Family Strife

Sometimes, out of the blue, something happens to remind me of how radically different my family relationships are than the typical. It’s always such a surprise when this happens; so much so that I rarely speak up to say that family strife does not have to be the “norm.”

Last night my dd, 14, and I took a knitting class. I’m the one who wanted to learn how to knit; my dd came along as my security blanket. I have very little self-confidence when it comes to learning how to do something new in front of other people.

Anyway, the class was taught be a lovely Australian woman. Our classmates included two middle-aged sisters and one of their daughters and another young woman who was far too skilled to be in our beginner’s class!

Altogether it was a delightful evening, but at one point, the conversation turned toward children and teenagers. Our teacher talked about how her adult sons know nothing about her as a person; don’t even really think of her as a “person.” She went on to say how most children don’t know anything about their parents, aren’t interested in knowing, etc. The other mothers in the group agreed and the sharing of “teenager” horror stories began.

The teacher remembered how her oldest son was “impossible” and how every day on the way to school she would pull over and just tell him to get out and walk. She shared that she believed his sole purpose during his teen years was to try to make everyone in the family miserable. She couldn’t wait until he was out of the house and it would just be her younger son there. But no sooner had the older one left than the younger turned impossible as well… and on and on and on. The two other mothers laughed and agreed, with one talking about how at age 15 her daughter (named Sara) turned into the “anti-Sara,” etc.

I wanted to say that I have three teenagers now and they know all about me! My kids know my likes and dislikes, my foibles and skills, what makes me laugh and what makes me cry. I know the same about them. We have a relationship built on love and trust, honesty and caring, and mutual respect. I love who my children are and always have.

So why did these other women have such different experiences with their children? Could it be that their mother/child relationships were built on control and lack of respect? The experiences they shared were so foreign to me – I can’t imagine wishing for the time when my children leave home.

I wanted to speak up, but didn’t know how to break into the conversation without sounding critical. Instead, on the way home, I talked with my dd about our relationship and my relationships with her older brothers. I’m glad my kids know that I love who they are right now; that I trust them to make decisions about their own lives and will support them no matter what.

Rising to the occasion

Lately I've been on a bread-making jaunt. My last one was in January. They usually last a couple of weeks at a time, but I'm hopeful I'll be able to sustain this one for a longer period of time. I finally found a good all-purpose whole wheat bread that my youngest dd will eat. It soft and mild tasting, with no added crunchiness. This is essential to her favorite breakfast - a piece of bread with peanut butter and chocolate chips; milk-chocolate, not semi-sweet.

So far this week I've made bread three times; a whole grain oat bread, Vienna bread and easy overnight-started bread, all from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. I never used to have much success with many of the breads from this cookbook. Now that I have a Kichenaid stand mixer, I realize I never kneaded the bread long enough by hand.

Making bread is part of my desire to live my principles and eat as locally as I can. I have to be careful, however, as I tend to easily place myself in a box and then feel horrendous guilt and failure when, for example, I buy kiwi at the grocery store.

No matter what else, if anything, I accomplish during any given day, if I have made bread I feel successful. There's something about working the dough with my hands and feeling it come to life that nurtures my need to create. It took me years to finally allow myself to use a machine to knead the bread; it always somehow felt like cheating.

Years ago, when my MIL was still alive, she visited my family for a week. Hilde made bread for her entire family of 12 children for years and years. Though in her later years we tended not to get along well, this visit sticks out in my mind for things we had in common.

During her visit, I made bread at least a couple of times. I remember one kind was a whole grain raisin bread. Hilde and I discussed our love of bread baking and how it was a manifestation of our love for our families. Though I chose to bake bread, Hilde, as a farm wife and mother of a dozen, really had no choice; yet we shared similar feelings for the process and the result.

I remember agreeing with her that a perfect salutation would be, "May your loaves rise high and light."

Though she has been gone now for several years, every time I make bread I think of my mother-in-law and this very basic connection we will always share.

What's that perfume you're wearing?????

I finally made the switch yesterday morning to using a locally produced shampoo bar. It's from Prairieland Herbs in Woodward, IA. I've had the soap since February, but was intimidated by the caution "you may experience funky hair for the first few weeks of use."

I've been using the body bars for several months now and really like it, but using the shampoo bar was, well scary!

So, because of the funky hair-scare, I bought the lovely-sounding "Red Rose and Lemon Balm" Herbal Hair Rinse, guaranteed to combat any wacky side effects the transition from petroleum/chemical-based hair care to a more natural, earth friendly approach.

True to its word, the rinse definitely kept my hair close to its normal level of funkiness. However, I neglected to read the fine print on the hair rinse bottle. "An herbally infused organic apple cider vinegar rinse..."

