Bag Lady

Here is a vintage apron that a child-who-shall-not-be-named got silver paint and tacky substances on.  To be fair, the apron was given to this child in desperation that clothing not be ruined in experiments that parents generally despaired of, but still.  I salvaged some unstained parts, including the pocket, and made it into a produce bag for my market cart. I have a lot of pretty bias tape, and I've been using it on purpose recently I guess so I can feel free to find more at the thrift store. That's a weird little mind trap!

I did a sewing-for-massage trade with a friend (so wonderful!).  The piece she asked me to resize was from Nepal and when the scraps where tumbled on my floor, I suddenly saw a bag to make.  The solid colors are so great and strong together, and that pretty ruffle is just right.  I actually used the scraps entirely to make this bag.  Satisfying.

The last bag ushers in a new era: an e-reader.  Oh my.  I do adore books, but I could not picture fitting enough books in my luggage and carry-on to keep me happy for an upcoming trip.  Obviously an e-reader is the way to take 40 books along, most for me but a few for my husband and kids just in case.  I only bought two with a coupon that came with the e-reader.  The rest are free downloads, mostly old books whose copyright has expired and have been digitized for such a time as this. Here is the helpful article that led me to books I wanted to read.

The e-reader seems sturdy enough, but I still feel pretty protective towards any screens I have purchased (and let me tell you, it has been a new phone and a new iPad recently, too, and I am sick of it). So I made a little padded bag - sturdy upholstery fabric on the outside, batting scraps in the middle, and lined with a flannel shirt scrap from my husband - with the pocket positioned to hold the charger.  I'm very pleased with it. 

New Cookbook Review: The Food in Jars Kitchen

The Food in Jars Kitchen is a cookbook after my own heart: it uses little bits of food in clever, flexible ways and gives the home-canned pantry lots of work to do.  I've been keeping track over the years of what my family eats, so I've cut back on making jam because we don't go through much toast and jam.  Marisa is evangelical about people like me in her Introduction - there's so much more to do with jam than toast! She is giving me an "empty-jar-to-empty jar education."

When my copy came in the mail, I put my nose in it and my pencil to paper as I jotted down all the recipes I could make right away.  There are so many! I did make three before I wrote this post, and I will make all of them again.

Also, please note: I received this book free as a review copy, but my opinions and my decision to write a review are my own.

First, I made Popunders.  Isn't that the most adorable name? I made them one morning at breakfast time and while we did, indeed, spoon a little jam in their little hollows, I could also see a dab of cheese or pesto or a bit of anything that I would put on bread.  Popunders are super-fast to whip up, sugar-free, made with pantry staples and standard muffin pans, and just need 20 minutes in the oven, no-preheating needed.

 Even though Marisa recommends them hot from the oven, we found they made a perfectly fine snack at room temperature a few hours later.

For a family gathering, I made the Concord Grape Butter Pizza with Camembert.  Oh! that was delicious! When I make and can grape juice in the fall, I use the spent skins to make grape butter, so I've got plenty of grape butter on hand.

I followed Marisa's pizza crust recipe instead of using my standard favorite, and it was the perfect thickness and texture for its toppings as well as easy to make and handle.  Marisa also explains the ratio of sweet spread to cheese to green topping which is helpful to cooks who want to go off-recipe.  I used Brie instead of Camembert and chopped arugula instead of baby arugula.  So, so, so delicious. I will definitely be making this for future neighborhood potlucks.

Yesterday, I made Marisa's Jam-Lacquered Chicken Wings for supper (excellent name!). I buy whole chickens and when I cut them up to cook, I've been collecting the wings separately in the freezer.  I've never made wings before, just threw them into stock, but I was determined to try since Ben has requested wings several times. 

Marisa's recipe was very clear and produced excellent results.  I didn't know meat can literally cook under the broiler - I typically just use the broiler to brown something.  But the wings cooked under the broiler exactly as Marisa indicated.  To paint the wings, I finished up jars of fig jam and grape butter and added some tomato jam as well as enough runny pepper jam (from 2013! it was waiting for its destiny) to give them a nice kick.

Next time, I will salt the wings on both sides and also broil them on both sides to increase the caramelization.  I find it annoying to get my fingers so messy for such a little bit of  (ok, delicious) meat, but my family was loving these wings, so ok, I do love seeing my people enjoy their food. Too bad my fingers were too sticky to operate my camera!

