The family and I just spent February vacation visiting my sister in San Francisco. I had every intention of writing a post from there because I am trying to get onto this women's blog site called, "Blog Her" and I need to write at least once per week to be considered, but chilling out in the City by the Bay without any animals besides my children to take care of, inspired me to say, "Fuck it."
There were no dogs to let out at 6am; no chickens to tend to; no bunnies to feel guilty about neglecting; no dog shit to shovel. There was just me and my boys visiting my sister in a beautiful city full of the nicest people you could possibly imagine and really good food.
The lead up to the vacation was a little stressful. I had the dogs all set to go to the kennel, but there are no kennels for chickens and rabbits that I know of. Luckily, we have a great neighbor with whom we share critter sitting duties and he agreed to come feed the chickens, rabbits and cats while we were gone. I always feel a little guilty when I ask him to watch over the farmette because he is absolutely petrified of one of the animals croaking under his watch. I don't think he could bear the boys' devastation.
Vacation is one of those things that is incredibly awesome and incredibly shitty all at the same time. When you are going about your normal day to day, you can be pretty happy and satisfied, but when you are on vacation you realize how much the day to day sucks. It is so much nicer to drink good coffee and visit cool museums than it is to go to work, muck out stalls, get kids off to school or have to kick a cocky rooster in attack mode across the hen house. The result is that whenever I am on vacation, I want to move to that place. I could study cooking and sculpture in Paris. I could eat tappas and learn Spanish in Madrid. I could be a beach bum drinking margaritas and fishing in Nicaragua. I could go hiking in the Redwoods and volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center every day in San Francisco. When we were driving past the beach on our way to the airport at the end of our week, James Dean looked at me with a puckish grin and said, "Are you thinking what I am thinking? We should move to San Francisco."
I know wanting to move to your vacation destination is probably a sign of a successful vacation, but I was filled with ennui nonetheless.
One thing I did learn while on vacation is that Prince is in full blown adolescence. Every family photo we tried to take to prove to everyone on Facebook that we are a happy, loving supportive unit having the time of our lives on vacation, was met with some major tude by the long haired, camera averse pre-teen.
Honestly, these photos are much more what real families are like, but we all want the Brady Bunch fantasy to hang on our walls. Back when I lived in Boston I met the most boring couple in the world. Seriously, it was painful to be around them, but they had this photo over the sofa of the two of them, arms entwined laughing like they were having the time of their lives. It was intoxicating. I really wanted to cut out a photo of myself and paste it in between their happy faces so I could pretend I had been a part of that magical, fun filled moment too.
At one point on what was supposed to be our Zen-like visit to the beautiful Muir Woods, Prince declared he was going to find a new family to live with and planted himself on a park bench as we were on our way out. At first I was upset but then got pissed off and was ready to leave his hormonal ass there for good because I hadn't taken my Evening Primrose to deal with my own PMS. The husband wanted to give some random family $5 to go over to him and tell him they were taking him home, but poor little James Dean and Scrappy were very concerned about losing their brother or possibly that they were going to be the next ones sent off with strangers, so they convinced Prince to get in the car with us.
We came to an agreement that we would not take photos of him if he didn't want us to. By the end of the week and countless photos of Scrappy hugging and kissing me, Prince tried to squeeze himself between his mother and brother for a photo op. Score one for Mom!
Many times throughout our fun-filled week in my new favorite city, I thought about my sheep and my dream of cheese making. Of course this week I am on the Mediterranean diet like everyone else who read the new study, so I am not eating dairy, which makes wanting to be a cheese maker a little weird, but last week when I was eating cheese and bread galore, I started to have mixed feelings about my cheesy empire. How would I ever go on vacation again? Having been a milk producer for almost six straight year myself, I am pretty sure you cannot leave a milking sheep alone for a week because she will probably keel over and die from engorgement.
Should I scrap the idea and just concentrate on the chickens and the garden? Should I forget the sheep and just buy the milk from some other poor sap who can't ever go on vacation? Neither option seemed quite right because I need photos to hang on the walls and post on Facebook of me confidently tending to my happy loving lambs. Besides, I really am a sucker for the animals.
I pondered this dilemma for some time and came up with a solution most of us city transplant homesteaders who still like a week on the beach seem to do: Interns. I am pretty sure I will be able to find some sucker, I mean earnest would be farmer who wants to literally get his or her hands dirty on the farmette. Of course, an intern probably would like be able to learn something from the wise knowledgeable farmer he or she will be working with. I guess it might be a while before I go on vacation again.
The boys and I left the husband in the city and headed home early Monday morning. Jet lag, lack of sleep and the grey day left us all a little disappointed to be home. We picked the dogs up from the kennel and their exuberance upon seeing us again cheered everyone up. After checking on the chickens and bunnies and changing the cat box, I sat down to look through some of the photos of our wonderful week away. That night when the kids went to bed I turned off the lights and looked at the newly fallen snow glittering in the light of the full moon. You don't see that when you look out the window in San Francisco. It was good to be home.
