Lovely Little Things: #2

pondering & recipes from the homestead

Did you hear that this Friday I’ll be teaching a free class on master dough? This is one simple dough recipe that you can adapt in endless ways - I'll show you how and also give you three printable recipes to try it out! Totally free. You can register to join the class, get the recording if you can’t come live, and get the printable recipes right here.

1.14.25

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

I repeated myself. Again. Stuart paid attention with his eyes, but I knew in his mind had long since wandered off to Middle Earth or lesson planning for homeschool coop tomorrow. He’d already heard it, perhaps a few times, and his brain had no need to absorb the emotions.

Unfortunately, my tongue still betrayed me. It was eager to walk the path again. As the words left my mouth, I knew that they were futile. Verbal processing (one of my many faults) can easily tip into selfishness, forcing everyone in my vicinity to come along for the ride, strapped in and thrusted into the roller coaster of middle-age-female-thoughts. Poor Stuart.

He humors me, despite the forced and familiar terrain, as I auditory exclaim that the times, are in fact (as Bob Dylan famously penned), a-changin’.

Six-months ago, when a friend asked about our ten-year goals and plans, I chortled, and said we’d be carrying on - business as usual. Schooling the kids, tending to the gardens and work, tucked in as a family. He chortled in return, pointed out my bad math, and rightfully observed that… well, no. By God’s grace, our oldest Georgia will be 24. Stuart, do you remember when we were 24? We held our first child in our arms, eager and anxious and so full of joy. The youngest, Juliette, will be 18. The present now will later be past.

I remember very well the smell of tea-tree oil in the diaper pail and the weight of the bag that went with us everywhere, full of pacifiers and toys and wipes. Morning naps gave my days clear moments of rest and quiet and four pregnancies gave my body a journey of epic proportions and shapes.

We settled, joyfully, into the season of life that was Kipper The Dog and potty training, delighting in mispronounced words, squishy folds, warm milk, and giggles. It all may sound a bit too precious - and it was (is). Gazing onto trails of crumbs and Calico Critters littering the floor, I still knew a clean floor could never possibly bring me as much joy as these four hooligans could.

Warm latte in hand, I wrap my cold fingers around a mug, deeply inhaling the perfume of maple syrup that Stuart has drizzled into the milk. Across the room, Owen and William are putting the finishing touches on their essay, about a fictional Ancient Greek warrior, written in cursive. Juliette is reading her history lesson after having just tucked away a full page of long-division into her math book. Georgia studies Logic, Latin, and Algebra 2 in the quiet of her bedroom. The Calico Critters have been gifted to a young family with plenty of toddlers to enjoy them.

The sun rose as I dabbled makeup over my aging skin… yes, it has aged, hasn’t it?… while they made themselves breakfast. No sippy cups needed filling, the wails for MOMMA breaking through the silence less frequently.

How did this happen?

“They still need you.” my own Mother comforts me. “They’ll always need you. Just in different ways.” I know she’s right, she always is. Even as I pick my nails in momentary melancholy, I only really feel gratitude. I tell Stuart this too. Again. All is as it should be, I softly say.

A bit like a sunset, one can sit and stare at the glory of the colors and rays exploding in the sky. WOW! Look at that! It’s incredible! WHAT A SHOW! Yet despite the intense delight and enjoyment of the beauty, second-by-second it changes. One is simply not capable of holding it in that moment, try as we might.

Would we even actually want to?

I love my babies.

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1.15.25

In a second-class car, I sit behind an American couple. “You’re over the top, Susan. This whole trip is over the top. Did you really have to have that hate? That ridiculous hat. And that wine you just had to drink at lunch cost thirty-five dollars. And now you sit here in ecstasy over cornfields and cows and a few decrepit villages. Hell, if you wanted to see cornfields I could have taken you to Iowa. Could have saved myself a whole lot of trouble. We travel seven thousand miles to look at cows.”

“I’m not just looking at cows, Jeffrey. I’m looking at Italy. That’s the part you don’t understand. And I love my hat. And I’ll tell you another thing, Jeffrey. I am over the top. Almost everything and everyone in this world is over the top, over your top. And I’ll tell you why. Your cup is too small. Your cup is mean and small and nothing fits in it except whatever drips and dribbles you pour into it yourself. There isn’t room for another thing. But let me tell you, Jeffrey, there’s more to life than what you can fit into your cup. Get a bigger cup. For God’s sake, Jeffery, get a bigger cup.

The Lady In the Palazzo, Marlene de Blasi

33 days until we leave for our trip to Umbria!

