Sundries of the week - 7/6.

This family is awesome. And the air guitar is perfection.

I know this is old, but it still makes me laugh every time. Their faces…

I have this book on hold at the library for when their order of it comes in, and I am so excited. I love learning through food writing, because it’s never just the food, it’s lives shared.

This is why the arts are important, at all levels. I’ll look forward to seeing the results of this study.

I greatly dislike washing dishes, and yet I keep coming back to this article.

Sundries of the Week.

The Rolling Stones made a Rice Krispies commercial.

Gear and advice for plus size bike riders.

Hamburg, Germany is banning single use coffee capsules, and others are following suit.

I've never been so happy to skip the pre-grated stuff and buy a block of parmesan cheese.

Apparently some kids just don't 'get' Kevin Spacey.

This is what happens when you ask to get hacked.

These voices need to be heard.

Some names are just hard.

Sundries of the week.

Here's a few of the things I've been reading this week:

If you've ever been unsure of what to do with snapchat, or what it even is, check out this slightly ridiculous article. How to snapchat like the teens

How this was not a huge story in its time somewhat amazes me. Snowbound Supermodels 

I think I would be an annoyance in a professional kitchen. I don't think I'm quite this precise. Chefs and their tape.

I've loved most of the Ok Go videos released thus far, and this new one is no exception. How it is a one shot astonishes me. Upside Down and Inside Out

If you follow people in the food world, this may interest you. 13 people to know in the food world right now.

Bravery right here. :) I let my Grandma dress me for a week.

I'm not entirely on board with prepping, but I do appreciate this approach a lot more than most I come across. Survival Mom

The article is good, but this is worth checking out for the pictures alone. Surfing Jaws

I would love to cook this soon, though I'm not sure that my guys would enjoy it as much as I would. Winter Panzanella

Enjoy!

Soup.

She hummed as she chopped the carrots. Sometimes nonsense notes, sometimes the melodies to hymns of which she had long since forgotten the words. The knife made a gentle ‘thwap, thwap’ against the cutting board, soothing in its regularity. She used the edge of her palm to push the diced carrots back up onto the blade, then scraped them off into the pot of slowly simmering soup. There was something comforting, something calming about making soup. Taking the small bits and pieces and leftovers of meals and dropping into a bit of water, or, if she’d thought ahead, some stock, somehow produced a thing greater than the sum of its meager parts.

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Diner Pie and Seedy Motels.

Les didn’t really want to leave. It wasn’t the hotel, Heaven knows it wasn’t that, they were all the same. Sleeper Suites, Pearl’s Inn, The Fawn Motel, they were all the same. Small rooms, door directly to the outside, thirty years out of date and in terrible disrepair. That’s why he chose them, actually, because he knew he’d find work. Les was a jack-of-all-trades, good at most repair jobs, and couldn’t stand to stay in one place for long. He’d roll into town, set up residence in a somewhat seedy motel, exchanging rent for repairs and a bit of cash for food and fuel, and then move on when most things were in order and he got the itch to drive again.

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Learning to Cook.

Chris and I have talked about the things we'd like to teach Jonathan as he grows up. How to do laundry, how to clean a toilet, etc. High on the list is teaching him how to cook. I've shown him a couple things, how to measure flour and spices, how to crack an egg without exploding it, (I didn't know you could make an egg explode quite so well as my son has done. Thankfully we've *mostly* moved past that.) I'm learning patience in the process of this teaching, mainly because it's all I can do not to take over and do things "the right way" and just let him stir a bit with the wooden spoon when I'm done.

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Winter Musings.

Somehow, in the midst of winter, I always find my way back to this space. It's not that I don't have much to say the rest of the year; in fact, I probably often have more to say than I actually get written down. It is just that, somehow, in the depths of winter, I find myself drawn to write again. It is a good thing for me.

I'm learning routines this year, learning things that perhaps others learned long ago. Though I usually recoil at the thought of scheduling my day, I have learned that there is freedom in having a schedule. The things I want to get done, get done. I still find rest in the midst of it all, at least when I remember too, but the days go so much better when rest is not my main goal. For that to work, I have to sleep well at night; I'm working on that too. I tend to be rather restless, and wide awake through some of the night, every night, and so often find myself catching a nap during the day. Thankfully, working at home allows this, but I feel the loss in my productivity. And so I'm learning the art of the schedule. 

I hope to bring a bit of that here, but I'm not committing anything to paper just yet. I've got to figure out life schedules before I figure out publishing schedules. It will come. Until then, thanks for sticking it out with me. :)

Harvest.

I'm nearly done harvesting everything from our garden. I need to do final cleanup this week, pulling up dead plants and trimming others, but I'm somewhat dreading it, mainly for the mosquitoes and other bugs that have taken up residence, who like to defend their territory against me. It must be done though, as our last yard waste pick up day is Thursday. It seems earlier this year, even though it's not. Oh well. Harvest has gone well this year, despite my having lost interest in the garden in August, as I always do, only gaining interest again when it was cooler in late September. Everything survives without me at this point, especially since it's started raining again. I can't remember the last time I watered my garden, honestly.

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