This is Bella. She and Sam are on the couch, perched in front of the fan, watching what Matt just informed me was their 22nd episode of “Martha Speaks” on Netflix.
It’s a dog’s life.
Snapshots
Dinner and a Rant
First, dinner.
Confession: I was so hungry, I moved straight from grill to table. This means no time for pictures. I assure you, the asparagus was green, chicken glazed and grilled, the corn – crisp and juicy.
Today felt so much like summer that we relaxed into a summer evening schedule (even though it’s a school night). We each went our summer evening ways: I ran, Colby hit baseballs then ran, and Matt worked on the property. While Colby ran, I sat on a rock nursing a beer and talking with Matt. Supper was super easy and ready in 20 minutes start to finish.
Sesame Chicken with grilled vegetables
1 lb thin chicken breast, tamari, dark sesame oil, tin foil
seasonal veg (2 servings veg to each 1 serving of meant) – we had corn and asparagus
dessert – every day is special enough for dessert
Directions: place chicken breast (if breasts are thick – believe me, mine are not – pound or slice them so that all pieces are approximately the same size) in a 9 x 12 pan with 2-3 good tablespoons of tamari. Swish around then add appx 1 tablespoon of sesame oil (the darker the better). Let sit while grill heats.
Put water on to boil. Shuck and wash corn. Cook until just tender, but still crisp.
Prep asparagus or other veg. For asparagus, wash, snap ends, and arrange in grill pan or in tin foil, lightly spray with olive oil and salt and pepper liberally.
This is about time to take the corn off. It should be almost done, but not quite. Take the pot off the heat and push it back on the stove. Let it sit and finish cooking while you work on the grill.
Place a large sheet of prepped (cooking spray) tin foil on the grill. Place chicken and asparagus on the foil. Drink a beer. Swat flies. Read two paragraphs in a book that may or may not piss you off.
Now, the rant.
I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’ve been so excited to read this. I started seeds and we’ve planted and there are tender green shoots coming up everywhere. I totally wanted to spend my afternoons looking at my garden and reading this book. But while I was cooking, I read this:
I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic. . . Cooking good food is mostly a matter of having the palate and the skill . . . The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local – food culture is not price, but attitude (31).
What the fuck.
How many Americans know what “food aesthetic” even means?
For someone who seems to be railing against the perception of money as the gateway to food culture, that is an elitist and offensive collection of statements. And stupid. And I’m only 31 pages in. I want to ask Kingsolver a few questions:
Do you know how expensive and time consuming it is to plant and raise a garden? Have you ever received food stamps? Was your first trip to a farmer’s market subsidized by WIC vouchers? Mine was. Have you ever had to create a meal for your family using dried or canned beans, canned tomatoes that you know are steeped in hormone disrupting chemicals? Generic, non-organic grains and cheese that did not come from organic milk? I have. That non-organic, processed and preserved meal was the staple of my young adult life (which also coincided with my parenting life). It contained complete proteins (I looked it up in Diet for a Small Planet), two servings of vegetables and complex carbohydrates. I am an American, I am a mother. And I’m really pissed off.
I value every fucking tomato that comes out of my garden because I know the investment. I know who started the seeds, be it me or my closest nursery. I water the plants. I talk to them. We weed and get bug bitten and apply compost. When we eat that tomato, I am proud. But when I have to buy a cheap tomato at the store because it is a year when I don’t have the time or money to grow my own, I will not feel guilty. Barbara – take a recipe for beans and rice and vegetables. Do the price comparison between fresh vegetables and frozen, organic rice and generic (at my local grocery it is at least a full dollar). Calculate the comparative TIME investment for dried beans vs. canned.
I feel like I’ve made it – in life- because I actually have the luxury of planting and tending a garden. TIME to prepare a careful meal for my family? A luxury that I have not always had. Enough money to buy the hormone-free chicken and local beef? You wanna bet that’s a luxury AND a sacrifice.
Sigh. I get it, I do. I want to know my farmer. I want to know where my food comes from. I want the best for my family and for me. I love Kingsolver’s fiction and I admire her passion, but she is missing the point.
When we eliminate time and money from the equation and make this a problem of culture (“palate and skill”, “attitude”), we are making a grave mistake. This is the culinary version of the bootstraps fallacy. Know what many working parents (and single working poor) don’t have? Time and money. Unchallenged, arguments like this are more harmful than a factory farmed tomato. They undermine our efforts at equality, tolerance, and human citizenship.
