This morning I got up early, pulled on my NY Rangers cap, and went out to a nearby farm to pick ten pounds of sustainably grown strawberries in the fresh air and sunshine.
Then on the way home I stopped at MacDonalds and had something called a MacGriddle.
It was delicious.
Just plain rude is what it is. I post pictures of my new living room, let the compliments roll in one after another, and then….
Radio silence.
Tsk tsk tsk. I tsk myself. It is time to set this to rights. Join me in the hot tub time machine (I call the spot next to John Cusack) and travel back to Memorial day weekend with me, because here’s what’s (been) happening since my last post:
Bratfest. Not everyone can be part of setting a world record. Sure, there’s Michael Johnson, Michael Phelps, and this guy, but how hard can those “records” really be to break, assuming you stretch first? I mean, I haven’t done it, but I’ve been kind of busy in the garden.
Needless to say, there was no stretching involved in Josh’s impressive consumption of brats (5), which, when added to the hard work of other Brat Fest attendees, led to a new world record of 209,376 bratwurst consumed at one festival. (I did not eat any brats, and I apologize for that.)
Here is Josh working on brat #3. I am so proud.
In honor of our city’s wurst achievement (sorry but at least I waited this long), we went for a post-brat drive and recorded this exciting moment in our 95 Volvo’s history:
A big day. A very big day. If you don’t have a car with 200,000 miles on it, I say to you: weak! You and your fancy “motorcar” with its elaborate “air conditioning” and conspicuous absence of rust best get out of the way of my armored horseless buggy.
If that wasn’t exciting enough, the next weekend we decided to go camping. We picked the very rainiest weekend we could find, to make things extra challenging, but despite our best efforts, we stayed mostly dry, had a nice roaring fire, and ate too many s’mores. I don’t know about you, but to me camping is just a reason to eat s’mores and read in peace. It’s a way to escape the internets and the never-ending Real Housewives of New York reunions which I can no more turn off than I can stop the world from turning. For just those couple of days when you are in the wilderness with nothing but the sight of a bear mauling the occupants of a neighboring campsite to entertain you, you can really sit down and think about what matters. And what matters is getting the marshmallow hot enough inside, without actually charring it too much on the outside, so that the little rectangle of Hershey’s melts into blissful goo on the graham cracker.
This is our fine tent. For those of you reading this blog who are getting married soon (I know of at least three of you), take it from this newlywed of almost 2 years and register for camping supplies. Though I obviously love all of my wedding gifts equally (except for the roomba. I love the roomba more because it is a person), a camping trip with all the right stuff is a bit more fun than dusting crystal. And when I say “the right stuff” I don’t mean the expensive North Face tent suitable for use on Everest. I mean a easy-to-set-up tent, a big sturdy tarp, supercozy sleeping bags that zip together, and (very important) an inflatable mattress. Sleeping on the ground is for chumps and the very inebriated.
Also be sure to pack lots of books but not scary books or books where people have to eat other people for survival, and a good pair of hiking shoes. That way you can follow my excellent camping schedule of reading when it is sunny and dry and hiking when it is stormy and wet. Hrm.
Last weekend we dialed it down a notch, heading up to the farmer’s market and scoring this enormous haul
(PS: this is less than $15 of food so can we stop accusing sustainable food of being expensive please?) before heading to the Madison Mallards baseball game. Which we won.
And now, because I love you, the readers, and also because I feel extremely guilty about not blogging for so long, I present this Extremely Unflattering Photograph of myself accosting a helpless Mallard after the game (which we won). Just after this photo was snapped I was politely asked to leave the Duck Pond and never come back. Okay, that part is not true. But if they’d seen this Extremely Unflattering Photo then it would have been.
The point is we won. Can we all just focus on that please?
After spending the weekend with my mom slaving over a hot paintbrush (why are moms so much better at cutting in corners than anyone else?), I am pleased to present phase one of our living room redesign! To remind you of what we were starting with, here’s a before picture of THE WALL.
We discovered while we were painting that there was a time when the entire room was this color. It must have been like standing in a gall bladder.
And here’s my mom starting to make it right, Holmes on Homes style.
And here is the dramatic transformation!
