Over the summer a friend (no idea which one — sorry, friend!) suggested that I write a blog series profiling homeschooling families. With so many children being educated from home, she said, it might be helpful to hear from experienced homeschoolers.

At first I was hesitant. In the beginning when Covid hit and schools shut down, it bugged me to hear everyone refer to themselves as “homeschoolers.” For me, homeschooling was an intentional lifestyle choice rooted in freedom, not to be confused with being confined at home all day washing our hands nonstop. This parenting-in-a-pandemic thing was not normal for us, either.

The whole situation got my panties in such a twist that I even wrote an op-ed about it. Being forced to stay at home full time with one’s kids because of a pandemic is not homeschooling, I ranted: It’s parenting in the midst of a global crisis. And supervising school-mandated assignments is not homeschooling; it’s helping with homework.

Nobody snatched the piece up though (sniff), which was probably just as well because then, a few weeks later, I was like, “Hang on. If anyone’s homeschooling, it’s these pandemic homeschoolers because they are, quite literally, doing school at home.” If anyone was misnamed, I realized, it was us, the pre-pandemic homeschoolers, aka the dinosaurs. (What should we be called? I’ve been pondering this for ages, and have no idea. Help me out, people.)

And even while I was getting all worked up about our fringe lifestyle getting co-opted, at least in name, by the mainstream — Who would’ve thunk it! — I knew I wasn’t being entirely fair. The divide between schooling and homeschooling has never been clearcut. Schooled kids study at home with their parents’ help. They learn via all sorts of nonschool activities like clubs, community volunteering, jobs, and voracious reading, same as homeschooled kids. And homeschooled kids, in turn, often enroll in actual school courses.

There’s no one right way to homeschool.

So here’s the thing: As Covid has drug on, more and more parents, worried about contagion and frustrated with the switch to virtual learning (and its accompanying many hours of screen time), have bailed on school — some just for the year, others maybe for longer. Some parents are even beginning to question the value of school, an institution they’ve always taken for granted. They’re starting to ask hard questions about what they want their children’s learning to look like, and to make changes accordingly.

But should I host a blog series as my friend suggested? The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Homeschoolers are a wildly diverse bunch, and showcasing a few of them might help make the transition to homeschooling easier for all these newcomers. If nothing else, interviewing a bunch of interesting people would be a heck of a lot of fun for me.

And that, my friends, is how my new blog series — that I am oh-so creatively calling “The Homeschool Series” — was born.

If you’ve signed off of school-sanctioned learning temporarily (or indefinitely, or forever, whatever) OR if you’re considering doing so OR if you’re just curious about what life without school looks like, this series is for you. I’ve got a bunch of people queued up for the next few weeks and months, ready to tell the nitty-gritty of homeschooling.

Stay tuned!

This same time, years previous: study stills, the quotidian (11.12.18), enough, for now, George Washington Carver sweet potato soup with peanut butter and ginger, butternut squash galette with caramelized onions and goat cheese, refrigerator bran muffins, sparkle blondies.

Sweet ‘taties and beans.

Satisfaction.

They don’t like mushrooms; I made it anyway: with white wine, bacon, and leeks.

Breakfast for one.

Community organizing with a side of pie.

Obsessively checking the results.

Laundry-folding party.

Happily hurling the eggplants.

Sweetening up the beef.

She can hardly contain herself.

This same time, years previous: what we ate, of mice and men and other matters, unleashing the curls, the quotidian (11.7.16), the quotidian (11.9.15), for the time change, maple roasted squash, pumpkin cranberry cream cheese muffins.

Today, I joined the noonday silent vigil downtown. 

When we arrived, the kids were tromping around in the woods searching for treasure.

My kids had even dangled bags of hot dogs and buns from tree branches (that they then had to retrieve themselves). 

Then: supper at the fire pit! 

My husband and I left soon after — it was cold and I still haven’t gotten the hang of dressing for the weather — but my dad built up the fire and the kids stayed on. 

And now it’s November!

This same time, years previous: egg bagels, sour cream coffee cake, apple dumplings, chatty time, posing for candy, why I’m spacey, Greek yogurt.

About six weeks before my son’s 21st birthday, his housemates rang me up. We don’t know what you’re planning, but we have some ideas, they said. One wanted to make a family favorite — tuxedo cake — and the other had just ordered some fancy wine from South Africa and wanted to break out a bottle (oo-la-la!).