As angry as I am, and I’m angry because this argument cuts to the core of all I value, I will continue to read. I respect Kingsolver’s skill and passion, and I hope I find a glimpse beyond her 100 acre backyard and carefully crafted factoids.
I’m going to eat an Oreo.
A Quick Update
A quick note for you all.
I’m participating in this fantastic blogging class led by Emilie Manhart of One Mom in Maine through the University of Maine.
Our challenge for the week is to post every day, so you’ll be hearing from me frequently.
My goal is to provide a wide variety of content (very much like Jenny Rosenstrach does in Dinner: A Love Story.
With that, what would you like to see? Picture essays? Multimedia? Book reviews? Bad mama confessionals?
Ask and you shall receive.
xoxo
Heather
Spring Fever
My father and I have this thing where, most afternoons, we call each other and see how the day went. The conversation is predictable: An ‘A’ day, not an ‘A’ day, or even worse – “a Day”.
Today was a Day.
- My fat pants didn’t fit. I’ve been reduced to pants and skirts with drawstrings and stretchy waistbands.
- I teach seniors who have three official school days left.
- I had to grocery shop after 5 p.m. without Colby (he is THE best grocery shopping companion of all time).
- Two important decisions need to be made pronto. I can tell nearly anyone exactly what I think they should do. I tell them to take care of themselves, to make a list, to prioritize, to think. For me to do these things, well, a totally different story.
My two decisions may directly address the problem of ill fitting pants, though. I need to decide whether or not I’m going to sign up for this triathlon (I’ve been dreaming about it all year) AND if I am going to apply to yoga teacher training (which I’ve wanted to do since I was 10 and saw an article on yoga in my mother’s Redbook).
Both decisions have financial implications for my family. Both events will *hopefully benefit me, my health and my sanity.
This evening will find me grading, folding laundry, taking a creative look at our budget, and making up my mind.
Peace out.
A Post In Which Heather Falls Out Of The Canoe And Is Very Scared
It was a day of firsts. Our first swim while canoeing. The first time I’ve changed in front of my in-laws. Cheers (see me holding up my cup of Sleepytime tea?).
We were so thankful for dry weather that the intermittent clouds were no problem. Matt and I took the Forester, freighted with gear, out Route 9 and toward camp. We drank coffee and ate breakfast and had a rare, but much-needed, visit.
Once at camp I settled in with a stack of grading while Matt attempted to get his old VW Rabbit (1 out of 4) running. His family arrived, and with them, lots of wedding talk. His father asked me, “Why can’t you just elope like normal people?”.
Said Father and Matt’s brother dropped us, our canoe and gear off, and we whooshed by them shortly. Us, water everywhere; them, safely on shore, fishing and shooting video.
Ledge Falls from Heather J Webb on Vimeo.
We knew we’d have big water today, but I certainly didn’t foresee what was to come.
We took some pics as we scouted the most difficult piece of our run. We were on the East Branch of the Union River and prepping to go over Ledge Falls. This spot has given us difficulty in the past, but usually because the water was TOO low.
Long story short, we dumped it.
I was pretty convinced that I was going to die. I was stuck for a few seconds but managed to wiggle my foot free and made sweet love to a huge rock. Once I was perched on the rock I was able to grab the canoe rope (Thanks, Matt for saving the canoe!) and haul it over to my rock. I flopped in, Matt hopped in, and we were back on our way. The rest of the trip was cold and wet, but we survived. Oddly, it was fun. We had a few more sections of fast water and then, poof, we were done. Matt built me a fire and I stood by it and wrung out my clothes while we waited for his parents.
Now we’re home and dry. Laundry is done and I am too.
Have a great week, friends.
xoxo
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
I can’t get enough of this season. Except, well, the tree pollen that has turned my sinuses into twin rocks. And the seniors who are ready to bust out of the school like a boil getting ready to burst.
I’m staring out the window at school all day. I want to play in the dirt and ride my bike and drink coffee on my sun porch and go for mid-morning runs.
I’ve watched our forsythia and rhododendron bloom and begin to drop, and now, now our apple trees are in bloom! Our driveway is covered in petals and I sigh every time I walk out the door. Lavender lilacs, bright pink and glossy green rhododendron, brilliant yellow forsythia, fuchsia and snow white crab apple blossoms. It’s too much. I walked the dogs tonight and kept taking long, deep breaths of the heady, verdant air.
