No Words For It

Four of our chickens were killed by two stray dogs tonight.

What's For Dinner?

This is the age-old problem. We all deal with it differently. Sometimes I just don't deal with it. We eat pancakes and pretend it's something exotic.

Mostly I'm pretty hyper-organized (a nice way of saying, "anal") about dinner. I map out the week's meals on my desk organizer on Sunday. I write up the grocery list, put in notes about when to soak the beans, take out the meat, prep the pot bread. I try to take into account the many practices that my kids have to go to--no highly involved dinner plans on a night that I have to get Samuel to football at 5:00, Grace to soccer at 5:30, pick up Grace at 6:30, Samuel at 7:00. Mostly, I only have drop-off duty, though.

So tonight is a good example of me trying to have something interesting for dinner and also juggle the double practices. Before Samuel's practice I prepped the Cheddar Drop Biscuits. Have I made these before? No. But they sounded good. I'm making Lentil-Vegetable Soup for dinner and the Grissini I thought looked really good and easy to make turned out not so good. I needed a backup and instead of settling for grilled cheese sandwiches (or nothing), went with the biscuits. I ran Samuel up to football, got back at 5:00 with time to hurriedly put the biscuits together and stick them in the oven.

Oh, leaving the house with the oven on? With something in the oven? I have so gotten over worrying about it. It's a new oven, it better not start my house on fire. And if it does, we'll go out for pizza.

I ran (okay, I drove very quickly through the neighborhoods, slowing down where it looked like children or dogs might be lurking) Grace up to her practice, came home to pull the biscuits out and start the soup. By this time Dave had got home so I was off the hook for pick up duty. Hooray!

And now the soup is quietly bubbling on the stove, the biscuits are cold (not the best way to eat them) but ready, and I have time to sip on a glass of wine and reflect on the last two hours. Is this worth it? The running, the chopping, the plotting out to the last detail how long it takes to make a dish, raise some dough, simmer some really tasty and healthy soup? Obviously, yes. It takes a heck of a lot of time and energy to make everything from scratch but in the end I see the benefits everywhere. We seldom get sick, we have energy to do everything that we do, we are fit, and we love food. Good food, real food. And do I feel guilty as hell for being privileged enough to not work outside the home, to be able to provide such bounty when so many cannot afford the time to obsess on whether to make Grissini or Cheddar Drop Biscuits? Yes. Yes and Yes and Yes.

This last Sunday's New York Times Magazine is all about food. Some of it is a little too precious (even if I did "devour" the entire article) as in the Michael Pollan bit about cooking for 36 hours on an outside clay oven with other foodies; other articles address the idea of building community through food, whether in Maine or Alabama or Detroit. The idea of handing out slices of homemade pie on a street corner to initiate conversation particularly struck me. Or planting gardens in the middle of the city where once stood empty lots collecting refuse and graffitti. Food is something everyone has an opinion about--why not use it to open up connections, bring industry at a grassroots level to impoverished neighborhoods, ensure that children and adults have a hand in food production, food consumption?

It seems that perhaps someday in the not-too-distant future maybe I can (or will) turn my attention to food outside the home. There must be some way to make it possible for everyone to eat first and foremost. Then maybe some way to make it possible for everyone to think about what they put in their bodies, to take pleasure in creating, and time to create, a meal out of real food. Big, grandiose plans, maybe a little pie-in-the-sky, but maybe one day you'll see me on the street corner here in my little burg, handing out pieces of pie.

Until then, I'll keep working on the home front, one meal at a time.

When Chickens Fly

Martha came out of the egg box long enough to fly up into the crabapple tree. I'm starting to think that Martha is a chicken who marches to her own beat.

First Sweater...Finished!

I really wasn't trying to look so serious for such a momentous occasion, but there it is. No smile. Anyway, I'm so glad to finally have finished this sweater. I started in January 2010, took a long break from it to: nurse an ailing wrist; go to Alaska; have a hot summer; refinish the entire living room. With patient help from knitter-extraordinaire Chelee, buttons from my mom, and many (hopefully) hard to see boo-boos, it's done in time for cooler weather.