But we need a red meat to go with it, he said. Do you have any steak left over from your steers?

Sure thing, I said, happy to share the party prep. And I’ll make the sides, too. 

But then a week before the birthday, I ran down cellar to check the beef supply and — no steak!

I did have a brisket, though, and a few weeks before I’d seen a recipe in the NYTimes for a braised sweet-and-sour brisket that looked promising. Problem was, when I’d gone back to the link to get the recipe, I could no longer access it. I’d checked with a few friends who I thought might have a fancier subscription than mine, but no luck. Apparently, the recipe was not to be mine, so I let it go. 

But now with a birthday looming and no steak in the freezer, I circled back. Surely someone had to have access to the NYTimes recipes, right? But nope, not the news junky friends, not the hip bloggers, and not the local university library, humph.

Feeling mildly desperate, I suggested to my husband that we maybe ought to buy a fancy subscription?

No! he barked, alarmed. (I have been known to lay down good money for recipes.) So I started to think about other birthday supper options. Meatloaf, maybe? But somehow meatloaf just didn’t sound 21st birthday celebrationy enough. 

Then, as a last Hail Mary, I put out an SOS on our church’s women’s Facebook page. And wouldn’t you know, within minutes — maybe even seconds? — someone messaged me a screen shot of the recipe followed by a PDF. I quick printed it out before the recipe disappeared again (one can never trust the internets entirely) and did a little happy dance. We’d have birthday brisket after all!

Turns out, the recipe was totally worth the search. It was easy to make — braise for six hours in a sauce, chill overnight, and then prior to serving, trim, slice, and reheat — and the final product, oh my.

You should’ve heard the groans. Melt-in-your-mouth tender and so, so flavorful. It was swoony, stuff-your-belly-full good. Between the ten of us, we nearly ate the entire thing.

Happy birthday, kiddo. We love you!

Brisket in Sweet-and-Sour Sauce

Adapted from the New York Times.

If you have any left over, consider shredding the meat and tossing it, and the sauce, with pasta, a bit of pasta water, and loads of Parm for a quick, fancy-ish supper.

There’s no salt in the recipe, but — surprise, surprise — it didn’t really need any.

1 6 to 7-pound brisket

1 medium onion, peeled and rough-chopped

generous 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped

6 large cloves garlic, peeled

1 cup ketchup

½ cup red wine

¼ cup cider vinegar

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup honey

¼ cup dijon mustard

1 tablespoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1½ cups Coke

½ cup olive oil

Let the meat stand at room temp for 30 minutes before baking. 

Put everything but the Coke, olive oil, and meat in a blender and blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and whisk in the Coke and oil. 

Place the meat, fat side up, in a heavy baking pan. Pour the sauce over the meat, cover the pan tightly with foil, and bake at 325 degrees for 3 hours. Turn the brisket over, cover tightly with foil, and bake for another 2-3 hours. Cool at room temp and then store in the fridge overnight.

An hour before serving, transfer the brisket to a cutting board. Trim off the fat and slice the meat against the grain (as best you can — the grains crisscross, making it hard to figure out what “against the grain” is, but don’t obsess. It’ll be fine). Transfer the sliced brisket to a clean baking dish.

Remove the layer of chilled fat atop the sauce and discard (the fat, not the sauce!). Put the sauce in a kettle and heat. If it’s thin (mine wasn’t), reduce it a little. Pour the sauce over the meat, cover the pan with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until heated through and bubbly. 

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (10.29.19), nourishment, the young adult child, growing it out, reading and ice cream evenings, apple farro salad, random, the details, sweet potato pie.

For weeks, we’d planned to go to the polls together as a family. Both the older kids would be first-time voters in a presidential election and I wanted to make a little party of it. The way I wanted it to happen was: we’d go get our flu shots, vote, and then get ice cream. 

But then my older son told me he’d already gotten his flu shot and my husband said he didn’t want to leave work early, and then the pharmacy said they couldn’t vaccinate anyone under 18, so. No flu shot party. (Though my older daughter and I did end up going ourselves.) And then, to top it all off, the day we were supposed to vote, a construction crew accidentally cut through a fiber optic cable which temporarily shut down voting for the entire state of Virginia. So there went that. 

I grumped for a minute, and then, a couple days later, we went for Plan B: we’d all meet at the polling station. My husband and I came straight from work, my older son came from his hospital clinicals (he got to see a c-section!!), and the three younger kids drove in from home. 

