of the coming cold
i have written a list
it sits in a water stained steno book on my kitchen table, usually propping up a bowl of apples or peppers, but probably a bowl of potatoes that have started to green. from my inability to fulfill my promise to cook more these days. to use these dramatically pricey items that haunt my fridge and counters. to make soups and stews. to bake breads and make butter to go with it.
haven’t we all decided that it is the time for this yet again?
after a summer of laying in the grass and eating sun warmed tomatoes. pretending we have nothing else to do as the rest of our lives lurk in the driveway, in the alarm clock and in our laundry rooms.
i’m sure everyone else uses the foods that they buy.
i am sure of it
and i berate myself when i don’t, and i never do. seriously never. it’s dreadful of me. it is. i know that you know that, lets all just spit it out and agree, i am kidding myself everytime a cucumber hits my shopping cart. i should just apologize to it then, “sorry buddy, this isnt gonna be pretty”, i usually just apologize as i remove the ragged corpse of that poor cucumber as i clean my fridge, frantically, on garbage day morning.
because, and this will not come as a shock to anyone, i am always suprised by garbage day.
every single time
why are we here?
not in the grand scheme of the universe, goodness, calm down, i haven’t taken enough meds for that, no, what are we talking about? yeah, i kinda forgot why i came back.
i am pretty sure we are gonna talk about food of some sort, as that is basically all i do. im a sous chef in a blossoming cafe, soon to be restaurant that seems to devour all of my time. i can things and bake things and mostly eat crackers and jam over my sink for a meal.
i am gonna ruin an illusion here, cooks for the most part, linecooks, chefs, sous, prep, most of us, eat awfully. we spend hours and hours of our days on our feet cooking and prepping and eating snacks over garbage cans (i mean, it just makes sense) or squatting on the line to jam bread dipped in bbq sauce as our first food of the day at 3 pm, and then we come home and we eat whatever we can scavange from the cupboards and fridge. just because we can make nearly everything from scratch, in a very quick fashion, with little to no direction, it doesn’t mean that we want to anymore.
crackers and jam are easy, they don’t go bad quickly, and if there happens to be cheese nearby then , that is 3 food groups, three! and that is more than enough for me to convince myself i am doing okay, which i’m clearly not, see above paragraphs and words and exhaustion.
according to this tiny friend, it is going to be a long winter
THE LIST
that was the beginning topic before i talked about my shameful vegetable slaughtering, it was all of the things i wanted to do before the cold sets in, as i say this i have put on yet another sweater, and my fingers are so very cold that i want to just hold a cup of tea for finger warmth, but the kitchen is a good 10 feet away, and that is just seems like a lot.
we were gonna talk about my to do list. it is this never ending, far too much for one human to do, list of things i will feel badly about when i don’t get them done. it used to all live inside a planner, and then covid reminded me i have absolutely nothing to be plopping in a planner, so the steno began its scribbled life.
this book is filled with fall to do, hell summer —- okay- fine, fine fiiiiiiiiine, fine— spring to do lists i still avoid, as if we will bump into each other and i will have to explain my actions.
the items just seem to get shuffled along to the next week or season and most of them will wait there until i have overcome my adhd. i am not holding my breath on that one, i think my adhd won and i will just let it have its day in the sun.
i bring this up, because this is now the to do list.
i just decided.
i may not bring laundry folding here, maybe just the bigger, prettier things,
but who knows?
sometimes you need an easy win, although i will never ever figure laundry out and i am currently sitting next to a basket of kids laundry, albeit clean laundry, that is actually bigger than my 10 year old, and that is not great. so maybe it will make an appearance, just to get it done.
whelp, lets find out, of not, i will see you again in 2-4 months, when i remember where my laptop is and start this all over again.
let’s begin
I have made a decision, it probably isn’t a great one, but it is a decision. I suppose that counts as forward momentum, although it feels as if I have been living in a perpetual state of panic for quite some time and all decisions or ideas of forward momentum feel as if they are just bandaids for my widening failures.
wow
Shit, that was too much to start this whole blogging once again. Shall we dive into my imposter syndrome? Or my questionable childhood next? Gosh, that would be a hoot! Let’s not though, even though it seems you may be keen to listen.
Let’s actually begin, like actually preserve something. Or grow something.
