The week in suppers: short and seasonal
Monday. Baked macaroni and cheese, by request. With peas, not by request.
Tuesday. Mashed potato soup (with leeks.)
Wednesday. Potluck birthday supper at my bro’s. I brought quinoa salad and old-style coleslaw.
Thursday. Sweet potato curry with brown rice. Bad recipe. What are we, hippies? Won’t repeat.
Friday. Potatoes, yams, and beets cut like french fries, tossed with olive oil, and roasted with rosemary. Chicken noodle soup, minus the chicken, by request.
**Weekend cooking accomplishment: Baked four loaves of bread. I bake bread by rote. I can bake bread with my eyes closed. I can bake bread in a deconstructed house that teeters on the edge of revolution. All I need is yeast, and an oven.
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This is a much-foreshortened week in suppers post. I am grappling with how to present these posts, and would appreciate feedback. Do you groan when you see it’s a “week in suppers” post? Too long? Too detailed? Are the menu ideas useful? I plan to continue doing them in one form or another because it’s easy to forget what’s working (or not), and I need constant reminders. But I also need to find the right format.
New rooms, day one, take a look
**Notes on the rooms.
My office has nothing on its walls. And we’re using my old crappy furniture. But it’s serene, austere, and dare I say perfect as is. I may not change a thing. Yesterday as we worked to move and rearrange four different rooms, I found myself taking moments to sit in my great-aunt Alice’s rocking chair and look at the brick and the lights and the height, and to breathe.
AppleApple and Kevin created a bookshelf from the old costume bureau. An awesome repurposing project. I love that she has The Bible arranged beside other favourites like Bone, Misty of Chincoteague, and Children of War (the latter being a wonderful book that she keeps recommending her big brother read, as way of encouraging him to stop playing imaginary games with exploding bombs.)
The new bunk bed in the little kids’ room is a marvel of design. We found it on kijiji, and it’s not of the best material, but heck, it was available and in our price range. It’s a t-shape, and CJ sleeps in what amounts to a little cozy cave. On one end is a desk with shelves and a built-in light. Bureau drawers are built in to the other end, along with a set of deep shelves. I still can’t believe how different that room looks.
My step-mother figured out how to make a comfy couch out of the guest futon under Albus’s bed. We’ve had the darn thing for about a decade and never knew it was possible. Neither Kevin nor I could understand her explanation (apparently it was very simple.) We’ve decided she operates on a higher level than us. My dad also loaned his muscles and back to the moving. It wouldn’t have gotten done without their help. I’ve gone all wimpy now that I’m running. I keep telling Kevin, I’m a runner, not a weight-lifter. I don’t want to injure myself.
Yet to be done today: painting, or at least prepping for painting; cleaning; and our living-room. I stole that beautiful wooden cabinet for my office from the living-room, and somehow that had a domino effect of toppling the entire room into a disaster zone. You know it’s a disaster zone if the smallest members of your family tell you: “This room is a mess!” Uh, yeah. We’re making use of kijiji to source a few more items. Kijiji is my new favourite virtual place. I’ve been inspired to post a few items for sale, too. If I get organized, I’ll post the entire contents of our attic. My inspiration, in part, came from this blog on the zero-waste home. (And no, we’re nowhere near zero. But hope springs eternal.)
In the new office …
A little glamour for your snowy Friday morning
What happened to the past two days?
Well, yesterday was spent organizing digital photos for the year. Ugh. It’s one of those things that has to be done that didn’t used to have to be done. Remember film? Remember prints? Here’s my digital method: I order prints of, say, the top 300 photos of the year right around now, in time to be put into albums for Christmas. It’s tedious work, but someone’s got to do it. If we want to keep these photos, that is. Poor Fooey’s babyhood is essentially unrecorded due to an awkward family switchover from film to digital. And she was the cutest baby ever. I don’t want any more eras to disappear; or at least not due to negligence on my part.
So that was yesterday.
Today, I’m going to post the blog I should have written on Wednesday. Yes, I’m behind the times. This is yesterday’s news. But what lovely news it is: on Tuesday evening, Canada’s literary scene got all glammed up for the biggest literary prize we’ve got going on here. The Giller Prize! And my publisher, Anansi, was there with TWO books on the shortlist. They posted a behind-the-scenes slideshow if you want a peek inside. Ah. It will make you want to drink champagne while wearing something sparkly.
