The weather outside is frightful.

No, no shoveling yet.  And, regardless of whether you’re calling it snowmageddon or snowpocolypse, it really is a lot of snow.  My only experience with this much snow at once was in Chicago in 1979 when I was barely old enough to remember.  The national weather service says they got 18 inches that January, though this description might be more accurate.  There is a picture of me sitting level with the top of a stop sign that weekend after plowing and I haven’t seen such dramatic snowfall since.

It’s still snowing (though less) and we’re just shy of 24 inches.  24.  Two feet.  That doesn’t seem like so much when you’re just thinking about it, but it means that cars are suggestions in a drift and if you stand in a dip, you’re up to your waist.  Charlottesville is a Southern city unaccustomed to snowfall.  On the plus side – everyone seems to be staying in (unlike DC where thousands of uninitiated snow drivers take to the highways at the first flake and stay out there til they crash and die).  On the minus side – there aren’t actually any plows.  More…tractors with plow attachments.

Tomorrow – shoveling.

I Missed My Garden

Today is the last day of our vegetable experiment.  All summer long we enjoyed the bounty of the season; heaps of lettuce in spring, peaches that ripened in the car on the way home and were almost bad by the time they hit your tongue, apples that looked like they fell off the tree and into the basket but tasted like they were polished with velvet gloves, late fall frozen blueberries and cider, and the sharp taste of farm onions and garlic.  The food collective we joined had a long season – from April to December – and today is the last day.

I don’t think we’ll hop on board next summer.  We couldn’t seem to find the right combination of feast and famine to effectively use all of our food (or have enough of it).  We missed the farmer’s market but felt like we couldn’t buy there while justifying the huge expenditure at the beginning of the summer.  The cost was heartbreaking for a few months.  Sure, we’d have spent it anyway, but we’d have spent it over time with a focus on the fruits and vegetables we loved.  We deeply enjoyed supporting local farmers, but would like to feel more connected to the food by buying directly from the farms that harvest the food and speaking to the people who grew it.  It’s a luxury we have, living where we do, and I’d like to take advantage of it.

We’re not walking away empty.  I learned an amazing amount from this summer and I’ll have the satisfied feeling that comes from lessons learned through cleaning dirt and eating vine-fresh fruits.

• Pumpkins will not grow when it is wet.  Tomatoes will not grow when it is cold.
• Cold, wet summers cannot be predicted and everyone feels the pain in their pocket and in their mouths.
• I prefer onions from Georgia with a hint of sweetness.
• Peels come off of peaches when they are less ripe, but pies are best made with the ripest peaches.  Go figure.
• Green onions will contaminate the entire car if you don’t wrap them up.
• Don’t expect apple season to last as long as it does in the grocery store.
• Forget citrus.  Eating locally involved no oranges.
• I don’t like to eat more than one squash per season.
• I used to think Bibb lettuce looked romantic.
• I never want to see a Bibb lettuce again.
• Fresh cider pulled straight from a vat brought straight from the orchard – yum.
• The end of corn season broke my heart.
• Red Sails Lettuce is the best sort of lettuce.
• I love wandering through markets and setting a menu based on produce.
• It rained all but two Wednesdays between April and December. Two.
• It’s not as fun to bring home wet green beans as you think.
• I like cauliflower when mashed with salt and butter.
• I love eating, and vegetables and the process of food but I missed my garden.

In the Family Way

Well, well, well.  Times have changed, haven’t they?  I’d say I didn’t know what caused it, but I do.  It’s all this pure countryside living.  Either that or the fertility clinic we went to this summer.  I know, I didn’t tell you it was coming.  Think of it this way, we didn’t really tell anyone.  Not even our parents.  Okay, ESPECIALLY not our parents. And now we’re in trouble, knocked up, in a delicate condition, pregnant.

