The holidays are bearing down on LivingSmall like a freight train of fun — unfortunately, not only was I travelling last week (the storm in Denver today makes my 7 hour layover there last week look like a bargain this morning) and not only do I have to work this week for the Big Corporation — I have a whole lot of stuff to get done. And I’m taking next week off then going to California in early January to train my group in the stuff I’ve learned in these seminars I’ve been travelling for, so there’s that low-level anxiety…
-
-
My trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving featured any number of family heirlooms — my grandmother and I went through a boatload of old family photos from the turn of the century, including piles of heartbreaking condolence letters received when her grandparents went down on the Lusitania, and a whole album of her own baby pictures (naked baby granny playing on the farm was pretty adorable). And then my mother gave me not only my great-grandmother’s silver flatware (more about that later) but this aluminum roaster. I love this roaster. The very first thing I remember learning to cook for myself…
-
Big game season ended yesterday, and the Mighty Hunter didn’t get his elk this year. He got antelope and deer, so it’s not like any of us will go hungry, but no elk, which is too bad. I like elk. This morning I went over to check New West Network and found this terrific piece on the intertwined pleasures of hunting and providing for oneself and one’s family: “The Thrill and the Meat” by Greg Lemon. I realize that in most parts of the country that hunting is an anathema, but out here, a lot of people like Lemon rely…
-
Although the house I woke up in this morning on my grandmother’s farm is not the house we all grew up in, the view out the window, a pale landscape of late-season standing corn, hazy Midwestern sky just pinking up to the east, and section lines marked off by rows of old, half-broken oak and elm trees is one I know in my bones somehow. The way we learn places as kids is so intense, so different than the way grownups know space that despite waking up in the new house my Aunt built on the site of my great-great…
-
I’ve been trying for days to figure out a way to write about this topic without sounding like a scold. Maybe the key is to ask you all (well, the three or four of you left after my various lapses in blogging) — what is it with dinner in America these days? Why is it so hard? Estimates vary, but it now seems that something like 30-50% of American families are not eating dinner together on any given night. I don’t get it. I’m not talking about pulling off some gourmet multi-course meal. I’m just talking about dinner — a…
-
I’ve been meaning to write about this article, BACK TO THE RANCH: Consumers are going to the source for pastured beef, pork, poultry and eggs in the SF Chronicle food section since it came out (which to my horror, was a month ago). Anyhow, looks like more and more families in the Bay Area are buying meat directly from ranchers — I’ve written before about knowing your meat, and my astonishment that most Americans are totally freaked out by this idea. When Patrick and I lived in the Bay Area we talked about finding someone to buy a side or…
-
It’s an odd week here at LivingSmall — September 11 rolls around once again and I can’t help but remember calling Patrick, who was in the truck on his way to work. He hadn’t wanted to wake me up before he left, just after the first plane hit. We were on the phone together when the first tower fell. Seeing all the footage makes me miss him. He was the person I knew I could call any time, and we all need that person in our lives, the one we know we can pick up the phone when something happens.…
-
Heading into week two of vacation and just beginning to feel like a human being again. I was tired. Run down, dragged out, wrecked kind of tired. And now I’m looking at a lovely summer day stretching out before me and thinking that the hammock sounds good, and a book. I should probably mow the lawn at some point, but it’s a small lawn, that’s ten minutes of activity. That’s enough. It’s summer vacation.
-
The garden is finally starting to come in this summer. I’m on vacation for 2 weeks, and I spent a lovely morning the other day puttering in the vegetable garden. I pulled out all the peas, which did really well this year, but which were starting to get woody. The tomatoes are starting to pop after a couple of days of hot weather — it really takes until August to get a tomato around here, but once they get past that 6-inch stage it feels like summer’s really begun. I have a lot of greens, and more onions than I…
-
They’re back! It’s spring in the Greater Yellowstone area, and the bears are awake and afoot. Some of you may remember that the dogs and I had a little encounter last year (see Not the Top of the Food Chain, and Bear Update). Well, this year it was three local girls, who got pinned up in Suce Creek for two or two and a half hours by a grizzly. They were hiking, they saw the bear, the bear charged and they all yelled at one another to drop and cover their necks. They dropped to the fetal position, covered the…