It’s been a little quiet here on the blog — maybe you noticed? 

I’m still here, entirely alive. It’s just — well, remember that course I mentioned back when the world was a solid piece of ice? I’m now four months into the six-month program and working ’round the clock. 

Actually, that’s a lie. I’ve been making myself keep work hours. Or trying to, anyway. Weekdays, my goal is to get 3-4 hours of work done in the morning (video editing/filming/zoom calls at home) and then the same amount in afternoon (email/script writing), often at a coffee shop in town.

To crystalize the division between work and non-work, at the end of the day I shut everything down — work account, video editing software, Discord chat — and then I yell to no one in particular, SYSTEMS SHUTTING DOWN, a la Cal Newport.

Weekends are still a little iffy. Sometimes I succumb to partial work days — video editing is tedious and the more I can spread it out, the more productive I am — but I’m getting better at sticking to my guns. I know I need the break, even though I kinda freak out at the end of the week because what am I going to do for two whole days without my work?

Why write a blog post, m’dear. That’s what!

Actually, my weekends are mostly for getting done all the things I don’t do during the week — i.e. cooking and playing and chillin’ on the porch. Anything other than thumbnails, market research, and tracking software.

Take today, for example. Here’s what I’ve done thus far. (As I type, it’s 3:14 p.m. on Saturday.)

I woke up before 6 to go on my first-ever trail run with my daughter-in-law. I had no idea what to expect, but it was pretty darn fun: a new setting, focused running (i.e. trying not to fall), dense green, quiet, darkly wooded, and it used a totally different set of muscles. I feel the run in my legs now, but it’s a good feeling. 

I was planning to make a Gruyere today, but on our drive home from the trail run, my husband called to say that the calves got out during the night. So, no fresh milk which meant I wouldn’t have enough to make a big wheel.

So I switched to Plan B: process as much of the week’s stockpiled milk as possible so I don’t have to do it next week (when I will be making that Gruyere). Specifically, this meant: 3+ gallons of yogurt, a double batch of ice cream base (hot weather is coming!), pasteurizing cream for the week’s coffees, skimming the rest of the milks. (The skimmed milk, I clabbered for the pigs. The cream, I stuffed in the freezer for a future butter experiment.) 

I made 3-ingredient pancakes for breakfast — cottage cheese, rolled oats, eggs (and salt). I thought they might be a bust, but they were actually pretty yummy: dense without being gummy and with a lovely nuttiness. My husband said they weren’t amazing but he wasn’t offended by them either. Translation: they’re better than oatmeal and not as good as ordinary pancakes.

Friends are coming for supper tonight, so I thawed some steaks, baked two chocolate loaf cakes with peanut butter cup-lined bottoms, and I made a rockin’ Moroccan carrot salad and another batch of onion relish. I washed a bunch of dishes, made multiple trips out to the cheese cave to monitor my husband’s progress — newsflash: THE CAVE HAS RUNNING WATER — and then I fizzled out. 

I still need to make a potato salad and chop up a watermelon for next week, and I want to make a menu for the week and then knock out a few more staples — but I can do that tomorrow. No need to tucker myself out entirely. 

(There is still a chance I’ll get a little wild and make some corn tortillas to go with tonight’s supper. I made corn tortillas last week and the leftovers, reheated, were wonderful with onion relish, scrambled eggs, and wedges of fresh ricotta salata, mmm.) 

Now it’s time to gather my nerve and go wash down the porch furniture and scrub the kitchen stove. Company will be here soon!

This same time, years previous: lassi, pepper jack cheese, the coronavirus diaries: week 66, barbecue sauce, up, up, up to Utuado, taking flight, reverberations, a photo book, spinach dip.

When you host a gathering, you never know what will be The Thing that gets people’s attention. 

At the hot dog roast at my brother’s house during the family gathering, turned out it was a jar of onions that garnered the most chatter. I hadn’t even noticed them (I didn’t eat a hot dog so I didn’t pay attention to the condiment tray), but then I overheard, These are amazing! What is in them? How did you make them? So I had to see what all the fuss was about. 

I scooped some of the onions onto a potato chip to sample. The onions were gently sweet with just a tiny kiss of acid, and they were jammy-soft with a slight crunch. I could’ve spooned them from the jar straight into my mouth. 

After everyone left, my brother texted a photo of the half-full jar of zucchini relish that I’d contributed to the supper. “Want to trade for onion relish?”

Uh … yessss!

And then I made an amazing discovery: grilled cheese stuffed with onion relish. Typically, I love me a thick layer of sweet pickles with my grilled cheese, but these onions, good grief. I couldn’t pack the sandwich full enough. 