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1.17.25

Fried Apples

Though it’s not a complicated recipe, this one feels like home. It’s a really beautiful way to serve up something that everyone knows and is familiar with; but maybe they’ve never enjoyed it in such a way before. It’s delicious served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or sweetened mascarpone, but truth be told, we eat them just like this. Don’t forget that you can easily reuse your tallow many times so even though the recipe calls for a lot, it can be saved in the refrigerator many times over for frying various foods.

1 ½ cups milk

2 eggs

3 tablespoons maple sugar

¾ teaspoon salt

½ cup flour

¼ cup cornstarch

1 teaspoon baking powder

3-5 tart apples, such as Granny Smith

3-5 cups tallow or lard, for frying 

1. In a bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, sugar and salt until well combined. Add in the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder. Whisk again very well until it’s completely smooth. Set aside.

2. Cut the apples into ¾” slices, widthwise. Set aside. 

3. Add the tallow into a Dutch oven. It should reach no more than halfway up. Heat the tallow to 325 degrees. 

4. Add the apple slices into the batter and swirl it around to coat them evenly. Using tongs, carefully move one apple slice at a time into the hot tallow, taking care to not overcrowd the pan. Working in batches so that the apples are in no more than a single layer, fry them for 4 minutes per side or until slightly puffy and golden. Remove the apple slices to a paper towel and repeat with the remaining slices. 

5. Let cool a bit, and dust lightly with powdered sugar, before enjoying.

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1.19.25

Clicking “purchase now” on a familiar gardening website, I feel equal parts exhilaration and defeat. What will people think? I ponder in my insecurity, knowing full-well that’s already the stupidest and most unhelpful question one can ask. I push it aside and begin pondering something else. Anything else.

The truth is that the decision has already been made… and for good reason. Even if our audience can’t make sense of it, we have.

I know in a few short weeks, a couple of gigantic packages will arrive in the mail (hopefully before our departure to Umbria). Tonya, our delivery driver, will arrive and use her impressively strong arms to hoist them into the tractor bucket. (She really is something to watch!). From there, the packages will be driven to the market garden, my short, red-handled gardening knife thrust carefully into the edge, opening up the package for the first and final time. I imagine a few swear words and fatigued muscles will follow as Stuart and I begin to pull and stretch the thick, black plastic over top of the currently frozen and dormant vegetable beds, still full of absolute chaos from last years harvest. I rest my case.

The beds, this year, will rest.

The reality is, they must. I must. Americans are good at many things, but built-in-cultural-rest is perhaps not one of them. Why would you rest when you can be productive? Thoughts like this wrap around me and I, like a fish snagged in a net, squirm to free myself from the suffocation. I don’t know how to rest well. But I want to.

This past weekend, I watched (for perhaps the 7,162 time) my favorite movie, A Good Year. At the very end, Max sits in the golden sunshine of Provence, a canopy of ancient trees in the distance where a table set for lunch awaits him. Max has given up something in London for something else in France. A trade of one life for a different one. It costs. But the gain is great.

To say “no” to one thing is to say “yes” to something else. In this year’s case, saying no to the market vegetable garden means saying yes to taking an extended family stay this spring in our favorite place in the world (aside from home, that is). It also means saying yes to a much-needed root cellar renovation and yes to the development of some bare land on the property. Time not allocated to making sauerkraut and giardinera will mean that same time can be devoted to pouring a bit more love and life into our fruit and nut trees, flower beds, and herb gardens. A trade of something for something else. Shoot… I did it again, didn’t it? Slipping so easily into the pit of justification for the invisible critic.

Perhaps more importantly - baking into our decision the desire to rest. With stacks of books and piles of flower seed packages and prayer journals and moments of deep contemplation. A small sabbatical of mind and effort, redirected towards the planting of new ideas and dreams.

Or perhaps directed at nothing at all.

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1.21.25

I have never regretted our foolhardiness. Of course, we made mistakes, endless mistakes, but at least they were our own. Just as the garden was our own. However imperfect the result there is a certain satisfaction in making a garden that is like no one else's, and in knowing that you yourself are responsible for every stone and every flower in the place. It is pleasant to know each of your plants intimately because you have chosen and planted every one of them. In course of time they become real friends, conjuring up pleasant associations of the people who gave them and the gardens they came from.

We Made A Garden, Margery Fish

Love,

“A commonplace journal is a type of notebook where a person collects and organizes various pieces of information like quotes, observations, ideas, and interesting facts from different sources, essentially creating a personal knowledge repository for future reference and reflection; often used to gather insights from books, conversations, or personal experiences.”