Happy Little Miss Homemaker

Last week, Andy and I devoted a large portion of our evenings to watching all of Mad Men Season 1. (Behind the times, I know.) Despite the affinity I felt for Peggy throughout the first season, I spent today much more like Betty than Peggy.

Well, no, I didn't spend my day chain-smoking or start consuming wine at or around 1 p.m. But I did spend my day off engaged in decidedly homemaker-esque tasks. And what a happy little homemaker I was . . . which I guess makes me less like Betty than I previously thought.  ;)

I'm what Suzy Guese calls a "nomadic homebody." As much as I love travel and a good adventure, I need an equal, if not greater amount of time spent puttering around my home to really feel balanced. After a long, busy work week, the cabin and I were overdue for some quality time together.

When I woke up this morning, a mountain of dishes waited by the sink, "past its prime" produce rattled around in the fridge's crisper drawers, the recycling spilled out of its bin and across the floor, and the bathroom was smelling less than fresh.

So today, I vacuumed the entire cabin, finally blocked an afghan for my mother, cleaned the bathroom, did two batches of dishes, did some ironing, took out the recycling and trash, and managed to prepare a balanced supper from a nearly bare fridge. Mundane tasks, yes, but each one was a major accomplishment both for the cabin's appearance and my well-being.  

I performed fridge triage, the happy results of which were a batch of crockpot marinara sauce -using some bruised and otherwise unattractive tomatoes - and these Asian inspired fridge pickles from a cucumber no longer in a state for salad and some garlic scapes from the garden.

I've been chomping at the bit to try these nutty granola bars ever since Marisa posted about them over at Food in Jars.  I have a tried and true granola bar recipe that both Andy and I like, but the chief binder in that recipe is marshmallows and I've been looking for a slightly more wholesome recipe. I finally got a batch made this evening. I'm pretty sure I overbaked them, but they're still darn nommy and *very* calorie rich. One change I would make if I were to make them again would be to use all butter instead of a mixture of coconut oil and butter. (Or I wouldn't use coconut oil that's been in the pantry for an unknown amount of time. . . ahem.)  Besides, who has two thumbs and likes butter? That's right . . . this guy.

I also fertilized the vast majority of vegetables. One patch of veggies that didn't get any fertilizer was the potato patch. These guys already got a goodly amount of Tomato-tone last week and they're looking quite content in their straw-y abode. Maybe, just maybe, this crazy "let's grow potatoes in straw" experiment is going to work. 

It was a good day.

Are you a happy homemaker or do you find chores to dull to be truly pleasurable? 

 

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Life in the Woods: Everyday Challenges

I always assumed moving home was kind of a cop-out, something you do when you're scared of rush hour and can't wrap your head around the expense of work clothes.

When you return home, you return to a little safety net of familiarity. You'll know the majority of people you bump into while running errands and you'll pick right back up on the small town gossip. Although I live an hour away from my childhood home, I still have the same zip code that I had growing up (it has to be one of the "most area covering" zip codes in the country!) and I shop at the same grocery store as my mother and bank at an institution where my grandmother worked for 39 years. Because I've simply fallen back into "the way things always were," there's not a whole lot of "figuring it out" that has to be done on a daily basis.

Yet despite the familiarity of it all, I find myself doing things every day that I never thought I'd do.

There's the whole "learning to drive a manual transmission" thing that I think I'm finally getting a handle on. Every day, I light a fire in the wood stove, something I never did growing up. Let's not even get started on my everyday fashion. In the end, my daily apparel of wool pants, "moon boots"  and Carhartt vests (Yes, I received not one, but two Carhartt vests for Christmas) isn't really the haute couture I'd imagined for myself.

And if you'd told me that one day I'd be crawling underneath the cabin to swap out propane tanks, I would have laughed in your face.  

But on Saturday afternoon, I went to brown some venison (case in point). But when I turned the knob to light the burner, I was greeted by "tick, tick, tick." As the ticking continued and the burner still refused to ignite, I knew we'd run out of propane. I'd suspected we were near the bottom of the tank, since the stove had smelled slightly gassy the last couple times I'd turned it on, a sure sign that a replacement tank would be in short order.  

Since moving into the cabin, I've always made Andy swap out the tanks because I didn't know how to do it. But the last time we ran out of propane, Andy was at work. So, after some detailed instructions from Andy over the phone, I donned my Carhartt vest, grabbed the crescent wrench and hopped underneath the deck to detach the empty propane cylinder. It took a little doing to get the cylinder detached. Propane tanks are threaded opposite of most things, making "lefty loosey, righty tighty" totally irrelevant and it was harder for me to wrap my brain around that than I would like to admit. Nevertheless, I eventually got it and getting the new cylinder in place was a piece of cake. 

