Informal Learning

A comment Kelly Lovejoy made while she was visiting has me thinking about refrigerators. So here's a blog challenge for whoever wants to take it: What does your refrigerator look like on an average day? Is it crammed and messy? Neat and organized? What's in it right now?

Here's what ours looked like Thursday. Jon went grocery shopping the night before, so this is pretty typical.



(Not everything is what it seems. We re-use containers - particularly jars - over and over again.)



(Petunia is diligent in her efforts to make sure no food escapes from the fridge unnoticed.)

Here's what's in our fridge right now (items marked with * are made by us):

Orange Juice
Grape Juice
Pineapple Juice
Iced Tea (I kinda wish Kelly Lovejoy would move here just so she could make us iced tea all the time. I do have her recipe. Not sure Jon would want to live without his Arizona, though.)
Sour Cream
Heavy Cream
Milk
Butter
Yogurt
(We currently get our milk from a farm but are hoping to be able to start getting it from a different one that's trying to get approval to sell raw milk - either way I'm planning to experiment with making butter and yogurt soon.)
*Peach Habanero Marinade
*Blueberry Honey Butter
*Strawberry Honey Butter
*BBQ Sauce
*Rose Petal Jelly
*Habanero Peach Preserves
*Maple, Strawberry, and Blueberry Syrup
*Strawberry and Blueberry Preserves
*Hot Sauce version 3.0
Various condiments and dressings
Jelly
Blueberries (We've planted 18 bushes, but they're not producing much of anything yet.)
Strawberries (We'll be planting a LOT of strawberries next year.)
Herbs and Veggies including (off the top of my head...) broccoli, sweet and hot peppers, greens, garlic, cilantro, carrots, ginger, zucchini, summer squash (I paid a lot of attention this summer to what veggies and herbs we eat most, so I can better plan next year's garden.)
Alfredo Sauce
Pesto
Salsa (Last week I made fresh salsa and, while it wasn't as spicy as I expected, it was really good.)
*Pancakes
Bread (You've got a good shot at fresh bread in our house, but that's on the counter.)
Pizza Dough (I'm on the lookout for the perfect pizza dough. Got a favorite recipe?)
Eggs (I've always been interested in having chickens for 'eggs and atmosphere' as someone said to me yesterday, but I don't think I'd deal well with the inevitable losses. I'm happy to be able to get our eggs from Chloe's chickens, who seem to have everything chickens could possibly want.)
*Peanut Butter Bars
Vegan Marshmallows
*Smashed Chickpea Salad
*Toasted Ravioli
*Fried Rice
*Rice Pudding
*Sundried Tomato Pesto
*Mac and Cheese
Pasta
Deli meat
Sliced , Chunk, Shredded, Ricotta, and Cream Cheese (Yes, that's a lot of cheese. Jon and Rowan are going to be learning to make cheese in November.)
Yeast
Veggie Stock (I don't know why I don't make my own veggie stock when it's so simple.)
Pudding
Applesauce (I make a mean applesauce, but this jar's not homemade.)
*Cookie Dough
Hot Fudge and Butterscotch
Hershey Syrup
Whipped Cream (We love homemade, but sometimes you just need a tub of Cool Whip.)
Frosting (Again, we like homemade, but sometimes you just need a tub of frosting.)

Leave a link in the comments if you do this on your blog.

Next blog challenge: planning, buying, and eating food.

Getting ready for the craft show at Soule.

This peach tree was old when we moved to our house 9 years ago. Every year we're pleasantly surprised to see it load up with peaches.



After we bought the house, but before we'd come to know every nook and cranny, I said the only thing I'd add would be fruit trees. Winter ended, blooms started appearing, and suddenly I could see we had a pear, a peach, a crab apple, and two cherry trees. None were in the greatest shape. They hadn't been tended and had all lived long lives already. But, man, the peaches from that tree are unbelievable. Not grocery store pretty, sometimes munched on by worms, but so good. My favorite thing to do is to get the one from the very top of the tree, the one that feels hot to my hand. When I eat that peach, I taste sunshine.

It's because of this tree that I learned to can. One peach tree grows a LOT of peaches. In the next couple of weeks we'll be picking and I'll be listening for jars to pop. Oh, and making peach upside down cakes, some to eat and some to freeze. There's nothing like eating sunshine when it's cold outside.