It is May and quickly turning into June. And though I missed things like building greenhouses, starting seeds, or filling garden beds, I can start now, as you, my dear reader (just the one, its cool, thank you) don’t care that I have just waxed poetic and meandered my way through the last 2 years.
Even in the event that you do mind, you wont say anything, because I know your mom and she raised you better than that. Don’t make me call her, not at this hour.
forgetting
I forgot how to do this. No really I did.
I forgot all the passwords, how and when in the process of actions to take photos, how to add a photo to this text and maybe somewhere along the way, what the point of all this was.
I guess I don't know what the point of this, or anything is today, funny that I'm here writing this to you not knowing why I'm here.
But you know, it was 2002 and when you buy any white girl a MacBook they are going to write a blog. And, by god, they are going to write a beautiful, stunning, otherworldly, Noble laureate level blog. The blog that will stun you into silence and make you want to be their friend.
And we would all make beautiful dinners and have the most gorgeous children and pets and take vacation upon vacation upon vacation. Showing the world to you in these tiny little moments.
Instagram wasn't around yet. I'm going to fact check myself on that so don't worry, but it definitely wasn't something that anyone cared about yet. It wasn't the basis of how our lives were supposed to be yet
We all had it in us, these luxurious lifestyles that we needed to curate and narrate and... berate you with? (I feel like it works, berate fits the rhyme, so, it stays.) To overwhelm You with the beauty of our existence. Like it would be something you would never ever ever could imagine. We were going to do that. We all were.
And then we all grew up. It's weird, it's so very weird. Growing up. weird and quick.
The other day at work I bumped into the first boy I fell in love with. I hadn't seen him for nearly 20 years. But there he was with his kids picking out bulk cashews, Right in front of me, this boy, now man, was right there. And it was like all of a sudden I was a sophomore in high school again and he had just left for college. This blink of an eye. Where you get to pause and see how fast things go.
Don't worry this isn't going to be some long diatribe about how time goes quickly and how ywe need to hug our children and live our lives and all of that crap because we all know it already.
We all see it when we look at the windows when we are at our jobs and we see it when we drive our cars and ride our bikes, when we schlep another kid to yet another soccer practice. When we make our way to the bank, when we make our way to the store, the post office, the doctors, the airport, the fridge in the night, the bathroom at that critical part of the movie, and yet we still forget that the world is around us.
How quickly we forget.
We forget so much
We forget first loves until they show up right in front of our faces.
We forgot that we only have so many days.
We forget there are woods to walk and mushrooms to find.
We forget we only have so many dreams and people we want to dream them with.
We forget to look up when there's a rainbow in the sky.
We are just so focused on other things.
Jobs and cars and taxes and final exams and dates and funerals and birthday parties.
These things that we promise we wouldn't focus on.
We promised that we would go and live these elaborate lives.
We promise that we would have beautiful dinners. We would have beautiful children and pets.
And we would take these vacations, these beautiful vacations, but now we have to go to jobs to pay for those vacations we may never take.
I'm not under the impression that my existence and my life and my everything is different than any of the other ones around me. And I'm not saying to you that I am brilliant and only pay attention to the rainbows in the sky or the clouds.
But, Oh, I do pay attention to them.
Things change, I suppose. Everything has a season. And here we are 20 years after the macbook showed up in my life, I am here, back again to write a beautiful, stunning, otherworldly, Noble laureate level blog. To show you the new.
To remind you of clouds and rainbows and gardens and projects and absolute disasters and maybe something that will reming you not to forget.
it will be a learning curve, bear with me, oh best beloved.
Because I guess I forgotten how to do this.
more clementines
Did you ever read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair? We all should, but not right now, we are gonna make something, and the libraries are still closed. I will give you the basics- It is about the meat packing industry and the evils of capitalism. It’s brutal, and a lot, and it makes you think about some serious shit. I read it in high school, because I thought I was edgy, it went well with my Doc Martins and my black fishnets. I miss the 90’s- damn i was cool back then…
I will get to my point.
There is a quote in the book -
“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”
I am not going to talk about the meat packing industry or pigs or the evils of anything- not today, today we talk clementines, again.
I reference The Jungle because the other day we made jelly with unwanted clementines and today we will make a cleaner with the peels, thereby using every part of the clementine but the squeal.
Here are all our peels.
So so easy.