Once upon a time, I got to attend the Gillers. I was 24. I dropped the better part of a pay cheque on a glamorous outfit, arrived early, sat at the back with fellow books section types and drank and ate and had so much fun. A little glamour goes a long way, especially in an industry not really renowned for the glitz. Let me tell you, sitting here in my sweater thinking about semi-colons: nothing but hot.
Now, I’m not super-connected to the CanLit scene, having spent the past decade being mostly-mom-at-home in the wilds of Waterloo, but still. The CanLit scene is like Six Degrees of Separation minus a few degrees. So I can say that my editor edited two of the books on the list (that’s pretty sweet.) And I can say that I read at an event with this year’s winner, Esi Edugyan, back when we were both promoting our first books. If I say I knew back then she’d win prizes someday it will sound less like intuition than hindsight, but man, I just knew she’d win prizes.
Anyone else looking forward to reading through this year’s nominees? Any books you wish would have made the list? Got any six-degrees-of-separation connections you’d like to share?
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Oh, and on a side-note: I’m developing a weird hankering for an electronic reading device. Anyone? Anyone? Kindle? Kobo? I do love books, the objects themselves, don’t get me wrong. But I keep having thoughts like, wouldn’t it be cool to, say, watch a video about an author after reading a book? Do e-books have features like that? They should. I so often finish a book and want more. I want to hear the author telling me where she got her ideas, or where she grew up, or how she feels about her characters. Know what I mean? That would be a very appealing addition to any book.
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PS Yes, that’s a photo of my new office!!!!!!! Electrical work needs doing today. I’m moving in on the weekend. Can you believe it?! Me neither.
Ode to the old office/baby room/playroom/guest room
Yesterday I sent the last of the copy edits back to my editor. “We’re really working at the fine details, here, aren’t we,” I commented as we mulled the addition of a “now” here and the removal of italics there. It’s very satisfying to know that a project has been carefully shepherded all the way down to the finest nuance. And just like that, the builders are also dotting i’s and crossing t’s in the new office space. The tile floor has been laid and grouted. Today the electrical work gets started, and tomorrow the trim is installed. Kevin has worked hard to paint walls, ceiling and boards. By the weekend, I will be moving this desk and this computer and this chair downstairs, to my new room.
So it seems fitting to thank this makeshift space in which I’m sitting right now. This is the room where the bulk of The Juliet Stories were written. This is the room where I started my blog. Over the years that this room has served as my writing space, my desk has always been right here, facing the wall nearest the door. I can turn my head to the left and look out the window at power lines over the street, which doesn’t sound very poetical until you consider the birds I’ve seen gathering there, and the squirrels dashing like high-wire artists. One of those squirrels made it into the very last paragraph of The Juliet Stories.
My desk has always been here, but the furniture behind me has changed over the years. Not so long ago there was a crib and a change table and a rocking chair. Now there is a pull-out futon for guests and/or for cozy reading before bed (Albus’s favourite spot.) The closet is crammed with Playmobil. There is an ugly chest of drawers from Ikea to which I cannot wait to bid adieu. (Filled with dress-up clothes.) There is a homework desk, now, too; and homework gum in the tiny set of drawers that serve as my office storage area.
As we look at reconfiguring the rooms, we still have some unsolved problems. Albus will be moving in here, and AppleApple will be claming the boys’ former room, with the two littlest moving in together in what is now the girls’ room. Where will the guest futon go? Will we miss having a communal playroom with shared toys? What will our family policy be on privacy and open doors? Is it time to set up a shared computer space downstairs for homework purposes?
Furniture we’re lacking as we prepare for the move this weekend includes: a bunk bed for the little kids; mattresses; desks; storage cubbies and/or shelves. I’ve been hunting kijiji listings. It’s going to be a busy weekend, a messy weekend, a weekend of playing around with space and imagining and painting and cleaning. It likely to be an unfinished weekend. This won’t all get done in one fell swoop. But it feels like an early Christmas gift, and everyone is excited. Change is exciting. It’s the act of imagining oneself into the future, imagining what might be, what could be. It’s a good time of year for this. We’ll stir things up.
And then we’ll settle in for the winter.
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Also, total aside, but did I really used to have straight hair? Like, just a few years ago, as shown in that top photo? Because it’s pretty curly/unruly these days.