Ordinary Time

I've been pondering how fear can bring out deep seated beliefs that more in more regulated times are kept under wraps or politely ignored. When people are coping with significant fear there is little left over for worrying about social niceties. There are two particular areas of life where I have been dismayed to see increasing levels of less-than-spectacular behavior. I've kept my tongue... so far. The first? The increasing anti-Asian sentiments that I have been seeing and hearing about. I have Asian children so this hits close to home. We don't go anywhere these days, so my children have not been subjected to anything outright (as regards to Covid-19, they have certainly experienced racist behavior at other times), but I have friends who have. Some of it is pretty egregious and other behavior is down right frightening. I'm not sorry to not be able to take my children out right now. If you are white, please be careful about what you say and share. Jokes about bat e

Have you ever watched the cartoon, Pinky and the Brain? It's about two lab rats, who, every night, try to take over the world. I find it highly amusing. I feel a little bit as though we are living in a Pinky and the Brain cartoon right now. This is not because we are trying to take over the world every day, but because of the conversation I have with multiple children every single night. A conversation which is very like the conversation between Pinky and the Brain in every show. I go into say good night to everyone. Each child, as I tuck them in, asks, "What are we going to do tomorrow?" I find myself answering, "The same thing we do every day, child, do some math and find things to fill the time." Sometimes I wonder if my children have noticed that they have not left the house for over fourteen days. They also know we are not leaving the house (property, actually) in the near future. They know we do school every morning. They know they play all afternoon.

In lieu of my weekly menu plan, because we are still working on the one I made two weeks ago, I thought I should write about cooking from a pantry filled with staples. Probably, I really should have written this four weeks ago when everyone was thinking about stocking up so they wouldn't need to leave their homes as much. But, perhaps you now have a pantry full of food that seemed like a good idea to have, but now are wondering what to do with it. I'll try to go through what I assume people would stock up on. It is by no means a definitive list, and actually not even a thought out one as the idea occurred to me when I sat down to write tonight's post. We'll see what I come up with. Rice I keep several kinds of rice in my pantry... jasmine, basmati, arborio, and brown. The jasmine I use as a default rice and for stir-fries; the basmati for more Indian-spiced dishes; arborio is for risotto; and the brown is for a base for grain bowls. But, I was given fifty pounds of

I don't know how I feel about that. I've been living off the beaten track for so long, it seems a little odd to suddenly be joined by more than a handful of people. What do I mean? Well, take a look at our day, and I'll explain. For much of the morning, I was busy transplanting seedlings. There are still quite a few left to do, but they aren't big enough to transplant yet. Here is what I have so far. The seedlings in the living room, and the seedlings in the utility room. The tomatoes I transplanted a couple of weeks are are doing quite well. Now, gardening isn't all that unusual, but B. was telling me that he read there is quite a run on seeds recently due to a sudden upswing of interest in growing your own food. I've been collecting various seeds over the years, and have quite a collection now, both of seeds I have purchased and seeds I have collected from last year's plants. I am going to have a viable garden this year, with hopefully

At least I think it's Friday. I actually had a moment yesterday when I truly couldn't remember what day it was. It was a little unnerving. We are continuing to fare well here at Chez Curry. In talking (virtually) with friends, it seems that in reality, during a global pandemic when you are not supposed to leave your house, that having 12 children truly is easier than say, 2, 3, or 4. My crew have happily played together all week. When one group tires of each other, they split up and find other siblings to play with. Or, if tired of other people, will go find a corner to be quiet by themselves. I think I have heard exactly one time, "I'm bored" from a child. Trust me when I say I am extremely thankful and not taking that lightly. I also have to admit that my children, for the most part, are just funny and fun. If you need a dinner conversation starter, have everyone figure out how their name would sound if you substituted every vowel with 'ub'. Dinner p

