For the Love of Vegetables

It makes me so sad that so many of my childhood memories revolve around conflict and troubles. I don't think that was the intention or goal, but unfortunately, it is what it is. One of these memories involved spaghetti.

My mother made spaghetti, but being the wonderful mother she was, she wanted us to eat our vegetables. How did she add vegetables to spaghetti? She cut it up into cubes and added it into the sauce. If my memory hasn't failed me, the vegetable she attempted to add was cucumber. Now you might be thinking, cucumber doesn't really belong in spaghetti. And I'm right there with you. It doesn't. And I didn't want to eat it. And I wasn't an anti-vegetable child. I just didn't want cucumber in my spaghetti. So I picked it out, didn't eat it, and a really big conflict ensued in our house. 

That's another story. And this was over 20 years ago. 

***

I made spaghetti this week. We hadn't had spaghetti in a while and it was an easy dinner, so I made some. We also had an abundance of squash and zucchini at our house which needed to be used before it went bad. I'd already been roasting it in the oven and even experimented with baking zucchini chips. So what did I do?

Yup, I added that zucchini and squash into my spaghetti. But unlike my mother, I did it with tact and caution. 

1. Blend it in.

My mother failed to blend it in. I know she wasn't trying to hide it, but if you're more than simply cooking food to eat, you would understand that food texture and shape has to be similar enough to blend or different enough to provide contrast. Adding cucumber to spaghetti? Definitely needs to be similar enough to blend in. You DON'T want your cucumber providing contrast in spaghetti. And my mother failed to do that. 

I, on the other hand, understood. So I julienned my zucchini and squash. And it blended into my spaghetti beautifully. My three-year-old and one-year-old both ate it with no complaints. 

2. Quantity Matters.

When adding a "foreigner" to a normal recipe, you can't overpower the usuals. I made sure not to add too much to keep it in the background of the dish. To go with my one pound of sausage and one pound of pasta, I added half a zucchini and half a squash. It turned out to be the perfect amount. I was actually thinking to myself as I was cooking that I may have been able to get away with a little more if I wanted to. But it was a really nice amount.

As much as I love my mother and as much as she took care of us, cooking was not her forte. I learned very little about cooking and food preparation from her. I watched cooking shows instead and put my tv time to good use. Jacques Pepin has always been my favorite. She always said, if I was going to watch so many cooking shows, I might as well learn something from it and cook. 

Yes, Mother. 

Oregano

I don't grow stuff outside. If you read one of my previous posts, you would have found links to all my failed growing projects. I'm lucky if I can grow grass. 

I was poking around outside one day, probably watering some grass, and I smelled something. It was familiar and fragrant. I found the plant producing this scent and then it clicked in my head because I'd just cooked with it recently. It was oregano.

Now I don't have a garden and I didn't plant any edibles intentionally. But this was unmistakably oregano. It's been there since we bought the house and has continued to grow year after year. I've never picked it or used it. Until now.

This year, I looked up when the best time to harvest oregano was and the best drying processes. I waited, and would occasionally sniff around the plant to see how strong the aroma was. I kept waiting. May passed. And then June arrived. Most websites I read told me to wait until the flowers start forming for the strongest flavor. Another website told me early June. So I watched and waited. 

Just before the middle of June, I saw some flower buds starting to form. A friend had just happened to visit me as well so the two of us cut a bunch of stems off and then tied them up to dry.

I cut a lot of oregano. This may turn into a yearly task.
Next year, I can ask my four-year-old to help me.

We hung them around my kitchen in bundles with twine. I had just elevated my kitchen from a normal updated kitchen to a rustic, Magnolia-style kitchen.

How can herbs tied with twine hung upside-down look so elegant? I have no idea.
We ended up moving these later.

Finding places to hang them to dry for 4-6 weeks was tricky. With young children, I couldn't hang them too low or else my one-year-old would grab at them. We opted to hang them from some upper cabinet handles on a built-in that doesn't get used often. 