D, in particular is pregnant, but isn’t that what you say?  We’re pregnant?  It’s amazing how early a woman’s body quickly belongs to the collective once she’s bearing a child.  I give myself a good mental smack every time I think it in an effort to psychologically give her her body back, but I’m thwarted at every turn.  For example, several people took the liberty of hugging us today when shared the news.  This is work folks, we are colleagues, we don’t hug.  Don’t even get me started on the way many pregnancy books manage to marginalize both the mother and any partner she has that isn’t her straight, American, husband.  Like I said, don’t get me started.

You might have questions.  How, in fact, did two hot, sexy women such as yourselves manage to conceive the miracle of life? We selected sperm from a bank, we shipped it to a doctor, he injected it into her uterus twice (once in August and once in September), she got pregnant.  Here’s what we didn’t do: we did not tell our other “trying” friends the number of our donor (I’ve heard that occurs), we did not take any fertility drugs and we did not tell people we were attempting to fertilize an egg.

Honestly, we’re still a little queasy about the idea of thwarting evolution at all, but have opted to become glassy-eyed with baby thoughts instead of considering the damage we’ve done to the human race by electing to use artificial means of conception.  Well, she’s queasy for entirely different reasons.  So, details: she’s 13 weeks, due in late June, we’re not going to find out the sex, and I won’t be numbing your eyes with baby chat here.

Two things – check out the page at the top titled “Plus One”.  If baby talk is your thing you can find me at Counting Chickens.  That’s it for this pregnancy public service announcement.

Points for not shunning me.

No Over the River

The best thing about this season has been the absolute lack of travel.  Seriously folks, the closest I’ve come to taking a trip has been watching jet contrails spin off into clouds.  I don’t know about you, but fall usually triggers a series of family visits interspersed with lines at the airport, bulging suitcases and hours spent in traffic.  This rigmarole goes straight through til January and then we get half a year’s peace.

I never thought I’d see a year in which we didn’t have to travel.  This year, my parents brought the circus in October.  Our closest friends came to us for Thanksgiving and we’re spending the winter holidays in our house alone.  D’s mom is coming on the 26th but until then, it’s peace and quiet.  It’s more than peace and quiet.  It’s amazing.

Delayed Gratification

A few months ago, I read that chocolate chip cookie dough was ten times better if left to sit in the refrigerator overnight before baking.  Chemically, I think the theory would hold true for any cookie with flour and butter.  Leaving the dough overnight allows the flour to break through the bonds of the butter just enough to turn out a cookie that is richer, has a sturdier texture and boasts a slight caramel flavor that swiftly bridges the chasm between homemade cookies and bakery wares.

A few weeks ago, I put together a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I don’t really like chocolate chip cookies, but the chips had been sitting there, mocking me, and I was likely to try to eat them with a spoon and a handful of baby marshmallows at any second.  The marshmallows were rescued (you can breathe again) and cookies it was.  Here’s a secret.  I prefer raw cookie dough infinitely.  Baked, cookies have a flat, greasy flavor.  Recalling the overnight trick, I resisted eating more than a spoonful (yes, I’m aware of the egg terror) and shoved the bowl in the fridge.

After 12 hours, that dough tasted like some sort of keebler elf had snuck into my kitchen and substituted my regular cookie dough for sweet miracles.  It was a little darker and was more integrated than it had been the night before.  I couldn’t taste or feel the grains of sugar.  And in a blast of genius (and no small amount of loathing for hours spent scooping and baking trays of cookies), I rolled dozens of balls of dough and threw them into the freezer.  Not like that.  I wrapped them first.  We also baked a few and they were phenomenal.  Much better than any cookies I’d had recently.

A few hours ago, I came home and ate one small ball of raw, frozen dough.  After I finished lolling about in heaven, I baked six of the frozen cookies.  Between the overnight dough and the pre-made freezer balls, I am the happiest person alive.  Best. Idea. Ever.

