The baby doesn't want to be the baby anymore

The day this pic was taken, as we waited for his brother at the bus stop, he was crushing acorns with his shoes. He said they were babies and he wanted to see their bones.

The day before, he was playing with his action figures under the table while I was writing, and he had Loki having to prove to Thor and the other Avengers that he wasn't a baby and he could fight, too.

He's breaking my heart.

He tells me he can't do things because he's a little kid, but he's not a tiny baby. But he can do other things because he's a big boy. I tell him he can't always do what his big brother does, but he wants to so badly that he gets upset when he can't draw as well or climb as well or say words as clearly. He's almost four and he wants to be seven.

I barely remember being four. And even when I was, I was the oldest; I didn't have anyone bigger that I wanted so desperately to be like. When the big kids exclude him--which is a lot, since he's so much smaller than them--I tell him to talk to his mom about being the littlest; she was the littlest, too, when we were kids.

I want him to stay little. Who knows when I'll get to have a baby of my own, and even if I had one tomorrow, they'd be a different kid in a different situation, not him. And he's such a cute, sweet, funny kid with a weird streak that I adore, and a good temper for being the baby. He gives in to his brother too much, but he does it because he loves him so much he doesn't want him upset. He's a natural peace-maker, and he's imaginative and he's naturally kinder than the other two. Less competitive. 

I don't want him to think being bigger means being mean or rude.

I don't know how to keep him sweet.

Pumpkin soup!

It's officially fall! So I wanted pumpkin soup. I used to make this all winter long with whatever winter squash I had when I was eating strictly seasonal, and I've missed it. So when it was my turn to cook dinner, I knew I wanted this and only this. 

Here's how I made it:

1. Mince up and sautée one onion until as soft as it'll go. Caramelizarion is good.

2. Mince and add some cloves of garlic.

3. Peel, mince and add one carrot and one sweet potato. It might've gone faster if I'd nuked the sweet potato first; those suckers take forever to boil soft!

4. Sautée all of that. Caramelize it some.

5. Seed, peel, and chop up a pumpkin. This one was a wee tiny pie pumpkin, about the size of my face. Only a few ponds. Throw those chunks in the sautée.

6. Add broth. I had a can of chicken and some dried broth base, so I used both; you could easily make it vegetarian by using veggie broth here. 

7. Season! I used salt, pepper, two shakes of cinnamon, sesame seeds, and bay leaves. Pumpkin goes good with savory and sweet spices, and cinnamon goes great with garlic and onions--it makes sort of a really simple curry-type seasonal flavor.

8. Boil the crap out of it! The pumpkin will break down first, and will be almost natural purée by the time the sweet potatoes are mushy-soft. 

9. Smooth out the purée. If you have an immersion blender, this is a great time for that. I don't have one (I want one so bad!), so I mushed it through a sieve until I got it about 75% smooth.

10. Finish with milk and butter until it's smooth! Eat warm and delicious! Use butter and unflavored nutmilk if doing veggie. I bet this would be delicious with almond milk.

I topped it with the pepitas, made so:

1. Remove all the pulp from the seeds. You can throw that into the soup, too, but it's stringy; you'll have to cook it longer and blend it better.

2. Rinse them real well.

3. Put them on a cookie sheet with a little oil of choice and salt. You can do seasonings, too, but I like the pure pumpkin seed flavor, and salt doesn't burn like seasonings can.

4. Cook at 400, stirring it every now and again, until they're toasty and crispy when you bite into them. 

Go forth and make Fall!

I've got the garden bug BAD.

Today, I set up all these seeds from grocery-store fruit, farmer's-market fruit, and wild-outside fruit (a variety of acorns, since that's what we have here*) for stratification! I've never stratified anything before--which is probably why none of my big seeds I gathered in the past ever grew.

It feels like progress.

I decided sometime over the last month that I'm tired of waiting for a real garden and I'm tired of the ridiculous cost of healthy foods. I'm also tired of the cost of exotic food, and even more tired of how far those things have to travel to get to me, and how a lot of exotic imports don't treat the people that grow them that well. All of that came to a point and I decided that 

- I'm going to expand my garden next spring.

- I'm going to spend the winter getting ready for spring better than I did last year.

- I'm going to work on growing whatever seeds I can inside through the cold months so they'll be ready for spring.

- And I'm going to at least cut my food bill. 

I want all our most frequent veggies to be grown at home so we don't have to buy them. I want all the fun exotics to be grown at home so they're local and have little to no greenhouse cost. While I'm here in apartments, I'm going to perfect my growing skills in NC** and grow as much as the complex will overlook, and save all te seeds I can to grow more and to trade for even more variety later.

