Tag Archives: housework

In Advent and Christmastide

Christmas, family, home, Nativity,
2016

This year is extra full for me, during the festal season, because a LOT of family are coming to my house, a bunch of them for nine blessed nights, from all over the country and from outside the country. They are expected to arrive a few days before Christmas, which is very soon, and I still have much preparation to do. Twelve or fifteen extra people will sleep under my roof; it will be a Christmas slumber party! And a few more will be with us for celebratory cooking and eating.

I’ve been grocery shopping (repeatedly) in six different stores, and clearing out “work” rooms for sleeping, and wrapping presents and …. well, you know. But I haven’t baked one cookie, in spite of looking daily at the soft butter sitting on the counter, waiting. If I hadn’t finally dusted the living room blinds this morning I wouldn’t be calm enough to sit down here for a few minutes.

But — I’m so grateful that there is a Prefeast Vespers service this evening for me to attend, to help me focus, and where I can pray with verses such as these:

O ye people, let us celebrate the forefeast of the nativity of Christ, and elevating our mind to Bethlehem, let us soar aloft in thought and behold the great mystery in the cave; for Eden was opened when God issued forth from the pure Virgin, being perfect in both divinity and manhood. Wherefore, let us cry aloud: O holy God, Thou unoriginate Father! O Holy and Mighty One, Thou Son Who becamest incarnate! O holy Immortal One, Thou comforting Spirit! O Holy Trinity, glory be to Thee!

Prepare thyself, O Bethlehem! 

I like rain and roasted onions.

books, food and cooking, home, weather, , , , , , , , , , ,

Rain… rain… rain… It’s been raining All. Day. It’s night now and still raining. I’ve been exulting in it, because I didn’t have any responsibilities that required my going out. I could tend the fire, chat with my daughters online about their weather, roast onions, read, and even accomplish one housecleaning task that has been hanging over my head for months: cleaning the ceiling exhaust fan in a bathroom. Yippee!

The nodding violet that I brought indoors last week before freezing weather arrived looked so lovely with the rainy light behind it, I had to take its picture.

Sir Gawain by Howard Pyle

On the table by the violet are a few of the books I bought to go with an online course I am taking this fall: “Christian Wonder Tales.” It is taught by Martin Shaw, the mythologist and storyteller whom I met at the Symbolic World Summit last winter. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight didn’t get in the picture, but is another title he recommended, and I have it upstairs.

Who knows if I will read any of these books to the end — I haven’t even finished The King of Ireland’s Son, by Padraic Colum, which is quite delightful. Also perfect for listening to, because the narrator Gerard Doyle’s Irish brogue, telling the stories-within-stories as is the custom with Irish stories, has me journeying entranced from the Irish cottage to the castle and back again, meeting mysterious characters and challenging assignments around every bend in the road.

Now to the topic of food: Back when my friend Susan was also my housemate, sometimes I would walk in the front door to another sort of captivating story, the aroma of which was the essential part. What are you cooking?? I would ask, drawn immediately into the kitchen, and it took a few repetitions of this encounter before my nose remembered what she had told me: “It’s only roasted onions!” I eventually had to start making them myself.

(Above, onions in my kitchen as it was 28 years ago. Notice bread rising in pans at left. The only thing that is the same now is cast iron pans always on the stove top.)

To keep up with my appetite for them, I’d need to roast a batch of onions once a week, but it ends up being more like twice a year. As soon as they are out of the oven I always serve myself a little bowl of them, which seems to be about one onion’s worth… or two — so I usually double the recipe below. Do you roast onions? You can find many recipes online; here is my version:

ROASTED ONIONS

3 large onions, yellow or red
2 tablespoons olive or other oil
1 tablespoon balsamic or other vinegar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
(1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme) – I never add this

Cut the onions vertically into quarters or sixths, and then slice those wedges crosswise as thick as you want; I make mine 1/8 to 1/3 inch thick. Toss them in a bowl with the other ingredients and roast in a sheet pan at 375 to 400 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, until they are as brown as looks good to you. I think sometimes, in an effort to get them crispier, I have overcooked them and made them a little tough.

This evening I didn’t use balsamic vinegar, because recently I was given an extra special bottle of “plain” red wine vinegar with a noble heritage. Just as bakers like to pass their sourdough starter around to friends, so chefs and winemakers often share a vinegar mother (also called a vinegar scoby). My vinegar was fermented with a mother whose mother belonged to Alice Waters, and whose grandmother grew in Julia Child’s kitchen. Does that make my onions taste better? You know, I think they might just be the best I’ve ever made!

What I was given on my Home Day.

home, other gardens, wildflowers, , , , , ,

Today was my Slow/Stay at Home/R&R/Catch up Day. That sounds like a lot to expect of one day, especially when you stay up writing until the hands of the clock are telling you it has already become that day, and therefore you will start out short on sleep.

But what a blessing it turned out to be! The first gift was a phone call from my grandson and his wife, the parents of my great-granddaughter, and that was heartwarming. I loved talking about maternity care — what she got as well as cultural trends — with Izzie, who is bouncing back with the resilience of youth and those hormones a woman gets a good dose of in childbirth. The whole family and her mom were walking at a park when Roger decided to phone me and we had our satisfying visit.