After about two weeks, I realized some of the oregano leaves were starting to fall by themselves or if the bunches were disturbed  because of this, I made the decision to pull them all off the stems and continue to let them dry in a bowl  this probably isn’t the traditional fashion for drying oregano, but considering I wanted to save my oregano from the floor and ultimately the trash, this was the concession.

My big bowl of oregano leaves waiting to be ground down or crushed.

After about five weeks of drying, I ground them down and packed them into two old spice jars and a mason jar. So much oregano! I used them in cooking for the first time today. I'll be blogging about today's meal in a later post so stay tuned for that one. 

A Piano and a Teddy Bear

Three years ago today, we were in the car. I was sitting in the backseat with my daughter, who at the time, was three months old. My husband was driving. We were going to Austin for a wedding. During one of my daughter's naps, I was just staring at her calm, sleeping face, thinking. And I thought of my mother's birthday, and I thought of how I she'd never get to meet my daughter or any of my future babies. And then I started crying.

My husband heard me crying from the driver's seat and he reached his hand back. I reached up and held it for a while. He didn't know why I was crying, and he didn't really need to. 

When I raise my children now and deal with their various problems and quirks, I think back to my own mother and the problems and quirks she put up with when I was a child. She used to bring me special toys in the car with her to pick me up from school because I would request something to play with during the car ride home. She would hear me whimpering at night and come to me because I was afraid of the dark and too scared to get out of bed to go get her myself. She took care of me when I was sick.

I never was able to truly understand these things until I became a mother myself because I was so young when I lost her. But I think these actions and services brought her joy as a mother. Because I know they bring me joy. When my daughter asks me to make a specific meal for her and then eats it. When she tells me her stories of the day at night before bed and recount what we did together. When she asks me to play with her and read her specific books. And some of the requests she asks for can get ridiculous and nonsensical. But I do it because they bring me joy. 

When my mother died, we were deciding what to put on her gravestone. We wanted to pick four images, one for each corner. The four images we chose were a piano, a Bible, praying hands, and a teddy bear.

The funeral director looked at us, the children, when we chose these images: Are these images to represent your mother or you? Normally the teddy bear goes on child gravestones.

I remember hearing her words and not really processing them. I don't remember anyone trying to justify the choices. To be honest, why should she have cared? 

Later when we shared with the rest of the family what we had chosen, my grandmother said something very poignant.

You guys did such a great job choosing images to represent your mother. the Bible and praying hands represented her faith. She loved listening and watching you play piano. And she loved watching you play with your stuffed animals. They brought her joy.

The piano and teddy bear did not represent her as a person, but they symbolized her role as a mother and the effect we had on her with our lives as well as our importance to her. I have no regrets about what is on her gravestone. Not once have I ever visited and thought to myself, it's strange to see a piano and a teddy bear.

Happy Birthday, Mommy.

Top Secret Writing

Today is Lou Gehrig's birthday. It's a random fact I came across when I was doing some fact-checking for this blog. I'm not a baseball fan and I've never been, but I know the generalities of his fame and I know he had a disease. Most people know it as "Lou Gehrig's disease", but it's actually called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. So why is he actually so poignant in my memories? 

***

We were taking a test in 8th grade. My teacher specifically said, "After the test you can do whatever you want," because all they really want you to do is stay quiet and not disturb anyone else. Well, they also don't want you to cheat.

I took my test, didn't talk, didn't cheat off anyone, and turned it in. Then, following my teacher's directions, I pulled out my planner and started writing. It's what I did in 8th grade. I'd write little journal entries or random stream of consciousness in the empty dates we didn't use in our planners - fall break, Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas vacation, etc. These were my secret diary entries. Back then, my planner had some teenage top secret writing. Why did I do this? Because it was something I had with me at all times. It ended up being the most convenient place to jot down random thoughts.

My teacher saw me writing in my planner, got up from his desk, and came over to the side of my desk. Without framing anything, he said to me, "Show me what you're writing." 