I've found a few nice ladies online who share seeds without needing me to trade anything back; next year, when I have my own harvest, I'll pay it forward for someone else. I'm collecting seeds from the fruits and veggies we buy, like I used to back when I lived on the ad hoc hippie commune we made out of our dorms. 

And I'm currently obsessed with finding sources for good, open pollinated, heirloom seeds. My seed stash is all (but for six packs) at least ten years old and has been in and out of storage, a house with no heating or cooling, and really damp conditions; they're all shot. Nothing has grown from my stash in years. So today, I inventoried the remains, so I can replace them, and in spring I'm just going to grow all of them and see what happens. If only one plant from each pack grows, I'll be able to replace the seeds for free. If nothing grows, I at least have the list to start rebuilding.

Now I just need to get my hands on seeds for all those expensive trendy foods I've gotten hooked on, like chia and quinoa...

NOTES:

* I find myself missing the ubiquitous oranges, limes, loquats, and kumquats of St Augustine, and the dates and jelly palms all over Jacksonville.

** I used to have an intinctive know she of gardening, but that was apparently a Floridian instinct; NC is a few growing zones up, and things work differently.

State of the Garden, start of fall 2014

My little bucket-garden is starting to wind down.

Looks a little sad, huh? I had four tomato plants and got maybe 20 or so cherry tomatoes, one big tomato that rotted the  next day, and nothing off of the other two plants. Those are looking pretty sad, but the cherry still has a few green babies on it and is still looking pretty good. Leggy, but it always did look leggy. Next year, I'm growing more, more varieties, and I'm growing tem in bigger buckets to see if more dirt = more fruit! These were all supposed to be small ones, but they all got big!

The pepper made a few flowers but not fruit, and didn't like the heat of the hottest part of summer much; I read recently that peppers can live up to ten years if the cold doesn't kill them, and that the fruit will be best in the second to fifth years, so in going to experiment with bringing it in next month or so, and seeing if I can overwinter it. Our house is dark, but maybe a lamp will make up for it enough.

This is the one that's still fruiting.

The other side of the garden: the crepe myrtle there in the front is doing great, the jade plant is fantastic, the little rescued cactus there behind it struggled most of the season but looks mostly settled now (and it's a fruiting one, so in excited about that!), the crabapple and the hawthorn are doing great. I'll definitely bring in the succulents, and maybe the trees. They overwintered last year when I didn't have pots for them, so I might just leave them all winter with wrapped up pots and hope they've grown strong.

Strawberries are mother one that apparently can be perrenial; I've never had any survive relocation to my garden, so I didn't know. I'll be bringing that one in, especially since she's making new leaves now!

I think it's these peat-pots; the ones I bought at te nursery with them did the best.

This is the only one of my wild walking garlic that I stole from school in PA that survived, and I hope it has enough strength to keep surviving. I have a few more I can plant, but that's it, and school has been rooting them up to get rid of them, so I don't know if I can get more!

The new Immortal Lettuce. This space apparently is only big enough for one at a time, and that one that flowered all summer was apparently one of those bastardy patented ones that doesn't make seeds so you have to keep buying new seed. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers and no seeds! Next year I'm growing open-pollinated ones in wider, lower pots, and having more greens to munch on before they go bonkers!

And these are the day lilies. They came up crazy-crowded this year, so as soon as everything dies off and I'm closing out and reclaiming pots and dirt, I'm dividing them up and letting them rest over the winter to come up next spring in maybe three pots instead of one! This was a good present my sister picked--it multiplies!

The Plan:

- I'm currently waiting on a few seed-swapping attempts. I've never swapped before and I really only have a pile of muscadine seeds to share, but I've found some generous folk with seeds to spare online. I'll post about those when they come in, and talk about how I found them.

- I've decided this winter will be about trying to start as many things from seed as possible. I have apple and pear seeds from the grocery store (unlikely, but who knows), those muscadines and a very few scuppernongs from the farmers market, peaches both from the market and the store, Italian Prune Plums from the store (that look like the ones we used to eat in the wild when we lived in Italy), and a wide selection of acorns. Did you know Raleigh was packed with oaks? You do now!

- I'm also going to seek out seeds. I tried an avocado, but I think it got damaged getting it out because it isn't doing much and it's been sitting there for months. I'm going to find a mango or three next paycheck and save those big ol seeds. I'm keeping an eye out for chestnuts and raw, in-shell hazelnuts and such. I'm keeping all my pits and seeds. Whatever sprouts when I stratify all this stuff next month gets to go in the garden next spring!

