Saturday, Feb 26, 2011 | Book Review |
Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook, volume 5, by Craig Battle and Ramon Perez, published by Owlkids.
It’s a bunch of different comics, and they’re mysteries. Some of the clues are hidden inside pictures–they’re not always words. I like how the artist draws the characters. I found out about Max Finder in Owl magazine. I like mysteries because they’re fun to try and figure out who did it. I like comics because it tells a story with pictures.
I also liked how you could find clues on the way while you were reading it, as if you were the detective. Then you could find out if you were right or wrong at the very end of the mystery.
I think it’s made for 7-13 year olds. It’s made for multi-gender (boys and girls). This book is cool.
by Albus, age 9
Friday, Feb 25, 2011 | Local Food |
Some food stores well in our cold cellar. Some food does not. The sweet keeper squash is still going strong, but all other squashes are turning, uh, squishy. Squishes. We’ve kept them past their prime. Note to self: buy in bulk early in the season, eat lots, and by January at the very latest, shred and freeze the rest. Late February is too late. Although also note: some slightly squishy squash may be peeled and turned into soup.
Excellent keepers: garlic, stored in brown paper bags (I love my Ontario garlic! If you think you know garlic, and you’ve only ever met grocery store Chinese-grown garlic, I would like to introduce you to a whole different vegetable [is it a vegetable?]); potatoes, as long as you root through the big bag and compost any soft specimens–they keep best stored in smaller amounts in brown paper bags; beets, just like potatoes, only everyone gets much more tired of them, and kind of wishes they wouldn’t keep so well (though they do make good pickles).
Good keepers: apples. Our cold cellar can’t preserve them as well as Martin’s, our local apple farm, but we buy half a bushel or more at a time, and, stored in our cold cellar, they stay crispy ’til eaten. But we can go through half a bushel in two weeks, so it’s hard to put a fine end date on their cold cellar lives.
Decent keepers: yams, turnips, green cabbage, napa cabbage, pears. Lower your expectations. Don’t leave them to linger all winter long. Eat within the month (even sooner for the napa). We store them loose on wire shelves, with the exception of the pears, which are stored, like the apples, in a handy bin. The pears must been eaten within two weeks, we’ve found, and they rot deceptively, from the inside out.
Not to be kept in the cold cellar: onions, which apparently have an ill effect on apples, so we store them in a dark cupboard in the kitchen; and carrots, which keep best in the refrigerator. It’s not practical to have more than 10 lbs in the bottom drawer of the fridge, but luckily, through Bailey’s Local Foods, I can buy a new 10 lb bag every month. And when that’s not enough, I can drive to Martin’s farm and buy more.
In the freezer, which I’m digging into with ever more gratitude for last summer’s kept harvest, I wish there were more: corn and green beans. And less peas and beet greens. I am absolutely thrilled with the amount of plums and apricots, and the happy surprise of blueberries, (enough to get us through til April or May). But the frozen applesauce is wasted space. Note to self: can the stuff! My canned pearsauce has lasted til now (last jar opened last night). My tomatoes are hanging in there, but with an upswing in soup and stew production, the jolly red jars are beginning to dwindle. I must do a head count. I want them to last through May, and it’s time to start rationing. The frozen roasted red peppers continue to delight. And finally, I am happy with my frozen herbs, but could have frozen far more cilantro and basil, the latter particularly, because there is nothing like a heaping bowl of pasta with pesto to make a winter’s supper sing. But I would like to critique my own freezing method–packing fresh leaves into ice cube trays and covering with water to freeze, then removing to store in bags. Note to self: less water, more leaves.
Sunday, Feb 20, 2011 | Siblings |
CJ’s newest excuse, when he doesn’t want to do something: “I too weak to do it, Mama! I too weak!” This applies to everything from picking up a game thrown in a fit a of pique, to walking instead of strollering, to climbing into a chair when he’d prefer to be helped. So far, I must say, it’s totally working. Who could resist helping a weak two-year-old?
CJ is also throwing more fits than he used to, a surprisingly endearing phenomenon. His feelings are much more sensitive than they once were. Yesterday, at supper, he crawled off his chair and stomped to the kitchen and declared: “I not eating supper ANYMORE!” No one knew what had happened, but he finally told us: Albus had been “interrupting!” With an apology from Albus, he climbed back into his chair and joined us again, entirely cheerful. His declarations of refusal are many, and are set off usually by hurt feelings, by someone telling him he’s doing something the wrong way, or by being ignored or not included, or not included in the way that he wishes: “I not eating cookies ANYMORE! I not be your son ANYMORE! You not be my mommy ANYMORE! He not be my sister ANYMORE!” etc. Maybe it’s because he’s my last, but man, I just love this stuff. It kills me.
:::
Our house is so exquisitely trashed that I don’t have the heart to tackle the mess all at once. So today I decided to do one room at a time. I started with the office/playroom. Phew. One done. Next up: the dining-room, so we can eat supper together. AppleApple is going to cook with Kevin and they plan to make vegetarian lasagna with garlic bread.
Saturday, Feb 19, 2011 | Photos, Play, Siblings |
Non-screen bonding. Still in pajamas. This is our Saturday, so far.
Saturday, Feb 19, 2011 | Confessions, Kids, Siblings |
Did I ever tell you (confess might be the more appropriate word) that we got our children a wii for Christmas? Yes, despite my determined rhetorical stance against electronic gadgetry, screentime, and giving in to the whims of trend, after much consideration and discussion, Kevin and I decided to get a “family gaming system.” Even just typing out those last three words makes me sigh. Kevin was the more enthusiastic of the giving parents, but I did indeed agree. What swung my vote was the fact that the children were already exposed to screens in a variety of forms. They watched movies, and played games on online sites like Poptropica and TVOkids. Albus played a computer game on Saturday mornings with the others gathered around the tiny screen to watch. We had limits in place on these other uses of the screen, so we figured we could treat the wii in the same way.
And it’s been … fine. Actually, in some ways–not to endorse family gaming systems–it’s proven to be a place of bonding between siblings.
Here’s what’s happening right now: Albus is playing a game with CJ that is easy enough for CJ to play, too. They are active and bouncing and laughing and taking water breaks. I’m not saying this bonding couldn’t happen in many other ways, because it can and it does. But this is okay, too. Okay. Guess that’s as enthusiastic as I can get in my acceptance of the family gaming system.
Compromise. Even I can do it.