That’s right folks, I am not afraid of color. Okay, I was a little afraid, but that didn’t stop me from going for the gusto. And I’m so happy with the results. The room is calmer, brighter, and more pleasant to be in, but it still matches the somewhat challenging color palette of the rest of the house (ie the Hardee’s-Orange kitchen). I think it even makes the college dorm furniture look better! (Just agree with me here. It’s the polite thing to do.)
Next up for this room: trim, art, seating, naps.
In case you’re wondering, the paint is Behr Premium Plus Ultra, which was every bit as terrific as Consumer Reports told us it would be and low-VOC to boot. It was insanely thick, which is probably why it covered the hideous wall in ONE COAT. The main color is Behr’s own Balmy Seas, and the accent color is Hosta by The Unstoppably Tasteful Martha. (The good people at Home Depot can computer match any old color you bring in.)
Behr, if you’re reading this, nice work on the paint.
Among the many startling revelations made in the Lost Finale last night, one of them was that the mysterious mug, coaster, and tray set featuring chickens in their natural habitat (the kitchen) that arrived a month or so ago on my doorstep actually came from Teresa Joyce the Garden Expert and Chicken Enabler Extraordinaire. Thank you, Teresa!
I apologize for my wronginess and assure you that it will never happen again until tomorrow.
I came home from the store the other day and the garage looked like this:
(Only slightly worse than it looked when we bought the house.)
I asked my husband about what went down but he was very vague on the details. My conclusion is that either Iron Man came and broke into our garage as requested, or, Josh and his friend Paul let loose with some duct tape and a hammer. Josh (or Iron Man) then crawled inside, peered at the door mechanism for awhile, determined that it did not work–so true!–and set the door opening to manual.
Then Josh or Iron Man devised this garbage bag “window,” (opaque for privacy,) removed all things of value from the garage, and went to the buffet at Maharaja to refuel after a hard day’s work. I have never been to the lunch buffet at Maharaja but I hear it’s nice.
My hope is that Josh (or Iron Man) is even as we speak cooking up a plan to fix the garage door and/or replace the window, but I’m not worked up enough about it to actually do anything to fix it myself. We have a good two, maybe three months, before winter starts up again and we need a place to keep our shovels.
Now, to distract you from the eyesore that is our super-ugly and now even uglier garage, here are some enormous flowers that smell like grape big league chew!
I’m talking about a quick blog post here, people. We do have neighbors.
It is freezing rain outside. Apparently in Wisconsin the saying goes “May sleet brings June flowers, maybe. Unless it kills them.” But about a week ago I did manage to get outside for some gardenry and I wanted to show you a few items of interest:
Here’s the tulip bed on the sunny side of the house:
On the shady side, we only got these, freakish looking tulips:
Meanwhile, out back we have a clump of peonies as big as a Volkswagen. Woot! Here they are:
Only slightly less exciting than the peonies is the alien escape pod composting bin that recently landed behind the garage:
Isn’t it awesome? I’m told one can do composting with little more than some chicken wire and a hole. But I’m also told it’s possible to cut one’s own hair. I enjoy the space-aged design of our new (yes, this is really what it’s called) Earth Machine, subsidized by the City of Madison, and I also enjoy the way it keeps the squirrels out of our discarded foodstuffs. I just hope Starbuck doesn’t try to climb inside it and pilot it back to Galactica.
More to come when it’s warm enough to go back outside. There will be more peonies, and iris, and asparagus (yes! Asparagus!) and lettuce, and god-willing, there will be carrots. Don’t think I don’t see you, adorable backyard bunny. I see you. I know what you want. Don’t make me get the cat.
In the meantime, does anyone know what this is? Please tell me it’s something I can pickle.
Yesterday around 2:30, Husband and I left the house together–he to do this fascinating interview, me to teach piano lessons. He got home via bike a couple of hours later and sent me this text:
“FYI Garage Door not opening. We’ll see if your remote works. Love!”
This created no shortage of consternation for me on my drive home. Because, friends, our garage door is our only portal into the treasure trove of tools and toys that is our garage. There is no people door. It is a box, with a pair of non-opening windows, and a big mechanical car door. If it don’t open, we don’t go inside.