Worked like a charm, smelled like a salad.

A Happy Mother's Day

What a glorious Mother's Day I had! It started with whole wheat walnut coffee cake and the Sunday New York Times, courtesy of my wonderful husband, Michael. He and the kids spent a good portion of the day cleaning the house, folding laundry, etc. We now have a bunch of pictures of the kids framed and ready to hang. Michael took the kids to a garden center where they picked out four beautiful rose bushes for our front yard. They surprised me by planting them before showing them to me!

I also received a gift of honey through Oxfam International, a lovely card and even a haiku from my youngest:

You snort when you laugh
and then you laugh more ha ha
which makes me laugh, too

Uh hmm, don't you love the honesty of children??

Dinner was also prepared for me by dh and Stephen: marinated pork chops cooked on the grill, grilled asparagus parmesan, fresh salad (from Melissa) and homemade coffee chocolate chip ice cream from Stephen and Michael.

I spent most of the day reading - to myself! - it was lovely.

Herbaceous Cookies, Dude

Our family food-foraging experiments took an interesting turn today when my friend Meg sent me a recipe for Dandelion Flower cookies. It seemed the perfect family activity for a gorgeous Mother's Day.

Unlike other neighborhoods from my past, I don't have to worry about whether the yards here have been sprayed. I now live in a poor area of Des Moines, just a few blocks away from inner city revitalization. The move here was a calculated gamble. Our hope is that revitalization will migrate 1/2 mile further east. The immediate gratification was restoring a 1904 house and a much lower mortgage. We left an upper middle class (dare I say, upper class?) area of Des Moines, with its share of huge houses, pristine lawns and alarm systems, to a neighborhood with its fair share of boarded up houses, multi-family living and neglected yards. No one here can afford expensive lawn care.

Anyway, my kids, my dh and myself trooped around the neighborhood, the younger kids dashing to pick every yellow head in their path. I only needed 1/2 cup of dandelion flower petals, so our gathering didn't take long; as it is I ended up with three times as many flowers as needed.

In case you've always wondered, the dandelion is so named because of its long, pointy root. It's name in old French is "Dent-de-lion," or lion tooth. The dandelion is now spread worldwide, though it was first introduced to the Midwest by Europeans to provide food for their imported honeybees.

Anyway, we squeezed and pulled out the requisite number of flower petals and my youngest dd helped me whip up the cookies. An easy recipe. The cookies tasted kind of blah to us, with the most prominent flavor being the honey. I didn't want to waste our cookies, so we made dandelion cookie and peanut butter sandwiches.

The verdict: delicious!

Dandelion Cookies

1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup oats
1/2 cup dandelion flowers

Preheat oven to 375. Blend oil and honey and beat in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, oatmeal and dandelion flowers. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto lightly oiled cookied sheet and bake for 10 minutes.

(Before using dandelion flowers, wash them thoroughly. To remove petals, squeeze the green part of the flower and pull yellow petals out)

Farmer's Market Today!

I'm still not good at making sure I have the camera with me, taking pictures, etc. Hopefully, once I gain more technological savvy, this will become second nature.

Today was the opening day of the Des Moines Downtown Farmer's Market. Hundreds of vendors are there selling everything from plants and flowers to vegetables to hand-made jewelry and pottery. We were able to load up on what I hope will be enough locally grown produce to last the week. Our haul included spring garlic, scallions, radishes, lettuce, spinach, fresh mint, pea greens, carrots, strawberries and morrel mushrooms! Yum!

In case you're wondering - what the heck? Strawberries in Iowa now? Your suspicion is justified - it definitely is too early for most of these crops to be ready had they been grown directly in the garden. These local farmers used cold frames, greenhouses, etc., to have early crops.

Unfortunately, one does have to be careful and ask about things like this. The Des Moines Farmer's Market, unlike the market in Fayetteville, Arkansas, does not require that all foods sold be locally grown or produced. So, today there were strawberries, musk melon, watermelons, zucchini and all manner of other fruits and vegetables from California at our LOCAL market. I wonder if some poor souls who are clueless about their food think these are locally produced as well?

Anyway, breakfast was a bountiful feast made completely from locally grown foods. I sauteed some sliced garlic with a few sliced morrels in butter, then added the locally harvested pasture raised chicken eggs mixed with local milk, salt and pepper. Once these were cooked, I added some locally produced feta cheese and allowed it to melt together. Accompanied by two of the quarts of strawberries and tall glasses of milk, we were in heaven!

We had to make several trips to the car, with all the above produce and to haul our 65 pounds of flours, corn meal, rice, etc. Paul's Grains grows most of the flours, corn meal, oats, etc., that they sell in a sustainable and organic manner. Other items, such as brown rice are brought in from elsewhere, but are organically grown. I'd rather give this small, local farmer the little bit of profit than a chain grocery store. We called the night before to place our order and were told the flour was being ground as we were speaking!

