Category: Music

Food Food Food Food Food

Food food food food food … it’s on my brain. The need to prepare and serve it in a variety of ways feels suddenly more constant, more pressing, more always. And more difficult. It can’t be that there are more meals to make. It must be that there’s less time in which to make them.

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the afternoon converting two baskets of market tomatoes to 14 jars and 7 freezer bags of the processed variety. (Plus one tomato from our front-yard garden: Albus’s! He insisted it go into the sauce so that he could imagine he was eating “his” tomato all winter). As a guide, I used last year’s blog entry on the subject of canning tomatoes. (Note: I forgot to mention, in that entry, that after placing the skinned tomato pieces into the jars, you fill the jars with hot water to a half-inch head). The work wasn’t hard to do, but it was time-consuming, and in the end felt anti-climactic as this won’t come close to filling our pantry. If I have the heart for it, I’ll repeat the exercise again next weekend. (It would be easier to do, and I recognize this, if there weren’t a thousand interruptions. I suspect it might even be something I’d enjoy doing: simple and productive handwork while the mind wanders. But right now, it feels like a chore among others.)
It’s Sunday, so I’m trying out my crockpot for the first time in years; that way, if the meal flops, we can order last-minute takeout and it won’t cramp our no-room-for-error weekday style. Are there some foods that actually taste better cooked in a crockpot? My experience, though limited, has been discouraging, so I would appreciate hearing some hurrahs for the crockpot. For tonight’s meal, I made up a recipe loosely based on a bunch of recipes in Fix It and Forget It, a cookbook which seems to rely heavily upon cans of cream of mushroom soup. No cans in my cooking. In fact, that may be why the crockpot has seemed so unappealing: because I’m used to eating food cooked up from scratch before mealtime, using the freshest ingredients. Can a crockpot really compete?

Here’s this week’s menu, at a glance:

Sunday: Crockpot brown rice casserole with hamburger, spinach, cheese and tomatoes. Roasted veggies on the side.

Monday: Chicken roasted (steamed?) in crockpot with root veggies. Buttered noodles on the side.

Tuesday: Mac and cheese with ham in crockpot. No time for sides.

Wednesday: BBQ at meet-the-teacher night.

Thursday: Beans or lentils, possibly in crockpot. Possibly not.

Friday: Leftovers. Plus some fresh items picked up from Nina’s buying club.

Of course, in addition to supper, there’s also lunch, and tonight I will be making THREE lunches to send for school tomorrow. Fooey is thrilled. But I am suffering school-lunch anxiety: her teacher has requested that I split the lunch into two well-marked portions (the children’s school has two nutrition breaks per day, but the older children simply choose what they want to eat out of whatever I send). Fooey’s teacher recommends that the first portion of lunch be the more substantial: sandwich. The second should be more snack-ish: fruit, veg. I’ve almost paralyzed my thinking on this subject with over-complication.

Ah, cup of coffee. That’s what I’m enjoying right now. Soon it will be lunchtime … scrambled egg and bean burritos. It never ends. Well, it never ends right now. And I’ll miss it when it does. But perhaps that will be because I’ve romanticized these days and forgotten how little time there was to sit and think. I miss sitting and thinking. There’s much to be said for it, even if what it produces is invisible to the eye.

:::
Random bits. Yesterday, CJ took my hand and led me to the rocking chair in our backyard. “Sit” he said, and I sat. He wanted an audience for his sandbox play. Or maybe he just wanted his mother to sit and think …

The children have been practicing piano, ten minutes apiece, in a the mornings before school. I love this more than I seem capable of expressing. It’s a bit like love. There’s no way to describe love without diminishing it. Hearing them play (or attempt to play) these simple songs on the piano is both ordinary and deeply affecting. It’s comforting. It’s beautiful. It returns me to my own childhood. It is such a wonderful way to start our day.

Yes!

“This is my first day of school in my whole life!”
She has, in fact, been dragged back and forth to school since she was five weeks old, but finally finally her own time has come. This morning, she met her teacher and explored her classroom. She looked confident and prepared, identified the “F” in her name (afterward she confided rather dismissively, “That was easy!”), and she and her little brother played together contentedly while the proud parents discussed the ins and outs of full-day kindergarten with her teacher. (I love how in kindergarten the grownups are required to squat on teeny-tiny chairs around teeny-tiny tables). She will attend her first full day on Monday. Her inside shoes are already there, waiting for her in her shoe cubby (there is also a bin with her name on it, a hook for coat and backpack, and a lunchbox cubby; all labelled and waiting to welcome her).
:::
Yesterday we tried out racing from school to piano lessons to City Cafe Bakery for take-out pizza to home again, all the while thinking: next week we’ll add choir in, too, after supper. Well, maybe not. Choir might just have to take one for the team, because the kids were in states of fine fury and exhaustion by 6pm. Albus kept stalking around glaring at everyone and saying, “I’m so angry!” “Why are you so angry?” “Because you’re not … because Fooey is … because !!!! roar!” Clearly, he was in the frame of mind that in adulthood calls for swear words mumbled under breath, or a nice restorative after-dinner beverage on the porch. We figured he was angry because he was exhausted beyond all repair, and we let the children veg after supper with a movie, then brush teeth, and fall into bed. But Apple-Apple in particular was too wired to relax, and had fits in her bunk, insisting that she must read herself off to sleep. This argument proved particularly effective on her mother, who feels exactly the same way most nights.
:::
Want to make note somewhere (baby book not available): CJ is speaking words! Putting them together in twos! “Dada ball,” he told me last night, coming inside after kicking a soccer ball around the back yard with his dad. Seriously, he did! He also announced, clear as a bell, and at exactly the right moment: “Nap.” Yup, it was naptime. What was that you say? Naptime. Oh, “naptime, naptime!” “Didi” continues to stand in for animals of all kinds. If he’s not kissing his favourite “didis” (animal crackers included), he’s having them kiss each other, or demanding we kiss them. And he’s got a great big head nod he uses to indicate “yes.” I like when a kid says yes rather than no. Shows a positive outlook in life, doesn’t it?