I’d never done early in-person voting before and had no idea what to expect. Turns out, it’s dreamy. People greeted us curbside. A person stationed right inside the doors gave us sample ballots to study. We stepped into the main area and practically glided through the steps: ID check, collect the ballot, vote, done. Mission accomplished.

I forced the family to pause for a we-just-voted family photo — they weren’t happy about it — and then we hopped over to Kline’s for ice cream. 

So I got my little party after all!

***

This week I had my first day of training to be a poll worker. The woman had told me to come in at 7:30 in the morning and to pack a lunch. I wouldn’t be able to leave until five, she said.

I’d thought training would involve a presentation of some sort, and maybe some role playing and a test, but an all-day training and we couldn’t leave? What kind of training was this? I wondered.

The morning of, the woman in charge introduced us newbies to the rest of the gathered group. Everyone signed a form so we could get paid, and we took the pledge. And then the woman assigned each of us to different stations — I was to be on the computers — gave a few instructions, and announced that we’d be opening in a few minutes.

Hang on a sec, I thought. We’re working?

Worried I’d gotten my wires crossed, I sidled up to the lady in charge. “Um, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. See, I’m here for the training and—” 

“This is the training,” she interrupted cheerfully. “This is how you’ll learn.” Which actually made perfect sense, I thought.

At the computers, I dove right in. I learned how to:

*deal with address mess-ups (one voter had a current address different from registered address different from license address, whew!)

*how to help a person switch from absentee voting to in-person voting (the voter has to turn to the mail-in ballot over to the election chief and then the chief does a computer override) 

*what to do when a registered voter has no ID on them (have them fill out a form stating that they are who they are)

*what to do when a person needs assistance (the person assisting — either someone who brought them in or a poll worker — fills out a form) 

We rotated positions every two hours. As ballot officer, I got to sit at a desk and hand out ballots (there are ten different ballots for the county), give voting instructions, and hand out “I voted” stickers and pens. 

At the polling booth station, I seated people and instructed them how to feed their ballots into the machine — but never touched or looked at their ballots! — and sanitized after each person went through.

For curbside voting, I sat outside and when cars pulled up, ran in and out, ferrying IDs and ballots in special folders so their votes stayed private.

Lunch break: they say we probably won’t get a chance to eat on Election Day.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the work — office-y work isn’t really my thing — but I did find the steady trickle of people to be fascinating:

*the young mother pushing two sets of young twins in a plastic-covered wagon (“our COVID wagon!” she said)

*the voter who quietly asked for assistance because he could neither read nor write

*the person who didn’t speak any English and needed an interpreter

*the person who gave me a bad ID just to see what I’d do (flag the person, I learned)

*the in-a-rush people

*the skeptics (Do I get to put the ballot in the machine myself? Will my vote really be counted? How do I know this is for real?)

*the first-time voters

*the elders

*the young couples

*the business folk 

It was inspiring, really — all these people taking time out of their day to add their voice. A little over four hundred people voted that day, and I heard that as of the beginning of that week, about twenty percent of all registered voters in the county have voted. 

Then yesterday I went with Leryann for her first time voting in a presidential.

Thrills!

Listen, people. Please, if you have the option of early voting in your area, do it!!! Election day is going to be crazy. For example, every single precinct in our area will have the option of curbside voting which is wonderful but it does complicate things. (After running back and forth with folders and ballots, this I know.) 

But whatever you do, however you do it, just do it. Please. GO VOTE.

And if you won’t listen to me, maybe you’ll listen to Inigo Montoya?

Backstory…

The other morning when I first discovered that clip, I watched it several times in a row — laughing all the while — before heading out on my run. As I jogged along, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Something about the couple, the way they related to each other, their zest for life, their ordinary fabulous humanness, something, struck me as exhilaratingly inspiring.

Also, the guy seemed familiar. Thoughts of Princess Bride and Inigo floated through my mind, but no, I told myself, it couldn’t be.

Then back home I looked it up and whaddaya know, the guy was Inigo Montoya!

Which made me ridiculously happy.

The end.

This same time, years previous: the soiree of 2019, the quotidian (10.22.18), another farm, another job, back in business, winter squash soup with corn relish, field work, the adjustment, breaking news, a silly supper.