There is really a lot more to love in this cookbook.  I'm going to use my onion jam in a Goat Cheese Savory Jam Tart, and I'm going to consider all the options for a jar of apple butter that I don't think we will spread on toast.  I appreciate Marisa's inclusion of some basic canning recipes in the final section because I have a deep yearning for Orange Marmalade Ice Cream and no marmalade in my pantry.

 I have two small quibbles with the book, both of which are typical of me and typical of most cookbooks being published (and probably not Marisa's decisions, either).  I prefer spiral bound cookbooks for kitchen use because it's tricky to get a stiff hardcover book to stay open while I cook. But good job keeping the recipes mostly on the same spread! It's also very tricky to turn pages between ingredient list and instructions while cooking.   I also prefer a very detailed index that includes major ingredients as entries so that I can look up recipes based on the ingredients they use, not just the recipe name or type.

I highly recommend the Food in Jars Kitchen cookbook.  It's beautiful to look at and full of recipes for daily cooking - from quick-the-kids-need-a-snack to the fancy-food potluck happening on the weekend. 

Relatives, Permaculture, and Hot Dogs

We went to visit Uncle Ron and Aunt Elena on a little trip.  They spoiled us.  We sat up late on their cozy front porch, talking, and made delicious food together (apparently Phoebe was sitting up on the counter licking the cake batter bowl, but I was out on a bike ride and didn't see it).  We visited the SteelStacks together, a lively place with fascinating history.

One of the books I had along to read was Gaia's Garden, recommended by Amanda Soule. I like the idea of permaculture, and this second edition has a chapter on urban permaculture which is making me think and consider. I think I also understand why my dear friend was looking for stacks of newspapers when she started her garden (to mulch!  mulch everything!).

I have a lot to learn in gardening, so I was especially fascinated by Aunt Elena's gardens.  She mixed veggies and herbs in with her flowers.  She composts her scraps in one of the ways Gaia's Garden mentions:  just put the stuff in the ground and let it go.  Her soil sample tested beautifully last year.  And she has little broken bits of china here and there in the sweetest way. I adore the mix of order and whimsy in her garden:  not perfect and prissy, but definitely cared for, definitely abundant and happy.

On the drive home, we stopped at Yocco's Hot Dogs.  My hot dog quest continues! I wasn't seeking out a hot dog joint - we just needed somewhere fast to get food that hopefully wasn't a chain and hopefully before the toddler lost her mind.  My husband remembered that foodie friends had worshiped at the Yocco's shrine, so we wanted to check it out.  The hot dogs were fine - good, sure - but my attention was caught by their steamed buns. I had never heard of steamed buns before a commenter on my Patagonian hot dog post mentioned Chicago-style hot dogs, and I went googling off to do some research.

Yocco's clearly is an institution and has a loyal following.  I always love when people make a fuss about food - it immediately becomes a goal of mine to track down the food and taste it.

Letters from Honeyhill

Letters from Honeyhill: A Woman's View of Homesteading 1914-1931 is an unusual treasure that Rebecca found at our library.  It is a collection of letters written by Cecilia Hennel Hendricks, who is an excellent writer with an eye for detail, humor, and human interest.  Her letters, selected and edited by her daughter, range in topic from housekeeping minutia and observations to her involvement in state politics to their family finances.

Cecilia writes about their first car (and car accidents), their first victrola, and redecorating.  She discusses canning and raising children with her sisters and mother, also going on at length about the petty squabbles of the various ladies' aid groups she is involved with.

Like most homesteaders, she and her family suffer tragedies, although Cecilia does not express self-pity, regrets, or despair in her letters.  I admire her fortitude even as I wonder how she kept it up (maybe she had times in her bedroom with the door closed that she feels are not something she cared to document for posterity!).  Occasionally, she refers to times when she was ill or “doing poorly” but she doesn’t elaborate.  When her parents and sisters send gifts and money, she is grateful and gracious - that takes such skill when difficulties slam up against pride!

I'll give you a short sample entry here below, so you can read for yourself Cecilia's style and insights. This book is well worth seeking out if you are interested in a women's biographies, housekeeping, or the homesteading/pioneering life.

Tuesday, June 5, 1923

“I am pleased to state that we now have a girl to stay with us all the time.  She came last night.  Her name is Norma Myers and she is a high school girl from Powell.  Mrs. Osborne told us about her last summer, and when we couldn’t get anybody else this time we got her.  I think she is about 18, and is a good big girl.  Mrs. Osborne says she has been cooking since she was 13 years old and can do anything about the house.  She is a neat looking girl and her mother is always as neat as a pin.  Their house looks nice, so I guess she knows how to do things.  It will certainly be nice to have our house looked after.  John does enjoy having a clean, neat house to sit down in after his work outside is finished, and when I had everything to do I couldn’t always keep the house looking the way I wanted it to.  The outside yard work in the bees will soon start and then of course I can put in my time to advantage helping John, and he will need help, for we have more bees this year than we have ever had."

