• For hot chocolate and donuts

    September 12, 2009

    Last night we had an impromptu back-to-school night. This is not like me. I’m not usually very impromptu, and we don’t celebrate back-to-school in our family because of the obvious—we don’t go to school. Besides, I don’t like to think of our studies as having a beginning or an end—it feels too un-holistic for my liking. (And yes, I realize that my strident idealism borders on obnoxiousness, but I normally don’t talk about it, except for here. My blog is my airing grounds for all irritating obsessions. Do forgive me. In real life I do a fairly decent job of holding my tongue. I think.) And furthermore, we have already started some of our studies—the impression of a cut-and-dried beginning was just a fabrication for the sake of simplicity.


    Anyway! So at dinner I told Mr. Handsome that I was going to take the two older kids into town to go to the library after supper and he shocked me by responding, “Can I come, too?” I did a quick mental calculation: I would have to help with the supper clean-up, get four kids spiffed up and out the door instead of two, my little hubby chore wish list (clean out the back hall, finish unpacking the clothes that are strewn about our bedroom floor, put away some of the canning equipment that is littering the downstairs bedroom) would remain untouched, and I would have the added stress of The Baby Nickel in the library. I smiled across the table at Mr. Handsome and said, “Of course!” (And then I laid down strict guidelines and expectations for how we would divide and conquer.) And we were off.

    At the library we loaded my giant LL Bean tote bag, and then when that was full, our arms, with books, videos, books on tape, and magazines. On the way back to the parking garage, I ordered the kids to walk in single-file, tallest to shortest (and then with me bringing up the rear), “like baby ducks.” They all started quacking, and Mr. Handsome, who was in the lead, started flapping his arms and waggling his head. Just for the record, a family of human ducks can make a respectable amount of noise in a large, echo-y parking garage.

    On our way out of town, we stopped at a gas station and I went inside to pick up a dozen donuts. When I came back out, the large box in my hand, the kids exploded with such rollicking excitement that the car wiggled from side to side.


    Back home they readied themselves for bed while I made a pot of hot chocolate (Mr. Handsome spiked the adult mugs with Baileys), and then I cut an assortment of donuts into quarters and divvied them out among four little plates. The kids ate and slurped until I told them they couldn’t have any more, and then they brushed teeth and piled onto the sofas with books. We all read together for a bit before hauling ourselves upstairs and tucking each other into bed.

    And thus begins a new school year.

    Hot Chocolate

    2 tablespoons cocoa powder
    2 slightly rounded tablespoons sugar
    a little bit of water
    2 cups milk
    a pinch of salt
    1/4 teaspoon vanilla

    In a small saucepan, whisk together the cocoa and sugar. Add a little bit of water till you have a thick sauce.

    Heat the chocolate sauce, stirring steadily, until it boils. (Boiling the mixture ensures that the final product will be creamy smooth, not grainy.) Slowly add the milk, whisking all the while. When the hot chocolate is hot enough for you (don’t boil it), remove the pan from the heat and add the salt and vanilla. Stir one more time before pouring the chocolate into mugs.

    Serves two.

    About One Year Ago: Family Photo Shoot. The picture of us up there in the right hand corner of the blog is one year old. I need to get a new picture up there…sometime.

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  • On being green, and other ho-hum matters

    September 10, 2009

    It’s 6:30 in the morning and it’s dark outside. I’m a little bit shocked and a little bit excited at what this means: summer is over and winter is coming. I don’t feel like we even had a real summer. I only counted two hot spells, a few brief days when it was hot enough for me to wish for cooler weather, but the rest of the time was mostly sweat-free.

    After August’s canning crescendo, I’m done with the garden. I’m ignoring the red raspberries, the hugely overgrown basil bushes, the few good tomatoes that are co-existing with the blighted ones. While we were in NY, the neighbor’s horses got into our property and into the barn and pooped on the potatoes that were curing on the ground and I don’t even care. That’s how I feel about the garden in September.

    (I did plant some fall broccoli and lettuce, I will check on the butternuts, we harvested the dried beans, and I may turn the dried heirloom corn into cornmeal, but I’m not making any promises.)

    I’m still not back into the swing of things even though we’re four days back in the land of scheduled bedtimes, chores, simple, mostly-vegetarian fare, and no multitudes of same-age cousins. I’m doing a round of sourdough baking, but aside from that, I’m not cooking … yet; this cool weather is giving me visions of chilis and donuts and squash pies, so I expect I’ll step into the culinary ring any day now.

    Yesterday I sat down and went through the kids’ school books, trying to pull together some semblance of A Plan for the upcoming academic year. I already informed Yo-Yo (last year, last week, and again yesterday) that this year, his fourth grade year, is going to be a big year for him. Since he has mastered the art of reading, we are going to delve into some more extensive work such as writing and arithmetic. Miss Becca Boo is begging to catch up to Yo-Yo in math (she spent a good deal of time in the swivel chair yesterday, studying a stack of addition cards and using the face clock to keep her nines and sixes straight and to help with the counting, all of her own volition) and wants to learn to read. Sweetsie can not wait to read, so I have to deal with her, too. My teaching workload is growing.