We've added quite a few trees in the past nine years - peaches, apples, mulberries, pears, plums, and almonds - gotten our blueberry patch established, and next year we'll be adding strawberries. But I doubt anything will ever taste better than the first peach I ate off this old tree.

Today we made a dent in this project:


and in this one:


My bed is going to feel very good tonight.

A really long time ago this picture was on my blog. Remember?



Here's what the table looks like now:



(Well, actually it's a bit messier than that now, but that's what it looked like this morning.)

While we were working on the craft room (I seem to have settled into that name...) I came across another table at the architectural salvage store we like to go to. I didn't get any before pictures of it, but it was in a bit better shape than the first one. My mom and I refinished it too, and here' s how it came out:



This table has a little plaque on it that says it was property of Brown University. One of my favorite things about it is the graffiti in the drawers. (Is that weird?)




I wonder what 'Rotten ole Tom Brady', class of '51, is up to these days.

Ok, I've got another one for you. Can anyone tell me what this is?



It's not a bush, more like a small gangling tree, and we have tons of them.

I recently had a conversation with my mom about my experience with school. We were talking about a book Rowan and I had read, in which the main character rode the bus to school on the first day of 8th grade, got off the bus, turned around, and went home. She just couldn't take one more minute of school. The word she used to describe how she felt there was "stupified".

I was horribly, mind-numbingly, stupifyingly bored from the third grade on. By fifth grade (during which year I was often sent to the hallway with an algebra book in what I believe was a well-meaning effort by my teacher to deal with my boredom) I was beginning to feel an overwhelming sense of doom whenever I entered the school building. By high school I was regularly skipping classes, intercepting mail, and changing the grades on my report card. I spent days at the town library, snuck home and hung out in the yard if I knew no one was there, went to friends' houses, went to the beach if I could get a ride. I walked to school, and some days I made it all the way there before the sinking feeling became too much to bear and I turned around not even knowing where I'd end up for the day. If I had missed one more day of high school I would not have graduated. My parents had no idea.

If I was a 'gifted' child no one ever told me, but this paper, titled To produce or not to produce? Understanding boredom and the honor in underachievement (On Gifted Students in School) pretty much sums up how I felt for 10 years of my life. I would have been thrilled in high school to have someone acknowledge the idea that there was honor in my 'underachievement'. Choosing not to produce, to disengage, certainly felt to me like the only way to keep my integrity intact, even at the price of lying to my parents.

Here's a poem I wrote on one of the days I spent at Needham Public Library when I was 15 or 16. Not great literature, by any means, but I can't tell you how clearly I remember this feeling.

Boredom lurks and then it pounces
As I sit, my mind a blank
So I draw a crazy picture
Of a ship that sailed, and sank.
Heading nowhere on a journey
To a place that's far away
Looking back at old, lost friendships
When I left, they chose to stay
In a place that's cold and lonely
While I head for sun and sand
On my ship that's made of daydreams
Sailing to a distant land.

This is not why my kids don't go to school. They don't go to school because they don't want to, for reasons of their own. But I am grateful there is nothing stupifying about their lives.

Recently Rowan and I read The Homeschool Liberation League. One of the interests of the main character is eating food that grows wild. I've been interested myself lately in learning more about what's edible. There's an amazing amount of food growing around us that we think of as weeds or ornamentation.

I always knew roses were edible, but I really didn't know what to do with them. This weekend I tried out a recipe for rose petal jelly. I've made lots of preserves, but this was my first jelly. It's a simple one to start with.

I used petals from the Rose of Sharon we inherited from whoever landscaped our pool area.

3-1/4 cup rose petals or any edible flower petals (be sure they have not been sprayed with anything you wouldn't want to eat)

2 cups water

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup white grape juice

1 package powdered fruit pectin

3 cups sugar

1/4 cup rose petals

Remove bitter white nail of all the rose petals. Rinse petals and pat dry. Bring the 3-1/4 cups rose petals, water, and 1/2 cup sugar to a boil; reduce heat.

Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Let stand, covered, for several hours to overnight.

Strain syrup, discarding flowers.

Combine syrup, grape juice, and pectin in a saucepan; mix well. Bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring occasionally. Add remaining 3 cups sugar; mix well. Bring to a full rolling boil that will not stir down. Boil for 1 minute; remove from heat.

