Yo-Yo and I have been playing Bananagrams.

While he waits for me to come join him at the table, he creates shapes.

I made a quick pizza with my new tomato sauce. Just crust, sauce, fresh basil, and mozzarella cheese.

It crossed my mind that I could whip up a batch of homemade mozzarella, but I scratched that idea as soon as it reared its head. If I’d-a had more time…

My kids are notorious for never using games/tools/furniture for the intended use. (See above picture of bananagrams.) This often drives me quite batty, but other times I get a huge kick out of it. Take, for example, what they’re doing with their swing set. They’ve turned it into a swinging seesaw. They balance, swing, and rock, all of which is punctuated with squeals and screams. It’s keeps them occupied, so I’m happy.

They used all the coats and jackets they could find to pad their little behinds. Ladder rungs aren’t all that comfortable to sit upon.

Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo went all hushy-hushy on me a couple days ago. They said they were working on my birthday present. It involved clandestine phone calls to my mother. It involved my sewing kit. It involved closed doors and wild shrieking to STAY OUT when any of the rest of us dared venture too close.

They asked if they could cut up blankets for stuffing. (NO.) They asked if they could take apart pillows for stuffing. (NO.)

There was deep despair. And there was resilience.

There were more closed doors. And then, finally (but about four weeks pre-birthday), they trooped downstairs bearing a large object wrapped in Yo-Yo’s spiderman blanket. Inside was…

a homemade pillowcase!

The patchwork cloth had already been sewed at Grandmommy’s house, I do believe. When they called her to see if they could use it, she reportedly said, “You can eat it for all I care.” So they hand stitched two of the sides together to make me a birthday pillowcase.

I was touched. I even got a little teary-eyed. The pillow now resides on my bed. I love it.

Heck, I love them, the silly goons.

We’ve been eating oven s’mores for desserts most nights. It’s a nasty habit. You don’t want to start.

Yes you do. Make them.

No, don’t. You’ll get addicted and then live to regret it. You’ll never visit this blog again. You’ll hate me.

Actually, you’ll love me. Make them.

Sit a couple marshmallows atop a graham cracker and stick it under the broiler till nice and toasty.

Smear the other cracker with Nutella. Lick the knife. (But don’t let the kids see or they’ll all beg for licks.)

Unite and bite! (No pictures of the biting. Too messy for that. And besides, I was really focused on my ooey-gooey piece of heaven.)

No nutella? Use chocolate chips or any other type of chocolate that strikes your fancy.

Another suggestion: add slices of banana.

And now we’ve come full circle, from bananagrams to banana s’mores. Goodnight!

This same time, years previous: dreaming, on our way, smartly

I’m not anti-science. Not at all. My father is a science teacher and a heck of a good one at that. (I had him in 8th grade for the unit on reproduction. I was not embarrassed, though I did harbor a secret fear that he would come into the room with his zipper down. This was/is not a problem of his, so I’m not sure where that fear came from, but I’m just stating the facts. My fear was never realized, thank goodness, and I loved having him as my teacher.) In high school I took as many science classes as I could get away with and I aced each one. I won in state science fairs more than once. Science was grand. Then I went to college and took the one required class of basic science and that was that. But still, I like science.

I just don’t teach it to my kids.

Okay, so that’s kind of a lie. I do teach them a leedle bitty bit of science, mostly in the form of reading aloud to them about things like the periodic table of elements, Experiments They Could Do at Home But Probably Shouldn’t, and stuff like that. We watch videos, too: “The world’s most incredible stuntman” (physics is a blast until the parachute doesn’t open) and Newton’s Apple and anything and everything from National Geographic.

But I don’t have a science curriculum and I don’t do science projects. No vinegar and baking soda volcanoes (though somehow the kids got into them anyway), no worm digging, no squealing over spider webs.