I have a visual list for you this week. The good, bad and ugly of what’s going on ’round here.
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
Lots of good stuff going on, but also lots of work. This whole wedding planning thing turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated. I’m dealing insofar as I’ve stopped sobbing “but it looks like shiiiiiiiiit. hiccup. it’s just one big awful fucking mess. hiccup. there are HOLES in the walllllllll. hiccup”. I’ve chosen the path of cautious optimism, and am going with a “everything will turn out” mantra.
Happy Monday, all.
Who’s Bringing Up Baby?
As I ambivalently entertain the idea of having another child, few concerns overwhelm me like the prospect of finding adequate and affordable child care. Well, that and whether or not I can handle another teenager. This article in The Atlantic doesn’t help.
I have the luxury, now, of telling Colby to hitch a ride to practice with another family. If I’m stuck late at work, I can call his school and send him to the very reasonably priced after-school care program. It wasn’t always this way.
During Colby’s infancy I was terrified of day care centers. Irrationally? Maybe, but terror is terror. I struggled to attend college part-time and made use of the online classes which were just coming into being. My advisor recognized my struggle at the end of one semester and recommended we “explore a judicious use of day care”. She told me how a group of faculty members, parents, banded together to keep funding for the University day care system, and how we needed to make use of it in order to keep it. I later met some of the women who fought for this, and we should all be grateful for their service. I got on the wait-list and started looking for local child care providers in the small town I lived in.
When I returned to school full-time as a commuter student, Colby spent his days with a dear woman he called ‘Nana’. For him and the few other children who were there, it was like spending the day at grandma’s. We returned to the area a few years later and he started school. Most days (because I didn’t make enough to pay even Nana) he would ride the bus to me at school. On a late day, though, he would take the bus to Nana’s with the rest of her kids. Through all of these years, she always made time for us, the parents, and pick-up time often turned into a round of gossip, or advice-giving and problem-solving. She knit blankets for her kids at Christmas. She was irreplaceable.
Our spot eventually came up for university day care, and shortly after, university family housing. I found a wonderful, family-friendly part-time job. The pieces of my future career came together in this year. The university child-care program was fantastic, as promised. We are still close with families we met during our time there. Colby thrived and moved on to preschool at our local Y, another blessing.
Between these golden days and Colby’s school years, I accepted a job that paid little, but would offer the experience I needed. My contract provided for child-care, but when I toured that squalid and over-crowded facility, I knew we couldn’t stay. Two weeks later we were on a plane back home.
We got lucky. I was able to be home with Colby during his infancy, but mostly because there was no place to take him if I did work outside the home. We lived in a town with one, perennially full, day care. Colby’s Nana had an opening at just the right time when he was very young, and again when he was school-aged. Without Nana, UMaine childcare and the Y, my career trajectory would have ended.
It so happens that people talk about this town, and other small, rural towns as dens of welfare iniquity. But mamas and papas, what the hell do you do when there is no one to take care of your babies? When faced with low-quality (read: dangerous) child care or none at all?
Please, everyone. Even if you don’t have children or yours are grown – talk about this. Ask your legislators about this. And hug whomever is taking care of your babies.
Lost and Found II
It took me 15 minutes to find my car in the Target parking lot last week.
Last night I couldn’t find my debit card. I figured it was in my car. I couldn’t find either of my credit cards, I figured I hid them and couldn’t remember the act of hiding them or where I may have placed them.
As I pulled into work this morning, my phone rang. After I found said phone in the depths of my school bag, I answered. It was my bank – telling me that I left my debit card in the ATM yesterday.
I lost an assignment and rubric after photocopying for a student who needed the weekend work early. It showed up on my desk after work.
I found hope in a swath of sunshine during my morning class; patience with a group of students who continually challenge me. On the way to my car, I looked down at a streak of orange on the ground. It was my missing grading pen.
A little bit of lost and found for your Thursday, friends.
p.s. If you find my credit cards, will you let me know?
I miss my couch.
It was a bacon-y kind of night at our house.
The afternoon sun hits our living room just right, and when I sit down on our dog-pawed and dusty leather couch, I can extend my legs into the spot warmed by sunshine. I did this today.
Eventually I had to get up and do what I do whenever I’m feeling the slightest bit overwhelmed: breakfast for supper.
My diet has been restricted for awhile now, so I know how to find uncured (no preservatives, artificial flavorings, etc.) bacon, but I stumbled onto the best.