Hide & Seek

Grace feeding the chickens bread crumbs. Lady is trying to get in on the action, too.

Martha is broody. She is convinced that she needs to sit in the egg box, even when there are no eggs under her. It doesn't surprise me that Martha is the first to do this. She is the biggest, the head chicken, the first to lay an egg. What does surprise me, however, is that she is broody now. My chicken books say that broodiness comes on with the lengthening days. We are definitely in "shortening" mode. Guess you can't always expect a book to have all the answers.

In the meantime, I push my hand under Martha a couple times a day, looking for the egg that may or may not be there. Whether one is there or not, she cackles at me, fluffs up her feathers, and refuses to budge.

Since all the chickens refuse to use the other egg box, and because Martha is hogging the other one, the other girls have gotten very creative in where they deposit their eggs. Gabby lays hers in a window well, nestled on top of some dry leaves and under the protective branches of a cotoneaster. Nancy lays under the broken red rake on the other side of the house. The rake leans up against the house and she has made a nice little bed with more dried leaves.

Ida and Michelle are wild cards. I'm not sure where they lay. I am still only getting about 3 eggs a day. Maybe some of them are on the every-other-day plan. Today, however, as I was hanging out sheets (it truly is a sunny day--cool, but no rain threatening) I heard a big ruckus on the other side of the shed. The "I laid an egg and I'm pretty proud of myself" crowing ruckus. I found a new spot, wedged between some cement bricks, the end of the hedge, and the neighbor's garage. Two dirty, little eggs. And since I can't tell the difference between Ida and Michelle (I need Grace to do this for me) I'm not sure which one did it. One from yesterday, I presume, the other nice and warm from this morning.

And so I see the days spread out before me, a mindful, quiet search every day for my little eggs. It's not a bad image.

Until, of course, I start imagining the snow.

Crazy Fall Weather

I should have known when I got up this morning that the brilliant blue sky, heavy warm air, and perfect calm would not last.

The floors that finally got swept and mopped after days of scattered mud and grass clumps; the blueberry muffins baked for "breakfast snacks" at our local ALE, HomeLink; the laundry that got hung up outside to dry (and then promptly taken back down); all of this could have waited while I got out for a walk. But I figured it would hold. I saw the signs that the weather wouldn't last but I blithely ignored them, happy for the opportunity to get stuff done while the rest of the gang was busy elsewhere. (Who am I kidding... they were watching football in the basement. Not so busy but definitely occupied.)

By the time my bread loaves emerged from the oven, sheets of rain not only replaced the sun, they absolutely shouted out, "No walk today!"

And so now I am tired, having continued on the overly industrious track I started this morning. But I have colcannon sitting on the stove in my beautiful red dutch oven, a glass of Jubelale at my side, and the Sunday NY Times Magazine to read, this week's issue completely devoted to food and communities brought together through food. And then to an early bed with Sherlock Holmes and undoubtedly Fluffy on my stomach, curled into my legs for warmth.

First Day of School, Finally

At long last, school has come to our house, too. All the friends, whether homeschooled or public schooled, have been at the books for at least a week. I think this fact, along with too much summer (yes, it's possible), helped make the transition eagerly embraced around here.

Samuel went off to "real" school at Homelink, an Alternative Learning Environment which is run by the public schools. He's in 6th grade, taking classes two days a week and doing the rest of the work at home. After classes today, he decided he likes his Washington State history class and math classes best, with runners up being the Environmental Science and Physical Science classes. Since that's all of them at Homelink, I'd say that's pretty good.

Grace is still mostly schooled at home although she'll have "workshops" at Homelink one day a week: art, creative writing, drama, and martial arts.

And Dave? Well, he's not actually back to school until next week. Today he worked on the first of two very overdue book reviews that he needs to write. He got it done and finally swapped his pajamas for biking clothes after lunch. Good day for Dad.

And I worked on my sweater while helping Grace remember her times facts. Lady napped.