Get a large mason jar, or any other jar that has a tight fitting lid. Fill it up with all of the peels from clementine jelly. Then fill the jar up with white vinegar, making sure to cover the peels. Put the lid on and store in a cool dark place for 2 weeks. Once the 2 weeks are up, strain the orange peels out. You have created a cleaner! Nice job! Feel free to water it down if you’d like, and use to clean stuff.
Please note this is not a disinfectant, it will not kill major germs, like the covid-19 or anything like that, this is a nice supplimental cleaner for when you need to tidy up. Save your Lysol and other cleaners for when you need them.
when life gives you clementines
Lets just say- purely hypothetically- there was a global pandemic. Hilarious, I know. Then, let’s say that you are a parent to a picky child. It is possible that he is the MOST picky child in the whole world. He will eat some different foods, but his diet is pretty basic, which makes him predictable, and easy to shop for, but very stressful if you happen to run out of one of the foods on the acceptable list. Especially if it is a global pandemic.
But that was purely hypothetically, remember? So don’t even give it a second thought. Just go back to the calm and peaceful day you are having, getting things done and being happy.
Getting to the clementines. My child will eat 6 of them for lunch or a snack, or at any time of the day, until he doesn’t. Usually no big deal, I will finish the remaining three or four of them up on a salad or give them to the birds. But, sorry to say, it is a pandemic, and I have been buying in bulk, so I have a few three or four pounds of them. Pounds. What is the old adage? Plans of mice and men, and your child will love something, until you buy a shit ton of it. So. here we are. I have a shit ton of clementines.
There are thousands of things you can do with oranges, I think, I don’t really know, I imagine there are that many, I got bored of looking pretty quickly. I was going to make a clementine curd, but there is an egg shortage around here, so gotta keep it simple. After much deliberation and searching through all of my cookbooks, I settled on jelly. It is simple enough and there is no need to eat all of the item in one go (clementine cream bars, clementine cakes) or to spend three days making it, like a marmalade. Jelly is easy and quite quick. Here is the only thing that makes it a bit of a bummer. It contains 7 cups of sugar. AHHHHHH! Sugar! NOOOOOO! Chill. It’s just sugar, we will all be fine. Don’t eat all 15 jars of it in a sitting and you will be fine. And also, never really eat 15 jars of anything at once, #prolifetip.
Let’s do this.
You are gonna need a couple things to make it:
Food processor or blender
strainer
big ol’ bowls
rubber spatula
large heavy bottom pan
And other things to can it:
water bath canner
timer
clean & sterilized jars
fresh lids
bands for canning, like Death Cab for Cutie, or The Decemberists, hmmmm, I feel like we all know I am talking about canning lid bands, but I am under the impression that I am hilarious.
more bowls
So many towels, like a preparing to give birth amount of towels
Canner funnel & ladle
Vinegar & paper towels
Seems simple- yes? It is, not to worry.
Give yourself a good amount of time to take care of this, it is a quick process, just don’t accidentally forget you needed to drive by a friends house for her daughters birthday parade, and have to run out of the house mid canning, weirdly specific, but totally not what happened this morning. I forget things. often.
Here is the recipe:
Clementine Jelly
3 pounds of clementines
7 cups of sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 pouch of Certo ( they come in pairs, just use one please)
How to:
Get your stuff together to can- water bath bubbling, jars clean and hot, and lids in hot water- before you get going with the jelly
Peel the clementines, place the segments in a bowl, hold them up to a light first to make sure they don’t have seeds- you can do this in groups, doesn’t have to be individual. *Plop the peels in a separate bowl - I got plans for those babies*
Into the blender or food processor with all the segments and puree the crap out of them, like for 4 minutes, my blender was unimpressed, she is old and grumpy
Strain the puree, this was you get a pretty and slightly thick juice
Measure out the juice, you want 4 cups. I only got three and a half, you can add orange juice if you’d like or even water in a pinch
Mix the sugar and the juices (lemon & clementine) into the heavy bottom pot and heat on medium heat
Bring to a boil, stirring to keep it from burning or boiling over
Once it comes to a boil that you can’t stir down, add the certo and cook for 1 minute- set a timer- I use Alexa, she is very helpful for that- and time outs- she is great for time outs.