I made a batch of onion relish this weekend, and then I made another round of grilled cheese. We also ate the onion relish on our Sunday lunch of beans and rice and my Monday eggs and beans. I imagine it’d be fabulous over scrambled eggs, too, or on a salad, stuffed into subs, on a cheeseburger, etc, etc. 

Onion Relish
Adapted from my brother’s recipe.

All amounts are guesstimates: play around. (Optional variations at the bottom.)

2 cups of chopped onion
¼ cup white vinegar, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon dried basil

Put the chopped onions and 2 tablespoons of the vinegar in a microwaveable bowl and cover with water. Microwave for 2 minutes. Drain the onions, give them a quick rinse, and drain again. 

Place the drained onions in a bowl and add the remaining vinegar, brown sugar, olive oil, and dried basil. Toss to combine. Transfer to a jar and store in the refrigerator. (No idea how long these last in the fridge. Haven’t gotten that far yet.)

Options to play around with, if you so desire: 

• The quantity and type of vinegar — I bet apple cider vinegar would be good
• Different herbs, like oregano, chives, parsley, or go wild and use fresh 
• Cook them a little longer or shorter, depending on the desired crunch level 
• Omit the sugar, or swap it out for white sugar, maple syrup, or honey

This same time, years previous: yoga sol, try and keep up, so much milk, in the bedroom, Black lives matter, the quotidian (6.3.19), mama said, this is us, brown sugar rhubarb muffins, when the studies end, a bunch of stuff, berry almond baked oatmeal.

This past weekend was the Baer Family Gathering of 2025. 

When we started talking about it back in December, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. It was more like, Hey, anyone want to get together this year? We’ll host!

But then we actually started planning the logistics — about 47 people (though 6 of them ended up not making it) for three meals — and we were like, Um … HOW exactly is this going to work? 

It ended up coming together quite nicely (though it did feel like all we did for the last month was get ready). We decided to put all my mom’s siblings at her house so they could snatch some quiet moments away from the throngs, and then we stuffed all the kids in the upstairs of our barn…

… and divided the parents between my brother’s house and our house. The rest of the adults were divvied between my brother’s house, our house, and a neighbor’s house (that my older son and his wife were housesitting for), and one family day-tripped. 

As for meals, we had lunch at my parents’, supper at my brother’s, and then brunch at our place. Travelers brought homemade desserts for Saturday afternoon and fresh fruit for Sunday morning, and locals provided the rest. 

In case you, too, are planning a family gathering and need inspiration, here’s what we ate:

LUNCH: baked potatoes, taco ground beef, sauteed mushrooms, sour cream, cottage cheese, pickled jalapeños, salsa, corn, and collard greens 
AFTERNOON SNACK: homemade desserts, coffee, chocolate milk
SUPPER: hot dogs, zucchini relish, pickled onions, raw veggies and hummus, green salad, potato chips, baked beans, ice cream cones
MORNING (in host homes): toast and coffee
BRUNCH: wholegrain sourdough pancakes, sausage, eggs, fresh fruit, smoothies, orange juice, coffee

In between the eating, there was kickball, a hike to a tidal spring, cornhole, campfires, a group photo, a fireball, a 5K, a hymn sing, card games, trampoline jumping, and lots and lots of talking. 

But the star of the show was the weather. We had two full days of The BEST Weather In The History Of The World: cool nights, shockingly gorgeous sunny days, zero humidity, it was sublime. After months of imagining the worst — and trying to prepare for it and failing (because I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the mayhem of solid rain with 40+ people) — I spent the entire weekend pinching myself.

Sunday afternoon as families began peeling away one by one, I turned verklempt, almost weepy. The last 24 hours had been so full — so absolutely packed with bodies and energy and noise — and then, just like that, it was over.

It was too much too fast, like emotional whiplash. I felt a little shellshocked. As I wandered through the house and yard collecting left behind socks and toothbrushes and phone chargers, I kept thinking of all the questions I wished I’d asked and the conversations I wished I’d had.

But that’s the nature of big family gatherings, I suppose: random snatches of deeper conversations amidst chaos. Mostly, the point is just about being together. 

And it’s kinda mind boggling, really. Even though we don’t all know each other all that well, and some of us go years without seeing each other, here we are for this one weekend choosing to be family to each other. 

For this small cluster of ordinary, glorious people who make up my family, I am so grateful my heart hurts.

This same time, years previous: what’s your number one breakfast?, the butter conundrum, sugar-crusted popovers, stuffed poblanos, about that house (and some news!), a few fun things, butter chicken, the hard part, the quotidian (5.26.14), down to the river to play, the reason why.