Now I'm sitting there, and knowing what I was writing, I said, "No." I had my hand gently covering my planner and looked at him. He may have asked me again, but I don't remember. What I do remember is him grabbing my planner from beneath my hand and reading it. 

My hand smeared the pencil I'd just freshly written.

He read it, gave it back to me, and said, "Oh. It's just a journal entry of some sort." He walked back to his desk, sat down, and the testing resumed. (I doubt any cheating had actually happened during that ordeal, but if it did, it was the most opportune time for it to happen because he clearly wasn't watching the rest of the class.)

I remember what that journal entry was about, not in crystal clear details with vivid descriptions, but I remember why I wanted to write it down. I'd had a dream the night before. In that dream, I had Lou Gehrig's disease, and I was in a wheelchair. 

And that's it.

This event forever changed my view of this teacher. What once was an enjoyable class where I made decent grades turned into dread at having picked a seat right in front of the teacher's desk. (We NEVER changed seats that year BTW.)

Here's what should have happened.

The teacher should have come over and asked to read what I was writing. I would have responded, "No." He should have told me to take my planner and go with him to the corner of the classroom where he could still keep an eye on the rest of the class. Then, he should have asked me privately, "Are you writing down answers from the test?" I would have responded, "No." And he may have followed up with requesting to see my planner to make sure I was being honest. Then, I would have begrudgingly shown him my planner in order to prove my honesty despite not wanting anyone reading my private thoughts. He would have seen what it was about, realized I was not cheating, and we both would have returned to our desks with no less dignity than we started. 

But, alas, that is not how it played out.

***

I no longer have my school planners anymore. I got rid of them a while back during a cleaning purge. I didn't catalogue or save any of these journal entries hidden throughout the pages, but that's okay. What's important will be remembered in its own way.

How do you want to be remembered? 

We're Painting Again: Part 3

We finished painting my studio shelves! It's been about a month now. Since we finished, I had to wrap up another school year of teaching, finish making my student recital video, we took our first road trip in over a year and a half (this time with TWO children), and then I had to get ready for my summer teaching schedule.

I'm so happy with the way it turned out. Is it perfect? Nope. It was definitely one of my faster projects and I rushed through some parts. Also, with all the rain we've been having, paint dries pretty slowly so painting the cabinet doors and shelves was a little difficult to maximize brushes and paint. I actually put on two coats of primer and two coats of paint in 5.5 hours. 😳 

Don't ask me to do it again though, I'm not sure I could unless it were 100 degrees outside

So how does this compare cost wise to hiring out? Let's take a look.

I'm assuming that a professional painter would have quoted me anywhere from $750-$1000+ in addition to the cost of paint to complete this. And it would have taken about 3 days. I'd mentioned in part 1 I would not have allowed them to use a sprayer to paint this despite it being the quickest and easiest way to do so because I have a semi-concert grand piano in the same room. So for simplicity and estimation, I'm going to use $1,000 as the cost to hire out and get this job done.

Here's a complete list of materials and their complete cost. Different retailers price differently so these are the approximate actual prices we paid from various retailers:

Zinser Primer 1 gallon: $24

Benjamin Moore Paint 1 gallon: $60

24 Paint Rollers: $10

Zibra Paint Brush: $10

Painting Pyramids: $12

TSP Cleaner: $6

1 roll of Painter's Tape: $3

Sanding Materials*: $5

Wood Putty: $5

Paint Pourer: $1

Total: $136 + tax : $150 to round up.

*we already had an orbital sander and sanding sheets to use which saved us so much time with this project. The other option is to buy sanding blocks which is what accounts for the $5.

Let's take a look at the actual cost of materials for this specific project though. 

Zinser Primer 1 gallon: $24 --> actual used was 1/4 gallon: $6

Benjamin Moore Paint 1 gallon: $60 --> actual used was 1/5 gallon: $12

24 Paint Rollers: $10 --> actual used was 3 rollers: $1.25

Zibra Paintbrush: $10 --> this was a new cost. so actual is still $10. but this brush is amazing and worth all the money.