Though a couple weeks ago I did notice that there was a very flat, dehydrated frog in the driveway. For days it reclined on the gravel right behind where I park the van. I realized it was a good teaching opportunity and that I should show it to the kids. But then, I thought, they will pick it up and play with it and quite possibly dismember it and I’ll find bits of dried froggy leather all over the porch. So I didn’t say a word.

Until Saturday when “there’s a dried-up frog in the driveway behind the van” just kind of popped out of my mouth. Miss Beccaboo swooped down and snatched it up. She danced it around her papa’s head till he told her to knock it off (not his head, the annoying behavior) and then arranged it artfully on the porch banister. Then she-of-the-dry-humor said, “I think what it needs is a little bit of water,” and made like she was going to go get a bowl.

“No,” I managed to get out between loud guffaws, images of a bloated, stinky, slimy frog floating in a bowl on my kitchen counter. “You are not. Don’t even think about it.”

I don’t like messes (unless they are self-made), and I don’t have tons of energy to invest in lots of scientific hoopla. (I get swamped just making meals and dealing with attitudes, both theirs and mine.) But when it comes down to it, at this point in the game I don’t think I could beat what they glean from everyday life. Science, minus the labeling and correct terminology, just happens around here. Here are three examples:

1. When the kids were at my sister-in-law’s house the other day, she helped them collect caterpillars and nestle them into jars with leaves and twigs. Within a day, the shelf in Miss Beccaboo’s room held an array of caterpillar-and-leaf-stuffed jars. She faithfully feeds the worms (that’s what I call them), watches them make their cocoons, and then as they emerge, sets them free. I admire the pretty butterflies when she asks me to (all the while silently wondering if we’re perpetuating an unwanted breed of caterpillars, the kind that will next year wreak havoc with my dill and basil), and then tell her to please get her gross, disgusting, revolting jars off my kitchen counter.

2. The other day I ordered all the kids out to the garden to help me weed the strawberry patch. The kids worked hard, but they kept getting distracted by bugs and things. There’s nothing like a boring job to invite exploration and creativity! At one point, The Baby Nickel caught a grasshopper and opened its mouth to check for teeth. People plan little lessons around stuff like this, it occurred to me. They go on excursions and look under leaves. And me? I say, “Cool, hon. Now will you please put the poor grasshopper down and PULL THE WEEDS.”

3. The kids have been having a great time in the tomato patch lately. They spear rotten tomatoes with long sticks and then see who can wing the tomatoes the farthest. There’s physics in that, you know. Not that they know that, but I like to think that when they hit physics class and learn about Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, the tomatoes on sticks. We know all about that already.”

I’ll get more structured as the kids get older. In fact, I’m already digging around for a second-hand microscope. And I’d like to do some molecular biology with them this year. (That’s fancy talk for “study cells”). But in the meantime, I’ll settle for whatever comes along. If I’m in the mood, I may even seize upon it. (Maybe next time the dog kills a groundhog, I’ll hand the kids a knife and tell them to bring me the liver. Not to eat, though.)

The following pictures have nothing to do with the above subject matter, except that they’re of the kids. Last night they hooked some chains up to the wagon and commenced to pretending they were horses (or rickshaw drivers, perhaps?) and wild wagon drivers. They went fast.

So fast, in fact, that it appears that the Miss Beccaboo Horse is getting spirited away into the Celestial Heavens.

It got a little crazy…

They were some stunts…

And some crashes…

Then they got bored and scooted the trampoline under the swing set, something they’re not allowed to do.

I stood on the deck and snapped pictures.

Then I called to Mr. Handsome who was out working in the barn. “Time for baths. Call the kids,” I said. After which I stepped back into the kitchen to make them some bedtime PB and J sandwiches, allowing him put a stop to their game. I’m so generous that way.

This same time, years previous: losing my marbles

I didn’t grow up with home-canned spaghetti and pizza sauce. Up until several years ago when I started making my own, I was content to add a couple cans of plain, store-bought tomato sauce to a pot of sauteed onions, garlic, green peppers, and herbs. It worked, and I was happy.