Yesterday, we got our first CSA delivery. It was a small bundle, but included asparagus, scallions and rhubarb. So far, I've made a rhubarb cake - so good!

The Happy Housewife

Well, I've not made a good start here, nor have I learned how to add pictures or links. Perhaps I'll be motivated to get myself up to speed by the lamentations of my good friend, Chris, who checks this poor, neglected blog daily - because of my neglect, her online life has included a "Ground Hog Day" of Feb. 18 for the last two months.

I've been reading a lot lately about self-sufficiency and eating locally. While I've only taken baby steps toward that goal, I was quite proud of myself today, though one could say my industriousness was spurred by laziness and justified, at least in part, by self-sufficiency/local motives.

This morning I found myself wanting to make calzones for supper, but I lacked several of the major ingredients, such as pepperoni and ricotta cheese. No problem, right? A quick jaunt to the grocery store and I could proceed. But I run to the grocery store way too often and rarely leave with only the items I intended to buy. OK., I didn't want to go anywhere and I wanted calzones. What to do?

I knew we had some free-range locally purchased sausage in the freezer. That could substitute for the pepperoni. Hmm, I'd recently read that it is easy to make ricotta cheese at home... could it really be? A quick search on Google and I found the simplest-looking recipe:

1 gallon milk
1/4 cup white vinegar

Heat milk slowly to 200 degrees, add vinegar, remove from heat and let sit for several minutes.
Pour contents through cheese cloth-lined strainer and allow to drain. (I didn't have that on hand so just used a really thin cotton kitchen towel)
Gather up ends of cheese cloth and tie together. Hang from kitchen faucet to drain.

The draining is only supposed to take an hour, but my kitchen towel wasn't as porous as cheese cloth, so I had to do some extra squeezing to get the liquid out.

Anyway, it worked like a dream and I had about a pound of ricotta cheese!

We also had several plastic bags of dandelion greens and curly dock my husband and girls had foraged the other night (it's too bitter for a plain salad). I sauteed it in olive oil and garlic with salt and pepper and pureed this in my food processor.

So, along with the mozarella, farm fresh eggs and parmesan already in my fridge, I combined the ricotta, sausage and sauteed greens for the calzone filling.

I don't know when I've been so happy about a kitchen achievement as I was today about my cheese!

Since no dinner is complete without dessert, I made a cherry pie, using locally-grown cherries I pitted and froze last summer.

To round out the meal, I had an English cucumber in the fridge - add oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper to the sliced up cucumber and there's a crunchy, delicious side dish. I cut up a red pepper and a yellow pepper and those will go on the table on a platter.

So, while most of my day was spent reading for pleasure, I put together this somewhat local meal with ingredients I had on hand.

Hey, it's a start!

Womanly Arts...

Lately I've had this urge to create. This poses a problem for me, however, since I have few crafty-type skills under my belt. My mother embroiders beautifully and is making me a gorgeous tablecloth. I never learned how to embroider. My cousin taught me how to crochet when I was 10 or 11 - I have completed two afghans in my lifetime and have a slew of unfinished projects tucked away in boxes and bags. I am definitely a beginning crocheter... I can follow an easy pattern, usually.

I have made a few ATCs to trade through Imagination Tribe and decorated a votive candleholder for another trade there. Sarah, Melissa and I just completed our pages for an artful poetry book through Imagination Tribe, as well.

Note to self: Learn how to include links in text.

I bought a book of more than 250 different patterns for crocheted granny squares about a month ago and have managed to complete two different ones. I love them and have decided on the third pattern, but at this rate it will take me the rest of my life to finish another afghan! I never learned to sew - despite the apron I made in 7th grade home ec. class, though I did buy supplies recently to make two different "quilts" using differently patterned napkins. My daughter showed me how to get started, and I was doing great, until the tension went screwy (at least that's what my friend diagnosed over the phone) and I had to stop. This was two weeks ago. Oh, my daughter only took a few sewing lessons and isn't familiar with this machine - the one she knows how to use is still packed from last summer's move...

I also bought a boxed set to learn how to embroider - it is still sitting, unopened, on my dresser. Right by the unfinished shawl I started for my mom last fall...

List of current unfinished projects:

* crocheted shawl for my mom (I think I lost the instructions...)
* crocheted afghan for my second son (I think it's still packed, hopefully with the directions, from our move last summer)
* crocheted poncho for my youngest daughter (even if I could figure out how to finish it, it's been two years and I don't think it would fit her anyway)
* an afghan I started when oldest daughter was 2 years old - she's almost 14. I finished it when she was 11, but it started to come apart shortly after she started using it and I don't know how to fix it.

