food

photo by rick, flickr

I've been thinking a lot about food lately.  Not surprising.  I always think about food a lot. 

But recently I've also been worrying a lot about food.  Not in an I-can't-eat-that-it'll-make-me-fat worrying way.  I don't diet.  Never have.  And not because I'm naturally thin.  I have never been thin and have hated my body just as most women do.  But I've tried dieting a few times, and those trials tend to last maybe 24 hours.  Maybe.  I just don't have the discipline.  Or the desire to be that disciplined.  And I like food!

My worry these days is a direct result of watching Food, Inc. a year or so ago and then reading about food production and distribution and politics in the US.  I want to provide the best for my family while also being a faithful steward of the earth.  I want my faith and my food to align.  And so I believe the food we eat should be made locally when possible, should involve as few chemicals and preservatives as possible, should involve humane treatment of animals and farmers, and should be primarily nutritious (not junk).  That is what I believe.  However, this is one case where it is very difficult (for me) to align my belief with my action.

Buying local and organic can be expensive.  Not always.  Our CSA gives us lots of quality veges for a similar-to-grocery-store price, and the peach/apple farm store near us has some great prices on certain produce.  But meat, flour, milk and dairy products - these are often at least twice as much as their conventional grocery counterpart.

And our budget is only getting tighter, not wider.

But even beyond the price issue, buying local and organic and unprocessed means more time in the kitchen.  A good bit more time.  I love CSA days because it's fun to find out what beautiful fresh veges I get to play with in the coming week, but I do not love all the time it takes to clean and prep them.  Buying a bag of frozen chopped spinach is much easier than doing the washing, cooking and chopping oneself.  And bread (which go through in droves - no low-carbing in our household!) is certainly much quicker from a shrinkwrapped package than from our oven. 

Simple living is not so simple.

Right now I'm holding a somewhat middle ground.  I already spend time and money on things that some families would find silly:

• I make yogurt (it's not as hard as it sounds).
• I make ricotta cheese (also, not very hard, and heavenly to eat, but requires cheesecloth which is awful to clean).
• I bake at least a couple loaves of bread a week plus other quick breads and yeasty things (like pizza dough).
• We make our own granola and granola bars (so much better than the store-bought stuff).
• We buy local dairy milk for the kiddoes.
• We eat some local meat (particularly sausage).
• I make most dinner meals from scratch.

And I'm even contemplating attempting recipes for tortillas, pita bread, graham crackers and cheese crackers!  But I also do a lot of other things that true locavores and natural foodies would find appalling:

• I use Splenda in my non-fair-trade coffee.
• I buy bananas regularly.
• I drink regular Kroger milk and buy regular Kroger cheese.
• I fix hot dogs (though I do typically buy the kosher kind).
• I sometimes use margarine (*gasp*).
• I don't buy organic flour or oats.
• I buy Kroger peanut butter.
• I buy regular eggs.
• And many, many more.

Oh my, I start to feel guilty just looking at this list. 

As I approach a chaotic new school year when my time in the kitchen is going to be more limited (or require more sacrifice), where do I draw the lines for our eating?  Where do I align my belief with action, and where do I let practicality (need to pay bills, need to spend time with family, need to sleep) win out?

I hope that I will at least be able to keep up the "already do" list, despite the time.  Then maybe I can tackle one small "want to do" item at a time.  But I'm pretty sure we'll never completely commit to all natural and local foods.  Heck, my family might riot! 

So we'll live with our food somewhere in the middle, and I'll try to be faithful in food decisions without being frantic.  Sometimes I'll use whole, organic foods.  And sometimes I'll just buy the disgusting chicken nuggets!

gearing up



photo by ralphbijker, flickr.com


Since returning from our annual beach vacation with my parents, I found it more difficult than usual to get back into the swing of daily life (including blogging!).  There's more than one reason for this, but one of those reasons is: OH MY WORD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?! I CAN'T BE A STUDENT AGAIN! 

I've passed the initial excitement phase and am fully in the trembling fear phase.  OK, so maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration.  Little bit. 

I feel too old to be starting over, too broke to be taking on such debt, too busy to commit so much time.  I don't fear the academics so much as I fear the amount of time I'll have to invest in it.  I was no good at all-nighters even when I was 20.  How will I manage it all and still be a positive presence in my family?  I don't know.  I just don't know. 

But I know that the long-term goal is valuable.  I know that ultimately this step is about giving our family more flexibility, not less.  And so I know I've got to walk into that classroom, fear or no fear.  And I've got to be a better scheduler! 

