Questions I ask myself after spending another beautiful day in the kitchen
I’ve spent the day in the kitchen. I can’t decide if this is a fine and lovely thing, for which I am appreciative, or if it’s a bit of a waste, and I should have been outside in the sunshine, or off to church this morning, or participating in one of the many community events going on today …
Instead, I woke up, started the laundry, hung a load from last night on the line outside, and turned on the radio, which is my constant companion on kitchen days. Then I began. I started by mixing and kneading a batch of bread and setting it to rise on the counter. I chopped and stewed plums and pears, which had been going to mush on the counter. In another pot, I sauteed onions, garlic, and herbs, and on a baking sheet arranged whole, cored tomatoes. I fired up the BBQ to about 375, and roasted the tomatoes with the sauteed veggies for several hours. I heated milk and washed jars and made yogurt. I mixed up cookie dough and baked the worst cookies ever. (And I followed the recipe. I have no explanation, except that maybe the kitchen is politely telling me to scram).
And I hung a second load of laundry on the line.
Could that be all? I started before 9am, and it is now nearly 4pm. For my efforts, I have arrayed before me: 2 jars of plum-pearsauce; 4 loaves of bread; several litres of roasted tomato sauce; 6 jars of yogurt; and a batch of barely edible cookies. The week ahead, and its necessary meals, remains unplanned. I am, therefore, going to throw on my running gear and go for a looooooooong run in today’s remaining sunshine. Fooey and Kevin are in charge of supper: pita pizzas on the BBQ using that roasted tomato sauce (I scraped the roasted ingredients into a pot and macerated them using a hand blender).
:::
As the school year begins again, my mind returns to the necessity of producing weekday suppers, frequently to be eaten at a ridiculously early hour, or immediately upon arriving home, due to after-school and evening activities. And so this blog will also return to a reprised version of The Week in Suppers. First edition coming tomorrow. Look for (mostly) vegetarian meal ideas, as our family attempts to go vegetarian for a month. Stay tuned.
One small thing
So, I’m out for a run, doing my best to keep my pace up a long steep climb, when a car slows beside me. An elderly man rolls down his window, leans across the front seat and with great enthusiasm calls out: “Congratulations!”
That’s never happened before.
The edits have arrived …
The edits have arrived. So I’ll be back to Juliet for one last think before the copy editing stage. And you know, I’m feeling ready to say goodbye. I’ve been working away at the new book, and discovering new characters, and writing in a different way than I did with Juliet. It feels more free-flowing, less controlled, and more plot-oriented, but that’s okay. Different is good.
As I start this new book, and finish Juliet, I’ve been inspired by Miriam Toews’ career so far. I just finished reading Swing Low, her biography of her father, written and imagined in his voice; and before that gulped down Irma Voth, which was set in Mexico, in a Mennonite compound where a movie was being filmed. A couple of points here. Miriam Toews played a lead role in a movie made by a Mexican director set in a Mexican Mennonite compound (compound might not be the right term, but my sense is these farms are not like villages or towns). And her father died of suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression. What inspires me is that she found ways to incorporate real-life experience into her work. There is no straight line between fact and fiction; it’s threads spun and wound and sewn into beautiful fictional patterns. I suspect that she could not do otherwise. Her creative life is necessary, and can’t be separated from her life. I get a sense of urgency, poignancy, and necessity when reading her work.
And I also experience overwhelming gratitude: that her work exists, that she works so hard to create it, and that I get to read it.
She writes the kinds of books I hope to write … hope that I am writing. Not that I want to mimic her voice, but that I want to build a career out of the things that matter to me, and write books that are heartfelt, maybe even heartbreaking, but also hopeful. That I not fear the insistence of life experience nosing its way into my fiction; but that I not limit my imagination either. I aspire to variety backed by consistency. Which is not the same as predictability.
“Be careful, Carrie. You’re becoming predictable.” I remember a mentor telling me that, many many years ago. I would have been eighteen. I remember thinking that she had a point; and it frightened me. I knew she didn’t mean I should become erratic; no, she was cautioning me to stay creative, to continue to push my limits, not to rest easy.
Many years later, and I don’t rest easy. Except at night, when I sleep very deeply indeed. (Except for last night, when I didn’t. I didn’t rest easy, either metaphorically or literally. Too many thoughts — work, deadlines, food, scheduling — whirling through my mind).
Rewards: sticky parenting methods
Do reward systems work, as a parenting method? I’ve been pretty firmly against them, on principle. On principle, I believe that kids should do their jobs to help the family out, as participants in a collective effort.
But it turns out that our eldest is highly motivated by reward; and highly not-motivated by his mother’s principles. This summer, to earn money, and completely of his own initiative, he worked for his grandma on several very hot afternoons. The work was gardening, which he blithely ignores at home, but at Grandma’s he threw his whole heart into the job. They went to the library and researched plants. They went to the greenhouse, and he picked out flowers and plants based on his research. Then he dug the garden beds and planted the flowers and plants, and watered them. For which he earned some money. And he took great delight in the connection between working hard and earning a reward.
Which got me rethinking my original no-reward system of family governance (or, more precisely, the-reward-is-in-the-happy-feeling-you-get-from-helping-out-your-family system). I’m not abandoning that system, or the concept of responsibility. The kids do have responsibilities, and important ones, like walking to school, and making sure younger siblings get safely to and from school. And going to bed when told. And doing their homework.
Which brings me around to the grey area of piano lessons. They kind of have to take piano lessons; perhaps they would want to even if the choice were wholly theirs, but the truth of the matter is, their mother wants them to take piano lessons, and three out of four children are doing just that this fall. It’s Fooey’s first year, and A and A’s third. Now, before this round of lessons ever started, Albus heard from a friend that the friend’s piano teacher gives out stickers for “good” practices, which, if enough were earned would eventually add up to actual prizes (Albus heard giant Lego ships; I’m thinking portions of this story might be apocryphal).
But in any case. Intriguing. What counts as a prize? For AppleApple, it’s a book. For Albus, it’s Lego. And what counts as a “good” piano practice? Basically just focus and attention. Also, as a rule, play each song at least three times. Albus was over the moon: imagine getting stickers just for practicing the piano. And I thought, imagine children practicing the piano just for getting stickers.
So I made up sticker sheets for each child (CJ could not be left out, and he actually sits at the piano and hammers away to earn his sticker). The rule is only one sticker can be earned per day. I hope it won’t discourage kids from taking an extra turn on the piano if they are so inspired, but I sensed that sticker madness followed by sticker burnout might quickly occur if limitations weren’t instituted.
Before getting all hurray-for-stickers, I will allow that it’s early days, just the second week of lessons, but hurray for stickers! Piano practice, and lessons, have thus far been completely pain-free, even pleasurable. The only issue is children fighting for time on the piano. Practice has been happening first thing in the morning, before school. Best of all (and this is my reward), the extra practicing is paying off: music is being made daily in our living-room.
Big words
“Where’s my yogurt drink?”
“Look in the fridge. Generally perishables are refrigerated.”
“Mom, why do you use such big words sometimes?”
Hm, yes, I suppose that phrasing is a bit obscure. Not quite Conrad Blackian, but also not, “that’s where we stick stuff that needs to stay cold.” All I can say, in my defense, is that I like words, and those happened to be the first ones that popped to mind.
“Sometimes when I say big words, people look at me funny.”
(For the record, she didn’t look like she minded being “looked at funny.” I don’t think she’ll stop trying out big words anytime soon. And neither will I.)
File this exchange under Another Example of Like Mother, Like Daughter.