Painting Pyramids: $12 --> we bought this when we first started painting so they've been used a multitude of times. we'll call it $1

TSP Cleaner: $6 --> actual used is almost negligible because you dilute the bottle and then spray to clean so we'll call it $1

1 roll of Painter's Tape: $3 --> actual used was probably 1/3 of a roll: $1

Sanding Materials*: $5 --> I clarified above what the $5 means so we will keep it for the actual: $5 

Wood Putty: $5 --> actual used 1/5: $1

Paint Pourer: $1 --> we've used this paint pourer so many times through various projects I think it has earned it's worth. : $0

Actual Total: $38

If you go one step further and actually look at how much of this was new money spent, that would only include the Zibra paintbrush and the 24 pack of paint rollers. So the true actual amount of new money spent on this project was $11.25.

The total number of hours we spent on doing this was approximately 10-15 hours of labor spread across 3 weeks. Considering this wasn't time being taken from anything else we would have done normally, I'd say it's almost negligible. We may have lost some hours of Netflix or browsing our phones, but I think we picked a much more productive way to spend our 15 hours of time. 

Now if you're attentive or extra observant or have experience painting, you might be wondering, there were no paint trays mentioned in the list of materials used. What in the world were you painting out of?

Well I'll tell you. We were painting out of to-go containers! 

Over the years we've amassed so many of these in ever so slightly different shapes that organizing them in our kitchen cabinets was getting to be more annoying than it was worth. So we poured our primer and paint into them to paint. Total cost? $0! (If you want to be super technical, there was a cost to pay for the food originally contained in them, but let's not do that.)

So there you have it, a complete break down of what we used and the total cost of this project. As I've already said, and if you can't already tell, I'm super happy with this project and the way it turned out. 

I need some more shelves. In due time.

We saved ourselves around $988.75! Worth it? Worth it. 🙂

Greener on the Sides

We've always had issues with growing grass in our yard at this house. We bought the house knowing it didn't have a working sprinkler system. Unfortunately, this gets in the way of growing grass, especially trying to grow grass in places which don't already have grass. Over the years, I've stood outside and watered the lawn by hand. We've also purchased a variety of lawn watering gadgets and tried them throughout the years. You know what the best way to water your yard is?

Rain.

Each spring, I love the rain and how much our grass grows because of it. It's been the sustaining factor in keeping our grass alive through the winter and year after year. Yes, I supplement here and there from July-September, but the rain we get in the spring is invaluable for our yard.

This year was the first year when I really thought to myself, this is too much rain. As someone without working sprinklers, the rain is the only time our entire yard gets a good soak. It's really gotten soaked this year. And we could really use some more sunshine to accompany all the rain.

Every year we clean out our gutters and pull out some of the richest compost made with no work on our part except to get it out of our gutter. It's terrible for the drainage, but makes some amazing compost. This year, I took that compost and I dumped it on the side of the house in a part of the lawn that was especially low. There was a tree cut down on the side of the yard before we moved in, and a few years after we moved in, we had the stump ground up. It left a bit of a hole that would sink year after year because of the loose soil and rain. 

This year, I filled it. And with all the rain that's been falling, the grass has been spreading and filling in over the hole all by itself. 

This is the current state of what the hole looks like. As you can see, it's lots of grass and a little hole of dirt in the middle. Every now and then I'll give it some extra water to keep the soil moist, but with all the rain we've been getting, Mother Nature has been doing her own thing. You want to know how big the soil patch started out when I first dumped the compost there?

Everything within the red circle used to be a patch of dirt. I planted no sod, no plugs, no fertilizer, did absolutely nothing except water it here and there along with the natural rain. This photo was taken on June 5, 2021. I'll have to do an update when the entire hole is filled by grass and no more soil is visible.

Sadly, this may be my first successful planting "experiment." I know I've posted about other ones, but sadly, those all ended in failures which is why I haven't updated. The astilbe? Gone. Gardenias? Gone. However, the succulent basket I wrote about in the gardenia post has thrived! 