The propane tanks are small, just the standard cylinders that you'd use for your grill. Despite their petite size, the cylinders usually last us close to four months, but as luck would have it, when the tank ran out on Saturday, Andy was again nowhere to be found.

I figured I remembered how to switch out the tanks by myself, so I threw on some shoes and headed to the shed to grab a full propane cylinder. This time of year, the ground beneath the deck is littered with sunflower seed shells and as I knelt beneath the deck I noticed four little squirrel paws pop out on the side of the deck plank right above my head.

"Living the dream," I grumbled as I sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that the squirrel would not defecate on my head or make a nest out of my hair while I tried to remember which way to turn the wrench. (Towards the house to loosen and towards yourself to tighten.) 

The gods above must have been listen. The squirrel scampered off, oblivious of my presence and the propane tanks were swapped out in minutes By the time Andy came home, stew burbled away on the stove top.

I will not be defeated by ticking ranges. I am woman: watch me swap out propane tanks.

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The Feast Nearby

I did it. I bought and read another book about owning chickens. Andy better watch out because a chicken coop is totally going up in the backyard, sooner or later.

I think Amazon recommended The Feat Nearby to me a while back; probably late last summer when I was busy searching It's the memoir of an out of work food editor (and as a pretty loyal reader of Fine Cooking and Cooking Light, I'm all over that) who moves to her small cabin in southwest Michigan to reorganize her life. With her poodle and parrot as her companions, she lives frugally, but focused on eating locally.  

While Mather's essays, which follow a full year of life in her 650 square ft. cabin (where the nearest stoplight is *gasp!* eight miles away. . .  cynical Ada feels the need to point out that she lives 53-ish miles from the nearest stoplight) are written in lovely prose, the essays are just that: essays. This is no how-to book, this is a chance to wax poetic on chickens, raspberry jam, and the single life.

One thing I was disappointed by was the lack of concrete detail about how exactly she got by on a $40 a week food budget. And frankly, $40 a week for food . . . for one person? As someone who capped her weekly food budget at $30 immediately after college, I'm just not that impressed. Despite what we're lead to believe, it is not that hard to both eat cheaply and well, just buy lots of dried goods - lentils, rice, pasta and peanut butter are your friend - and make sure you eat everything (i.e. produce) before it goes bad. Now, if Mather was living on $40 a week, full stop, then we'd truly have a "hold the presses" sort of thing going on. Hrumph! 

What was I saying?

Right, details. . .

While, I fully enjoyed the book for what it was, with a tagline like "how I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally," I wanted some details. I didn't just want to hear in passing that you set up some strawberry preserves for fresh produce swapping system with your neighbor.

She talks a lot about carefully planning her yearly food supply (which included canning 50 pints of diced tomatoes!), but never gives many specifics. Call me crazy, but I want to see an appendix with information about exact amounts you canned, dehydrated, froze, etc. to get yourself through 12 months.

At the end of the essay she includes a set of recipes related to the essay's topics. We've tried out a couple of the recipes and they are yummy.  I made the lamb and apricot tagine to use up the leg of lamb I picked up on sale after Easter last year and just the other night I followed her directions for stuffing a squash. They're both winners and they make me anxious to try out her other recipes. That said, her directions for yogurt proved disappointing, but then I'm just not sure you're supposed to make yogurt when it's -3F outside. So I'm stalking up that failure to me and not her.

If you're looking for a homey, comforting read (the woman knits, how can you not love her?) for long winter evenings, this is a great choice . . . especially if you have a penchant for reading cooking magazines anyway.


 
Full disclosure: I did not pay for this book because my fabulous brother gave me a B&N gift certificate for Christmas. (Score!) The opinions expressed in this review are my own and I received no compensation for this review. 

P.S. Happy Groundhog's Day! 6 more weeks of winter where you are? We *always* have six more weeks of winter after February 2, so this day's a total cop-out in northern Minnesota. 

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Ode to Minnesota

Minnesota, Minnesota - We are south of Manitoba
We are east of North Dakota
We've got something really rare
It's fulfilling, entertaining
It's true culture you'll be gaining- Ann Reed

Oh Minnesota. Home of Post-It notes, Bob Dylan, Cheerios, 10,000+ lakes, the Boundary Waters, MPR, the Mississippi River, the Mall of America (wait a minute, how did that get in there?), and . . . me.

