Meet Me At The Fair

"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas."
- George Santayana, early 20th-century philosopher and writer

Well, folks, I just got back from a lovely trip, not along the Milky Way, but along the interstate.  For three whole days I gorged myself on all things sustainable living, do-it-yourself, homestead style, healthful habits, and renewable energy.  At the moment I'm literally stuffed to the gills with information.  Where did I run off to?  The Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania.

Home Sweet Home

When I was a little girl I dreamed I would grow up and live in a huge garage.  Wait.  What??  That can't be right.  But truth is stranger than fiction, no?  The truth is that as of a couple weeks ago I AM living in a huge garage.  I moved from my rented 1,300 square-foot brick home with a full basement, yard, shade trees and large garden plot to a 650 square-foot apartment that makes up 1/2 of a metal shop building complete with an over-sized garage door, OSB wooden sheet and metal walls, and unpainted concrete floors. There is no yard and very little southern exposure.  Despite what you may be thinking right now it was an easy decision to make.

BEFORE

AFTER...yes, these are labeled correctly

Because I can, can, can

Nothing says summer to me quite like the weekly, bi-weekly, or even twice-weekly process of transforming fresh-picked produce into a Technicolor glass menagerie.   Each winter I make a list of new recipes to try or gaps in the canning pantry I’m desperate to fill.  By spring I’m chomping at the bit to line up my Mason jars, wash up my canner, and break out new seals.  When spring’s mad rush of outdoor duties gives way to higher temperatures and a burgeoning garden, it’s the kitchen that once again takes center stage.  Lugging the garden’s bounty inside is merely the intro.  Then I rumple my hair like every good conductor and begin orchestrating the whoosh, plop, clang, sizzle, and hiss of utensils, pots, pans and jars.  I maintain this rhythm throughout May, June, July, and August in preparation for the coming year.  While it can be a formidable task and I don’t always look forward to it on the morning of a canning day, I know nothing will taste better on a cold February afternoon than a half-day’s work from last August.

A Bit of Berry Good Advice

After not having written in over a month, I'm attempting to get back in the good graces of my readers by solving an annual dilemma.  Cookout season has begun (and BERRY season along with it)...  You brought killer potato salad last year...and decadent jello salad the year before that...and strawberry spinach salad the year before that...   Now what?!?!?!?   I'm going to share a simple, gloriously delicious, seasonally friendly recipe that will have everyone smiling without knocking their teeth out with cavities.  I call it my Any-Kind-of-Fruit Crisp.

Keepin' It Real in the Kitchen

In my lifetime my mother has called me many things, but there's one description she's had in her arsenal since I was a kid that still makes me a little gooey in the middle every time it's used within my earshot.  She usually says something like, "I go into the fridge and see an old piece of bread, a half-empty jar of who-knows-what, some ketchup, and a pickle.  She (that's me) can go in that same fridge and come out with a gourmet sandwich."  Now,  I’m not sure that Julia Childs would concur on the gourmet status of my creations at the ripe age of 9, but needless to say the eaters were happy and that’s step one.  I've dedicated this post to one of my lifelong loves: FOOD.    (There's even a recipe at the end!) 

Life on the Line

My husband and I joke that there's a troll living in our basement.  We currently live in an older home built by his grandparents in 1960.  The underground lair is partially finished, damp, dimly lit, and generally "creepy" (as my younger sister, fifteen years my junior, calls it).  Thankfully, spiders don't bother me and the rare signs of a rodent don't send me screaming. Despite efforts at keeping it tidy, it's hard to make a place like this one inviting.  However, the utilitarian qualities of my basement are more than adequate to redeem it in my book.  There's a built-in set of pantry shelves for canned goods, an ancient and wonderfully reliable chest freezer, a nook with shelving for seasonal items, a room for storing orphaned extended family items, the wood stove et al, the recycling bins, the tools/hardware stash, and the washing machine/laundry/cleaning area complete with clothesline.  Yup, a clothesline.  I love it.

February Follies (...or Life Lessons Learned)

If "older and wiser" go together like "peas and carrots" then I couldn't be happier that it's finally March.  Here's my train of thought:  I'm older at the start of this month than last, so technically that means I'm wiser.  Right?  What a relief.