear how much someone likes this blog – this whole thing started on a lark trying to keep a lost then found creative spark that is so much a part of me that I don’t ever want to lose it again. In a little internet game of tag you’re it, Meridith over at Counting Chickens gave me a little shout-out along with a list of questions that were optional for me to answer. And if you know me, you know that I bounce from subject to subject, so why should my blog be any different? This one is for you Meridith.
Jamming.
While I might be more known to pickle everything in sight, I do tend to make a batch of jam here & there upon occasion. Jam took me quite some time to really master – somehow I was able to teach others how to do it without ever actually being successful at it myself. I know, go figure. The people that live in my house, scarred by years of bad jam, prefer to not eat the jam I make. One of them requests I purchase large tubs of just plain, grape jelly that the act of making a pb& j doesn’t use half a jar. The other has decided she’s only going to eat Daniel’s jam and when I get sneaky and reuse his jars, keeping the label and filling it with my own, she knows.
The Calvert Party Encyclopedia
My friend Allison, who happens to be the same Allison that did an entire weekend camping trip wearing a trash bag as a poncho in 3 inches of rain because I assured her there was no rain in the forecast and therefore, it was not worth running home for – which I would also like to point out she was an absolute trooper about, but then, that’s Allison. She’s one of those rock solid people who takes everything in stride. She’s the kind of friend you can call on a cold, snowy Saturday in January and ask to please bring you a chocolate banana milkshake because you just had a baby and your husband has told you his days of running out to please your every whim are over, thankyouverymuch and she then walks all over downtown in the snow looking for anything that’s open that will make you a chocolate banana milkshake and while she’s at it, she brings along a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which you’ve been craving for the last 9 months just in case the six pack you had sitting in the cooler on the back porch for such an event accidentally got left on the back porch in the excitement of leaving to have a baby, because it did.
She’s that kind of friend. Kinda the bomb.
Allison came down to visit recently and brought me a most delightful gift that as soon as I opened it, knew I had to share it here. Continue reading
Not Camping.
In talking about a little getaway with my husband, I suggested that perhaps we could go camping. As I pretty much never offer to do this, I thought he’d like the idea. It’s not that I don’t like camping, it’s just that almost every camping trip we’ve ever gone on has been rained on. Sometimes spectacularly and memorably so. Like the time we camped out in a tropical storm on the beach at the Outer Banks. Or the time we did a three day canoe trip with Smiley & the gang. Then there was the trip when I was pregnant with Edie were no rain was in the forecast – Allison didn’t even bring her rain gear and as soon as we put in, the bottom of the sky fell out and we got something like 3 inches of rain that weekend. We had friends with us that were covered in head to toe goretex who pouted the entire time – which considering I was pregnant, cold, uncomfortable and wet the entire time should have been my job. Continue reading
Misadventures of the gardening foodie sort.
Last summer, my friend Cynthia introduced me to this adorable little relative of the cucumber family, the Mexican Sour Gherkin. The flavor of these miniature watermelon-appearing fruits has a crisp, tart (think lemon) cucumber flavor. I immediately thought they would make an excellent pickle. Continue reading
While the cat’s away.
We’re on day 5 of no kid here and I’ve gotten lots of questions about what we’re up to while our gal is gone. Here’s my week in review.
Oh July.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind around here lately – deadlines & cooking classes galore with last minute radio spots and packing up missthing for 3 weeks of camp all while playing single mom in the miserably muggy weather. Last Thursday, when you could see the air and it smelled like mildew outside and I couldn’t take it anymore, I got our wonderful neighbor Brian to come help me reinstall the not-finished-french doors between the dining room and sunroom so that I could shut the house up and keep the humidity levels sane. I can take the heat and even the humidity, but I can’t take the effect humidity has on the inside of my house. Living in Alabama for almost a decade, I never had central AC – all through college I lived in wonderful old houses that had lots of big trees & ceiling fans, very similar to what I live with now – and I learned to just deal with it. I also had a car that did not have air conditioning. Ever drive along the Gulf Coast Fourth of July without AC in the middle of the day? To this day, AC in a car is a wonderful, wonderful luxury.
So I’m quite used to dealing with heat & humidity. It seems that spending too much time inside in AC this time of year results in sinus infections for all of us – I woke up just this morning with that telltale pressure on the right side of my face. Thankfully, the weather is supposed to become far more pleasant later in the week, so hopefully we can open the house back up again.
Pat spent last week running the Middle James Expedition– while Edie & I held down the home front. Despite our house being the muggiest one around, her pals were in & out all week long. A huge thanks to Teresa, who had Edie over for a sleepover while I drove over to Harrisonburg and back for a canning demonstration at Friendly City Co-op. Thanks to everyone who came out to that – I had a great time and am looking forward to going back over for a pressure canning demo in a few weeks. Saturday morning after a quick phone appearance on WINA talking about the upcoming swap, I assisted with Erica’s Cooking with A Whole Chicken Class for Market Central,while running last minute errands and doing laundry in order to get up and drop Edie at camp Sunday morning.
After which, we stopped at the nearest open brewery and toasted our child-free status for the next three weeks.
I’ll miss not finding feet pictures on my camera the next three weeks, but I have plenty of adventures lined up to keep me occupied, starting with tonight’s canning class at PVCC, a fridge full of produce I need to deal with ASAP and the mailing of a care package of the things she forgot to pack. Like toothpaste.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 