• lemon creams

    I have three dollars in the grocery envelope. I thought I did really good with not spending much money on groceries this month. I thought I’d have a lot leftover to put into the grocery savings envelope (for things like bushels of peaches and apples or a pizza-ordering splurge). But I guess I thought wrong. Last time I went to the store, I had only 13 dollars to spend. I got lactose milk for my husband, one gallon of milk for us, and a bag of rolled oats and now I have three dollars left.

    Actually, it’s kinda fun not having money to spend. The simplicity is liberating. My choices are pared down, streamlined, straightforward. The end is in sight—happy last day of January, world!—so the scarcity has felt manageable. Plus, I have the basic perishables, like eggs, butter, and cheese. (Without these, I would feel panicked.)

    I’m shopping my pantry and freezers, discovering treasures like a random bag of chicken wings. I thought it was a whole chicken (from our last butchering two years back?), but then I thawed it and realized it was wings. That night we feasted. And then the neighbors gifted us sausage and Pon Haus from their pig butchering, yay! And then they gave us two and a half gallons of raw milk, so now we’re flush with cream and yogurt, cue the Hallelujah chorus. (I’m making them sweet rolls in exchange… that is, once February comes and I can get to the store for some potatoes for the dough.)

    Using up food makes me happy.

    Look at me go! I’ll gloat to my husband. That meal took five pounds of potatoes and a container of chili I found in the freezer and the tail end of that block cheese, yes! Or, That monster crisp made a HUGE dent in the apple supply! Or, No more tortillas and beans—time to make bread! Or, Great! The strawberries are all gone. Moving on to the blueberries…

    My enthusiasm miffs my husband.

    “What’s so great about finishing stuff off? It just means we have to buy more.”

    “But it’s better to use up what we already have than to buy more when we don’t have to. Do I really need to explain this to you?”

    “But using up the strawberries is not good news. Stop being so happy about it.”

    “But it is good news We grew it or bought it and then ate it—that’s the point. By the time summer’s here, we’ll be desperate for all the food we’ve run out of, so we’ll be all excited about planting a garden. There’s nothing better than an empty freezer to light the fire under our butts.”

    ***

    So, in the spirit of shopping my shelves:

    There was a sack of lemons languishing in the fridge. I had all the fresh cream from our neighbor’s cow, plus two pints of whipping cream from the store. The cream situation was reaching crisis levels (just kidding—too much cream is never a problem), so I made lemon creams.

    I found the recipe on Julie’s blog. Boil cream and sugar, add lemon juice, and get a pudding? I was intrigued. So I did it and she was right—it is magic.

    Lemon Creams
    Adapted from Dinner With Julie.

    These are called possets, officially. It’s a English dessert, but since I am not English, I can’t say the word “posset” without feeling like an imposter. So Lemon Creams it is.

    Julie calls for a mix of lemon and lime juice which would be lovely, I’m sure. But I only had lemons, so lemons it is.

    2 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
    3/4 cup sugar
    5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

    Put the cream and sugar in a roomy kettle and bring to a boil over high heat, whisking every minute or so. The mixture will bubble rather vigorously, so once it’s come to a boil, stay close, stirring steadily and lifting the kettle off the heat should the cream threaten to tumble over the edge. Boil for 3 minutes.

    Remove the kettle from the heat, whisk in the lemon juice, and divide the mixture between six ramekins. Cool to room temperature, cover with plastic, and chill in the fridge overnight. (Julie said you could eat them after a couple hours, so we did, but they were still soupy in the middle. They were much firmer after a night of chilly repose.)

  • home education series: stalled

    Continued from

    ***

    I’m at a standstill in this home education series. I have a ton of stuff I still want to say, but I don’t know how or what for or why. So I write pages of notes and talk my friends’ ears off and jump up and down to drive the point home and then I sit down in front of the computer and—nothing. It’s a slightly terrifying place to be. All this pent up energy and fermenting ideas (is there an explosion on the horizon?) but no way out. It’s making my skin crawl.

    Yesterday I listened to Radiolab while chopping celery and peeling potatoes for the supper soup. It was a great show, but the part that was especially relevant was Elizabeth Gilbert speaking on the muse. The notion that there are ideas and inspirations whirling around the earth (like some sort of idea-ridden gulf stream current) in search of a portal through which to enter is intriguing, fascinating, and downright delightful. The thing is, the inspiration only come to those who are worthy; in other words, the people who are putting in the time. So I’m just going to keep putting in my time, thinking, typing rants in all-caps, reading, and wrestling myself into knots and maybe I’ll eventually be worthy of becoming a portal. In the meantime, here’s a bunch of homeschool links, resources, and tidbits to tide you over.

