A few days after my older daughter moved moved back into our house (temporarily), my out-of-state brother’s three kids who are ages 4, 7, and 9 came to stay with us for a little over a week and just like that I went from having two fairly-independent children at home to six, three of which required full-time supervision, and was plunged back into the world of bedtime stories, snack-times, potty-training, communal bathing, and early-morning wake-ups. 

Except it wasn’t exactly like it was when my kids were little because, this time around, I had three older kids to shoulder (an enormous portion of) the load.

My younger daughter managed bathtime and hair brushing. My older daughter supervised Monopoly sessions (and mediated the fallout).

All of my kids took on the job of “chore coach,” teaching their cousins the ropes of dish washing, collecting trash, bringing in firewood, folding laundry and so on, and then shadowing the kids as they began to do the jobs themselves. 

not visible: the footstool my son is standing on

We made excursions to Costco and Magpie (to get mini vanilla braids and to see the kitchen where my younger daughter was working), and to the library to stock up on books.

78 books (the kids counted)

Nearly every day, the littles left for several hours to go play at their cousins’ or my parents’ house, or the cousins came here, and one day my older son and daughter-in-law took them on a special outing to the children’s museum and then out for pizza. 

And then almost as abruptly as it began, the whirlwind ground to a halt. My older daughter moved out on Saturday and the next day the three littles went back to their home — and I felt… I don’t know. Adrift? Relieved, definitely. Also, bereft. I was so glad to have my house back again, the burden of needy littles lifted, and yet —

And yet.

As my kids have grown and our family has moved from one stage to the next, the earlier stages fade. I’ve felt sad every now and then, sure, but since the changes were incremental — reasonable, wanted — I could handle them, often not even noticing what I was losing. But for that one week that my brother’s kids were here, I was back in the thick of it again (which I always kinda hated but also sorta really loved because I thrive on chaos and adore all the organization, bossing, crisis management, cooking, and hands-on, in-the-moment work that goes with running a full house). 

But this time my older kids were involved. We were all working together, rallying around these curious and cuddly children, and then the cousins left and we all went back to being our own people doing our own things, sometimes together but mostly independently as it should be and as I want it to be, but that bizarre mashup of two totally different life stages juxtaposed like that — young adult kids with the wee ones — reminded me of just how much I’ve lost and how grateful I am not to be doing that anymore and how much I miss it.

Especially feeding people. That part might be my favorite.

This same time, years previous: a week in cheese, the quotidian (1.24.22), four fun things, overnight baked oatmeal, a new routine, women’s march on Washington, blizzard of 2016, lazy stuffed cabbage rolls, hobo beans, rocks in my granola, and other tales, what you can do, multigrain bread.

The first time I met with my cheesemaking group and one of them mentioned affinage, I had to ask what it meant. Affinage, my cheesemaking friends explained, is the process of aging cheeses. Okay, I said, and then I spent the next year studiously avoiding the word because it’s French and I can’t pronounce French words to save my life, and because most of my cheeses were vac-packed: in their little plastic biomes, there was no mold, no rind, no excitement, so I didn’t feel like I was affinaging anything. 

But then I did that Full Moon Blue and, the barrier broken, I shot out of the starting gate like my hair was on fire. I bought big, see-through, round plastic food storage containers from Webstaurant (not cheap but TOTALLY worth it) and promptly filled them with wheels of cheese.

Currently, here’s what I’m affinaging (oh-la-la!):

Jarlsberg-Style: I wondered if vac-packing was curbing eye development, and if I might be brining for too long (too much salt inhibits eye development), so I decided to attempt a natural rind from start to finish. I’ve had trouble with the rind being too soft/wet, but I think it’s finally stabilizing. . . and the cheese is now at room temp and beginning to swell.

Double Gloucester: Thus far, this one is my favorite cheddar-style cheese so I decided to make it with a natural rind to see if that would add more nuance to the flavor. I’m mostly just brushing or dry rubbing the rind to keep the molds at bay. It’s looking pretty gnarly. 

Smackered: I created this cheese — smacked down with a board to give it curved sides (it didn’t really work) and then ale-rubbed with a pinch of b.linens. I think I did pretty much everything wrong. It has a rash of mildew spots, I didn’t wash it frequently enough, and the b.linens never really took off, but I used the cheese corer to sample it last week and it was lovely. Which brings up the next question: when is it done aging? I have no idea. (Probably when I need the aging box for a new cheese, ha!)