- I'm going to do my best to get to the nurseries earlier next year; I missed out in replacing my roses and getting berries because I started too late and couldn't afford pots and dirt as well as plants, but now I have some pots, the compost is finally turning into dirt, and I'm looking forward to expanding!

My tin ultimate goal is to have, like, a mini food forest, one I can take with me if we have to move. I want as much variety of as many kinds of edibles as I can, so that I can minimize the expense of getting healthy veggies at the store--have you seen how expensive organic stuff is? 

Plus, I like lots of exotic and non-local stuff, and that stuff, in the store, comes with more gas-use and transport-cost than I'm happy with. I think the trick to eating locally is to make everything you want to eat local!

So that's my garden. How is yours doing?

On my mind

The muscadine jam I made yesterday and the masa cakes I plan to make to eat them on

The cooler weather and how awesome it is

Seed swapping to make my garden So Cool next spring, and worrying about how many of the seeds I'm about to but in for stratifying will sprout

How ninja just bugged me for an hour to wake up, and as soon as I did, laid down and went to sleep

Also how smooth and shiny she is since I put her on an all-wet-food diet to help her dry skin

The shepherds pie I made for dinner last night

The tea I haven't made yet this morning

How long my brother is taking in the shower and how much I have to pee

What I'll write today's haiku about, and how I've forgotten haikus the last few days

How I can get IG posts to post here automatically when they apply to this blog

Mixing up and packing up orders for customers today

What're you thinking about this lovely Monday?

Muscadine Jam!

It's fall here in the south, and that means native local muscadine grapes are at all the farmers markets for cheap! I bought a batch last week and I've been munching on them like they're little plums. I had an idea that I would make, like, an Italian-style cornmeal-olive oil cake out of them, but I didn't have enough oil and by the time I decided on jam, I didn't have enough left so I bought more.

So this is about one and a half of those little green berry baskets they sell small fruit in at the market.

So here's a loose tutorial on making jam!

First, get a big pot and put your jars in it. Being it to a summer and keep it there. You should probably use new jars; I don't have any, and I don't expect this nectar of the gods to need to last that long!

Muscadines! God I love musky fruit. These babies, scuppernongs (the green ones), guavas, mangoes. Ugh, I just love them.

But muscadines do have this super thick skin that regular grapes don't, so there's this extra step, plus I always save seeds, so that's an extra step, too:

Cut open the grapes...

Separate the pulp. I dropped it straight into the measuring cup, so I wouldn't lose all that fabulous juice. Note how much pulp and juice you have...

Save all those seeds. I'll be figuring out how to get these babies to grow over the winter so I can have baby grape-topiaries next year...

See how much skins you have...

Add a little water and blenderize until those thick skins are all weensie little shreds. 

All together, pulp and skins, I had about 4c of fruit-goo to throw in the pot (no reactive of course), like so...

Cook it down until the fruit bits are falling apart. I mushed them with a potato masher because the spatula I was using was too soft to mush anything, and I for impatient. All together, it was maybe 20 mins before...

Add the sugar! All the recipes I looked at before this had about a 1-fruit to 3/4-sugar ratio, so 4c fruit would be about 3 c sugar; I used about 2 1/2 c because they were sweet grapes and the bowl I was measuring into didn't hold another half cup.

Cook it. A lot. Somewhere between a half hour and an hour, on medium, so it boils properly but doesn't splatter all over your kitchen like napalm. Cook until the fruit is all broken down, the skin is all tender, everything is dark purple, and it starts jelling. Look for the stuff to "sheet" off the spatula instead of dripping, and put some on a plate, let it cool until you can touch it. Then see if it still drips; if it doesn't, it's jellified!

Get those hot jars out of the hot water and fill with the hot jam! Leave a half inch or inch of space to make a suction as it cools; cap loosely with the hot lids. Put them back in the water and cook for ten minutes or so, then pull out to cool. Tighten the kids as soon as you can touch the jars without melting your fingerprints off. If you're using new jars, they'll ping as they cool; mine didn't do that. If they seal right, they'll store at room temperature; I'm keeping mine in the fridge to be safe.

Yum!

Ps: kindly disregard my messy-ass stovetop; I'm a terrible housekeeper and it's a constant battle with myself!