But then I started experimenting with my own sauce and promptly fell in love with both the method and the results. It’s a slow process, and not a very pretty one, truth be told, one that involves buckets of sweat and boatloads of dirty dishes. Broken down, the process goes like so: the tomato picking (or acquiring), the blanching, peeling, and coring, the chopping, simmering, and pureeing, and then, of course, the canning. If you’re making a pizza or spaghetti sauce, there’s also the onions, garlic, and peppers to clean, chop, and saute, the fresh herbs to gather, clean, chop, and measure, and so on and so on, till your kitchen walls are redly be-speckled and you’re swearing under your breath.

I totally understand why some people might be daunted. Heck, I’m daunted some days.

And yet, I still do it. Keeping one eye cocked on the lazily simmering pot of tomatoes as it reduces, playing chemist with fresh and dried herbs, ladling the final product into pint jars—it’s a process packed with satisfaction, dirty kitchen be damned.

Over the past couple days, I’ve been experimenting with some new tomato sauces. My friend (I think she took pity on me after looking at pictures of our dismal garden) called me up to see if I wanted two five-gallon buckets of tomatoes. Well, duh, yes.

The day she called, I had gleaned several pounds of tomatoes from our pathetic garden and was already experimenting with SouleMama’s carrot tomato soup, so when the buckets of tomatoes landed in my lap, I happily branched out to experiment with a new pizza sauce (more on that later) and this roasted tomato sauce.

It’s the simplest sauce I’ve made to date, so listen up, people. There are only three steps.

1. Roast: toss halved tomatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast them in a hot oven for three-quarters of an hour.

2. Blend: whiz them up with a hand-held immersion blender (Eh? You have not a magic kitchen wand? Fool! Cheapskate! You mocketh the culinary arts with your inauthentic wizardry! Take thyself to a kitchen store and buy one henceforth! Now, away with you!)

3. Can: ladle into mason jars and process in a hot water bath.

Attention Weary Kitchen Workers! Please note, there is no blanching, no peeling, and no stove-top reducing. Verily, I tell you, straighten your aching shoulders and attack those last few tomatoes with renewed vigor! Hark, your job is nearly done! Delicious sauce will soon be yours.

And is it ever delicious, oh my. Thanks to the time in the oven, the sauce is richly flavored and caramel-y sweet. It’s gorgeous, too—a dark red, flecked with bits of black from the tomatoes’ blistered backs. Vibrant, musky, sexy, oo-la-la, and yum. It’s all of that, and more.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

I add citric acid (purchased in the canning section of my grocery store) to the jars when canning as a precaution against the olive oil’s neutralizing qualities; if you omit the oil (but don’t!—it tastes so good), there is no need for the acid.

8-9 pounds paste tomatoes, washed, cored, and halved
½ cup olive oil
sea salt
½ – 1 teaspoon black pepper
citric acid, to add to the jars before/if canning

Toss the tomatoes with the olive oil, 2 teaspoons salt, and pepper. Divide them between two large baking sheets and bake at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through. The pans will fill up with tomato juice (careful when turning!) and some of the tomato tops will blister black.

Dump the roasted tomatoes into a large stock-pot and whiz well with an immersion blender. Or, if you no magic kitchen wand, you can get the job done with a blender. (If, by any chance, your sauce isn’t as thick as you’d like, now’s the time to cook it down a bit more—simply cook on low heat, stirring every few minutes.)

Season well (I added another tablespoon of salt, a little at a time, tasting after each addition) and ladle the sauce into jars. Add citric acid (½ teaspoon for quart jars, 1/4 teaspoon for pints), wipe the rims, lid, and process the jars in a water bath—once the water boils, allow 15 minutes for pints and 20 minutes for quarts.

Yield: approximately 6 pints

This same time, years previous: apple crisp topping, pasta with sauteed peppers and onions