 Just look at all that green on that map. That's a lot of national and state forest. No wonder people come here on vacation.

Minnesota, you've given me so much. Even if I didn't develop sweat glands thanks to you and growing up on the frosty shores of Lake Superior, you have given me the ability to stand still in -0F weather with my mittens off. Kudos on the cool education options and for making the woods feel like second nature.

Although I sometimes often wonder if I should try some place new, perhaps some place where the amenities are a little more tightly spaced, or where winter driving is kept at a minimum and where planting things that take 90 days to mature isn't a "gamble", I never do. No matter how far I travel from Minnesota's landlocked lands, I always find some reminder of my Minnesota roots -- whether it's riding in a cab in Ireland with Bob Dylan playing softly in the background or running to fetch Post-Its from a London office storeroom -- that warms my heart, that makes me want to return.

During high school, my brother spent a week in Chiapas, Mexico. On the return trip, he described the surge of pride and joy everyone in his travel group felt when they touched down on the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport tarmac.  This is our home. Minnesota pride is run deep in our veins. I identify more strongly with being a Minnesotan than I do with being an American, although that's partly because with both my accent and the cabin's location, I feel just a couple steps shy of being a Canadian.

Oh Minnesota, even if you make it a habit of threatening to shut down the state government because the governor and legislature can't reach a budget agreement, I still love you.

And no, I'm not just saying this because I thought ahead and already got my fishing license.

Government, scmovernment, right? I'm all set to enjoy to the best of Minnesota this summer, regardless of what's going on in that far off city of St. Paul.

You never were great at offering convenience and easy living, anyway Minnesota. And this penchant for government shutdowns? It's just one more quirk we'll have to learn to love about you. Through it all, you'll always be . . . the best.

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Feels Like Home to Me

Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

A window breaks down a long dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But I'm alright 'cause I have you here with me
And I can almost see through the dark there's light

-- Chantal Kreviazuk

It's been a rough couple days around here. Both Andy and I spent the weekend away from the cabin: me at my parents' place in town, Andy at an out of state sports show. The last few days have been low on sleep, high on drama. While I'm normally a huge proponent of shaking up the everyday, this go-round, I just wanted to be home.

So imagine my delight when we pulled into the cabin late yesterday morning.

Back with the cheeky squirrels.

Giving the houseplants a well-deserved drink of water.

Hearing the fire roar into life in the stove.

Making a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup.

Enjoying the quiet twilight hour when only chickadees and nuthatches flit quietly about the feeder area, delicately selecting a sunflower seed before fluttering back to the shelter of trees.  

Dorothy said it best: "There's no place like home."


What's your favorite part of being home?

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The best investment you'll ever make . . .

Back in my college days, as the ever-muckraking news editor of the student newspaper, I had the chance to talk with the college president. We discussed a myriad of topics, including the rapidly rising cost of higher education. Is it really worth it, I wondered out loud. How could tuition prices climb by thousands of dollars every year? 

He admitted it was a lot money. (College tuition in the '00s consistently rose at a rate twice that of inflation.) Then he compared it to buying a house.

"Sure it's a lot of money up front," he said. "But you ultimately you realize: it's the best investment you'll ever make."

Considering that I now have a degree from a college that no one outside of northern Minnesota knows about, I think he might have been pulling my leg a little bit.

For instance:

At the end of last week, a home-owning friend called me up. "Um, what do you know about black mold?" she asked.

My mom called up before the latest snowfall. "If it snows and I have to shovel that driveway again, I swear . . . " she sputtered. .

And then last morning, Andy came home early to deal with the whole ice dam issue. 

Remember the ice dam on our roof that causes ice to drip down into our door frame? It flared up a couple weeks ago, but the cloudy mild days of late kept the dripping at bay. But yesterday dawned sunny and I woke up to the thunk, jiggle, and clunky sound of Andy attempting to open the frozen shut front door so he could leave for work. At mid-morning, when I open the door to check on the whole "inner door icicle" situation, the equivalent of a bucket of water rained down on me. I knew that morning shower was a waste of time!

Andy climbed onto the roof and started redirecting snow and ice.

I filled a couple thermos with hot water and threw them up on the roof to assist with the melting process.

I kept plugging away at my office work. Boots on. Ready to assist where necessary. In less than half an hour Andy had shoveled most of the snow off the roof and broken up a big portion of the ice. The icy drips coming from the door frame slowed and eventually, disappeared completely.