    Some previous posts on homeschooling from yours truly:

    *No Special Skills: my response to the common “Oh you homeschool? I could never to that!” comment. 
    *Hats: on there not being a difference between parenting and teaching. 
    *On the Subject of Grade Level: my kids are behind.
    *Hypothesizing: kids learn when they’re ready.
    *Stirring The Pot: yikes! It’s a full-blown rant! (And it hits the diversity issue smack on the head.)
    *How It Really Is: why I homeschool my children.
    *A Teacher’s Lesson: an unschooling experiment.
    I just re-read these posts and suddenly I don’t think I have anything else to say. Maybe this is the end of this series after all? I’m not sure, but please don’t hold your breath.
    From elsewhere:
    *This is what happens when a kid leaves traditional education by Joe Martino. You’ve probably all seen Logan’s TEDx talk already, but here it is just in case you haven’t. (His cocky attitude is a bit off-putting—try to look past it. Mom, I’m talking to you.) Also, the article is succinct and the video by Sir Ken Robinson is quite worthwhile. 
    *An interview by Penelope Trunk, an unschooling mother, on Pioneer Woman Homeschooling. And another one by IrishMum. I love hearing other homeschool parents talk. We’re all so different!
    *The Mennonite World Review reprinted a post from the series. I’ve been hearing from other homeschooling families who are in “heady” Mennonite communities that don’t understand or even appreciate homeschooling. Fellow Mennonites and Mennonite homeschoolers: would our church community benefit from a more intentional conversation about this topic? If so, how?
    *Homeschool Blues by comedian Tim Hawkins.
    Some excellent books:
    *Teach Your Own by John Holt. This was the book that inspired my parents to homeschool me.
    *Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich. I read this book in one sitting at Barnes and Noble and then went back a few days later and bought it.
    *The One World Schoolhouse by Salman Khan. This is not a homeschooling book. Then again, it is. (I don’t think Khan is aware of this, though.)
    Do you have other good resources? Please share!
  • about a picture

    I snapped this picture on Saturday evening.

    I got out the camera (that only works sporadically/there’s a new one in the mail/I don’t want to talk about it) to capture the lovey love-love going on between my baby and my mommy. But then when I loaded it to my computer and sat down to look at it, I realized there was a lot more going on.

    1. The obvious: my youngest child snuggling on his grandmommy. A minute before, he had launched himself off the chair and into her arms, wrapping his legs around her middle like a human koala bear.

    2. My husband reading a magazine. He’s not supposed to be reading. I know this because he’s back in the corner, bent over the table, and not sitting in a chair like a civilized reader of words. He was probably mid-straightening up, saw the old Time Magazine that my mother brought us, leaned a little closer, and end of cleaning up the house. (This is what is sounds like when he starts a fire with old newspaper: crumble crumble crumb— SILENCE.)

    3.The little pile of clean, folded, and not put away laundry on the table. This—the tail end, the one final piece, the unfinished task—drives me absolutely bonkers. It is also the reason that, when making lists for the minions, I write, “Fold laundry and put it ALL away.” This time, there was no list and I suffered for it.

    4. The one solitary clothes hanger dangling from the living room ceiling (and the blue ropes in the very corner). Usually, that hanger has a man-sized pair of damp overalls draped over its plastic shoulders. In the winter time, the area around the wood stove transforms into a clothes drying room. It’s so romantic.

    5. That string of paper lantern lights that I splurged on (fifteen dollars, to be exact) and haven’t regretted once.

    6. The two little nieces spying on one of my showering daughters. They are in their coats (the nieces, not the showering daughters), ready to go to a coffee shop with my parents to listen to their parents (the girls’ parents, not my parents’ parents) perform. The older daughter, whose head is in the bathroom so you can’t really see, is wearing an old-fashioned bonnet a la Laura and Mary. She is very devoted to the world of make believe and confessed that she sometimes even sleeps in her bonnet.

    7. The stack of books ready to be packed up and taken to West Virginia with my older son for his week-long visit with the grandparents. On the reading agenda (if they get to it): the atom bomb, the orphan trains, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the only must read because it’s due back to the library), some grammary stuff, The Crucible, and I can’t remember what all else (something on the Titanic, maybe?)

    8. The basket of grapefruit. My kids are leery of the sour fruit, but they’re getting braver about taking tastes. Now when I peel myself a snack, I’m lucky if I get half of it.

    9. The banner proclaiming that it’s January and we’re happy about it (from Mavis).

    10. The cluttered art table with a mug of dirty water leftover from a painting project.

    11. The briefly-shelved chess board. It’s in high use, that board is. I’m forever finding chess pieces (we have an odd assortment from several games) under sofas and kitchen cabinets, crunching them with my feet, or vacuuming them up. Nearly every game (between the two youngest) ends in tears, rage-tossed pieces, and flailing fists. And yet they keep starting new games, weird kids.

    12. And back to my loving-on-his-grandmommy boy, the shredded pants. The hems got so full of holes that he kept tripping and falling. When the holes finally ripped open so that the pants were fringed with swaths of dangling fabric, he was thrilled—no more sudden floor landings.