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Digging out the remnants of the summer berries from the bottom of my freezer to make jam.
Jam on toast with hot chocolate (green & blacks gently melted into organic milk) to warm cold hands and fill empty tummies after school.
Homemade berry icecream. Just because.
It was beginning to smell of dirty socks. I blame the nearly 12 year old boy (yes my dear child, you do need to wash them every day). Fair or not, I thought lemon verbena and lavender would make for a preferable olfactory experience.
The sewing machine is still broken (or rather, broke again. Warren spent a weekend fixing it, turned it on, and bang! The ungrateful thing just blew up on the poor fellow) so I took up a needle and thread and made a pouch the old fashioned way.
I hung it over my rearview mirror and whenever I feel like a fresh burst of scent I just give it a squeeze and wait for the remnants of summer to waft over me. Lovely.
Sanity may be madness, but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be. ~ Don Quixote
1. baby cilantro, 2. Ranunculus, 3. welcoming warmth, 4. the moment ~ week 17, 5. peony, 6. Untitled, 7. figuring it out, 8. soft boiled, 9. things are looking up
Though it could have been. It was for sale when we moved here, and it was exactly the sort of house that my heart was asking me for. But the practicalities (too small, too cold, too old) argued me out of it, and we went renting instead. Sorry, heart.
Ms. Cleaver commented in the last post how smart it is to use one cut of meat for several meals. I already do this for chicken (I can get beautiful organic chicken from a store nearby), a roast for the first meal, often a risotto for the second (a glass of wine for the pan, a glass of wine for me - so civilised) and I am just learning to make a decent stock from the carcass. Not easy for a one-time vegetarian. (Yes. I totally was.) Di also linked to this post on how to cook cheap cuts of meat. I'm sure my grandparents knew all this. It would have been great if they'd left me with a recipe collection or two, though a good second choice would be moving to the french countryside...
This soup was made from a homemade stock - I saute an onion or two in olive oil, then add in whatever else I happen to have on hand. I sometimes add in cannellini beans too and last night I thought that a sprinkling of parmesan would have lifted it from a nice meal into a gorgeous one, but alas I was out. This is how I cook. Add stuff until it tastes great.
I try to keep a small selection of growing things on my patio (we are garden-less) but I fail miserably at it. Herbs I can do, except I often buy baby ones and use so much of them so quickly that they never quite recover. Bad lady. My kids get an over-the-top thrill out of seeing even a sprinkling of parsley we've grown ourselves over the top of a meal. It seems to give them some kind of idea that we are eco-warrior culinary genius types, and I am more than happy to uphold the illusion.
I bought my weekly fruit and veg a couple of weeks ago from a retired gardener who runs a little street stall with his neighbour. Gorgeous stuff. All the family got to choose whatever produce they wanted, which in the girls' case meant tons of fruit, Warren chose silverbeet, and I loaded up on heirloom tomatoes. Nathan abstained. He's not a fan of raw things.
Our income has dropped to levels where I need to be careful what I buy and where. Food's expensive in N.Z., good food astronomical. And I love good food. So, my challenge to myself over the next couple of months is to explore more ways of feeding my family good food, real food, within a limited budget. I am certain it can be done, and I'm looking forward to it. Hints, tips, and recipes welcome.
I keep forgetting to say that Tara of the wonderful Eyeblog was the winner of the photo prints a few posts back. It's such fun giving away stuff, that I checked through a few more garage boxes in case there was anything else hiding in there that you could have. Unless you're a fan of worn shoes and broken toys, no luck. Oh well. Another time.
Did you know it was the equinox today? Happy equinox. Amy and I have decided to explore the differences in cultures/hemispheres/ways-of-being between us with a collaboration of writing and photography (one week my pictures, her words, next week her pictures, my words). We thought the equinox would be an excellent time in the year to begin, and what do you know, an excellent name for a blog too. First entry is up here, so go and check it out if you are so inclined.
I was in the kitchen early this morning, having muddled my way through nothing much in particular. Megan, I said, are you really so very useless? Yes, I replied, I do think that I might be. Then I spent one whole entire day changing the look of this blog in a very slight and uneventful manner. I added links in at last, though no doubt I've forgotten a quadrillion people I really shouldn't have. If that's you, please let me know. And sorry.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. ~ Albert Einstein
So yes, this many polka dots is over the top, even for me. Still. A bit of colour in a sometimes too grey world is no bad thing.
How's things? Found your fairy godmother/magic wand/happy-ever-after yet? Me either. I have a growing suspicion I might have been duped over their existence. Next thing, people will be telling me there's no gold at the end of the rainbow either. Pah.
I made two of these yesterday, one for each of my girls. Iona, who is the least trend conscious of the pair, looks great in hats, and thinks anything I make is just fabulous, put hers on and said: 'Oh my goodness. I look so ugly."
Not a winner then. But Eilidh, who would rather wear nothing at all than be seen in something she dislikes (true story), hasn't taken hers off. She even turned up for breakfast in her pyjamas and hat. Fair enough. I'm good with pleasing some of the children some of the time.
Two hats in one day with this pattern is a piece of cake. Truly. I actually made three, probably four if you count the early cack-handed attempts at learning the pattern (I'm not fluent in crochet-ese). If you used the thicker yarn and bigger hook that the pattern specifies (I used what I had - we're doing that a lot around here these days) you could probably knock one off with your morning cup of tea.
One third of a lap rug complete, and I won't even bother to tell you how long that much has taken me. Or cost. Matey. My family is so impressed I can actually crochet an actual blanket that I have kept it my secret that only knowing how to chain and double chain isn't very clever at all.
I know, the colours aren't right. Should have gone more monochromatic, or less. Still, Autumn is the perfect rug-crocheting season, don't you think? Sitting on the couch with the rug on my knees, invariably watching some crime drama or another while merrily pretending I'm doing something extremely useful to the world, is pretty much as good as it gets. Sometimes I even get a cup of tea brought to me. Spoiled. Yes.
Next one's going to be a ripple. Because my new life plan is to double chain until I die.
I went to visit an impressionist exhibition at the national museum on Friday, paintings by Monet mostly. I'm always struck with how human painting is, how ordinary the actual strokes of paint on canvas are when you come down to it. I like that.
Of course there is nothing ordinary about Monet. Have you seen his paintings in the flesh? The real magic in them happens when you step away and look from a distance. Suddenly the sun turns on and lights up the whole canvas. Breathtaking. I kept looking up in the ceiling to see if the museum had installed special lighting to add to the effect, (they hadn't), I couldn't quite believe someone could be so wonderfully clever as to paint sunlight. I still can't.
I've been taking my camera out and about with me the last couple of weeks, just playing, having fun. I feel like I haven't even begun to learn how to take a good photograph, but never mind. I've a good deal of a lifetime left to learn. I collected some of the results into a Blurb book and had such a great time making it that I lost track of time, space, and how many children I own. It's not a very good book, but I don't care. Though I could never be as clever with colour and light as someone like Monet, I am perfectly free to love them just as much.
What if in your dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you woke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah! What then? ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
So, I know the dude was rather too fond of the old opiates. But still. What if?