No Parades of Any Kind

We had a fantastic snowfall last weekend.  It’s the first time I ever remember decorating the tree while heavy snow fell and Christmas carols played in the background.  I can’t believe it has never happened, but with a childhood spent in the west, it’s not entirely unlikely.  Still, it was a particularly storybook memory to tuck away.

While I’m not religious, I celebrate a holiday that brings family together (however you identify family) and focuses on giving.  We decorate a tree, we give thanks, we sing carols, I’m sure my wife has a word or two with god.  As for me, I welcome the coming longer days and the change of the seasons.  Spring is coming and along with it rebirth.  First though, rivers of eggnog, fantastic mistletoe kisses and heaps of chocolate.  Let’s not skip past those.

D says my family is fanatical about memory making.  Okay, I added the fanatical part.  And they are.  I grew up with my mother insisting that we were a “white picket fence” family and she constructed memories to go with it.  At the holidays, that meant gingerbread houses and men, sledding and hot chocolate, ice-skating on frozen ponds with colorful scarves and mittens.  She kept our childhood ornaments and carefully marked the dates, though the construction paper and popsicle stick ones have somehow disappeared, leaving only pretty ones behind.

Food features prominently in my family’s memories. Turkeys are golden and huge.  Ham is perfectly glossy.  There are dozens of tins of different cookies and plates of pies.  It’s a little like a Karo syrup Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  This year, I’m quietly appreciating a holiday season (and I’m counting Thanksgiving and birthdays in that) spent without my extended family and all the food and perfection that comes with it.  Not up to speed on my family’s weird birthdays?  Now you are.

This season, I’ll be able to get up as early (or as late) as I want to, wear sweats at the breakfast table, eat toast instead of cinnamon rolls, eat tacos instead of turkey, enjoy a non-gift focused celebration, listen to whatever music I want and not have to watch any parades OF ANY KIND.  There will still be memories (like when my wife doesn’t kill me for putting on the seventeenth unique version of Let it Snow.  You think I kid.) and the look on her face when she finds the tiny gifts I’ve tucked in her stocking.  It will be good.  I’m looking forward to my own sort of memory making.

In Which I Almost Go to the ER on Thanksgiving

As I stood there, peeling potatoes, I was thinking about how this particular peeling tool always nicks my fingers.  Every time, no matter how careful I am, I end up with a bandaid around a knuckle and blood in the sink.  Daydreaming about my soon-to-be nicks (maybe that’s why I’m getting nicked to begin with), I started thinking about how folks end up unexpectedly spending their Thanksgivings in the ER.

Ordinarily, I’m a reasonably good cook.  Dinner is an important part of our daily ritual and the more cooking involved the better.  Sometimes we’re too exhausted to whip up a feast (or anything at all) but when we do I feel more grounded and more satisfied.  Cooking a Thanksgiving meal is like a year-long version of that grounding.  It’s a capstone that makes me feel confident in the coming year, grateful for my connections and relationships, and quietly thrilled at my increasing mastery of the traditional meal.  And I don’t even like turkey.

Ordinarily, I have reasonably good technical skills.  Today I quickly chopped fresh sage and thyme into a sweet pile of fragrant, miniscule herbs.  It was indistinguishable in the stuffing, lending flavor but no earthy texture.  I mashed potatoes in a stable, sturdy pot.  I helped walk my wife through a perfect carving of the Norman Rockwell bird.  Knifes I handle, heat I manage, dishes stay intact.

Ordinarily, I’m not worried about stabbing myself.

Last night, I had a moment (after the finger nicking and before The Incident) when I wondered if I would call an ambulance or drive to the hospital if I sliced my finger open with my freshly sharpened chef’s knife.  Fortunately, it was the dull paring knife that slid off of the turkey and plunged into my stomach.  Stabbed.  I managed to stab myself directly in the stomach. The knife skidded off the bird, my wrist bumped the edge of the sink, the knife slammed into my shirt and punctured my stomach and then…stopped.