When I got home I pressed the button of my door opener approximately seven thousand times, which resulted in exactly zero inches of motion from the door. Then I laid my head on the steering wheel for a few moments to meditate. This meditation may or may not have been a detailed visualization of me starting the car, revving it a few times, and then gunning the engine and crashing through the motionless door.
Luckily that was the exact moment when my husband arrived home from his run. He dragged me out of the car and took the keys away. Yes, he had checked the power to the garage, and yes, it was on. No, the batteries to both clickers didn’t need replacing. No, there was no other way in. Yes, we were probably going to have to break a window. No, we would not be grilling out anytime soon, even though we had, in a rush of excitement over our new Weber, invited people over to grill out all weekend. Because, naturally, all the grill accoutrement and the charcoal are in the garage. (And yes, I had been marinating portobello steaks all day for our friends who were expected in ten minutes. Oh, look, here they are now!)
Ladies and gentleman, why the BLEEP won’t our garage door open? It closed, using the clicker, just two hours before. It seems like if it was going to die, it should have opened its mighty maw in one last cry of agony, allowing us access to my bike and gardening equipment, or at the very least, burped up just enough to give one of us a chance to roll inside, Indiana Jones style, to get a look inside.
I know, from blog stats, that despite my long, boring absence, there are still a good couple dozen of you checking out this page on a daily basis, either out of the goodness of your hearts or because you are related to me. Can one of you please, please, come over to my house and blow up my garage door? I would give you strawberry jam.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen.
Ignore the title and cover and flap copy. It’s good and funny and sad and sweet. Mostly funny.
Also it will make you hungry, and then not at all hungry, for Kartoffelsalat.
So I was out in my garden a week ago and I noticed the strawberries were coming in nicely. I went out with a container and collected about four pounds worth of big red juicy fruit, along with some organic lemons from my backyard organic lemon tree:
Anyhoo, it was obviously time to jam. (Confidential to Phish fan who found this blog post from a “time to jam” google search, I apologize for wasting your time, bra.)
I took out my pretty new copy of Well Preserved and my canner, which, like me, had been getting dusty all winter. Yes, I know I was supposed to make six kinds of marmalade with the in-season citrus, but I was too busy this winter talking to myself and rocking in the fetal position praying for sun. Wisconsin winter is long, yo. It is a good thing we do not own a chainsaw.
Right, then. After the canner was readied, I rustled up some jars and epic amounts of sugar. I mean, really epic. Like, sent Josh to the store on his bike to bring back more sugar, amounts of sugar. It alarmed me somewhat to be working from a recipe that begins, “Combine berries with 6 cups of sugar.” Really. And this was one of the lowest sugar recipes I could find in all my canning references.
But I am so fearful of botulism that I dared not go dietary rogue, as I am wont to do in my regular, non-lethal types of cookery. Bloated is, after all, way better than dead. And besides, this is jam. You’re not supposed to drink the stuff.* La di da.
Here’s the blissfully easy procedure for “Super Sale Strawberry Sludge” as I am calling the jars of gorgeous red tastiness that now crowd my pantry:
Cut up berries.
Add shocking amounts of sugar and lots of lemon juice.
Stir until you have this:
At this point you will want to put some jam in your mouth but do not do that because it is very hot and burny and your husband will mock you.
Instead, put it in jars, like so:
Process. Then hover anxiously nearby until you hear the pop of the jar sealing, and each time a jar seals, pump your arms up and down in the air and attempt to give the cat a high five. Declare yourself the greatest canner who has ever lived if all your jars seal. If they do not, blame the jars for having a bad attitude.
You guys, really, canning is the greatest. If you are feeling low, or like maybe you should have gone outside at least once during the month of February, or if you need the sort of pursuit that you will know, right away, if you’ve failed, vs. the sort of pursuit that involves waiting and intense panic followed by more waiting, then canning is for you. And it’s actually really easy! Except for juggling the thousand pots of boiling water, and the choking amounts of steam, and the hot sticky jam mess you somehow get inside the microwave which you weren’t even using, and the haunting feeling that you are doing something wrong that could lead to your own hospitalization. But other than that, totally easy!
And really, really addictive. It’s only a matter of time before I start robbing liquor stores to get more money for produce.
*Kind of tempted to drink some jam now.
