Ordinary Time

I'm two-thirds of the way finished with reading, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that isn't Food by Chris van Tulleken. It is a fascinating book and so much more than just about ultra-processed food. It has history, human biology, brain science, and sociology. While I will probably write more about the ultra-processed food bit once I finish it, I came across something this afternoon that I wanted to share with you in terms of adoption. "Flavour signatures of particular smells and tastes also allow us to identify food from our cultures -- historically food we would know to be safe. This learning starts before birth. Julie Mennella at Monell Chemical Senses Centre did an experiment examining how food choices during pregnancy influence future flavour choice. During the last trimester of their pregnancies, participants drank a big glass of either carrot juice or water for four days per week for three weeks. They did the same thing while lactating. Then, as the ...

Today was pickle day. G. and I made ten quarts of dill pickles and five pints of bread and butter pickles. Plus, they all sealed! We still had some cucumbers left, so at some point I'll make and can some sweet relish. I did save some brine from the dill pickles if there are still some cucumbers left after that. I used nearly three gallons of white vinegar today.  I also juiced another 24 cups of choke berries. I think I have one more batch to juice and then I can make jelly. Fascinating times over here, but it keeps me sane because I can't really focus on all the bad stuff.  And for those who read to the end even when all I wrote about is endless canning, a brief update on how the community college classes are going for everyone. The shirt answer is they are going well for everyone. What has been interesting is all three have come home saying they are the only ones who answer questions in class. (They are all in different classes.) I'm fact, Y. came home and announced her m...

It's the end of the growing season, the country's descent into hell in a hand basket is speeding up, and I have a bit too much free time due to not enough clients this month. All of that together is a recipe for me to engage in an obsessive canning and making fest. The making end I shared yesterday, so today it's canning. The direct correlation between my existential dread and preserving food continues.  Yesterday, I popped over to my favorite family run farm stand where I know they sell in amounts suitable for canning. (Remember the corn ? Same place.) I wanted to see what was on offer because the pantry was bare of Dilly beans and dill pickles, with the bread and butter pickles running low. I was in luck and bought 25 pounds of beans and two packs of pickling cucumbers. With G.'s help, we did all the beans today. Those 25 pounds of beans ended up making 13 pints of Dilly beans with enough fresh beans leftover to have with dinner.  Only one out of the thirteen didn...

Before I get to talking about warps, I have a couple of other things to share first. Here is some handspun that I finally finished and got off the wheel.  It's a 2-ply Merino, and I wasn't sure I loved it at first. It's for the holiday sale, so I decided to wind it into a set of mini-skeins which I would them dye each of them a different color using natural dyed. The skein on the right is actually a prettier green in person (you know me and photographs). It was dyed with bindweed, which I have in abundance. I think I'll do goldenrod next because it is in bloom.  After I had mordanted this batch, I actually ended up liking the yarn more. It's now incredibly fluffy and bouncy. The other thing I wanted to share was my bodice Muslim that I drafted. The pattern drafting class I had been taking is meeting again, and we are now to the place where we are creating pattern blocks for ourselves. This is to my measurements and we'll do the first fitting on Wednesday. I stil...

I just finished The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. If you're unfamiliar with that author's name, she also wrote Anne of Green Gables. If you haven't read this particular book, I highly recommend it.  One thing I have always loved about L. M. Montgomery's books is that she created strong and often outspoken female characters in an age where that was not the norm. (Anne was published in 1908 and The Blue Castle in 1926.) This book has the added enjoyment of watching the main character find her voice. It was the perfect antidote for this past week.  And one of my favorite quotes from it: "Fear is the origin sin. Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you." (p. 25)

A while back, while we were heavily in the thick of healing two newly adopted older children adjust to their new parents, siblings, home, language, and culture, I wrote a post with some unpopular opinions in it . I don't normally ask you to pause in reading the current post in order to read a previous one, but I'm asking you to do that now. If you weren't reading here in 2016, reading this past post will help you understand where I am coming from. Go on, click back, I'll wait.  Here's a picture from about that same time period to keep you entertained while we wait for everyone to get back.  R., H., and Y. at the Museum of Science and Industry Everyone back?  Good intentions don't go very far when vulnerable people pay the price. In the example I wrote about it was the children living in institutions who pay the price for orphan tourism. Nice people with good intentions get to feel as though they did a good thing while leaving unacknowledged emotional wreckage in...