Two Thrifty Cookbooks Inspiring Me Right Now

I have been inspired by two new cookbooks from the library recently. It so happens that they are both thrifty, although in different ways.

The CSA Cookbook: No-Waste Recipes for Cooking Your Way Through a Community Supported Abriculture Box, Farmers' Market, or Backyard Bounty by Linda Ly is a new book (so I can't renew it and I just keep paying the fine because it's a rental fee, a donation to the library - right?).  Ly's parents were first-generation immigrants from Vietnam and they used every scrap of the food they bought.

I knew that rhubarb leaves were poisonous, so I guess I extrapolated that to mean that other leaves are not good eating either.  But: Tomato Leaf Pesto and Ginger-Spiced Chicken Soup with Wilted Pepper Leaves (and others!). I have already made her recipes for Chard Stalk Hummus and Kale Stem Pesto.  I didn't care for her specific recipes (she put lemon in the pesto and I like my hummus recipe better), but the concept is brilliant. I definitely will not be composting kale stems again!

Ly brings in a number of ethnic cuisine recipes, which makes sense because other cuisines are adept at using parts that we Americans ignore or discard. Chimichurri the Way an Argentine Makes It, for example, and Watermelon Rind Kimchi which has convinced me to seek out a Korean pepper paste at my Asian store.

My only pet peeve with this book (and it's not Ly's fault) is that it is a hardcover book which is difficult to wrangle in the kitchen where, ostensibly, a cook would want to have the book in order to use it.  Hey, cookbook publishers, make the cookbooks kitchen-user-friendly, like with a spiral binding or a three-ring binder.  I know the industry tips towards coffee-table book food porn, but I want a practical book.

The other cookbook I'm renting is paperback - a bit easier to manage as I cook.  It's Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 a Day by Leanne Brown. It grew out of her master's project to make good recipes for people living on SNAP (formerly known as food stamps).

I am absolutely fascinated by this book because I deeply desire to get people, especially people with few resources, into the kitchen to cook and eat well.  Brown is attempting to reach a population that could really benefit from kitchen knowledge and cooking. I bump into people like this frequently at my kids' school, although I usually start up conversations with less-dangerous topics than cooking and eating.

Her tone is friendly and matter-of-fact and she has an impressive range of recipes and ideas for all kinds of cooks - I picked up several tricks along the way (corn cob broth, frozen melon cubes for a quick sorbet, savory breakfast oatmeal).  Her recipes focus on vegetables with just a bit of meat here and there; I am particularly charmed by the Half-Veggie Burgers, and the Chorizo and White Bean Ragu. I love her suggestions for hot dog toppings.  She divides her recipes into truly useful chapters:  Breakfast, Soup and Salad, Snacks, Sides, &Small Bites, Dinner, Big Batch, Pantry, Drinks & Desserts.  The final chapter of desserts is a tiny chapter and although Brown doesn't preach anywhere that sugar is bad, that tiny chapter is an unmissable statement.

Most of the time, Brown explains any fancy ingredients and techniques.  Sometimes, however, she forgets these cooks and accidentally shows her NYC roots.  Her dal recipe specifies black mustard seeds and cumin seeds in addition to other spices; these are not common spices, nor do they have wide application in a number of dishes. There are dhal recipes with more common spices (mine, for example), or she could list a variation with ground spices. A recipe calls for a "handful of Thai basil" - this is a rarity unless you have a garden or a fancy (probably urban) grocery store. She doesn't advise what to do with a partial can of coconut milk (I would freeze it in cubes for other recipes) and she generally specifies fresh hot peppers, which have unpredictable heat so you could accidentally make a dish too spicy to consume or burn your fingers and lungs in the process. For a stroganoff, she airily advises cooks to "ask your butcher" if you want to use a cut other than chuck. Most cooks don't have a butcher to ask, let alone a novice cook who is overwhelmed simply by the grocery-store display of meat.

Both these cookbooks have inspired new dishes in my kitchen, which is nice.  I cook for my family daily which occasionally bogs me down into a rut where I feel like I've cooked everything already. And now that I have told you about these books, I will return them to the library on the walk to school tomorrow.  Possible purchases in my future. . .

