Hours of cooking, beautiful food, misc

I tell you, spending hours picking fruit will surely keep you accountable in terms of not letting it go to waste! It's a race against time when you have fresh produce ripening in real time, and when you go slightly overboard with poundage schlepped home, well, get your cooking hands ready!

I was too slow for about a sixth of my blackberries, but the rest are safely frozen, jammed, or pied, and today I finished the raspberries. Lots of straight-up raspberry jam and also some raspberry-Grand Marnier. I'll be honest, y'all, while Grand Marnier is a heavenly substance, the plain old raspberry jam just can't be beat. I'm glad I made a majority of that.

I'm about half-through the peaches -which are scrumptious by the way- and have so far brandied seven pints and made a gorgeous pie. I'll deal with the rest tomorrow.

Also, tomatoes. Y'all know how I feel about summer's star. It's true love. This evening I made this caramelized tomato tarte tatin with slow-roasted Romas, caramelized onions, and puff pastry. It's like summer thinking of sliding into fall via cast iron pan. 

Tonight was a tough'ish night of parenting, and I was glad to have two episodes of The Americans to settle into when finally the boys' bedtime came. It is such a good show- Matthew Rhys and Keri Russel have delicious chemistry, and Frank Langella...Oh how I adore him. What an actor. 

Tomorrow I'm taking the boys to see Cirque du Soleil. Have y'all seen one of their performances? I never have and am looking forward to it!

Fruit picking 2016, Wondy?

Yesterday marked my annual outing to Larriland Farm to pick my body weight in fruit. You might recall my original case for thorns and/or my overzealous death by fruit of previous years. Both memorable and delightful; yesterday was no different.

Isn't my Jack a handsome boy?

We brought along our dear neighbor, Jane, and picked peaches, blackberries, beets and raspberries with various degrees of abandon. Last night I froze twenty cups of blackberries and made one pie and four pints of jam (just two ingredients! blackberries and sugar!). Today, I taught Jane how to can and then put up several pints of raspberry jam (just three ingredients! raspberries, sugar, and lemon juice) myself. 

picked and quickly frozen blackberries- beautiful!

Tomorrow I plan to finish dealing with the berries and pray that the peaches don't ripen until Friday. 

Tonight, as soon as Tom walked in, I retreated to the bath. Where I found this.

Is that Wonder Woman? In a rugby hat? With a mean face? What the heck? #summerstillgoing

All the things: Olympics, summer, libraries, hilarity

Did y'all know that (apparently many years ago) the USPS officially decreed that they would no longer put a comma between city and state on address labels? I did not know this, and recently, when a friend and I were drafting invites for a bridal shower we're hosting, I said "Doesn't there need to be a comma between City and State?" and she said, "Honey, the USPS stopped doing that decades ago. Librarians know these things."

And I was and remain appalled because that's just not right-like visually, that's just NUTS. I mean, I adopted the damn Oxford comma, but NO COMMA between City and State? Ain't no way. And so T looked it up for me, and fortunately this nonsense is ONLY a USPS thing, not a worldwide grammar thing, and I am just so grateful I could weep.

I just wanted to share that.

Anyway, tomorrow marks Day 1 of no camp but seemingly infinite time before school resumes, and the boys are sleeping in another fort that uses all of our kitchen table chairs (6) plus two TV trays and 90% of the sheets in our home plus sleeping bags, light sabers, glass water glasses and more.

I would say that this arrangement doesn't bode well for a restful tomorrow, but then again, does it really matter?! We have little planned. At least they fell asleep before I did so that I could tuck a pillow under each of their heads and make sure they weren't suffocating in their sleeping bags. 

Summer is starting to feel long. We've been sweating for a lifetime, and I've set a new record of pizza for dinner in any given week: 4 times. The me of ten years ago is quivering with vexation and perceived failure. The me of today is holding up a gold trophy bestowed upon Self for including multiple fruits and veggies alongside each and every pie.

In my defense, the pizzas came from four different places, including two gold star joints. We are now totally certain about which pizza sucks and which pizza doesn't. A+ in pizza study.

The Olympics were, by and large, delightful, but I cheered the closing ceremony tonight because I simply cannot stay up through the 11pm - 12am hour for even a single additional night. I'm 40 people; that time has passed. 

I believe that other than Ryan D'bag Lochte and his misguided posse, our athletes comported themselves in lovely fashion. Really, the Olympics is such a grand coming together of talent and sportsmanship. I love the Games. Until next time!

Do y'all know that during the past two weeks, a dream of mine has come true? My darling husband agreed that we could turn our formal living room (never used for that purpose) into a library!! As the incredible construction has taken place, Jack and I have been nerding out to beat sixty. We ordered a one million pound Oxford dictionary and were literally chagrined when it was not delivered yesterday as promised.

UNTIL a kindly neighbor who had received said tome walked it over, and we cheered. 

Literally. Look at Jack's face!

"Jack, do you want to look up the first word?" I asked, hoping he'd say no.

"Oh yes, Mom. I will look up.....Indonesia." 

What the hell? Why? I mean, great but where did that come from?

Anyway, if you don't know, Indonesia is part of the Malay archipelago. And so marked our foray into the kazillion page book, a tiny, tidy J eternally ticked by Indonesia. We have all taken a pact to mark our initial, IN THE NEATEST HANDWRITING POSSIBLE, by each and every word we look up forevermore.

I'm so thrilled with and proud of this new room that we will all love but especially Jack and me. Oliver's primary response so far has been, "I don't love the knobs you chose. Why couldn't you have gotten neon green ones?"

OMG, I feel SO lucky. We weren't really supposed to put anything on the shelves until Tuesday, but for the love of patience, we waited five whole days and the paint has simply got to be hard enough by now. It's going to be so much fun to fill these.

I love these little family traditions. They're the glue, really, the threads we weave together over the years that make family durable over time, even when times are tough. Like possibly the coming weeks.

We have also resurrected Pi Guy and Roach and the games we play with them.

Pi Guy, in case you've forgotten, is a wire man clothed in a Pi jumper and trousers that Jack made in art a couple years ago during his preoccupation with Pi. Periodically, he'll put Pi Guy somewhere ridiculous, like suspended from my shower head or from a shirt in my closet, and I'll counter by seating Pi Guy on Jack's toilet or hanging precipitously from his headboard. 

This is an utterly delightful game.

In true Oliver fashion, he plays this game with an entirely too realistic rubber roach that my aunt Renee sent him. She knew exactly how much Oliver would adore this roach, and adore it he does. I awoke recently to find said roach sitting on top of the water glass on my nightstand. I put roach on Ol's bathroom faucet. He tossed it onto my rug. 

revolting and, mercifully, fake

Tonight I made the boys dinner and then T made us dinner, and then he and I watched two episodes of The Americans (we are slightly obsessed), and now we're going to bed, and all is well. 

I cannot tell y'all how much I love okra. And shrimp.