    I used to say that homeschooling wasn’t any big deal (there’s that infamous line of mine), that it didn’t take much time or effort and yadda-ya-ya, but that was then and this is now and now I know differently. It may still be simple and enjoyable (on the good days), but it sure takes a lot of attention on my part. Which, like I said, can be fun, but it’s definitely not mindless.

    Last night I spent an hour ordering some workbooks on line (I didn’t order that much stuff, it just takes a long time for my computer to load pages), and it’s (mostly) all because of my sister-in-law Sarah. One NY afternoon, Sarah hoisted a giant canvas tote bag in my general direction and said, “Here. If you get bored, you can look through our homeschool stuff.” So I did—both the bored and the looking parts—and I found some gems of schoolbooks that I’m now ordering (once I get Sarah to email me the titles since I was too lazy to copy them down at that moment). Sarah has a knack for inspiring me.

    She also is the reason that I am becoming green.

    With envy.

    Over a camera.

    I’ve always admired Sarah’s photography skills and that casual professional look she sports so effortlessly, but then I sat down with her one afternoon to scroll through the pictures she had taken thus far, and I was totally blown away. The pictures were crystal clear, even the long-distance shots—beyond anything I could ever dream of doing with my dear little camera. And then on Sunday afternoon when we were all lounging about in the yard, she casually handed me her camera and said magnanimously, “You can play around with it if you want.” I snapped a few shots of the boys climbing on the old tractor and promptly got a ginormous case of the green gimmies. In fact, the camera lust was so completely unnerving that I only snapped a few glorious pictures before setting the sexy black box down in the grass between us. If I couldn’t have it, I couldn’t bear to handle it. Abstinence was clearly the only option.

    I don’t usually feel this way about things. I think some things are cool, I like other things, and some I even jot down on a list to buy someday, but this flat-out carnal desire for a material object is rare for me. Is this how people feel about cars or new shoes or designer jeans? If so, my capacity for compassion has just been expanded.

    Love,
    Pollyanna

    PS. Don’t worry about me—I’ll get over my case of the green gimmies in no time at all. Or else I’ll convince Mr. Handsome to buy a certain something for my birthday—if I tell him that he is then released from any gift-giving duties for the next couple years, he just might do it…

    About One Year Ago: Indian Chicken and Rice, your choice of brown or white.

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  • The big night

    September 7, 2009

    The wedding, the reason we all traveled to New York in the first place, was a beautiful affair.


    Brian and Kara went out of their way to make their guests comfortable. There was the cocktail hour, live music, a fabulous DJ, a bounce house, potted orchids for the centerpieces (I got to bring one home!), movies for the kids, a cotton candy machine, and dancing, dancing, and more dancing.

    While the whole event was a delightful experience, the highlight of the night (for me) was Miss Becca Boo. We have never gone to a wedding of this magnitude (ie, multiple forks, wine glasses, loud music and dancing, and servers snaking through the crowd bearing platters of carrot risotto balls and skewered lumps of mozzarella, tomato and onion), and to my surprise, she was in her element.

    Even before we left the house, she was starting to act the part, pretending to demurely smoke a lollipop while she waited for the rest of us to finish dressing.


    At the cocktail hour, she was thrilled with the Shirley Temples.


    At the dinner, she sampled my wine and champagne (and then disdainfully screwed up her nose, thankfully), sighed happily over the salad of greens, blue cheese and walnuts, and snuggled up close to Uncle Brian when he visited our table.


    When it came time to dance, she hit the floor and danced for two hours. She (and her cousins and everyone else) spun and boogied and whirled, pure joy lighting her face. Eventually she noticed that people were getting more drinks over at the bar, and after asking me for permission, she went over all by her lonesome, her little head barely reaching the top of the bar, and ordered herself another Shirley Temple. (I did limit her to only one cone of cotton candy, though.) At dessert time, she approached the chef in search of a cup of decaf coffee, and the chef went out of her way to fix Miss Becca Boo up with cream and two packets of sugar.


    As Mr. Handsome and I watched her, we shook our heads in amazed disbelief. This flamboyant and poised child came from us? What an absolute hoot.

    As for the rest of the children: Yo-Yo and Sweetsie were more reserved, eschewing the dance floor and instead bouncing in the jump house and watching movies (Yo-Yo) and hanging out with us (Sweetsie). But the Baby Nickel had more fun than I thought he would. He gorged on goldfish, his gourmet food of choice,


    simultaneously guzzled two Shirley Temples,


    was my favorite dance partner (though he also sought out other partners when he got bored with me—his Aunt Rachel, baby cousin Elliot, and the whirling girl cousins), and finally—finally!—collapsed in a heap.

    Other posts on Miss Becca Boo: The Smashed Finger and On Being A Late Reader.

    About One Year Ago: Pink Jelly Shoes, Turtle Plants, and Fairy Rings.

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