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary;
everyday; ordinary; commonplace

For my birthday, I made my own cake: London Fog.
photo credit: my younger daughter

Breakfast of champions: a stale croissant, sliced, griddled,
and stuffed with ham and sharp cheddar.

Sometimes I text my family photos of my working meals just to be mean.

A little of both.

I’m having trouble keeping up.

Open-air study.

Fall days.

The kid wanted a bird-feeder so he put one up.

For my husband’s special day.

The cake (made by my younger daughter) was delicious.
photo credit: my older son

This same time, years previous: English muffins, the relief sale doughnuts of 2017, the quotidian (10.10.16), salted caramel ice cream, home, party on, old-fashioned brown sugar cookies.

A few weeks back, the diner had a brunch special I’d never heard of before. Khachapuri, they said, was a Georgian cheese bread. 

Georgia like the state? I said. 

No, like they country, they said. 

Oh, I said.

And then I had to go look it up, of course, because cheese bread. Need I say more?

I never got a chance to sample any of the diner’s khachapuri (though I did help make a batch of the dough, I think), but back at home, I read a bunch of recipes and cobbled together my own version. I’ve made it twice now, once with a sourdough pizza dough and once with a regular yeasted dough (the regular yeasted dough was softer and paired better with the cheesy filling). 

Striking the perfect balance between playful and easy, novel and delicious, it’s a fun meal to make. Like so: roll out a simple pizza dough and then bury it with a mix of cheeses.

Roll up two of the sides — with lots of cheese tucked inside, oo-la-lah — and pinch-twist the ends together to create a boat, of sorts.

Bake the boats, and then, just before they’re done, crack an egg into the center of each one.

Bake for a few more minutes and — voila, Khachapuri! 

To serve, smack the pans down in the center of the table and watch the masses tear into it like wild dogs.

Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread)

Adapted from a variety of recipes (but mostly this one), and with inspiration from Magpie.

The recipe called for onion salt in the cheese filling, or dried dill; I didn’t use either.

Also, the second time around, I experimented with beating an egg into the cheese mixture to make it more creamy, and adding in a little sauteed spinach; it was fine but I think I prefer the straight cheese version. (I can’t help thinking that browned sausage would be a good addition, though then it wouldn’t be authentic Khachapuri, I suppose…)

I didn’t have chives, so I used green onions — stick with chives.

The recipe calls for one pound of your favorite pizza dough. I used a recipe from Food Network that makes two pounds (recipe included). ‘Twas excellent. 

for the dough:

1 tablespoon sugar

1⅓ cups warm water

2½ teaspoons yeast

3 tablespoons olive oil

3¾ cups all-purpose flour

1½ teaspoons salt

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, warm water, and yeast. Set aside for five minutes to let the yeast bubble and foam. 

In a larger bowl, stir together the flour and salt. Add the yeast mixture and olive oil. Stir to combine, knead briefly, and then return to the bowl and cover. Let rest until doubled. 

for the filling:

1 cup feta cheese

1 cup ricotta cheese

2½ cups mozzarella (I used a mix of grated and fresh)

5 eggs, divided

4 tablespoons butter

everything but the bagel seasoning

minced chives

red pepper flakes

black pepper

to shape and bake:

Mix together the cheeses.

Divide the dough into four balls. Roll each ball into a 9-inch circle, more or less. Spread ¼ of the cheese on each of the dough rounds, going almost all the way to the edges. Roll up two of the sides, keeping the cheese in the dough, as though rolling sweet rolls. Pinch-twist the ends together. The dough should look like giant eyes, or boats. Add more cheese to the center of the boat, if you want. 

Transfer the khachapuri to two parchment-lined baking sheets. Brush the edges of the dough with a beaten egg and then sprinkle with everything season. 

Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and, using the back of a spoon, make a little crater in the cheese in each of the khachapuri. Crack in an egg, one egg per khachapuri. Tuck bits of butter into the cheese — about 1 tablespoon per khachapuri. Return to the oven and bake another 5-8 minutes, or until the egg is mostly set but still runny in the middle. 

Sprinkle with chopped chives, red pepper flakes, and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Eat while still hot, tearing off bits of the crust and using it to dip up the melted cheese and egg. 

This same time, years previous: the relief sale doughnuts of 2019, the relief sale doughnuts of 2018, the quotidian (10.10.17), pasta with chicken, broccoli, and oven-roasted tomatoes, o happy!, catching our breath, it’s for real, clouds, green tomato curry.