I've been slowly working my way back into post-vacation home-management.  And I'm slowly trying to plan for a workable schedule that still allows me time with my family and for the activities I believe are important.  I'm usually a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal, particularly when it comes to a daily schedule.  That's going to have to change some.  But I know I'll never be able to fully plan for the life I'm about to step into, so hopefully that fly-by-pants nature will allow me to bend rather than break during these next 2 years.  Hopefully. 

a creative process

Inspired yet again by The Artful Parent (definitely my favorite blog for practical art ideas with young kids), I decided to pull out one of the big blank canvases I got at some time on sale and commission The Girl to make a painting for me.  We talked about how artists are sometimes paid to paint something specific, and so I asked her to paint a big flower for me on the canvas using acrylic craft paint.  I was picturing something like her Van Gogh sunflowers from school art class, but I told her she could decide how to do it.  And she did.  And...well...I didn't love it.  Isn't that awful?!?  She painted a tall, skinny rose, and then covered the background in light blue and lavendar (because she ran out of blue), and then painted bright red squiglies across the background.  It was...odd.

So I thanked her and put it aside to dry and wondered what in the world I was going to do with this large painting that she was very proud of but I didn't care for. 

And then I found this post on process painting at Paint, Cut, Paste.  Aha!  I decided to see if I could convince The Girl to continue to work on the painting with me.  To make it something we painted on a little bit at a time until we were done with it.  No plan, no particular end - just painting. 

She loved the idea!  Thank goodness.

And so we started on our painting, taking the basic shapes she'd already painted and expanding on them while also adding some new shapes.  I added a sun.  She added wind.  As usual - she is the more creative.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a before picture, but here's what we ended up with after our first joint painting day:

You can kind of see where her original rose and the squiglies are.  She was the one who decided to add the light blue slashes, which I thought was brilliant (ok, maybe it's not actually brilliant, but I thought it was very fun!). 

And after one more paint session, The Girl decided it was finished.  So this is our finished project:

Notice she gave it a title.  Yes, we watched Pocahontas recently.

I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, except that there's a little too much of me there.  Though the shapes and colors are mostly hers, a lot of the color blending and final style-look are mine, which is not what I intended.  But she got very focused on those slashes at the end!  Still, I'm very happy we made something together.  And the process helped us both.  I helped her with using a larger space (the canvas is 18x24) and blending color.  And she helped me with her boldness and excitement at trying new things.  It was fun.  We may have to do this again.

And the best part...she gave me $1.52 for my part of the commission.  And I gave her $1.52.  Not the same $1.52.  Oh no, that wouldn't do (I tried it).  A different $1.52.

volcanic eruption

Inspired by Artful Parent, the kiddoes and I made a volcano in our dining room yesterday.  And boy, what is a hit!

I began by making a quick batch of salt dough (4 cups flour, 2 cups salt, 2 cups water, a shot of glycerin).  I made it on the watery side and with glycerin so the kids could mold it more easily.  Really, I should've made more dough, but I ran out of salt.  The kids molded the dough around a quart-size jar (with a little help):

And then decorated the volcano (which is almost as much fun as erupting it) with green playdough, leaves/grass from the yard and doomed lego people:

Having been warned by The Artful Parent, I put some old towels around our tray (note to self: next time use a pan or plate WITHOUT holes in it! - duh):

And then we were ready for the mad scientist part.  We filled the jar about 2/3s full with warm water, blue food coloring (because they wanted blue lava - I should've used more food coloring - you'll notice the lava is only faintly blue-tinged), a few drops of dish soap, and 2 Tbsp baking soda.  Then we stood back and I poured in some vinegar:

I kept pouring in more vinegar to produce multiple eruptions until the volcano was all tuckered out.  I'm not a good photographer at the best of times and had a terrible time with our little camera taking action shots while pouring, but here's a couple of bad photos of the kids' reactions:

There was lots of squealing.  And lots of cheering for dead lego people.  This is something of a violent activity :).  And then lots and lots of water/vinegar and wet salt-dough mess.  Next time I think I'll try to find a piece of cardboard to do it on so we can just dump the thing in the trashcan.  But it was worth it.  A fun indoor activity for a hot summer afternoon.

father's day fun

The Father in our household didn't get home until mid-afternoon on Father's Day because he was away at kids camp.  It made for a long afternoon of waiting, waiting, waiting...but it gave us plenty of time to get our Father's Day goodies ready! 