Remember I mentioned that there was a food wholesaler in Chicago who was allowing the public to place orders? Well, I made my list and sent it in yesterday, and today it was ready for pick-up. I had little trouble getting there; it was on the west side between Garfield Park and UIC, and I only had to ask one person for directions to find the front of the warehouse. The guy who brought out my order was extremely nice. I now have his card and he is more than happy for me to continue to place orders with him. I think I'm good for a few months at least, though. Because it was kind of a lot of food I brought home. Here is what it all looked like in the back of my van, and below is what it all looked like loaded into the kitchen. There's flour (unbleached and semolina), a bunch of things in #10 cans, quite a bit of cheese of various kinds, sun-dried tomatoes (5 pounds!), some fresh produce, twenty pounds of Italian sausage, and various other things. I figure it was at least

We are playing a little catch-up at home because we had taken a couple weeks of due to illness, but we were supposed to be on spring break for the past two weeks. Because none of our outside activities are currently meeting, it gives us a little leeway in our schedule. Since today would have been spent at our co-op according to the schedule, we had a looser schedule today. We did do math, though. It's just easier to not take huge breaks with that. When you work with a child individually, you have a pretty good idea of how they are (or are not) learning things. I don't need a test result to tell me that, I am perfectly aware of understanding simply by asking a few simple questions. Over the past few days I have been realizing that one child has some pretty good math skills, but is missing some fundamental understanding of the four basic functions. How do I know this? Because I have to explain them every time we come to them. I decided that we need to pause in the textbook an

Mondays can be tough, especially when you are homeschooling. It is the day that you have to spend reminding everyone of the math they knew on Friday, but seem to have forgotten over the weekend. I will now publicly apologize to my mother for all the text books I threw across the room in frustration during my school years. I do this because I now have a book thrower. I can't really get upset with this particular child because I so deeply understand the rather automatic reaction to throw things in the face of frustration. (Would you think less of me to know that it is still a trait I am trying to out grow? I can still throw things if frustrated enough.) The moment of book throwing passed and life continued. I'm happy to report we all survived the day. I share this mainly to remind everyone who homeschools, both by choice or by circumstance, that not every day of learning goes smoothly and swimmingly. There are bumps along the way, but they pass. I think the key is to remind yours

If you are looking for this week's meal plan, remember, last week, I posted my menu for the next three weeks . It was a huge grocery bill, but I'm kind of liking not having to worry about this week's meal or go to the grocery store tomorrow. I doubt that when life goes back to normal that I will try to do more than one week's meal planning at a time, though. It's just too much work on the front end. I think I will be making a rather large order from the Chicago wholesaler I mentioned on Friday. I spent quite a bit of time going through their list of offerings, deciding what I wanted to get. With that order, which I plan on going to get mid-week, we should be set for another several weeks. (Some of the items should last long beyond the need to shelter in place. I hope.) Someone will probably need to go pick-up some milk and fresh fruits and vegetables, but other than that I think we'll be fine. This is good because with the understandable limits stores have put

I've had seasons where I could go literally days without leaving my house. It was because I had traumatized children who couldn't handle being out and about, or because I had five children under five, or some combination of the above. I was also homeschooling during those times. So all of this, taking away the anxiety about possible illness, feels very, very familiar. In some ways this is even easier because I have J. and my adult children at home so it is not just me with a house full of littles. When I discovered the other day that I wore sweats all day and never actually brushed my hair, I realized that I needed to brush up on some rather dormant skills for navigating never leaving my house. Perhaps these tips will be of wider interest. 1. Get dressed. I know it's comfortable to wear sweats or pajamas all day, and every so often it really is a treat. But if you start doing this every day, you are going to feel more and more slug-like. And when ones starts to feel like

Well. The world is a crazy place. That about sums it up. We did nearly a full week of regular school this week. Yesterday was a little limited because J. was home, working remotely, for the first day. Usually when J. is home we don't do school, but that doesn't seem to be a wise choice, so we just need to become accustomed to all working at home together. B. came home tonight along with Romeo, his cat, to stay for a while. The IL governor will be issuing a Shelter in Place proclamation tomorrow, and it will be a lot more fun to be surrounded by family than sitting alone in his apartment.  We are now officially four people over the ten person gathering limit. Oh well. Earlier this week, as part of our learning for ancient Egypt, everyone worked on writing hieroglyphs. This was made super fun because I had been saving packages of  hieroglyphic writing activities which came in the surprise box sent by a friend last fall. There were really cook stencils as well as two sheets

