Quietly

After the busyness of getting ready for the holidays (see, we did decorate these houses, although Oona kind of wandered far afield from the whole "sticking things on cookies" theme), things have gotten very quiet today.

Math with a nearly-asleep dog in one's lap.

Reading with a chewing dog in one's lap.

What happens when the kid gets the camera. I had hoped to feature the knitting I was doing -- knitting I wrapped up as a gift, still on the needles. It will be done, really, soon. I promise!

When I was out making pointy mulch piles flat with the help of my inexplicably broken rake, I remembered that the chickens needed water and probably food. Look what was waiting in the nest box! The days are lengthening, but I didn't know the chickens had noticed yet.

Assembly time

In a previous life, I studied counseling psychology and had to take a lot of tests. Personality tests, intelligence tests, tests of psychosis, etc. While scoring low in psychosis, I tended to score high in what was called divergent thinking -- thinking out of the box.

Do I still put this trait to use, lo these many years later?

You know I do.

Exhibit A: gingerbread house pre-assembly, without uniform pieces.

If I can keep the dogs from snacking until that icing sets up, these little A-frame cabins are going to be turned right side up and hidden until tomorrow, when the decorating will begin.

This year we'll have a detail-minded eighteen year old, five other people, plus a three year old around the table. Should be interesting.

A Whale of a Trip

If I could read a calendar, if be on a whale watching trip right now.

Fortunately, sitting in an In N Out burger is okay. This has been one of the happiest drives I can remember with my children. For example, there was the question, "What would your superpower be if you could have it?" It's one of my favorite car games.

Tor said, "I'd turn into Batman."
Katie said, "I'd be able to move things with my mind."
Ellie said, "I'd control people's minds. . . "

I can think of few more horrifying things than my 14 year old controlling people's minds, so the game devolved from there into a discussion of how she'd not be evil, just make people do what she wanted them to do. Of course. Rolling by the beautiful hills just east of Fremont, I thought how wonderful the day had been.

Fortunately, their good moods lasted through all the songs on the radio. "Sweater Weather," anyone? It sure is cold. . .  We belted out song after song after song, and I insisted on total participation when Van Morrison sang about standing in the sunlight laughin'.

I really couldn't have asked for a better couple of hours.

So the trip is rescheduled; hope the whales wait. . . meanwhile I have supplies to finish a tree skirt, the big dog is getting an unanticipated visit to the dog park which is usually Taz's sole domain, and there's the Mayor's Christmas Tree lighting tonight downtown. Wonder if it will be worth it to bundle up and brave the cold for that. Edited to add, NO WAY!

It's not as though I don't suddenly have time.

Lambent

We used to attend silent Quaker meetings. They were great in many respects, not for me in others eventually. But one phrase the Friends use is "holding in the light." It means a few different things. Today, intermittently, I walked in the light.

Morning starts early with dogs and vomiting on the floor. Oh well, that's what paper towels are for. Venturing outside, I noticed that the heavy fog of winter mornings was visiting. Always, always I again see my children as tiny little things running in the fog on mornings like this.

Tea made, paper read, dog park! I rode my newly repaired bike -- but still have a hard time keeping up with Taz. I am The World's Slowest Rider still, apparently. The fog had made art on the fence.

Later, I overheard the eldest child talking reasonably to the second one, a glow of light.

Frisbee bake sale -- shining beautiful faces of the players -- leaving time for a dim sum lunch with the child who doesn't get good enough food in Oregon.

The electric car stayed to charge in the municipal garage because the mulch blocks access at home; off for a favorite hike. As I step over roots and up and down rocks, the dog flings herself into the lake. We've been here so many times. Today, we walked widdershins around the water, so started in shadow. No sunglasses needed. But as we returned from the creek out-and-back, and started on the other side, warm sun broke through.

Jacket off, eyes closed, face to sky. . . it glowed with thin honey light. A benediction on a winter afternoon, soon before sunset. Candles on the table, golden bubbling wine in glasses on the visiting child's last day.

Last one of the year

Life isn't always easy when you're the only boy in a family of girls. Add in being the last birthday of the year, after the excitement of Halloween and your always-dramatic only two years older sister's birthday, and Tor's birthday can sometimes feel a little ad-hoc.

Add in an aversion to chocolate in its purest forms, and well. . . what are you going to do?

Fortunately, this year boys from his class were available to play video games at a new arcade, his dad was willing to do party duty while I ran off to Oregon, and Smitten Kitchen can be counted on for fantastic cakes.

The Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake is a huge hit, because somehow the presence of peanut butter makes chocolate go from an "eeew" to a "yay!" The ganache was easy and fun, and it's a pretty cake. Lots of bang for a moderate effort, my kind of late in the year birthday effect.

With this one turned 12, only one more child still in single digits -- the time seems to be moving on pretty fast.