Words to live by #5

What to do when you feel sick

So I watched this show where this guy was tracking down famous dead people's DNA to see what he could learn from it. There's a lot going on there, it's a fascinating show ("Dead Famous DNA" on Netflix), but the part that matters here is that he found out that Darwin had Crohns Disease. He was sick every day of his life and was still a prolific scientist and writer and letter-writer.

Today, I woke up sick. There's some stomach bug going around; a kid at my sister's work had it, now she does, and the baby's been saying he feels sick too. I was hoping I'd be okay, but this morning, I woke up queasy and sort of... You know that wobbly-in-the-insides feeling you get with a stomach bug, where it's like everything is made of jello and moving around unpleasantly?

Like that.

But see, I had things to do today. And I'm supposed to be taking care of mom, who just had more shoulder surgery and is laid up again.

So here's what I do when I feel sick:

- Slow down: it doesn't matter how quickly things get done as long as they get done. Or at least started.

- Eat gently: maybe skip the vitamins. Brew the tea a little less strong. Skip the stuff that you know causes issues. Do the BRAT diet, like a sick kid--bananas, rice, applesauce, toast. Only my T is tea because I don't have any GF bread around.

- Skip really active stuff: don't push yourself at all, physically, if you don't have to. If you do have to, don't push a second further than the minimum. Focus on resting. In the average life, lifting and shifting and pulling can be done a different day.

- Nap: as often as you need. Whenever you need. Or at least as soon as you can, if you have to work or something.

- Keep the bathroom stocked: especially if you have a stomach bug, you're not going to want to be without. And you might not be able to get out to get more toilet paper or something.

- Take the hottest showers you can handle: I don't know about you, but to me, a really hot shower feels like it's cleaning out the germs. It also loosens up my chronic sinus clog that gets worse whenever my immune system goes wonky. And it definitely helps with body aches.

- Drink a lot of water: Because hydration.

I'm not as sick as Darwin always was. Not by far. My uncle has Chrons and I know what that's like. But for this day or three or five or whatever, it feels pretty bad, and I know I'm not at my normal level on anything.

If I'm still sick on Friday, which is shopping day, I'm going to buy a big cow or pig bone and make some bone broth to bring my nutrients back up. I think I'm going to drink about as much tea as I always do, but slower, and maybe with more milk and less tea. Maybe I can find my elderberries and see if they're still good enough to make a healing tea from?

And I'm going to try and get better.

What do you do when you're sick? What foods do you eat? What steps do you take? Do you have any hope remedies you swear by?

What is taking up all your brain space right now, in a good way?

Here's mine:

- Layering photo-editing apps: this pic was taken with Hipstamatic, patterned in Tangent, text-ed in Over. I love these apps so much, and I have others I use, too.

- Doctor Who: Legacy: this game is stupidly addictive and is puzzling enough that I don't mind replaying levels to get new characters to drop, or to level up my team.

- Tiny Houses: I want one! I want to build it myself! Except I have no skills, no money, nowhere to park it because we currently live in an apartment, and I don't know how to drive.All of which, really, makes me want it more. I adore the idea of being able to move without packing up in boxes anymore. I adore the idea of not loving in someone else's house anymore, while all my stuff sits in storage.

- The Simpsons: Tapped Out: I've been playing this game on and off for maybe four years, and I just love it. It's the main way I'm keeping up with the series now!

- The new TV season: This week coming up, we have some of the shows coming back, and almost everything else comes back the week after and I am SO EXCITED! There's so much promise in a new season before the reality of network meddling, poor writing, and viewing conflict narrow down what we can actually watch!

- International stews: I have such a craving for Ethiopian stews, for rich curries that don't depend on spiciness alone, for goulash and stroganoff, and for British-style stews with big chunks of potatoes and beef. Maybe I can make one this week...I'm definitely collecting up new recipes.

- Fall: I'm so done with summer that I'm leaping on every tiniest sign of the season changing. The nights aren't as hot. The days are overcast and drizzly. That one tree is turning orange. There are acorns everywhere*. The farmers market is full of everything. The cat's winter coat is coming in with a vengeance. I love it all.

- Sewing: I haven't started yet, but I think I'm going to sew something soon.

- Eating my way to health: did you know you can heal cavities? I might try.

- Dollhouse comics: I want to gather dolls and action figures and statues and tell awesome and weird stories with them. I'm figuring stuff out before I start, but I think it'll be soonish.

- Geeky tees I can't afford right now: We're in a boom--there are SO MANY companies making awesome shirts, and even though I can very rarely actually afford one, I love looking at all the designs!

What's on your mind? Let's share.

Where were you on September 11th?

