announcements
1) Dan left to go hunting on Wednesday and the kids and I immediately went to the grocery store and bought: hot dogs, bacon, mac’n’cheese, hippie peanut butter cups, cookies and boxed cereal. (Also, we may or may not be riding bikes to the donut shop for breakfast this morning).
Somehow, the kids seem more themselves when I’m solo-parenting, or magnified, like their most selves. It’s due to some abstract law of physics, like: the fewer adults around to absorb and witness, the more the kids become themselves. Does that make sense? It’s great because you get to really see them – like being an anthropologist in your own family. When Col climbed on the conveyer belt at the grocery store with our bacon, hot dogs, etc…announcing “I’m coming down, scan me!” I was completely unrattled. “That’s so you, Col. And please climb down now.”
~Also, I’m holding out for the possibility that in becoming more themselves, they might take on some of the Buddhist precepts, you know: compassionate speech, deep listening, non-harming~
2) I am teaching a free fermentation class at Durango Natural Foods on Tuesday, September 27th, 6:30 – 8pm. We’ll discuss making cheese, yogurt, kefir, vinegar, sauerkraut, cultured veggies, kimchi, and my new favorite: fermented salsa. Bring a sampling spoon!
3) I’m teaching an 8-week writing class, Writing your Wild Life, through Fort Lewis College’s continuing education program, starting October 12th. Details here. Early registration is discounted.
4) I have an article in the Fall edition of Rhythm of the Home where I share the best tomato sauce recipe ever. Really, the BEST.
5) The answer to harvest fatigue is here! My friend Kati is coming over today to help me chop peaches, make pesto, shell acorns and pick from the jungle of cherry tomatoes while the kids become more themselves.
6) Some of you have asked about chokecherries. They’re our most abundant wild fruit here in Southern Colorado. They’re sweet and astringent and so historically significant that many native tribes simply called them “berry.” Cooked down with a little sugar or honey into jelly or syrup, they’re a delicacy. Look for my article on chokecherries in the next issue of Edible San Juan Mountains.
7) I finished ALL my deadlines and now I’m totally partying, er, eating bacon with small people.
Have a lovely weekend!
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whew good job on the deadlines!!!!!! congratulations! these all sound fantastic, making me wish we lived close. fermented salsa- yum! enjoy your donuts!
I love the phrase “free fermentation class.” I would also love to come over and chop peaches while eating hippie peanut butter cups.
Again, online writing class please!
And do enjoy your weekend full of bacon goodness and little people being little people.
Aww I wish we lived there, I’d take your writing class!
I still think you should do a one-day workshop the next time you swing through the Bay Area . . . I’m just sayin’ . . .
And I love rising to the occasion when Leeor is gone. Donuts and all!
Enjoy the time with the kids becoming more themselves–love that!
I totally get that kids becoming more themselves thing.
As they got older, I discovered that driving them in groups places provides all sorts of insights. It’s as though adults vanish, and the car becomes a magical conveyance device, with no need for a conductor. I discovered that 4th grade boys discuss what they might name future children, for instance. Who knew?
Yay for hippie peanut butter cups and bacon! Also, mac&cheese and hot dogs is like my FAVE secret comfort food best dinner ever.
Your tomato sauce recipe is soooo timely. I just bought 11 pounds of “unwanted” tomatoes at my local produce stand – for half price. Sauce making was already on the schedule for the long weekend. I’ll be trying your recipe for sure. Thanks!!
Enjoy eating bacon and hanging out with small people. Sounds fabulous to me!
Glad to hear you have extra hands coming to help process the harvest. (My version of harvest fatigue is featuring okra this week. I just keep reminding my self how much I look it and how yummy it will be in the winter.) And let me second the request for an on-line writing class or workshop.
I think I would move to Durango just to be able to take your classes (all of them) and learn from you!!! I am completely addicted to kimchee and have been wanting to learn! I’ll have to go take a look at the tomato recipe too :). Enjoy being solo with the littles & congrats on meeting your deadlines!
High fives to your deadlines. Um, can Kati come here? I have harvest fatigue.
Have another round of bacon – you deserve it. I made bacon stuffed pancakes the other day:
cook bacon, drain pan, place bacon strips on again, pour pancake batter in rectangle shapes and then knock them slippers right off your kids.
xoxo
Can’t wait to try the sauce recipe – and can’t wait to smell the house during the process.
I find solo parenting fascinating – they always seem the most intensely needy and renegade just before a solo parenting adventure, just enough to send you to bed with a combination of dread and adrenaline, and then they are always charming, hilarious and strangely cooperative during the solo-parenting stint. I think they have an instinctive understanding of the limited parenting resource available and choose to preserve it. Or maybe I just put the let’s-have-fun-all-day and clean the house the night before Papa gets back shades on. Either way, it’s entertaining and loud and um, bad for my liver.
My man leaves for the woods on Wednesday…for (ahem) ten days…too bad we’re too far apart to get our wild kids together and put food into jars. :) The classes sound great – I would love to take a writing class after nearly 7 years – wow I can’t believe i’ve been out of school that long! Oh, and I made chokecherry jelly this year! I grew up eating it, but it was always my mom’s special thing – I’d never made it myself. Next I’m trying buffalo berries, (they grow all around our house) any experience with that?
I want to be scanned. I wonder if that would work with the cashiers here in Romania? And I want to be in your writing class. Damn the Atlantic Ocean.