Long Term Decisions

A long time ago, I told myself that having birthdays in the family between Halloween and Thanksgiving would be "no big deal," and better certainly than between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Turns out, since Halloween is like the high holidays here, it isn't terrible, but it's also not super easy.

Until this year, when my OACAH (oldest available child at home) decided that a nice dinner out with her family would be a good way to celebrate. Less pressure, lots of fun, and that freed me up to concentrate on the parts of birthday celebrating I do enjoy.

Cake.

Cake is the part I like.

Not just making cake, but looking up new cake recipes and considering them, and trying them out, and testing them, and everything else. So these late in the year birthdays are all about the cake. This one is The Celebration Cake from Bake it Like you Mean it, by Gesine Bullock-Prado.

I had help, too. Not just from the youngest child, who licked beaters, and the dogs, who tried to get at it, but my sister in law is visiting, so I had competent adult help. Even she couldn't keep me from making bonehead errors, which is why there are three spare wrongly-measured ingredient chocolate layers downstairs in the freezer.

Oops.

Making new ones with appropriately measured ingredients helped a lot.

Layers of vanilla butter cake, flourless chocolate cake, raspberry buttercream, and raspberry preserves make what I think of as a terrifically girly birthday cake.

 

And that girliness is appropriate, I think, for a young lady turning 14.

I can hardly believe it. As we do every year, I told her the crazy story of her 45-minute birth, we made the jokes about her always being in a hurry, and marveled at how big she's getting.

This one is turning into a marvel of maturity, and her shining qualities keep showing themselves. Her friends are lucky to have her, as are we. We're especially glad that tolerance of her siblings is one of her qualities, because brothers will do things like this if at all possible.

I haven't even tried it yet. Last night's dinner was too filling. So maybe a slice with tea today, then the search for friends and neighbors to feed it to begins. This cake called for 10" layers, which is craziness indeed. I did discover a new restaurant supply house, though, so nothing but all future disposable income is lost.

One more birthday cake, then Thanksgiving pies, then at least one Buche de Noel. I'm a happy winter baker!

The Big One

Our sadly neglected front yard apple trees put on a lovely show this year. I've been eating apples almost every day.

Sometimes it's been difficult to see them because they're hidden by volunteer Sun Gold vines, but the other day I was picking some tomatoes to force them on offer them to neighbors, and saw the apple of the season.

Yum.

The other Big One?

She seems to be having a lot of fun and studying hard at college. We were lucky enough to get to see her play in a casual tournament last week.

Watching my kids play remains one of the very most enjoyable things I do.

Harvest Monday

Imagine my surprise when the camera's memory card didn't only contain pictures of today's incredibly bountiful harvest.

You see, Eric and I had taken the younger children away for a short backpacking trip near Tahoe, which was wonderful, but I'd left the camera home, partly because it is kind of heavy and partially because I'd misplaced it. Oh well, I took lots of mental pictures: the eight year old ahead of us on a trail overarched by huge trees; the two kids playing teetertotter on a log caught between two trees; the perfect bijou lake; the clear water; Eric's face next to mine in the tent, even though I was all wrapped up in a sleeping bag and he looked a bit hot. . .

But today, after yesterday's post-trip bout of laundry, laundry, dishes, dishes, dishes, returning camping gear to the proper shelves, washing camp cook pots, was over, I headed out to say hi to the garden.

I came back with a lot of stuff. I took pictures of it. Then came the work of changing it from fresh food to storable food. Roasting. Soup-making. Giving some away to the kid with the sprained ankle when daughter called and asked me to bring an ice pack to the field. His mom said thanks. . .

And the day went by in this way. Finally, the house quiet, the kids down for the night, the dogs even quiet, I remembered -- I wanted to post my harvest pictures.

Instead I got these:

That's right. The cat one I took the day I left, but apparently the weekend was lots of Ultimate, as daughter #1's club team qualified for Regionals -- with a twelve year old on the field -- too bad Regionals is in Arizona, the weekend before her first college classes, and those of a teammate, and another teammate just sprained his ankle today. . . and apparently daughter #2 and I are going to have to talk about playing with fire in a wooden Victorian house because you know, when you're 13 and you do a LOT of declaring that you Are All Grown Up Now And Responsible, Thank You Very Much, then maybe taking pictures isn't the smartest thing in the world.

Let us turn our gaze away from the travails of rearing the young and look at rearing veggies. Whee! Tons of Principe Borghese for drying, behind them the Early Girls from one vine. Ripe red and yellow peppers, to roast and blend into the tomato soup that half of the Early Girls made today. A couple of Romanesco zucchini, two Marketmore slicing cucumbers, and a bunch of Persian Baby cucumbers. Lots of everything summer, in my garden.

Vegetables are easier, but they can't throw a Frisbee. Guess I'll keep both harvests then.

Sprouts growing up

I actually have been gardening, believe it or not, but I've been really busy doing something else.