So here’s what I’m thankful for: that I am too lazy to sharpen the paring knife like I do the other knives; that I had a paint stained t-shirt on with a thick dried wad of paint right over the belly; that I am too lazy to use a rag when I paint; that I was using my non-dominant, less-strong hand; that my general high-stress personality caused me to freak over dropping the turkey (the dirt!) and simultaneously suck in my stomach; and, that I didn’t do more than draw a drop of blood.

Seriously.  Who stabs themselves at Thanksgiving?  Thankfully, we avoided a trip to the ER and a home evisceration.  We’ve a lot to be grateful for.

Rake

It’s impossible to avoid feeling suburban when you have trees in your backyard.  Sure, we live in the city (well, for what that’s worth) instead of the surrounding vast network of rural counties.  City or not, our neighborhood is studded with oaks, maples, cottonwoods and…you get the idea.  Those leaves are pretty but they have to fall.

I had no idea being a homeowner would give me such sore abs.

At least, raking is slightly more fun that it was as a kid.  Now there’s an ipod and I’m actually tall enough to move the rake without whacking myself in the head (Thanks for that chore, dad).  Sure, we aren’t jumping in the leaves – have you seen the bugs out there? – but it’s fun to smell the dry leaves in the sun and hear them crunch underfoot.

Sore everything.  But, completely worth it.

National Blog Writing Month

Somehow November crept up on me.  I suppose it’s only fair to say that October and September did too.  It’s been lovely, fall in a new house.  We’re been watching the leaves flash a most beautiful red and yellow.  Some folks say it has been a brighter fall than usual, but I can’t tell the difference from last year.  Our old neighborhood was heavy on the dogwoods – young ones that turned a sullen purply red.  This neighborhood has old oaks and cottonwoods (along with a few grown dogwoods) that have lit up the sky.  Late October is one of my favorite times of year.

This is National Blog Writing Month followed by Holidailies in December.  I’ve managed to write nearly every day in these two months for the last two years (Nov. 1 posts here and here) without much fanfare.  So consider this a statement of intent and an invitation to join me.  I’m not necessarily brilliant for 61 days, but I’m company at least!

Death Defying Loops

When is the last time you’ve ridden a roller coaster?  And how did you feel afterward?  Not just in the woohoo moments when the ride cruises to a stop, but in the day-after moments?

We’re all adults here, you can admit it if you felt like you might die.

D and I went to an amusement park this weekend to shake off some of the last month.  And shake it we did, on teeth-rattling, head-banging, gut-wrenching, twisting and twirling rides.

I didn’t grow up enjoying roller coasters.  I particularly hate the click click click of the cars going up for the first big drop.  The rattling, jostling ride of a wooden roller coaster is a recipe for a skull cracking headache.  But as an adult, I love the rush of the propelled coasters, the smooth steel tracks that zip under and over without the need for a slow initial rise and deep drop.  I love to laugh as the ride shoots through loops and curls and suspends me upside down for a perfect moment.

But let me tell you, we hadn’t been to a park in a couple of years and something about my equilibrium has significantly changed.  The first ride we went on featured a set of twists that just about sent my stomach onto the pavement.  While the rest of the day was terrific, I don’t think we ever really recovered from the nausea courtesy of our first trip.  I’ve definitely felt it in my bones for the last couple of days.  Ouch.

Even in the moment, I think we knew that our inner children had taken a beating.  When I was little, I remember running from ride to ride, insatiable for more excitement, thrilled as the park lights twinkled on and the lines got shorter.  It didn’t matter that we would race from one point to the next just to stand in line or even that we rode the same ride again and again.  It was a matter of cramming as much as possible into the minutes we had left.  It was always time to go too soon.  This time, we arrived shortly after the park opened (but not early enough to beat down the door) and left well before it closed, satisfied and happy, delighted to both have been there and to be wrapping things up.

I never thought I’d want to leave before the park closed.  But oh was I delighted to be home.  People, my bones might be too old for roller coasters, but luckily, my soul isn’t.