Archive for September, 2007

Bear Shit Dog

By cmf
September 13, 2007
Bear Shit Dog

It’s fall in Montana which means that the bears are on the move — there’s been a black bear down in the creekbed woods behind the dog park where we walk and last night Raymond came home covered in bear shit. Bad dog! Bad dog got washed with cold water from the hose in...
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Cooking Small

By cmf
September 12, 2007

Somehow we’ve managed to live a little too large here at LivingSmall, the debt-to-savings ratio has gotten itself upside down, and so we’re trying to cut back wherever we can. I’m the kind of person who buys pantry staples when I’m feeling existentially anxious, and so, in the spirit of economizing, I’ve found myself...
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Madeleine L’Engle

By cmf
September 11, 2007

You’ve probably seen by now that Madeleine L’Engle has died. Despite having been the kind of kid who could walk between classes with my nose in a book and never bump into anyone (I also became very quick at taking tests because we were free to read after we were done), I was never...
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Happy Bike

By cmf
September 10, 2007
Happy Bike

Once the heat wave passed it seems like everyone in town has been riding around on those retro-cruiser bikes. I was on the verge of going to buy one when I remembered that duh! I have a bike! I bought this bike a couple of years ago for forty bucks at the pawn shop...
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Guest Blog Post at the Ethicurean

By cmf
September 9, 2007

For those of you coming in from Ethicurean … welcome, take a look around. For my regular readers, I have a guest post over there called “What’s in Your Freezer” (with an embarassing photo of my frosty freezer).
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Canning — Everybody’s Learning How

By cmf
September 6, 2007

Somehow the subject of canning is everywhere on the interenets, and it’s spawned a bastardized version of “Surfin Safari” inside my head. You’ve got a lot of time to think of things like this while waiting for water to boil. On the home front — I put up a couple of jars of marinated...
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Blue Jelly

By cmf
September 5, 2007

A million years ago, when I was still in graduate school and working at the bookstore in Salt Lake City, I picked up Blue Jelly by Debby Bull. I loved this book. I tried my darndest to sell it to people but for some reason, the folks who wanted Bridges of Madison Country didn’t...
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Peach of my Dreams

By cmf
September 4, 2007
Peach of my Dreams

Maryanne just returned from a visit to her sister’s place in Western Colorado and she brought me peaches. Real peaches. Delicious, dead-ripe Western Slope peaches. Yes they’re a little lumpy — there are a few bruises and blemishes where some bug or something made a mark. But cut them open, and this is what...
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Drowning in Plums …

By cmf
September 3, 2007
Drowning in Plums …

When I first moved to California in my 20s, I was shocked at the amount of stone fruit going to waste in peoples’ yards. To a Midwestern kid who grew up thinking that a ripe peach in February was a great treat, the sight of peaches by the bushel rotting on the ground because...
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