I was at school. I'd started college January 2001, so is been away from home less than a year. I was in my second dorm room, with only one roommate, which felt like a luxury after last semester with an unpleasant roommate. It was also the first time we had AC, and we'd just gotten a phone and I'd just gotten my computer a few weeks before. 

We heard about what had happened in my first class that day--poetry. The teacher was sort of flighty and excitable at the best of times, but this morning he was distraught. He wasn't making a lot of sense. There was a disaster. It was terrible. It affected us all. We were going to have class normally--but of course, that didn't happen, and we gave up. 

We didn't have a tv in out room, so D and I went down to the rotunda, where the school had set up a big tv at the beginning of the semester--only like two or three weeks previous--and we watched the news for hours with other students, trying to figure out what it meant, who had done it, how it could happen.

It took us days to get calls out to call home--the phone was hinky at best, a barely-useful add-on to our 1800s-built dorm building. With everyone is school calling home, plus everyone in the country calling everyone they knew, plus every computer in the city trying to access dialup, we couldn't call anyone. We didn't have cellphones yet. 

Classes were canceled. Then a tropical storm hit, and we were stuck inside with only intermittent phones, almost no internet, and hours of conflicting news stories.

I had a high school friend going to school within sight of the towers, and we couldn't get ahold of her for weeks, and then only by email.

Another high school friend had family in New York, and it was weeks before she even knew they were still alive.

My family lived in Orlando. There was a lot of talk that if more attacks came, they'd hit places that represent America and where people gather--places like Disney. They'd target military places--like Lockheed Martin, half a mile from my highscool. They'd start at airports--two miles down from where my whole family lived. 

I thought a lot about walking down highways in a post-apocalypse, trying to find my family.

Afterward, mom couldn't get to work because the bus went through the airport and they'd shut down the airport. Dad was working driving people back and forth from the airport and attractions, and he had to take all his people right back to their hotels. D and I sat in school.

It was a blur for days after that.

I think it was Monday when we went back to school. I don't remember going back. I remember flinching when planes started up again after that, after two weeks or more of creepy-silent skies. I remember resenting that. I grew up on airbases, and I always loved the sound of planes. They were cool, exciting, they represented neat people with neat jobs. Now, they were scary.

A year or two later, I went to DC with my boyfriend. We took the train because airplanes were still scary, and costs were high, and we knew we were going to the center of government. I don't remember why we chose DC; maybe because no one else would, so there wasn't a lot of competition for hotels and travel.

The museums were open, but we were searched before entering every single one. A lot of the monuments were closed to the public and barricaded. It was surreal around the edges the whole time, but I felt better after we left. After we saw in person that things were still working.

Where were you? What was it like for you? We hear about the people at ground zero all the time, but this was something important for all of us. I'm not particularly patriotic, but this affected all of us, one way or another.

Words to live by #4

Monthly Me - September 2014

Outfit of the day:

- cute baby-whale shirt with tie shoulders and front pocket

- fav purple skirt

- Pan nail polish (mine - Incidental Twin)

- slate Avon eyeliner, black Mark mascara, and gold-copper mismatched Burt's Bees tinted lip balm that is so old it smells stale

- Annabel Lee perfume by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

I'm not at all happy about the weight, but I should be getting to my Moontime this week if the black cohosh keeps working, so I won't complain about it until I know whether that's it. And I've been eating poorly again because funds are tighter and tighter and I'm having trouble affording the more expensive options I should be eating. I'm hoping to take a trip to the local Korean market this weekend coming up to se eif I can get some rice-based stuff and some fresh veg for cheap.

Physically and mentally, I feel like I'm doing better. I've had a few days where depression was an issue, but overall, that's looking better. If I can afford it, I'm going to add magnesium and st johns wort to help with that, but I think the cohosh and the big doses of omega-3s I've been taking are helping. They helped Kickstarter my moon last month after almost six months without, and ever since then I've been feeling less fragile, less tender, less wobbly and wrong than I had for ages beforehand.

I'm also writing again, and that always helps me feel more human. I lowered my daily goals so that it's way less stressful to get them or to miss them, and added daily poetry, and it's early yet, but it feels better. We'll see if I can keep it up!

And I feel like even if I've been trending heavier again, I feel better and look better. My hair is smoother and less dry since I started treating it with coconut oil, my skin is softer since the same, and my face is less... Okay, my skin gets sort of gritty when my diet is off and I'm not washing it enough, but with the vitamins and my fancy new soap from the handmade soap stall at the flea market, it's much clearer.

How're you doing? How do you feel today?

Words to live by #3