the quotidian (4.16.12)

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary;
everyday; ordinary; commonplace 

After snapping a few pictures, I nipped this creative endeavor in the bud. 
The children were not happy with me.

The girls like to pretend this is their horse. And the horse doesn’t seem to mind—she’s always eager to meet up with them for a free grooming session and complimentary bucket of water.

We’re hosting our family reunion again (!) and my husband is on a rampage. I love it.

Wikki Stix: can you see the person filling a bucket of water at the stream? The apple tree?
The picnic table in the background?

Dear Bon Appetit,
I have issues with you. Those sticky buns on the front cover? They were not good. I like my sticky buns to taste like sticky buns, not sticky, honey cake. And three sticks of butter for and an 8 x 8 pan worth of buns? Are you kidding me? Even I, butter queen extraordinaire, find that to be excessive. And speaking of the 8 x 8 pan—I put my buns in a larger pan and they still bubbled over. What do you guys do in those fancy test kitchens of yours anyway?
Sincerely,
A picky sticky bun eater

One farmer’s excess is another (non) farmer’s boon: a bushel of delicious, sweet spinach blanched and in my freezer. Green smoothies, here we come!

Water, sun, and a new (used) trampoline! Now the kids can bounce around to their heart’s content.

Sleeping with the orange his grandmommy brought him: he was too sick to eat it, poor kid.

PS. Have you seen this talk by John Cleese on creativity? I’ve watched it twice now. He perfectly articulates how I experience the writing process (though he wasn’t specifically speaking about writing).

This same time, years previous: wild hair, cereal worship, and other sundry tales, flour tortillas, chocolate-covered peanut butter eggs, the value (or not) of the workbook, asparagus-walnut salad, asparagus with lemony crème fraîche and boiled egg

11 Comments

  • Lily

    I love your quotidian posts!
    In the future – no need to blanch the spinach. Since you plan to use them for green smoothies anyway you can freeze it raw. It only works for smoothie greens, because obviously thawed raw frozen greens are gaggy in any other application, but for smoothies it's perfect. I do the same thing with chard and kale. I also think greens are a lot more mild tasting if they aren't cooked, which is a good thing in smoothies.

    • Jennifer Jo

      I've tried not blanching greens before and found they had a moldy taste. But I didn't use them in smoothies. I think an experiment is in order!

      (Oh yeah, the other problem with not blanching is freezer space—there's quite a difference between freezing a bushel of raw spinach and a bushel of blanched spinach. But we'll see…)

    • Lily

      Huh, I've never had that problem. In fact, I started freezing my greens because they were sometimes going icky before we finished them all. They do take up more space, although they smoosh down pretty well in gallon bags with all the air squeezed out.

      I'm envious of the trampoline – I love those things!

    • Jennifer Jo

      Gas, yes, but also danger. I could see the wagon being tipped over and drug, the kid on the tarp getting a broken butt, someone getting in the way of the mower wheels and getting mushed. Plus, the mower is loud so it's hard to hear if someone yells to stop. Plus, they didn't ask permission—the mower isn't a toy. The kids were not at all surprised that I put on the brakes.

    • Anonymous

      Looks like fun, but I see your point! maybe you need to find a second-hand 4-wheeler. 😉 😉 just kidding. sorta.

  • Becky

    Great score on that spinach! I recently read your post about the green smoothies and you inspired me to make a version of my own. I never thought I'd get so excited about a smoothie with spinach in it. I've been making one for breakfast every morning for the past 2 weeks! I add a few more ingredients, including almond butter and chia seeds but really the star is banana and the hidden spinach. 🙂 Love it!

  • Aleksandra

    I came here today specifically to look for the green smoothie recipe (unexpected surplus of spinach here, too) and there it was waiting for me not even requiring searching!

    And I love the green in your pictures.

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