For many years, I didn’t really drink coffee, but now that I live with someone who is very much not a morning person, and who introduced me to the decadent habit of having a cup of coffee in bed before rising, well, I am now a coffee drinker. However, I am not not not a coffee snob. I find all the fussing repellant. As well as the mere idea of spending a gazillion dollars on a home expresso machine. Just seems showoffy, and if I want some foamy coffee thing, I’ll walk over two blocks and support a local business.…
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Last week I went back to the midwest to celebrate my grandmother’s 100th birthday. Here she is as a very small child in front of the famous Chicago Water Tower. Jane Plamondon Ripley was born into a manufacturing family in 1911, and I believe she was the first grandchild (if not, the others lived in Michigan, so she was the first one at home). Her grandparents, Charles and Mary Plamondon were leading citizens of the boomtown that was Chicago at the turn of the last century, and when they went down on the Lusitania, their funerals brought hundreds of people…
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A weekend like this one, when someone decides to murder a bunch of civic-minded folks who have come to a supermarket to chat with their Congresswoman, well, it makes you think about all the things you can’t control in this world. So I came inside, and I cleaned my floors, and washed my slipcovers, and made an angel food cake with all those egg whites left over from the Christmas profiteroles and then made a loaf of Darina Allen’s Brown Soda Bread (since I was out of regular bread and the sourdough starter needed some time). I’ve got a leftover…
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My new CookBookSlut column is up over at Bookslut — I take on cooking and urban homesteading as one approach to the continuing implosion of the economy and the unabating high unemployment rate. I mean, if we’re not going to have jobs anymore, we’d better learn to grow our own and cook our own and take care of our own. (Rant alert, btw.) Here’s a list of the terrific books I discuss this month: A Householder’s Guide to the Universe: A Calendar of Basics for the Home and Beyond Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables This Organic…
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These were actually last year’s Christmas present, but I didn’t get to use them much as we got a warm spell right after the holiday. Today it’s sunny and beautiful. Clear blue skies, about 25 degrees, lovely. So at lunch, I took my new skates over to the lagoon in town park, and skated for about 20 minutes. It was great — the ice was bumpy and there were patches of snow on it just like when I was a kid, and the adventure is compounded by the fact that I grew up on figure skates, not hockey skates, so…
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I’m expanding my blog universe this year with a new blog venue on my personal site, Charlotte McGuinn Freeman. For an explanation of what I intend to do over there go take a look at my first post: New Year, New Blog. I have no intention of dropping LivingSmall — this is where I’ll continue to write about sustainability issues, gardening, cooking, my dogs and life on the edge of the Paradise Valley. But I’m looking forward to stretching my brain a little bit and to writing about some new topics as well. So bookmark them both, and here’s to…