Oh a house. The best investment you'll ever make . . . but of what? Your time? Your worry?

Whatever we call our houses under our breath, at least they'll always be "Home Sweet Home."

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Wordless Wednesday: Home is where the mail is?

We've been at the cabin for six months now and preparing to hole up for the winter.
We just needed one more thing to make it feel like home . . .

A mailbox. We'd been putting off the mailbox for a while (we've picked up our mail in town until now), but luckily our hands were forced a little when I won an autumn contest over at Jenn's Rook No. 17 and needed a place for the prize (a magazine subscription) to be sent to. (Thanks Jenn!)

Ah. Home sweet home.

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Goodbye Shack

We moved out of the Shack months ago, but yesterday we headed down to the Mid-Trail area to pay one last visit to the Shack. Although we’d moved the most pertinent things out in May when we left, little bits of Ada and Andy still lingered in the Shack: old printers, tennis rackets, and guitars. So yesterday we packed, stacked and shoved all those not so little bits into the back of Andy’s truck. As we drove back to the cabin, I started to wonder just how we managed to get so much shi-stuff into a 12x20 building.

Luckily, the new shed has reached a point in its construction that we could move a bit of the truck’s contents directly into that space. Still the vast majority of bins and bags needed to brought inside and dealt with. For a couple hours yesterday we made a stab at going through the boxes, sorting it into toss piles and thrift piles, condensing bins. But it gets old so quickly, doesn’t it and there is so very much of it. To think, in my parents’ garage, there are still containers filled with stuff I haven’t looked at since college.

How do two people, each a mere 25 years in age end up with so much stuff? I just don’t get it.

But somehow, stuff piles up. Homes come and go. When you take a moment to think about it, it can be pretty amazing to think of all you’ve seen, all you’ve received, all you’ve done and learned. Shutting the door to the Shack yesterday afternoon, it was hard to believe we’d spent so much time in the cramped little, poorly insulated space.

But the Shack was truly a happy, humble home for us. The kind of place where you didn’t have to feel guilty that all your worldly belongings were still shoved into plastic containers. Where you didn’t worry about housekeeping because even in the best of circumstances the Shack doesn’t look too hot. A place to be until everything sorted itself out.

Goodbye Shack. May you make a cozy home for someone else very soon.

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The Home Place

For whatever reason, when we’re driving home after some evening event, Andy and I frequently have this conversation:

Ada: I always thought I’d end up in a big city, like Chicago, New York, or London.

Andy: Ick! Not me!

In the British Isles, they have a concept called “the home place.” The concept is a central component of modern day Irish dramatist Brian Friel’s play entitled, well, The Home Place, but I’ve also run across the concept in other pieces of literature set in Ireland. The most recent reference of the home place I ran into was in Minnesota author Erin Hart’s mystery Haunted Ground. The “home place” is a reference to a member of the English Ascendancy’s old family home in England. It’s a place often shrouded with mythical symbolism that is only magnified by the person’s geographical distance from the location. It’s something used to define a person, even if it’s been generations since any direct relative lived on the land.

In the States, our sense of home isn’t tied as tightly with tradition as it is overseas, but our sense of home is just as complicated. We are raised on the American dream and a sense that home is something that travels with us, that with the unpacking of a suitcase we can simply will a new place to be our home. But it’s not quite that easy.

While plenty of Americans head overseas to find their roots, few find more than just a pleasant experience and, if they’re lucky, a deeper understanding of who they are. They usually don’t find a newly realized home. And maybe that’s because there seems to be an infantile understanding of home that haunts us well into adulthood.

I have put in time in the big city. I have proven that I am perfectly capable of living in dorms, in cities, in suburbs. But in all those experiences there was a strain of inexplicable homesickness that tinges such experiences. A sense that after all the newness is discovered, that this really isn’t the place I want to spend all my time.

Is northern Minnesota really my home place? It certainly seems to be Andy’s.

In the movie Orange County the main character, Shaun, finally runs into his writer idol who is also a professor at Stanford. After talking for a while, the writer/professor tells Shaun: “You’re a writer. Every good writer has a conflicted relationship with their home.”

We may not know where our home place lies exactly. But we certainly know when we’re not home and from that, through deductive reasoning, we should be able to determine our home place. When feelings of anxiousness or smothered longing are absent, we may find that we’re already home.

Where’s your home place?