Off the heat when the timer goes off, clear the top layer of sediment, they are just not pretty
You have clementine jelly now, and quite a bit of it, so lets get canning
Put the clean hot jars on a towel on the counter, fill them up with the hot jelly, using the funnel and a ladle leaving 1/2” headspace
Once filled, wipe the rim of the jars with white vinegar on a paper towel, put on the canning lids and bands, finger tight
Process for 10 minutes (use a timer) Let rest in the pot for 5 minutes (use a timer)
Remove from canner, place on a towel and allow to rest unmoved for 24 hours. Check seals. If any did not seal put in the fridge Everybody else can be stored in a cool dark place for up to 18 months.
That is it! you did it! huzzah! Now you get to do the sticky dishes. but on the upside- you have sunshine in a jar to eat for a bit!
compost and you, a love story
imagine you and some compost looking out at a sunset. i wanted to have a pretty photo of compost but i don’t currently have one. on the to do list.
Composting is a medium science.
Theoretic composting is very easy, you save your leftover food goodies (we will clarify and classify later, fun, I know!) and then you mix ‘em up with some other stuff, add some water, warmth and- PRESTO! Garden happiness!
To be honest it is a smidge more complicated and can make you a bit nutty. So let’s take the hard parts out and make it super simple. Simple is best. I would have to say that I personally love hard work. Not like hard math problems or anything like that, but manual labor and I are buddies. It helps me keep my mind occupied so I don’t veer off into the “what-if” rabbit hole that is always lurking about.
Not everyone is like this, I get that. My husband doesn’t gleefully ask what closet he can help sort out, it’s just not his jam. It is 1000% my jam. I love jam, especially strawberry. He actually doesn’t even like jam. Crazy.
So let’s start in the compost beginning. where you gonna put this stuff?
Most people will buy containers by using the amount of their output as their main deciding point. But for this particular situation it is probably best to choose the amount of space you have available at your current location. I have a pretty big yard, with a perfect space for a large pile/bin, I actually have two piles and a small rotating composter that I fill up in a few weeks, but it is nice in the winter when I don’t want to venture out into the deep snow.
Composter options:
Build a compost bin in your yard- best for big ol’ yards
Patio composter- best for small yards or patios- amazon has loads of them
Worm composter- anyone can have these little guys- I’m getting ready to make one
Farmer Pirates! (not a bin, but it is a really cool option.)*
the death star- aka my mini composter and a dead lavender plant
We will discuss how to build them very soon, as I am giving one of my piles a makeover, and will have loads of photos to share.
*Farmer Pirates are a service that comes and takes your compost away! it isn’t very expensive either. They even give the option of giving you some compost back if you’d like it. super cool. I know that you may not live in the Buffalo NY region, so you may have to google compost pick up near you.
Okay, you have a bin, it’s pretty and ready to go. Time to fill her up.
There are different rules for different bins and I will give you the basics and then if you need more direction we can get more detailed. What you put in it is always the same, green group and brown group. The ratios will differ.
Team Green:
fruit and veggie scraps- everything is welcome! feel free to chop it up
tea bags (natural not synthetic bags)
coffee grounds and filters
egg shells
grass clippings
chicken & rabbit poop
weeds that haven’t gone to seed
algae
Team Brown:
dead leaves from the fall
newspaper, shredded paper, cardboard
thin sticks- broken up please
dead plants
deciduous wood ash
Team No Thanks:
don’t put these things in your compost bin, please
cat, dog or human poop- eww gross
cat litter
dairy of any sort- you’ll invite unwanted digging and rodents
meat or bones of any kind- also a rodent or trash panda issue
glossy magazine paper
diseased plants
weeds that have gone to seed
All that is left is to put them in your bin, how you choose to do it is simple.
There is a specific formula for worm bins. I am gonna talk about that in a later post, and show you how to build your own- pretty cool.
If you have a rotating composter, you need to add the ingredients in a 40/60 ration 40 green, 60 brown. this is because there is less evaporation of the water from the foods in the green section so you will need to add less. you Will need to check that everything is breaking down well, by taking a peek every now and again. watering when needed and adding paper if too wet.
If you have a backyard bin i suggest having a leaf pile if possible next to it. This way you can do the lasagna method of composting which i think is the easiest.
the leaf pile- its a hot mess
You layer the browns and the greens, hit it withe hose if it has been super dry. Put a tarp on it if you want, or don’t. It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy. Then after a while you can move it around and shake it up. Get some air in there and hit it again with the hose.
brown, green, brown, green, brown, green, brown, green, brown, green, water, donezo.
the beginning of the compost pile- she needs some work
Here is the thing about composting, gardening, anything really, if you want to make it wild and detailed and scientific, go for it! If you don’t, don’t! This is about what makes you happy. Although if you go super easy and carefree then it will probably not give you the highest yeilds and you will just have to accept that. I feel like a medium amount of science is best. Medium is just a great place to be.