Nancy Drew's Little Sister

That is her only wish right now:  to be Nancy Drew's little sister.  Never mind that Nancy is a fictional character and likes being an only child.  Genevieve knows that little sisters are wonderful and she wants to live in Nancy Drew's world.

I got major mom points by finding a length of Nancy Drew fabric online and sewing two panels onto tee-shirts for my girl.

What I really wanted to do was make a tee shirt that said "Nancy Drew a picture" with a magnifying glass underneath but my brain sort of stopped at the options for lettering and I didn't push on.

And we are both pleased with how the tee shirts turned out.

There are still some panels of N.D. fabric left; maybe I will make a tote that Genevieve can't physically grow out of. Because I know that she will grow out of this Nancy Drew enthrallment, but oh it is charming while it lasts.  Genevieve is going to start wearing penny loafers as soon as her (secondhand on eBay) pair comes in the mail.

Bringing Up Bébé: Book Review

So my husband purchased a Harper’s magazine for his beach reading a few weeks ago.  And there was the author of Bringing Up Bébé, Pamela Druckerman, reflecting on her book.  I had forgotten about her book – I had never read it, although I read the other Frenchy books: French Kids Eat Everything and French Women Don’t Get Fat.  I found value in both those books, although it’s extremely tempting to lump the trio together for scorn and jokes and pro-American sentiment.

Then, two of the beach girls mentioned how much they wished they had read Bringing Up Bebe when they had their own small babies.  I looked at my small baby and read the book.  

The immediate effect on me was liberation.  I loved the idea of a patient, happy baby and a sane life not dictated by boring baby needs (note: this is not exactly what Druckerman claims, but rather the conclusion that I drew).  A fellow blogger pointed out a few weeks ago that days with an infant can be long and boring; I instantly felt relief and recognition when she described that feeling I was trying not to feel.  I am a homebody homemaker and I love being a mother, but yes, heaven help me, I need some stimulation besides baby life all day!

But, back to Bringing Up Bébé: I reviewed my nighttimes with Phoebe – we weren’t doing too badly and I had assumed in the American way that I had gotten a “good sleeper.”  She had slept from 9pm to 6am a few times since she was 3 months old, thus proving to me that she could go without milk at night.  So since then, if she fussed in the middle of the night, I would comfort her without offering to nurse her.  Younger babies usually do need milk around the clock, but by 3 months, Druckerman says, babies can sustain their sleep at night without milk, even if they feel a little hungry, just like kids and adults. In fact, parents should first watch the baby (La Pause, Druckerman jokes) when she starts fussing to see if she’s trying to go back to sleep or what; apparently, kids and adults wake up between sleep cycles and put themselves right back to sleep without even remembering it; that’s the goal for the babies, to learn that automatic self-soothing right back to sleep.

I found this perspective incredibly helpful.  It also rings true with my previous babies.  And further chapters had more sensible advice on manners, sensory exploration, eating, vacationing, and adult life.

Towards the end of the book, I began to try to read between the lines to see what the downfalls of French parenting might be.  Breastfeeding is actively discouraged (mothers can return to “normal” faster). Children seem to spend almost as much time away from their parents as with their parents.  From a young age, sometimes less than a year old, they go to nursery schools and childcare; the care is excellent and personal, but the pattern continues of French children essentially outsourced to other caregivers, taking week-long field trips in kindergarten and so on.  I’m guessing this makes for rather distant, formal relationships between parents and children.  The French government also pays for much of the schooling, medical care, maternal care, and extras; there are very few stay-at-home parents in France because the childcare is so easily available.

I’m still ruminating on this book, so we’ll see what stays with me long-term.  For now, here are my take-aways:

1. Give Phoebe some time when she starts fussing so she and I can figure out what’s needed.  Develops patience in her.  La Pause.

2. Encourage her to amuse herself with very little, to let her explore her world on her own terms.  This is the opposite of Baby Einstein and constant stimulation to speed up development.

3. Tell Phoebe what is going on and my reasons for what I’m doing with her (the French really believe that babies can understand such talk on an intuitive level – it sure makes me feel better about driving the last 10 minutes when she’s screaming if I’ve first explained to her that I will nurse her when we get home).

4. Give serious attention to my marriage as the primary relationship in our family.  Feel and feed my status as a beloved wife and lover.  My parents were an excellent example of this and their love made for a secure family life.  I’ve been guilty of attending to the urgent, noisy needs of the kids and feeling grateful if my husband doesn’t appear to need me so I can creep away for silence.  Can I be a good mother, partner, and introvert?  We’ll see!