Making the Tradition Mine

I sort of fell off the Internet there for the second part of December. Wanna know why? After last year’s first attempt was deemed a success by my candy-making grandfather, and with his candy-making tools in hand (omg! marble slab ftw!), I picked up the family Christmas candy tradition. I’ve always thought that someone should carry on Grandpa’s candy making; if it’s me, I get to claim the extras. I guess there’s an ulterior motive for everything. Grandpa made caramels for years. I remember there were a few years when I was a teenager (I think) when he made all …

My Weekend

Things I did this past weekend: spent 2 hours shoveling gravel into buckets as part of a work party in our local urban forest, Cheasty Greenspace at Mt. View. We graveled 75 feet of trail! attended a showing of Once Upon a Circus, a production of the SANCA Youth Company. They attempted to tell fairy tales but kept getting the details mixed up. Favorite segments: the acrobatic seven dwarfs and Red Riding Hood’s aerial routine. The introduction skit mangling The Lord of the Rings was pretty awesome as well. made a bag from In Color Order’s tutorial: started the holiday …

What if…

I have this fantasy about melting snow: Imagine you have some snow on the ground. Seattle snow. Midwestern snow would be too deep. Now imagine that it all melts, all at once. Instantly. Like someone used the Clapper and instead of turning on a light, all the snow was immediately liquid. Now imagine the split second when the water is all standing where the snow had been, all still and quiet, like the water’s a little surprised to be Not Snow. Then, it all suddenly rushes away. It’s somewhere between that Parting of the Red Sea scene in The Ten …

When I got started on it this morning, the vision for dinner was potato soup. When the garden produces 48 pounds of potatoes, that’s a lot of potatoes to discover/invent ways to eat. Some of them are starting to show their age (perhaps the pantry is slightly warmer than the perfect potato storage temperature), but they still soup nicely. But there was half a sweet potato in the fridge that I threw into the pot with the sautéd onions and the dried bell peppers. I added one of the jars of whey from cheesemaking last month and the whey that …

Tomorrow is Monday, and the vacation is officially over. And, in the department of minor miracles, I might actually be mostly ready. The after-school muffins are made, the mail is processed, the email box sorted. Caitlyn and I harvested the remaining carrots that were still in the garden. Their tops were nasty, but the carrots are in surprisingly good shape, even after the freezing weather of last month. Caitlyn was able/willing to get into the harvesting this time, as well, since the soil just brushed off, unlike last time. I may leave them in the garden longer next winter – …