I was washing dishes the other day and this jar came to the top of the pile. It’s a jar I bought honey in when we lived in California — seven or eight years ago now. This is what I love about mason jars — that they last forever. About a year ago I got rid of all the plastic containers in my house. I bought a bunch of old pyrex refrigerator storage containers on eBay, and I’ve been using canning jars for everything else. It works perfectly. For braised things like the pork with New Mexico chile (thanks Deb…
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Although setting out on morning dog walks in the dark (at 7:30) is sort of a drag, the reward is that by the time we get to the dog park at Mayor’s Landing, which is a bluff overlooking the Yellowstone, we get to watch the sunrise over the Crazy Mountains to the northeast. It’s just lovely. It’s so lovely that I stop and look and feel very grateful that I live here. Every morning. The exercise is good, but the gratitude is even better. So this morning as we turned to head home, I heard what I thought was geese,…
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Tonigh night I was fried. I went out the last two nights, and while it was so much fun last night carving pumpkins with the kids (thanks Dad for that perennially-scary pumpkin face you taught me when I was little) well, the grownups overindulged just a tiny bit, and then today was crazy at work. By seven, I was rattling around trying to figure out what to eat for dinner. I wasn’t that hungry, but I wanted something other than cheese and crackers. And that’s when the antelope bolongese that I put up with the terrifying pressure canner came in…
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I managed to get my herbs in before the big snow which was a relief, especially as it took months for the shiso to germinate and I’m curious about using it. I put the herbs on this table in my mud room last winter, and while they didn’t die, they didn’t exactly thrive either. There’s a window directly opposite the table, and it is the south-facing side of the house, but it doesn’t get a whole lot of sunlight, especially on those gloomy days. So I bought a couple of brackets and a timer, and rigged up one of the…
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… is stay home. Rebecca Solnit, one of my favorite writers, has a lovely piece over at Orion in which she quotes Gary Snyder: “The most radical thing you can do is stay home.” Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking a lot about the economic situation — as much as I’d like to be economically independent here at LivingSmall, I’m still a good ten years away from that, and my Corporate Job depends on the world economy not collapsing entirely. And while I don’t want to see a world recession or depression, it also seems to me that perhaps we…
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I’ve been looking at storm doors for months now. My house was built in 1903, and has a beautiful carved front door. However lovely it is, the wind whistles through it all winter — last year I spent much of the winter with a piece of tape over the keyhole (my front door locks with an actual skeleton key — a source of much amusement when I visit friends in places like SF or LA where they all have both real keys, and security systems). I shopped through a number of storm doors at the big box stores — but…
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I’m having a very hard time here at LivingSmall believing that Yes, We Can indeed do it this year, that we can vote a “transformational” leader into the White House. Despite the newspaper endorsements, despite Colin Powell’s strong endorsement, despite the 100,000 people gathered beneath the St. Louis arch — I’m fighting a nagging sense of despair. The racism on display at the McCain rallies is so … what? horrifying? frightening? appalling? The open calls for violence, the gleeful finger-pointing and sneering claims that everything is just fine in America, that our wars are just and our financial system is…
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I had to have two cavities filled today. I am revoltingly healthy, in general (knock on wood). I broke an arm when I was eight, other than that, nothing. My mother claims that those of us who haven’t had kids are wusses, because we haven’t had all of our most private parts invaded by armies of medical professionals, and she might have a point. I also, thanks to the deities, inherited my father’s sturdy teeth. Aside from orthodonture, and a few cavities, I’ve been pretty lucky on that front. The last cavity I had was probably 15 years ago (and…
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This isn’t the greatest photo in the world, but here’s the 2008 pancetta in progress. This year I used the gorgeous pork I bought from my Milk Lady — it was significantly meatier than the commercial pork belly I bought last year. This proved something of a challenge when it came time to roll this puppy — it was more like wrestling than rolling, but I did finally get a nice, tight cylinder. I started out with the pancetta in the basement, because it’s cooler than upstairs, but it’s so dry down there (this is the west, after all). I…
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Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the big snow, I realized I was down to only one egg, so I set off, with Raymond, for the little health food store a couple of blocks from my house. Ray hadn’t had a proper walk because of the snow, and I was feeling like I needed some exercise, and the roads were so crummy I didn’t want to drive. Well, Foodworks was out of my Milk Lady’s eggs, and what can I say? After eating her unbelievably great farm eggs for the past couple of years I just couldn’t bring myself to…