We have our first high school graduate -- top row, second from right.

Because she was homeschooled all the way through, it was a DIY (or DIG, because it was a group effort) graduation. A few meetings, a lot of alpha moms trying to figure out whose vision would triumph, and a long evening's service. Good food, some tears, and aren't they lovely?

Now she's off to Oregon in the fall to play Ultimate. And, you know, attend some classes!

I'll post gardening pictures as soon as I really catch my breath.

An Adult

She's much bigger now.

Happy 18th birthday to our first finished object.

Finishing Things

Some of us are better than others at seeing projects through. I find myself doing a fair amount of puttering -- a bit of this, a bit of that, and not a lot gets done. But if you make things for growing kids, they have to get done or they get left behind.

Although it took a ridiculous amount of time to finish these fairly easy sweaters, they did finally get done, and I assume will actually be worn. Thank goodness for superwash wool and cotton!

Someone didn't really want her picture taken, although she did give me permission this morning to post pictures.

 
Tor actually sort of got into the photo shoot. Had I thought, I would have channeled my inner fashion photographer and asked him to "gimme love."

He wasn't the only one in a silly position. Ahem. She seems to be announcing that she's ready for her breakfast.

Subtraction, Sauce, Strawberries and Spiciness

 Busy day yesterday. The Lone Remaining Homeschooler (all remaining children having gone or been sent to school or college) spent a lot of quality time with Khan Academy, wrestling with multiple-digit borrowing. She giggles iher way through the explanatory videos, and then works out the problems, squealing when she gets them right. It's a very cheery way to do math, and I do a lot of over-shoulder looking and helping, too. A nice balance.

While she was busy, I gathered everything I needed to do some canning. A recipe for fermented hot sauce sounded appealing, or at least appealing to make, if not to consume. I had a fancy pickling jar cookie jar from Target ready and available, plus lots of too-hot-for-me peppers. And, weeks late, I managed to harvest from the abundant apple tree down the street. Two shopping bags were all I could reach standing on the ground, and I fear I missed the peak of the harvest, judging by the amount of apples on the ground. Alas. Anyhow, I was set up for a fun morning of putting things in jars.

To make the sauce, first the immersion blender to chop things up. The thought of my plastic food processor being coated with high-octane pepper juice sort of distressed me, but this was a difficult substitution. It got easier when I pre-chopped the peppers. (Duh.)

A towel was supposed to prevent flying bits and clouds of gas. It worked, sort of. I still ended up coughing a lot.

Pretty soon it became obvious that there was not enough of the good red peppers to make a generous sauce. Sacrificing aesthetics, I grabbed every hot or semi-hot pepper I could find, and chopped them into the slurry.

Less attractive, huh? My trusty silicone spatula scraped everything down into a flattish disc.

Because there is no plate in the house which fits snugly in the crock/jar, I used a bag of brine to weigh down the mush.

That done and set aside, I turned my attention to the apples. I think these are some sort of Golden Delicious, and they are, in fact, delicious. I managed to get nearly all perfect ones and washed off the dust. Since this tree is completely neglected, I feel confident that they harbor no pesticides, and only a few pesty things besides dirt.

I didn't peel or cor them, just cut out bad spots like this and quartered them until my pot was full.

It took them over an hour to cook down at low heat -- and I did keep adding some water as scorching kept threatening. Stir, stir, cook, cook, over and over.

That was fun, and at the end I used the Foley Food Mill Denise had gifted me with to make the peels and seeds and any non-nice bits go away and leave me with lovely apple sauce. I asked the kids to taste it and they said it was fine, just the right amount of sugar. Funny, that, it was just apples! Win for me! I did add a touch of lemon juice and then canned it up. The one potful gave me four pints and a quart. Which I did not photograph. You've all seen canned goods.

By that time, Denise and Oona were here! Hooray! However, my house is no longer toddler-proof, and after 30 minutes of her opening the freezer and saying, "Ice? Ice?" I decided that the adorable 20 month old's talents could be better focused outside. Things to pick! Tomatoes, which will lead to another round of Things In Jars tonight.

Helpful toddlers are the very best kind.

One run through the pepper patch and the tomatoes were disappearing under Pizza my Heart in front, and Padron in back.

I complained about the hot bird-type pepper and Denise sagely said, "Tear it out, if you don't like it." Well. Hadn't thought too much of that one, so out it went. It was a big plant, shading the peppers around it and falling on one other plant. That poor wire cage was no match for it.

Between all three of us, though, we picked the plant clean. I'm going to try to give some away to the homeschoolers today, and drop the rest off at the food bank. Surely someone likes really hot peppers?

As a reward for all her hard work, Oona got a basket of just-picked strawberries.

Probably the best way to hook future labor inculcate a love of gardening, right?

Probably the best end to a productive afternoon I could have thought of.