Last week I bought an instruction booklet for how to crochet a small purse (think young girl) and then felt it. I bought enough yarn to make at least 6 purses. I did start it today; so far so good.

Today I bought felt and embroidery thread for the girls to make teddy bears for a trade and I bought yet more yarn for myself to crochet one. We have until the end of the week if we hope to make the deadline for the trade.

So, what prompts this urge to create? Is it the beautiful works I see online and in the craft stores? The scarves, sweaters and hats my friends make? I honestly don't know.

Years ago, when she was about 4, my youngest daughter saw me working on an afghan (I never finished that one, either, though I do have about 20 granny squares made). She had never seen me crochet before. With an incredulous look on her face and a dubious tone in her voice she declared, "Mom, I thought the only womanly art you knew how to do was cooking!"

Well, honey, you may still be right!

Back to reality...

Well, I'm off to a slow start. There have been many times I've thought of posting, but have been concerned with revealing too much of myself to the world. A good friend of mine brought me back to reality by pointing out that "the world" is unlikely to be very interested in me! Hmmm...

So, here goes the effort to post 4 times this week. My other blogging goal for the week is to learn how to upload photos onto the blog. A big technological deal for me!

Another good day

Today was such a good day. Sarah is finally home from the hospital and feeling well again. I've decided to keep her home from school tomorrow - I wish I could keep her home all the time! She is so torn; loving having friends her age again and having teachers, etc., yet wanting to be home and spend her time how she wants to and feeling so frustrated with make-up work, home work, etc. It reminds me of me - never fully fitting in anywhere. Poor thing!

Anyway, I got to read the paper today and visit with Zachary about his evening at Mayhem. Drank my two cups of coffee, too. By then it was almost 11 a.m. and the rest of the tribe was stirring, so I mixed up waffles and blueberry sauce. "Whipping-up" as applied to waffles is somewhat of a misnomer - each waffle takes 3 minutes to cook, so a double batch can take close to an hour to make!

Stephen arrived home before everyone had eaten, so all my kiddos were home and we had a fun breakfast together. Zachary volunteered to wash up after breakfast while I finished cooking the waffles; the girls took off to play WoW. Stephen and Zach then went out and shoveled the entire driveway and all the sidewalk surrounding our house. This way Michael could come home from work and not have to face all that shoveling.

I finally got ready for the day at about 2 p.m., after starting a huge pot of beans to quick soak. Michael got home with the much-need cat door so we can finally keep the dog from eating cat poop!! While I made the ham and bean soup, Michael cut the hole for the cat door and installed it, and finally got some towel bars up in the bathroom.

Sarah, despite some tears, got quite a bit of her make-up work done today. Most of her time was spent playing warcraft. Zachary was thrilled with his early birthday gift of the WOW Burning Crusade. He suffered quite a lot of frustration trying to install it on the upstairs computer - our wireless hook-up is somewhat less than reliable. He moved to the downstairs computer and got it up and running and had a great afternoon.

Stephen headed back to Drake at about 3 today. I'm so glad he goes to school in Des Moines - it makes it easy to say goodbye to him when I know I'll see him again soon.

I read more of the "book that never ends," Inkspell. We think maybe the book is under an inkspell and that's why, despite seemingly reading it all the time, we never finish! It's a great story and we both love it - made a fair amount of progress reading it today and I didn't even get sleepy. Well, I did leave to use up the organic pears that were a little past their prime by making a pear pie - Michael made the crust. It wasn't the best, in fact, I don't think I"ll use that recipe again, but with some vanilla ice cream it made a passable dessert. The pie-making break helped me be awake enough to read for another hour or so!

I even had a little time to read my book club book "The Strange Case of the Dog in the Night."

After supper, we tried out a few craft activities for our girl scout meeting on Tuesday. I searched the entire Des Moines Metro looking for Ivory Snow powder and no one carries it! Instead, we tried grating up a bar of Ivory Soap and adding the water to it to make fake snow. It worked great! Both girls made absolutely adorable snow men with it - it's kind of messy, but it should be a lot of fun for Tuesday. We're also trying out an experiment to make a snowflake in a super-saturated solution of hot water and Borax. We made a framework out of pipecleaners and dangled it down into the solution from a pencil across the top of the jar. Supposedly, as the water cools, the borax will cling to the pipe cleaner, forming a hexagonal snowflake. I hope it works! I'm not sure how practical it will be for our meeting, though. Tomorrow, the girls and I will try it by placing the jar outside to see how fast the snowflake will form.

So, what made it such a good day? I think it was just being home, with everyone safe and sound, knowing I've fed my family well, everyone is happy and enjoying what they're doing. I even had some time to myself!