beauty that moves

a very brief hello... and jam

Hi everyone! I have only a minute, there are some major computer issues in my life at the moment. This explains my absence the last several days, and likely the next few days ahead. Hang on (I say to myself), check back soon (I say to you), and wish me luck as I attempt to remove over 8,000 photos, countless word docs, e-books, music, and who knows what else from the hard drive. The many, many hours spent on the phone with tech support tells me that my computer is not toast yet, but everything has to come off asap so they can work their tech-y magic and breathe new life into my fifth appendage.

In the meantime, have some jam.

The other night I made a batch of Rhubarb Ginger Jam and have been enjoying it for lunch everyday with goat cheese, really rugged crackers, and sliced pears. Everything about the combination of these things is perfect.

I'm really trying to link to this recipe but my quickly degenerating computer is saying no way, you're lucky to be on here at all, nice try smarty pants. It came from the editor's page of Hallmark magazine, October issue. I'm kind of surprised I enjoy this magazine, but I do. My mom got me a subscription when it first came out and though it was much lighter on the advertisements back in those first few months, the photography in the feature articles is always so beautiful. So if you see it on the newstands, flip to the letter from the editor for the jam recipe, it's excellent and would also serve nicely as a little tummy tonic for the family. There is a 1/2 cup of fresh ginger in the recipe that makes about one quart. Ginger lovers utopia!

See you soon!

ps - All of this computer nonsense also explains emails and comments that need responding to as well.  I'm behind on things, very behind.

hanging on to summer

For us, part of the craziness in flip-flopping schedules when I taught yoga, was  what I referred to as the parking lot swap. Adam and I would meet at a given time, minutes before I had to be at the studio, him slightly stressed from leaving a pile of unfinished work on his desk because of his early departure. As a mom, all I can say is parking lot swaps suck. I'd stand there passing off Emily, spend two seconds debriefing with Adam, then I was off, shouting last minute dinner instructions out the window as I drove away. I never was able to escape the feeling in my stomach and a voice in my head that said, "this is so not the way!" Because our time as a family is so precious, and it being summer and all, we've gotten pretty good at making the most of the one night a week he comes home at a decent hour. Enter ice cream for dinner. Every Thursday.

As the summer winds down, I find myself upping my game, as you can see by this banana split. Totally not finish-able, so darn huge. I am not one who is shy about hefty portions of ice cream, but ummm... seriously.

We take a little drive out of our city and head to the very New England countryside of winding roads, fields of wildflowers, and horse farms, finally arriving at our destination. Adam always says those waffle bowls are just too much, so delicious but way too filling, next time he'll just go for the ice cream... yeah, right. As you drive up, the incredible smell of made to order waffle bowls and cones is everywhere, resistance is futile.

We hang out with the ducks and chickens, cows and bunnies, flowers and open space... there is usually a soccer ball or two lying around for play. It's very simple, just ice cream and families, doing their best to hang on to summer. We've got one full week left before Emily returns to school, there is a lot of summer to experience in these remaining days. See you next week girl, and please tell your shy lady friends back there I said thanks. You never disappoint me.

Vegan schmegan... not today friends, not next Thursday either.  My relationship with you, Veganism, is so day to day. I hope you understand. Yes, I feel so much more amazing when I embrace you fully, but life is short, you know?

right under my nose

For many, many months now we've been having the conversation pretty regularly about needing new dishes. Our current set is dwindling, it's about 6 years old and was purchased new. Such a short life can often mean (and is true in our case) that the quality was pretty dismal to begin with. We've gotten to the point where we aren't putting them in the dishwasher unless we are going to run the load because we wouldn't have enough clean plates left in the cupboard for our next meal. You know what I'm talking about... we've all been through the various stages of shrinking dish sets. My problem is that I have no desire to drive to, or spend, an entire afternoon at the big shopping mecca in our area. It's a consumers dream or nightmare, depending on how you look at it. It depresses the heck out of me and I avoid it as best I can. Then it occurred to me... "Heather, you run a little online vintage shop... and for every item you have in there, you have five more waiting to be photographed and listed... go shopping right here, silly... why did it take you so long to figure this out?" There, that's better. Look at all those plates, saucers, cups. And there were even two creamer sugar sets! Maybe I can let one of those go. I still need some bowls though, some deeper digging needs to be done. In the meantime, I'm so pleased with my new dish set. And you know, I would have spent more in gas to go to the mall than I did on this whole set (that I found at a flea market five minutes from my house). That makes the score extra sweet. That and the fact that I'm pretty confident this set will hold up to more than six years of use.