Trader Joe’s ‘W’ brand uncured bacon is one of the best things I’ve eaten all year. I had time to kill (read: hash browns in the oven) so I got my cast iron frying pan nice and warm and let the bacon cook gently (it can be done) for a really long time. It probably took about 15-20 minutes per batch. The end result was thick, deeply browned slices of bacon that were to bacon what al dente is to pasta. Not the crispy-break-your-teeth hard of the regular bacon.
I gained approximately 80 lbs during my pregnancy with Colby by eating pounds and pounds and pounds of ribs, so this felt like an old, comfy food sweatshirt. Really. You should see how much I ate before he came down the stairs.
I’ve already wrapped up a little paper towel covered bundle to make tomato and bacon sandwiches out of tomorrow.
This was so much better than traditionally cured bacon that I’m already thinking of my next move.
Who knows a good butcher?
Good night, all. Sleep tight.
Dinner: Do’s and Don’ts
Early in our courtship, Matt and I found a strong common thread in the importance of family in our lives. Family dinner, for us, was non-negotiable. This happened early enough for me NOT to know how weird he thought my vegetarian chili was, but far enough in to know we were both serious about the idea. Fast forward four years and a million (good, bad and ugly) dinners, and you can find us at 6:30 on any school night; Matt outside planting bulbs, Colby still stinky from baseball practice and upstairs finishing his homework, and mama on the couch, drinking a beer and looking up the recipes. With luck, the table is set before 9 o’clock.
The concept of eating together was easy to embrace. The act of creating a family meal every.damn.night took some time (and many nights of cereal or PBJs) to figure out. Notice I didn’t say master. However, in the cyclone that is modern working life, I’ve been able to shake out some basic rules for family dinner. See Jenny Rosentrach’s 100 Rules of Dinner for the best advice ever (especially rules 24, 26, 49 and 50).
Sunday – Big, green salads all around. Leftovers for Colby and Matt – baked beans and beans and rice. Do give yourself one night a week to get rid of whatever is ready to go in your refrigerator. Try to find one big, unifying ingredient like a loaf of good bread, a soup or ‘whatever’s left in the crisper salads (see above). Let everyone else pick and choose from the contents of the refrigerator. You get a family meal, a clean refrigerator and a clean conscience (nothing’s wasted!).
Monday – Baseball practice. This macaroni and cheese served with three huge heads of broccoli (roasted in oo, s&p).
Don’t be afraid to eat later than everyone else in America. Keep a box of granola bars and a bag of apples handy for the in-between hours. Eating late is better than eating in shifts. Also, don’t feel guilty if this just.isn’t.going.to.work on any given night. Life demands flexibility. If we eat before 7 p.m. it is a miracle comparable to the virgin birth.
Tuesday – Baseball practice. Tacos with all the fixings Colby changes in the car after practice and goes straight to watch his school’s speech competition. It is now buffet style nacho night. Don’t be afraid to change plans.
Wednesday – Baseball game, Rx appointment. Parmesan breadsticks with Portland Pie Rosemary Garlic pizza dough and big salads. Do plan easy meals for busy days.
Thursday – Baseball practice. Faculty meeting. Grill all around: chicken thighs, corn and veg kabobs. Do choose something to do at the table when everyone is grumpy. I refused to let anyone watch television during dinner because I was SURE it would ruin the whole fucking point of family dinner. I mean, aren’t you supposed to bond? Talk about work and school and life? The short answer is: In your dreams, mama. I’m convinced that watching tv is less damaging than watching mom and dad give each other the stink eye from across the table or demanding an answer to “how was your day” from a surly teenager. Last summer we watched The Walking Dead on Netflix. Now we’re watching X-Files. If we feel like talking, we talk over it. If not, we bond over our shared disgust at Scully’s refusal to believe. Also, delegate. Matt grills, I bake.
Friday – Baseball practice. Buttered and toasted English Muffins and poached eggs with fruit. That chardonnay I’ve been eying all week. Don’t plan a difficult meal for a Friday night. You work, right? Don’t do this to yourself. End your week nice and easy and plan a beverage pairing.
Saturday – Drum lessons and travel soccer try-outs. Take out. Put take-out on the menu. This usually happens on game days for us, but I’m sick of take-out pizza and if I want anything else I would have to drive. So – take out day is Saturday this week.
This meant-for-Monday-night post is finally ready for you. Have a great week, enjoy the sunshine and take it easy.
xoxo
Heather
from midnight oil 