I'm sure you would agree that the news is fantastically depressing these days. I'm not panicking, but then I feel vaguely guilty that I'm not taking things seriously enough. Still, every time I pick up my phone, I find myself holding my breath a bit because you just never know what new latest disaster will appear. So, let's all stop and find the things we are thankful for in the midst of this truly bizarre world event. 1. My family is nearly all home, all the time. J. is working from home now and the college students are all home. The rest of us are already always home. B. is the only one that is currently missing, being employed with his own apartment. It isn't for lack of trying on my part, though, to get him to ride it out with us. Hey, we're already over the limit of social gatherings, what's one more? 2. My family generally gets along extremely well. I've watched my children of all ages play games together, do puzzles, color, bake, play video ga

There has been much hoopla about how to fill ones time during this period of staying at home and practicing social distancing. I was kind of excited about it and looking forward to getting some things I've been wanting to get to done. I even toyed with the thoughts that I might even be able to sneak into my studio and be able to work in there a bit. I have some sewing I need to work on and a friend gave me a really cook quilting pattern, and there is my new dress form that I haven't played with yet... there are always at least a dozen possible projects in there. I had daydreams of being so caught up on the laundry that I could finally get to the things that could use a wash but are not vital. Of course, it would also be fun to get out one of our longer games and play them with my children. The internet was promising boat loads of free time and I was ready to fill it. Today I made a realization. This social distancing-thing where you stay at home with your children all day, ev

And that's just my regular life, not even taking into account all the virus-related craziness. I'm actually kind of looking forward to long, slow days together with my children. Maybe tomorrow will be my day. Today certainly wasn't. It started off well enough. Everyone was ready to sit down to do school at the appointed hour. We did math (some frustration but no tears). We did grammar (I'm going to have to work on some hands-on learning activities to help H. figure out the difference between nouns and verbs... they are currently making no sense). We did history. R. even did some really good work and was pleasant and cooperative. She had such a good morning, I even took a couple of pictures of a small success and posted them on Facebook. We ate lunch and I was able to finish a book I was reading. (Thank goodness I finished it. It was one of the dullest books I've ever read. I kept thinking it would get better and by the time I figured out it wasn't I wa

Today I spent finishing getting all the groceries I bought yesterday sorted out. I did a lot of blanching and freezing. It always takes longer than I expect it to by the time you wait for each step to be done. Tomorrow we are back to business as usual, which means that the school schedule begins again. In some ways, our life (that would be mine and the school age children) has changed very little. We just have fewer places we need to be. (This is not true for J. and our adult and college age children... their typical schedule and money earning is completely turned upside down.) But really, it's the easiest thing in the world for us to get up in the morning, do some math, do some grammar, and head back to ancient Egypt. It's just how we live our lives. We're used to it. As a result, I struggle with what to write. I don't want to just seem that life is normal, because it is so very far from normal. I would love to offer encouragement to those for whom this living and

Yes, you read that correctly, this menu is for three weeks. I have a pretty decently stocked pantry, and I've always said that if push came to shove I could probably feed everyone for several weeks if needed. Well, I'm feeling a little like Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. You know, "He always said she could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week, but he had never been quite sure this was true." Push is coming to shove, and we're going to see how my pantry manages. I did do quite a bit of grocery shopping this weekend, mainly for perishables. I bought some canned goods that needed to be restocked, and no bread and very little meat. What I was mainly stocking up on were things such as pet food, outside animal feed, cleaning supplies that had dwindled, coffee, tea, and fruits and vegetables that had a hope of lasting for a while. I've frozen peppers and onions for late in the month, and tomorrow morning I'll blanch and freeze the othe