I'm not the greatest with plants at all. Growing things (as are raising children) is a very hands-on process. I think right now the children have taken priority whether or not I like it. But as they get older, I'd like to spend more time outside growing things, even if it's just filling in the soil patches in my yard with real grass. 

The Other Woman

The summer after 8th grade, my dad took my brother and I on a road trip. We drove Northwest and visited Yellowstone National Park, Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and probably some other parks and landmarks I'm missing. My brother and I were your typical teenagers. We would sit in the car and listen to our music or play on the computer while my dad drove. 

At the end of this scenic road trip, we ended up in Kirkland, Washington. At the time, in my head, we were in the middle of nowhere. We'd never ventured this far northwest before, and I didn't know anyone who lived there. But my dad did. At the time, we'd hear him talking on the phone at night on the weekends for an extended period of time. We didn't know who he was on the phone with, but we were old enough and keen enough to be able to make some inferences.

I remember my dad pulling onto this street and telling us we'd arrived. We were parked in front of a house I didn't recognize in an area where houses looked different than what we were used to seeing in Texas. We grabbed our suitcases and walked up to the front door. A woman opened the door and let us in. She took us downstairs to the basement where we'd be staying. Of course, the only thing we cared about was if there was wifi and how to log on. And she did that, too. Great.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast together. All four of us sat at the table and ate breakfast. We didn't do this at home when it was just the three of us. Each of us ran on our own schedule. My dad went to work. We went to school. And on weekends when we were home, we were all in our own little world. 

All four of us sat at the table and ate breakfast for two hours. I can't remember what we ate for breakfast that day, and I know I finished eating probably after about 30 minutes. And that was stretching out my eating. For the rest of the time, she and my dad talked. We maybe replied to a question occasionally, but most of the time, they talked to each other, and we sat there and watched and listened. I can't remember how breakfast finally ended, but my brother and I felt very very awkward. 

One night, we all went to Red Lobster for dinner. She and my dad sat next to each other in the booth and my brother and I sat next to each other across from them. We ate dinner, and once again, most of the conversation was had by the two of them while my brother and I sat quietly, ate, and listened. The rest of the dinner is fuzzy, but I remember thinking to myself: We look like a normal family of four, a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter, eating dinner together.....but we're not.

After dinner, she took us to a park with a path along the shoreline. We walked for a bit, and she pointed out that this was the dry side of Washington. If we crossed the lake to the other side, that was Seattle, the wetter side. 

We left Washington and continued the rest of our road trip back home. We drove through Colorado and stopped at Arches National Park. We went to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. Both of these were great parks. I didn't near appreciate it as much then as I would now if I went back, but we also didn't explore either to their full extent.

After coming back home, my dad asked us at dinner one night what we thought of the woman in Washington. Neither of us said much. We didn't know what to say. Did we like her? What does it mean to like her? As a person? As the role she would fill? Did we even want that role filled? Time passed and the phone calls stopped. We never heard anything about her after that. We never went back to visit. To this day I can't remember what her name was. 

For the last 12 years, someone else has taken over that "spot." And throughout these years I've been learning more about myself, my grief, and the sore spots you shouldn't mess with ever. And sometimes, I remember all the way back to when we drove out on a random road trip to meet a random woman I didn't know. And however awkward it felt at the time, I now realize, that would have been fine. The awkwardness may have remained in a way, but everything would have worked together much better.  I didn't know it at the time, but I liked the other woman. I liked her poise, her personality, and who she was. I discussed this with a friend, and he phrased the exact revelation I came to in such an elegant way.

She was self-confident and mature, and she understood her potential role in your life. Yes. She did not pretend to be something she could not be.

I never wanted another mother much less a stepmother. I never wanted another grandmother for my children. I never wanted someone to waltz into my life and fill the hole. The hole is still there. It always will be. I wanted someone to be a companion to my dad and realize that she was nobody special to me unless I wanted her to be because those are separate roles. And I wanted her to realize even if I never wanted her to be anyone in my life, that was okay, and to let it be okay. 

I liked the other woman.