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A Stirring in My Soul

I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life: Am I living it right?
-- John Mayer

 

Fifteen years ago, my family took our first major family trip. We hopped on the train in Chicago, riding overnight and most of the next day out to Newark to spend a week with a great uncle. We explored the Delaware Gap and one day, we spent in New York City. That day, I viewed the city with wide ten-year-old eyes and promptly decided the city life was the life for me. As an English major, I assumed I’d eventually make my way to the East Coast. But when it came time to chose a college, I went with the only in-state option I’d considered (a wise decision when it came to student debt) and a trip to London shifted my focus to the far side of the Atlantic.

Any good trip forces you to ask questions of yourself and the life you lead and so it has been with this month of travel that came to a close yesterday. Although the “day after Christmas” feelings of yesterday have passed, there remains the quiet suspicion that my ten-year-old soul was of a braver, truer sort than this current soul of mine.

New York was just as fabulous as I remembered it. While I’m old enough to realize that everything that appears “fabulous” comes with its own unique upside and downside, we had such a wonderful week in the Big Apple that it’s hard not to wish for just “one more day.” My credit card bill, stuffed up sinuses and a heap of correspondence and deadlines dictate that it’s time to come home. But before I make a full return to this life of woods and words, here’s a recap in snapshots of the past week.

After being an MTV devotee in my teenage years, I finally made it to Times Square.

 We went to the beautiful New York Public Library with Carrie Bradshaw on our minds and found the original Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

In the end, we didn't cross paths with Carrie, but Burger and his wife (Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt) did stroll past us on Bleecker Street in the West Village while we were waiting for the Sex and the City tour to resume on Wednesday.

What could be better than a hot dog from Nathan's in Coney Island?

Maybe having a Brooklyn native tell you to "fuggedaboutit" or a cupcake from the Magnolia Bakery. . .

Swung by Tiffany's to take a peep at my favorite engagement ring.

It's soooo pretty. . . . So out of an appropriate price range. . . .



















One of my most vivid memories from my last visit to New York City is seeing the WTC towers from the Empire State Building observation deck. We stopped to see the progress being made on the new tower and the memorial at the World Trade Center. Almost nine years later and no one's still sure what to say.

I've always had a soft spot for Lady Liberty. It was good to see her again.

After going strong as tourists for a week, on Saturday we took a moment to take in some of the quieter wonders of Manhattan before our flights back to Minneapolis.  

 We saw the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and spent a bit of time in the Met's Cloisters.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

While memories of NYC swirl about in my heart, now it's time to turn my mind to laundry, to-do lists, and packing up the Shack. I'm overwhelmed by all I'm meant to be getting done at this very moment. The only way to overcome that feeling is to actually start getting some things done.

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Home Check In

Some things change when you return home from the Pacific Northwest. For one thing, all the trees seem so small here in the great Northwoods. And they’re really close together.

Some things really change while you’re gone. When we left, ice still covered the majority of the lake. The ice went out completely the day after we left and today was the first time since December that we’ve seen the ripple of open water on the lake. Typically the ice goes out in early May. This irregular spring weather is discomfiting to the point of being scary since its turning the woods into a veritable tinderbox. Fire danger is currently “very high.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom on the home front. The bird feeders that I filled before leaving are empty and this afternoon I brought them in to retire them for the summer. The plant caretaker who stopped by the Shack a couple times to water the plants is worth her weight. Both the African Violet and the Christmas Cactus are showing off lovely blooms and the spider plant is getting ready to throw its first plant since I took in the little guy.

Of course, the house plants aren’t the only things that did some growing in the Shack while we were gone . . . .

Ick! I predict some bleach action in the future.

I had some good writing news waiting for me in my inbox this afternoon. A short story I wrote in December was accepted by my alma mater’s annual literary and artistic journal and actually won this year’s “best prose” award. On the flip side, the couple poems I also submitted were not accepted which reinforces my belief that my writing energy should not be wasted on poetry. I respect a good poet and I fear that good poets are far more talented wordsmiths than I will ever be. However, as someone who seeks to make her living with her writing, I do not have the time to develop my poetry to the extent that it needs development, nor has poetry ever proven especially lucrative.

Speaking of freelancing, I also had an article assignment waiting in my inbox. Am only mildly freaking out about the amount of work I’m supposed to complete upon my true return home at the end of the month.

Right now, writing is not the priority. Laundry and figuring out what to pack for New York City trip are at the forefront of my mind tonight. But first, after nearly two weeks straight of travel, I think a good night sleep in my own bed is in order.

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