Does anyone know the name of this pattern? Rhonda left a note in the comments asking, and I'd love to know too. If you know the name please let us know, thanks so much!

pretending to be a painter

Yesterday I was visiting several blogs, checking around on Flickr (which I am finally trying to be embrace into my life), and I came upon a photo of a painting that really caught my eye, from Toni at Simple Sparrow. I thought, oh, that is so pretty... how I'd love to paint like that... could i paint like that?... I have no idea if I could paint like that. I was an art student in school but always avoided the painting classes, thinking I wouldn't be good enough. Without being too fancy or think too hard about it, I decided to just try and paint what I saw, to just see if I could come close to creating anything as pretty as Toni's piece. The beginning went surprisingly well, I was pleased with the little cluster of pink flowers and have no idea how I made the leaves actually look like leaves... I was even thinking, "I just might hang this in my home." As I continued to work, the painting quickly got away from me. I wondered if this happens to *real* painters and if they are able to save their work. We were running out of white paint and it seemed like every time I went to dip my brush in the palette, I needed white. Well, the orange flowers (which on the original painting are clearly roses) look like nothing more than gloppy circles. But those leaves were still fun! I forged ahead, trying to fix or save my little orange roses until the white ran out. At this point I could only step back and look at my work, as complete as it was going to be. It's not great, many of the flowers appear to be floating around in space and should have been painted in much tighter clusters, but it was incredibly fun and I can see an interest developing here... with lots and lots of practice. I really enjoyed the process, painting beside Emily, listening to The Splendid Table podcasts (safe to listen to with children!), and painting away, inside, on an unusually cool August afternoon. I'm going to stock up heavily on white and get back to work, next time taking a cue from the young one though... Find inspiration all around you and let it motivate you to try new things, but have the confidence to make it your very own. 

early bird

Every once in a while the youngest in our family goes through a phase of getting up at 5am. She'll set her alarm clock, she is not a snooze button girl. She rises promptly and greets her day full of energy. Today she took care of her pets, made her bed, took a shower (as I lay in bed listening to the shower water turn on and off, determining whether she is lathering or rinsing, her latest effort in conservation). At this point I figure I should get up as well, and put a little effort into my day. It's about 5:30...

By 6am she had taken the dog out, checked and harvested the days take from the garden, and set about filling up many, many little jars with fresh flowers. It's a little thing of hers that I'm rather fond of.

Somewhere in the midst of her whirlwind, I did manage to squeak out a batch of our favorite blueberry muffins, but that's about it. Well, I did put together Adam's lunch, we sat down together for a weekday breakfast (which doesn't happen too often), then sent him on his way for the day. As I write this there has been spritzing of the bathroom counters upstairs, and vacuuming. Lot's and lot's of vacuuming. Now she is right next to me vacuuming... I'm not feeling right about this... blogging while my child vacuums under my feet... hmmm. I better run, but let me leave you with two recipes.

1. I made a great little fruit dip for Adam's lunch today, to go with apple and pear slices. Yes, he's 36, but what can I say, we're dippy kind of people. It's simple. Mix 1 cup vanilla yogurt with 3 TBS. orange marmelade and 1 TBS. poppy seeds. I figured with school lunches on the horizon for many of us you might like to try it, it's excellent!
2. The recipe for blueberry muffins. Click on the photo to enlarge, hopefully you can read it. This recipe was used at my father-in-law's deli years ago. It's where Adam and I met, I used to bake these every day at 5am. Today I didn't use any raspberries, just blueberries, I adjusted the amount. This makes a huge pan of very large muffins. I suggest cutting the recipe in half, you aren't trying to impress the customers with your super-sized everything... this paper is the original recipe from the deli, can you tell? I really should re-type this soon.

There are a few changes I make, I don't use white sugar but a mix of sucanat and evaporated cane juice (which is super close to being white sugar, hence the sucanat), I also make my own "bisquick", there are recipes all over the internet.

:::UPDATED::: I just read this recipe... in case you can't tell, the temp for the oven is 375 degrees. If you do go ahead and half the recipe, making more normal sized muffins, you only need to cook then for about 25 minutes. Today I cooked them at 400 for 20 minutes, I'm a flexible baker. ;)

Oh, one more thing for those of you who have made it this far... with school lunch making coming up, do you have any great ideas? I'd love to do a lunch box post in the next week or so and would love your ideas/recipes to contribute. Of course I will link to you, and I think we would all benefit, even when we were homeschooling there were so many days when we would pack lunch to meet with friends, go apple picking, swimming, etc. Feel free to leave ideas in the comments. Thank you!