And then a spell of plant identification. 🙂 Yes, and I didn’t even have to go out and discover the plant myself. My farmer friend from whom I buy lamb every year had posted a picture of flowers on Instagram, glad to see them in the pasture before the sheep ate them. She didn’t say their name so I assumed she didn’t know, but they were so pretty, I wanted to find out.

I asked Pippin’s help, but she didn’t know them, either, so I looked in the Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest guide, even though the authors don’t try to include my area of California in their book; I might still find a clue. And I did see one very similar, which was enough to take to the Internet and search with. I’m pasting the Wikipedia photo here, almost identical to the farmer’s, of downingia concolor or calicoflower, which is in the Campanulaceae Family. Aren’t they darling? I wonder if the sheep have eaten them by now…

Kasha, or roasted buckwheat groats, is one of my favorite things to eat on fast days. I like to cook a potful so that I have several servings on hand, but I had run out of that a couple of weeks ago. This package that was given to me by a friend is nearly used up now; it cooks up the way I like it and has the best flavor, so I think I will try to get this type from now on. I got to eat kasha for lunch, and stashed three containers in the fridge and freezer.

I had told myself that I would not read or write blogs today, since I did just do that last night, and because I wanted to catch up on one or two of the many other things that I’m behind on. Lately it’s become R&R just to wash the dishes, and when I was washing up my kasha pot I just kept going, and ended up spending a couple of hours on the kitchen. What took the longest was giving my stove top and range hood a thorough cleaning of the sort is hasn’t had for ages. After that experience, my hands told me they needed a manicure.

The sun came out — but not until 6:00 p.m. But after bending over my housework all that time, and feeling not rushed, the sunshine was all the encouragement I needed to get outside. I would just take the easiest stroll, no hurry.

Once I was in the neighborhood where I took pictures for my “Roses on My Path” series a long time ago that doesn’t feel that long ago (before my husband was even sick), I remembered that I wanted to go back to the house I called the Rose House back then, to find whether anything had changed.

I found it, and the display was more opulent than ever. This is the house where the roses do not appear to be cared for, though I continue to think they must be getting water from somewhere to make it through our rainless summers. All the roses on this post are from that house, and a link to the previous post might show up as one of the “related” posts below.

They still have the mailbox with stylistic roses painted on it, but now it is hidden deep under a broad spray of blooms hanging down. I think maybe that bush seems twice as tall as before because it has climbed into a tree behind it.

The profusion of flowers is probably a result of the rain of the last two years. The species are very special. I can’t tell you much about them, except that I find them exquisite, but many of my readers will know things just by looking. This time I noticed an identifying tag at the base of one bush that has the trunk of a tree. It was grown from a cutting taken in 2001; how long, I wonder, was the rose bush cared for before it was allowed to grow wild?

I feasted my eyes and my nose for quite a while, walking and gawking up and down and wishing I were in an official rose garden with a proper bench. I wanted to sit for a while to gaze at their loveliness, bursting out through the tangled canes and deadwood. Eventually there was nothing to do but go home. I felt thoroughly loved through those roses.

But when I got here I had to write after all, while it is yet today.
It’s one way I have of thanking God for all His wonderful gifts
that pour down even on — or is it especially on? — a slow day.

A rosemary comeback, and big plans.

home, my garden, , , , , ,

The first sunny day we’ve had in a week, and my plan was to work on cleaning the garage; I do not say “to clean the garage” because that sounds like I could ever finish.

But first, a walk. The creek is so high, and now running smoothly so that the sky reflects off the water, distracting from the quantity of mud still flowing below.

After breakfast I opened the overhead door of the garage to get light on my subject, and remembered that I wanted to trim the abutilon. It never stops blooming, so I can’t wait for dormancy. One bloom shone brightly yellow and caught the sun penetrating its petals.

You know how it goes in the garden – One thing leads to another, and I did a bit of tidying up the next hour. The first asparagus has emerged, and lots of California poppy plants that you can see behind one of my new wallflower bushes.

But what is THIS? A ladybug, yes, I know, but the bug is sitting on a stem of rosemary! A stem of a bush that is taking over a pittosporum bush, and already blooming, and I never saw it until today. It’s from a root left over from the gnarly plant that was there until three years ago; what a surprise that it didn’t show itself all this time, until now.

I had to cut it off for the time being, because I didn’t want to take time to dig out the root, which is what is sadly necessary.

gl P1040918
Rosemary in the previous landscape.


Several of my yarrow clumps seem to have died out,
but a couple of plants are starting to bloom.

And the abutilon – the star of the show.

I eventually did get a lot done in the garage. I’m making space there for stuff that’s been stored in the house, especially in the great room upstairs, because… Announcement!: I’m starting a remodel of this big room. For almost three decades it has been used for homeschooling, large families sleeping or even living in there, Mr. Glad practicing his drums, and always, the storage of many, many things, not in a very efficient manner. We avoided doing anything to it, while we fixed more urgent areas of the house and property.

My plan is to divide it into three rooms: a Guest Room, a Sewing Room, and a full bathroom. Plans now being drawn by an architect will soon be submitted to the city for a building permit, and the contractor is standing by….

There is nothing lovely or very interesting to tell about in the garage, or in the great room. Decorating, choosing furniture, colors and such matters do not inspire me. They challenge me and find me bored and impatient, and that makes me want to escape here and write about books or saints or the moon I saw through my window last night. So things might not change too much on the blog. I’ll be seeing you around!