This is going to be a quick post, or so I say at this moment. Things can change very quickly as I start typing. With only the dogs to talk to, I often find I get diarrhea of the mouth or hands in this case, when I want to chat.
The Odyssey of the Mind competition is coming up on Saturday and I am starting to stress out a bit. I haven't written much about my first endeavor with this program, but suffice to say my lame attempt to demonstrate one of the projects to the husband, made him chortle, "Are you really the coach?" "It should be called Odyssey of the Dipshit," I am not the most mechanical person. I take that back. I think I could be mechanical, but I have absolutely no interest.
For any of you who have never heard of OM, it is a program that challenges kids to come up with creative solutions to problems; the more outrageous the better. My team is to develop and build three vehicles that are powered in three different ways and they must be able to travel 10 feet. The kids are supposed to do all of the brainstorming and building and the adults are just there to supervise. I gave this approach a try but by week four I realized this was not working so well and my patience was wearing thin with a couple of kids, only one of which was mine.
I must take some responsibility for their lack of initiative since half the team is made up of my own children and I can be a rather take charge kind of person both by choice and necessity. My ADD means I am always running about 15 minutes behind schedule because the kitchen cabinets really do need to be cleaned right now, even though I am in the middle of making dinner. It is easier to do it myself than spend twice as much time and way too much anxiety trying to get the boys to do it. This approach helps to keep us on schedule but doesn't do much for turning them into self starters. My heartfelt apologies go out to their future mates for delivering grown men who don't know how to put their clothes away. I just couldn't bear to see crumpled shirts shoved into drawers.
As the OM competition got closer, the kids still had not made the vehicles they were supposed to build for their performance. I decided they needed a little help coming up with their own ideas so I spent countless hours researching balloon powered cars, mousetrap powered cars, rubber band powered cars, etc. I stayed up until midnight one night trying to figure our how to use wind power to blow a plastic container ten feet across the floor and then figure out how to get the kids to come up with the idea themselves. Oy.
I started bringing all of the materials to make a rubber band powered car a couple of weeks ago. Instead of telling them, "We are building a rubber band powered car." I held up a rubber band and asked, "Could we use a rubber band in one of the vehicles?" My heart started racing and I was thinking, 'Please someone say rubber band powered car.' I could hear crickets chirping as most of them stared blankly at me. Luckily, there is one smart little cookie in the group who seems to be a classmate of mine at Youtube University.
They all agreed that a rubber band powered car was a great idea and they were glad they came up with it. The task of actually building it was now at hand. Despite all of my attempts to have them accidentally find the step by step directions in my open folder, no one got it. After a few failed attempts, one kid decided to make a rubber band ball and the others decided to shoot the rubber bands at each other. I realized I was going to have take them through the process step by step by asking them not very open ended questions: "How do we twist the rubber band around the axle to make it move?" "Would you want to use these wheels here and turn it into a Batmobile?"
When one kid started to get frustrated and suggest that we just push the car, I acted as if I hadn't heard him. "What's another way we could attach the end of the rubber band?" "Could we possibly use this notched piece of cardboard I just happen to have?"
My aggressive questioning has paid off and the vehicles are all done. Come to think of it, I may be a mechanical genius. I have learned more about axles in the past couple of months than in my entire life. Did you know CD's make excellent wheels? Maybe this is really is my Odyssey of the Dipshit?
One rehearsal left and lots to do. Wish me, I mean the kids luck.
I usually choose one topic to write about every week, but this week has been so chaotic that I am going to attempt to tie together Prince's birthday, the Superbowl, Itty Bitty's need for a man and a really great recipe for lentil soup. You may be asking yourselves, What the hell is berbere? It is an Ethiopian spice mix I used in the lentils. I used it in the title because I couldn't come up with a "B" word for lentil soup. So here goes my attempt to write one blog post about four seemingly unconnected subjects.
Prince just celebrated his 11th birthday. It has been tough on him moving away from the city and his friends, but he is trying really hard to acclimate and make new friends, so in my typical over compensating mommy way, I told him he could invite five of his friends from the city up for the weekend, invite his new friends to a roller skating party on Saturday, and then have a couple of his new friends join the slumber party on Saturday night. Let's just say, the number of boys you have under one roof is inversely proportional to the number of brain cells under the same roof. In other words; they do stupid shit. At one point the husband looked at me and said, "This was your idea," as he wandered back upstairs to watch another episode of "House of Cards," leaving me to pick up Nerf gun ammo for the zillionth time. Have you seen that show btw? It is really good.