A Grand Debauch

To celebrate their recent wedding, my brother and brand-new sister-in-law hosted a party at their farm, complete with festively blue-and-white striped tent (yuh-huh, it rained off and on, and somehow that just added to the experience), pig roast, bonfire, sparklers, marshmallows, kegs, music, mud, and a device that shot potatoes into the netherworld. Let’s just say it was exactly the wild time that was called for, fun for all ages, complete with a few necessary sparks of danger. Just add fire. A moment that returns to me now: lying in our tent, trying to get CJ back to sleep, listening to the younger/child-less crowd scream out the lyrics to “Sabotage.” Apparently (I can actually picture this) my middle brother somehow managed to get his feet well above his head in a display of dancing virtuosity. How late was this? I have no idea. As soon as we arrived, I lost all track of time, and that was sweet, too. A day and night out of time.
And this week Kevin’s on holiday, and we are getting organized, hanging out, moving at our own pace for a few more blissful days before we return to routine. Let the good times roll.

Hillside Festival, aka Soak-a-palooza 2009

Day one: swimming “at your own risk,” hiding out from a brief rainstorm by the bicycle lock-up, Mapleton’s ice cream, good advance packing and planning, sharing rice and curry with Albus, and grilled corn on the cob with CJ, huge slices of watermelon, conversations with friends, kids on a self-propelled wooden merry-go-round, yoga in the kids’ tent, wandering around with Albus while getting CJ for his nap in the backpack, leaving while everyone was still in a fine mood. Bands we saw? Uh. A smidgen of Julie Doiron, a hint of Hey Rosetta, and anyone who was at the main stage as we wandered by. Best moment: walking off the island, past the bay, on the trail, with Buffy Sainte-Marie singing us home.
Day two: uh oh, huge thunderstorm delays our departure, but looks on the radar like it will blow over; wait in long line-up for parking due to mud pits at the lot entrances; walk an extra half kilometre to the ticket booth; swim briefly; head immediately for food tent, argue over how much food everyone should be hungry for given that we’ve just eaten a picnic lunch in the car; decide to try to watch the band at the main stage, sit on blanket, relax, notice we have over our heads a patch of gorgeous hot blue sky which is surrounded on all sides by ominous looming dark clouds; sense arrival of rain, pack in the blanket, gear up, hit the ice cream stand just as skies open; thunderstorm, fierce winds, seriously everything shuts down, occasional drenched festival-goer runs by barefoot, everyone else huddled under tents or umbrellas; crack of thunder combined with lightening that sounds like we’ve been hit–CJ continues destroying banana ice cream cone with deep contentment; storm passes but rain continues, children complaining of cold, head for hot chocolate; storm returns, take shelter inside island stage tent where Montreal band Clues decimates our collective eardrums, children now complaining of cold and pressing hands to ears; CJ sleeps through; head for kids’ craft tent; then supper; then stop to dance to band on main stage; multiple trips to porta-potties with various children; still raining; start walking home; reach car in lot–sunshine! Though it’s storming again now as I write this … Best moment: that crack of thunder/lightening. It was so surreal, so extreme, and the kids were so extraordinarily content and calm as they licked their ice cream cones in our narrow shelter. Wish I’d gotten photos, but had hands enough only to hold umbrella, napkins, and periodically retrieve CJ’s fallen ball of ice cream.

Listen

My today involved two (2) recitals for Apple-Apple’s day camp. It was hot, someone kept shushing the babies, and I tossed crackers non-stop at my offspring, but hey, it was worth it. Here is the link to Apple-Apple’s first piano performance (be assured, it’s short). And here is the afternoon group singing a canon that I found very moving (plus Fooey mugging for the camera; she thought I was taking a photograph and offered a variety of facial poses … umm, what am I doing to my kids by photographing them so often? Which reminds me that this afternoon, while we were eating popsicles in poetical formation on the front porch, recovering from all the bleeping lovely recitals, Apple-Apple cried, “Get your camera! You need a picture of this, Mom!” and I said, “No. I need to sit down.” And so I did. Because sometimes, sometimes, I don’t need a picture. Which is long enough, methinks, for a parenthetical aside).
And, yes, that’s a gratuitous photo of CJ completely unrelated to this post.

Spring-shine


Walking to school this afternoon … thinking praise be for sunshine. We’re getting our roof done, and just learned our back porch is rotting away, like the front. Sometimes it feels like we’re just perpetually falling apart around here; yet I feel oddly bouyant. The bottom photo is of the older children’s folk music choir, after their performance earlier this week. It was moving to watch them gradually relax, lose some of the stage nerves, and sing from their hearts, even if they didn’t know every word. Though the expression on Albus’s face is kinda how he looked the entire time. When I asked him afterward what he’d been thinking, he couldn’t say. Here’s a taste of the performance (I couldn’t get it to upload here).