We have covered the where, the what, the how, who seems a bit on the nose, it’s you, the when is easy too, all the time that your area isn’t frozen. I do still compost in the winter but that is a whole different thing. Which we can discuss when we get closer to winter.
The big ask is the why. Why bother? Why should I? For the answer to that please read my “Why You Should Compost & Other Preachy Shit I Say” post. Promise it is only mildly preachy. To sum it up: it’s bad to put organic materials in the landfill, it’s good to feed plants for free, and you should just do it, stop being lazy.
It is very helpful to have an indoor bucket or two to help the compost voyage along. When I a preparing a huge vegetable stir fry in the summer it is easy to just make a quick trip to the heap. but in the morning with my coffee grounds it is a pain to make the trip just for that. I have a small bucket that I keep near my garbage can that I fill up with all the bits and bobs from everyday life, coffee grounds, apple cores, tea bags, carrot tips. That way i don’t get lazy and drop them into the garbage can.
Real talk here. you in love? I am. It’s a really neat idea that my old apple bits will feed me over and over and over again. It makes me feel lucky that I get to help it on its voyage to be the best apple it could be. Is that cheesy? maybe. But I’m good with that.
why you should compost
There are easily10000 books or more written on composting. I myself have own a minimum of 10 books on the subject, and to be perfectly frank, I am quite sure I haven’t even come close to being able to start to master it, although I am working hard on the matter. I have said it before, but it bears repeating, composting is a science, but it doesn’t have to be super hard. You can choose your own adventure when it comes to how you want to do it. Man, choose your own adventure books were awesome. I never made good choices, but you could always go back and try again…just like compost!
MIND BLOWN.
Anyway, I believe in composting. To an insane degree. How important it is, how much it helps, how it is like reincarnation for plant matter- the last one makes me feel like it will all be okay. One day they are a happy apple on a tree and then we eat every part but the core and then the core goes into the bin and becomes some compost and then it’s off to the garden, where that organic matter becomes something new- a lavender flower, a tomato, a bean, then the cycle continues! It is really quite beautiful when you think about it.
Here we go, a very short list of the very important reasons, in no particular order, you should compost:
Its good for the environment, landfills are closed off, no oxygen can get in there and break down the food. Methane and other greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. I think it goes without saying that climate change is bad news.
Save money. After your initial investment of materials, if any, you are creating something for free! you used the part you paid for, the rest is gravy.
Save water. Composted soil retains water longer, leading you to water less. saving you more money.
Less garbage in your cans- less carbon dioxide emissions from the garbage trucks.
More compost= less chemical fertilizer to run off into the water system.
There are many more reasons to compost, but the one that I think is the most important, is the Earth needs us to do it. She is working hard not to spin off into the vastness of space, we could probably keep some coffee grounds and carrot nubs in a pile for a bit.
Hello dearest,
hello dearest,
What a Time to be Alive. No really it is. A wild and crazy time. Full of fear, anxiety and things that make everyone a bit jumpy. There are other truly wonderful things too, like the smell of dirt, spring flowers, bird feeders, rubber boots and that feeling that winter is finally over.
I have to admit that I am here because my therapist thinks this is a good idea. Oh gosh, don’t worry I am not going to start blathering on about a sad childhood or the grey weather, I am here to talk about control.
More importantly things that I can control.
One of those things (for the most part) is my garden and my compost heap. Now, I can’t control all the aspects of this, Mother Nature seems a bit pissed at us, so she is a bit of a wild-card, but I can create a space that I will grow some food to feed my family in these uncertain times.
That is all you really hear about these days, how uncertain everything is, and I feel that, I FEEL it deeply and heavily. It is hard to look to the future with hope, for me anyway. I cant imagine going on every groundhog day that comes after this thinking that this is the best we can expect. And we won’t. We can’t. We will all look at our regrown celery stalks in a few months and sigh happily that things are returning to normal.
As we all look out the window and wonder what 2020 is going to bring us, i invite you to watch me stumble gracefully in my garden and in life. Because we are all gonna be okay. There isn’t any other option.