When Daddy finally arrived, the kiddoes ran out to greet him before he even parked.  And then they carried all his stuff inside - a true Father's Day miracle - where he was greeted with this:

And this:

And then his first present:

A super-hero (and other pop-culture) crown for our own Super-hero Daddy.  Actually he received 2 crowns, because after the kiddoes helped me make this one, The Girl decided it wasn't her style.  So she made another one.  Somehow I didn't get a picture of it (bad mommy), but it had the words "Our Hero" on it as well as a blue ribbon (because it was the best crown, obviously) and a picture of SuperHero Daddy saving the day.

And his second present (idea from Alphamom):

A Hero Survival Kit with this inside:

A letter from The Girl, goodies like Hero Juice and X-ray Vision Drops (with funny tag lines - check the link for the full list), and an "Our Hero" book made by The Girl.  The book involves Hero Daddy saving some people from a falling meteorite, walking home, watching his favorite movie (in his green chair) with his kids and then going to sleep.  Sounds like a good Hero Day :)!

And his final present:

Homemade StarWars toys!  Just print, cut and assemble.  Found at Toy-a-Day.  Are they not so freakin' cute!?!  OK, so maybe die-hard StarWars fans don't care for cute.  But I think they're adorable :). And The Boy loves them.  A good intro to Star Wars, perhaps, as I'm not ready for them to watch the movies yet!

We also made some pictures for the Granddads:

which I printed and framed in a "We Love..." frame.  Man, it was difficult to get a decent picture of the two of them together!  Good photographer, I am not.

And this is how Father's Day ended:

Happy Father's Day to Our SuperHero Daddy (and Granddads)!

summer art

Summer has begun!  I hate the heat, but I am looking forward to the change of pace with the kiddoes.  Though my work schedule doesn't change, we'll have more afternoon time together now.  And since The Boy can get along without a nap (sometimes) these days, we have much more opportunity to make simple plans this summer.  Hopefully we'll take advantage of that.

One thing I know will be a big component of our summer is ART!  And I know that because I'm not primarily responsible for it :).  The kids are both going to art camp this summer - every morning all summer long.  It's a simple, relaxed kind of camp at a small, local church.  The Girl went last year, and this year The Boy gets to join in the fun.  He's very excited, but he'll probably be the youngest there, so I hope he'll be just as excited when he gets home from his first day (today!). 

I also have some artsy kinds of plans for us at home.  First, I need to frame some!  Kid's art, that is.  I'd like to turn one wall of the playroom into a gallery of their art, but I've gotta get the frames and mats (homemade) ready.  My hope is that this will be a constantly changing and evolving kind of gallery.  I just gotta take that first step.

My favorite kids art is the art that they create on their own with whatever materials are available.  No real directions, just process art.  Too many rules can make our art time more stressful and inhibits their exploration and creativitiy.  Now, don't get me wrong - we don't paint on walls here.  But we do sometimes paint on bodies!

This painting is not for the faint-hearted!

Though I'm unlikely to give real art lessons at home, I have been impressed with some of the art that My Girl did in school this year.  And I love that they give us digital copies of some of them:

My favorite is that last one - the Van Gogh flowers.  Gorgeous!  And that snow-woman - the first time I saw that one it was taped to the wall outside her classroom with all the others from her class.  It was immediately apparent which was was My Girl's.  A fanciful explosion is about the best way to describe it!

I love, love, love that my kids are excited about creating, whether it's with paint or crayon or paper or legos.  It's always fun to see what they make.  I remember a mother telling me a few years ago that she didn't allow messy art materials in her house - only the mess-free crayola kind.  And I remember thinking, "But what fun you're missing!" 

down, mama bear

Update on the softball situation: 

I should've pointed out in my last softball post that the games in which I watched My Girl ask her coaches for a chance at pitcher, her head coach was not there.  He was out of town for the week so it was assistant coaches who were running the game.  Assistants who are nice but more intense and stern than the head coach. 

This week the head coach was back.  And My Girl played pitcher in both games this week!  She even got to play first base once, though she had a hard time remembering she was supposed to actually cover the base :).  And in both games, she played infield positions the entire game.  No outfield at all. 

And I had never said a word to anyone.

Sometimes being quiet pays off.

This will be the last year My Girl has this particular coach.  I think I'm going to miss him.  He's been very kind and patient with my funny one.  She's ending the season on a high note, feeling good about herself and her team.  I am proud at how she improved this season.  I am proud at how she continued to play even when she was discouraged.  I am proud that she made a thank you card for her coach after her first game as pitcher.  And I am most proud of the fact that during every game, on the field and on the bench, she cheered for her teammates, jumping up and down for them in great encouragement.  She is My Bright One.