Sunday afternoon the husband loaded the city boys into the car and headed out. An over tired, over stimulated Prince started to cry at the prospect of peace and quiet, but gave me a hug and thanked me for a fun birthday. I was brain dead and couldn't wait to crawl into bed and watch the Superbowl or more accurately, the Superbowl commercials.
I am not a huge football fan and trying to decide if I wanted to cheer for the Ravens or the 49ers was difficult. Do I root for the team with the murderer or the team with the raging homophobe? Decisions. Decisions. I quickly sided with the 49ers though because A: Their Harbaugh brother is cuter and B: That quarterback can throw some serious passes! My geeky science side kept yelling, "That is physics in motion you guys!"
The boys and I were all munching on popcorn by the time Beyonce took the field. I don't really like Beyonce, though I do love, "Put a Ring on It." Normally I would take the half-time opportunity to mix up a batch of margaritas, but I was exhausted and since I was impressed by what she had to say about gender equality in her GQ magazine interview, I decided to stay and watch. I soon realized Beyonce doesn't exactly practice what she preaches. As she was licking her fingers to caress herself and shaking her booty in the air, I couldn't help but compare her to our cat, Itty Bitty, who while in the throes of her first heat kept trying desperately to woo our dog with a booty shaking routine of her own. At one point when the rest of Destiny's Child came onto the stage, Scrappy Doo asked, "Why do they all have boots on with their swimsuits?"
I am all for sexuality. I think Madonna did a lot for female empowerment, but she owned her sexuality. Watching Beyonce (the manufactured product of her father and now married to one of the most powerful men in music) prance around like a Pepsi focus group definition of sexy, just made me sad. It was a live "Go Daddy" commercial.
Speaking of commercials, I loved the Budweiser commercial, but I love anything with baby animals, as do most people obviously since it was shown during the Superbowl. I also started out loving the Jeep commercial narrated by Oprah. I got all choked up thinking this was merely an expensive thank you to our veterans until all the vets started arriving home in Jeeps. I thought this crossed a line. It is OK to say something about Jeep supporting US troops at the end of the commercial, but it is just plain icky to put their vehicles in the actual ad, as if to say Jeep somehow makes a soldier's transition to home life easier. It also made me throw up a little in my mouth thinking about all the money Chrysler must make selling Jeeps for military combat overseas.
I was also a little nauseous watching the "Farmer" commercial that aired around 10pm. I know there was a black out so things got pushed back, but most farmers are asleep at 10pm since they have to get up in six hours to milk the cows, so basically, instead of trying to sell huge gas guzzling trucks to people who actually need huge gas guzzling trucks, Dodge was trying to sell huge gas guzzling trucks to suburban yahoos who think it makes them look as badass as a farmer.
And speaking of farms, I made a killer soup with the last of my kale and sweet potatoes from the fall harvest. I had never grown sweet potatoes before, but found some plants at a local nursery and decided to give it a try. I didn't think any would grow, since central New York isn't ideal growing conditions for sweet potatoes, but when I was putting the garden to bed in October I was pleasantly surprised to find a dozen or so of the most beautiful orange sweet potatoes I have ever seen. I don't think I had ever eaten fresh sweet potatoes before my lucky find, but they are amazing! Here is a recipe for sweet potato, kale and lentil soup:
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
2 medium sweet potatoes diced small
leftover Ethiopian lentils *
1 cup chorizo diced
2 handfuls chopped kale
4 cups chicken stock
Sautee onion, garlic and sweet potatoes in olive oil until soft. Add chorizo and stir until sweating. Add lentils and broth and cook for 10 minutes. Add kale to pot and cover. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes.
*I have had a love affair with Ethiopian food since my college days in Boston, where there was a great Ethiopian restaurant. The husband does not share my love of lentils or eating food with spongy teff pancakes so whenever I make Ethiopian lentils I have lots left over. Here is the recipe from Saveur:
1 small onion finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic
2 T berbere which is:
2 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. fenugreek seeds
1⁄2 tsp. black peppercorns
1⁄4 tsp. whole allspice
6 white cardamom pods
4 whole cloves
1⁄2 cup dried onion flakes
5 dried chiles de árbol, stemmed, seeded,
and broken into small pieces
3 tbsp. paprika
2 tsp. kosher salt
1⁄2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1⁄2 tsp. ground ginger
1⁄2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 small tomato chopped
1 C red lentils
4 T butter
Sautee onions in butter until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook about 30 seconds. Add lentils, 1T berere, tomato and 4 cups water to saucepan. Simmer over medium low stirring occasionally until lentils are soft and stew is thick, 45-50 minutes. Taste and add salt and more berbere as needed
The combination of the spice from the berbere and the sweetness of the sweet potatoes make this a really tasty lentil soup.
So there you have it. Boys, Beyonce, Berbere and a kitty in heat, all in one post.