Unnamed, #121: Washed curd, a little salt added to the curds and whey, brined, and ale rubbed. The rind was smooth and pinkish until dusty tan-blue molds took over. It smells like cool gravel and kinda reminds me of southwestern colors and climate.

Raclette: I am beyond excited about this one. The rind is wildly sticky-stinky (the other day when I told my husband to smell it, he took a whiff and then dry-heaved) and the most gorgeous peachy-pink. I’m not at all sure I can wait the full three months before tasting it.

Gouda: I rubbed this one with a Belgian ale and it has a golden honey color and sweet, nutty-yeasty smell that’s driving me wild. I’ve switched from the ale rubs to a twice-a-week light salt brine rub. Thus far, it’s pretty darn perfect. 

ale-washed gouda

Affinage is incredibly laborious. Flipping a cheese might sound like no big deal, but consider the following tasks:

*shlepping cheeses up from the cellar and then back down again
*note taking
*mixing brines
*washing (or brushing/wiping) the rinds
*maintaining a cheese-turning schedule
*daily observation, researching, and troubleshooting
*monitoring humidity levels and temperature
*thinking, thinking, thinking
*waiting

smackered

It takes up an awful lot of brain space, these cheeses do. I don’t know exactly what I’m going for, or what I’ll do with the cheese when I get there, or whether or not I want to replicate the same cheese or do something different (and if so, what?). The accute and perpetual state of cluelessness and uncertainty is exhausting. The cheeses are heavy and smelly and weird and my head hurts from thinking and I have no idea if I’m on the right track. 

raclette

So next time you see an artisanal cheese that you think is exorbitantly overpriced, know this: it’s not.

This same time, years previous: perimenopause: Deirdre, age 46, ham and bean soup, pozole, salad dressing: a basic formula, doing stupid safely, all the way under, homemade grainy mustard, lemon cream cake, the quotidian (1.19.15), cream cheese dip.

I’ve decided it’s time to start smoking cheese so… 

1. I had my younger son pull out an old electric smoker that someone gave to us, but it didn’t work. Or he couldn’t get it to work (which is the same thing as far as I’m concerned). 
2. He got out an actual fire smoker — coals in the bottom and food on top — that I’d bought secondhand. It works great for meats, but we couldn’t get the temp to stay below the necessary 90 degrees that cheese needs. 
3. He put coals in a pan and we tried to smoke the cheese in the grill but the coals kept dying.

And then I bought this sweet little do-hickey for 13 bucks and ba-BAM — billows of delicious smoke for hours. 

Now my cheese world has exploded. The smoked cheddar is fantastic — like a whole new kind of cheese. I’m so excited to try Gouda and Toscano Pepato.

Jarlsberg, Pepper Jack, Derby, São Jorge, Gouda (of course), and Toscano Pepato 

***

The other day I happened upon a video of some of the behind-the-scenes filming of Napoleon Dynamite.

I watched it multiple times, with multiple family members, and with immense glee. It was so fun to see Pedro, Uncle Rico, etc as their “real” selves (um … the actors, I guess?), and I was fascinated by how everyone seemed to be cobbling the movie together as they went. The whole process looked tedious, unglamorous — and wicked fun. 

***

How many of you know what the Enneagram is? (This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know! The enneagram is such a central part of how I understand people and relationships that I often forget that many people — most people? — don’t even know what it is.) 

I always knew my number just from my reading, but then a few years ago I took one of the most in-depth Enneagram tests (some test out of South Africa that we had to pay for and gave me pages and pages and pages of analysis) and it confirmed what I already knew: I’m a raging 8. What number are you? Here’s a list of the best free tests, if you want to try one. (I just took the Truity test and I’m an 8.)

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Here’s an oldie but goodie. On the surface it’s about marriage, but really it applies to all conflict. For a clip that’s not even two minutes long, there’s an awful lot to unpack.

I showed it to my kids this week, and they got a kick out of it.

This same time, years previous: apple strudel, kefir, the coronavirus diaries: week 45, this is who we are, the quotidian (1.13.20), full house, scandinavian sweet buns, cranberry bread, through the kitchen window, roll and twist.