Place remaining 1/4 cup rose petals into 4 hot sterilized 1/2 pint jars (or 2 pint jars, if you're me). Ladle jelly into jars, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace; seal with 2-piece lids. Drape jars with a towel. Cool to room temperature and store in a cool place.

Yields 2 pints.

All of the color comes from the petals. The color leaches out of them very quickly when you first start to cook them. In the morning the syrup is a beautiful purple (the picture doesn't do it justice), which lightens up to pink as you add the other ingredients. Most importantly - yum.

The other night Dagny and I were super hungry, so we tried this recipe for quick quesadillas. Next time I think I'd use pepper jack cheese, cuz why not. They disappeared very quickly. I'll probably mix up some of the filling to keep in the fridge. Much nicer than microwaving a frozen something.

2 zucchini, grated
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin
2 scallions, thinly sliced
15 oz can black beans
8 oz monteray jack cheese, shredded
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Olive oil spray
Tortillas

Drain and rinse beans.
Combine beans, spices, cheese, and scallions.
Put grated zucchini in a collander. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt and squeeze out excess water.
Add to other ingredients.

Spray one side of each tortilla with olive oil spray. Place oil side down on baking sheet. Spread with filling, then top with another tortilla. Spray top of tortilla with olive oil.
Broil 1-2 minutes (until golden).
Flip and broil other side 1-2 minutes.

We had huge tortillas and found we had better luck spreading the filling over 1/2 a tortilla then folding it closed. Much easier to flip.

Start with one not-so-pretty bridesmaid's dress. I'm talking puffy sleeves, lace modesty panel, acres of fabric. Add a pair of scissors, a sewing machine, and a Dagny who sees treasure where others see trash.

Reedy's Ratatouille

1 eggplant, peeled and cubed (or skipped completely if you're cooking for Dagny)

2 zucchini, sliced (peel if you like)

1 red pepper, sliced

1 orange pepper, sliced

1 onion, sliced

4 tomatoes, coarsely chopped

¼ cup oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons salt

pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in a large pot. Cover and cook over medium heat for as little as 15 minutes, or up to an hour. Serve over pasta. Yummy with a bit of farmer's cheese.

In the past couple of years I've become a lot better acquainted with loss. Family members and friends-who-became-family-members, leaving spaces behind that can't be filled.

One of those gaping spaces belongs to my friend Lisa Heyman, who died in February 2008. Months before, our families had visited Plimoth Plantation, and Lisa and I had spent some happy time in the gift shop picking out a crochet hook for me and some yarn and knitting needles for her. The last few times I visited with her she was using those purchases to make a very long scarf for her husband, Larry.

A few weeks ago Larry, Roxy, and Fire came to our house, and brought along the almost-completed scarf so that I can finish it.


As I began to work on it, weaving in the loose ends, I found myself thinking about the loose ends that are inevitable in any life. In some ways, we don't get to choose what things will be left undone. But by carefully choosing and living our priorities, as Lisa did, we can be sure to leave the important ends tied up.

The craft room is coming together, evolving as we begin to use it. We still have some molding to hang and paint, and a bit of organizing to do, but already there's been lots of creating.

I didn't get pictures of everything, but here are some bits and pieces. Dagny and Andrew were working while I took pictures, and they were hot and sweaty and not feeling photogenic. There's also still a pile of paint and tools on the floor, not looking very pretty. I'll get some pictures of the rest another day, including the two tables my mom and I refinished.










The illustrations my mom gave us are perfect. We love them.



We ended up using seven out of the twelve, all along one wall. We don't have enough wall space for the rest, so we'll probably rotate them depending on the season.

This is my favorite.

I've been identifying some weeds that are growing in the spot where we throw our tree trimmings/pulled weeds/etc. Since cleaning up long-neglected sections of our property is a never-ending project around here, it's quite a big pile. An unbelievable variety of things grows around and over it each year. We like the wild blackberries best, but so do the birds and the bunnies and the chipmunks and the squirrels and whoever else is living over there.

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), with its egg shape, spikes, and purple flowers, was easy to find with google. I'm having a harder time with this one, which I don't remember seeing in previous years.


Can anyone tell me what it is?

Been wishing you had some pretty pottery? Check out Brenna's etsy shop.



Dagny got this mug last week. On top of being so nice to look at, it's got that just right for wrapping your hand around feeling.

You can tell when a thing's been made by someone who's doing something they love, you know?