Resurgence

To begin with, we have recently signed up for an at home deliver of veggies and other organic products.  Yes, you can order everything on the internet and be a complete shut in if you like.  I don't have to go to the grocery store anymore and I love it!  Two hours of my life restored.  Now if my kids want to throw a fit we can do it in the privacy of my own home and I don't have to get overstimulated with advertising for crap.  I love it.  The kids love it too.  It is like Christmas every friday - and the gift keeps on giving because it becomes their dinner!  Again, I love the whole concept.

Furthermore, I love the concept of getting local and organic foods.  For some weird reason, the grocery stores around here are rather fickle and don't have good selections of either meat or produce.  Now I know I am getting both from a fresh source. With the whole deal I also get to choice other organic-type products that I probably otherwise would not try.  Online they are on sale so I order some without walking down the perceived over priced 'organics' isle at the grocery store.  It has been super pleasant and we have made some crazy good finds, such as today's lunch:

These little nuggets are delicious!   They are not chicken, which in the land of chicken nuggets is actually a relief.  I have had an over reactive gag reflex recently with meat products - and even the idea of commercial chicken nuggets makes me nauseous.  You know that one bad nugget with the 'other' stuff in it. Gag.  These little guys are smooth!  They are made of fugiprotien - basically mushrooms - but the texture is as beautiful as the best homemade chicken pot pie.   They were delicious and I was mad I gave most of them to the kids.  The next box is all for me.


I find in this tale of day a few resurgent patterns of my youth that made me even think it worthy to post (besides spreading the word to meat eaters about Quorn).

One - the return to home delivery.  When I grew up we had milk delivered to our back porch.  By the time I came around we got the regular gallons that you would by in the store, but I vaguely remember that we did once set out our used bottles and the were traded out and returned full of milk.

Two -  When I was going through the finicky teen years I had a bad experience with beef that made me a psedu-vegetarian for awhile.  My mother was extremely patient and accommodating.  I insisted that it was medical - I would barf and be bulimic if all she served me was meat.  Yet, with this recent resurgence of hyper-sensitive gag reflexes I find myself cutting the teen me some slack.  I have always liked vegetable products better - the first time I ate a veggie-burger at Hard Rock I thought I had gone to heaven. Now the Quorn stuff.  I start to wonder if at some point my body gets overloaded with byproducts of animal products and puts on the gag breaks.  It is a crazy thought - but it creeps up on me even while reading fiction to my kids at night (we have been reading Jungle Book and I gag each time Mowgli makes a kill and eats it and moves on...could he really eat it raw and stomach it?).

Three - the feeling that with the turning of the seasons and finally have a fall again that there are some comforting parts of my past that are surging to the top again.  It is strange and invigorating.  Inside of me I am somewhat ageless and yet trapped in a 'time' that is constructed of my current life status.  Thus to feel more of the old me in the present time is....interesting.  I like it.  Just like the kids like opening up groceries; there is something fresh and nourishing inside.  I'm not a vegetarian but stomach a bit more of my past than I have let myself do in a while.

Chicks, and Strawberries and Sons! Oh MY!

I have an 18 quart triumph!!! For the first year ever in my solo jam making experience my strawberry jam has set! It is all the more triumphant born in the light of its nativity days.

Yesterday, just before picking up the two cases of strawberrries I had ordered in my tranquil days, we were coordinating the reception of a new foster placement. A son. He is three, yet two. Simple and smiley.

A new foster placement is like going to college for the first time ever complete with moving into the dorms in a far away place. You are excited because you will learn and grow yet you have no idea how things will turn out. How will your roommate be? Are your professors going to be dull, overtaxing, or inspiring? With one call from CPS all that crazy elation comes swirling and as soon as that child walks in the door you begin assessing each other. Oh yes, these little people get you figured out just as you are figuring out them, only I think they are better at it. E has some more specific challenges that are going to keep surfacing but his will is iron. Perhaps if we adopt him I will change his name to Iron Will. Not.

Thank heavens Josh is home with me in the mornings and we were able to make a lot of the discoveries and game plans together. I had E yesterday until my rehearsals and then we all got home at the same time in the evening and worked out a bedtime routine together. E gave us a run for his money but he got settled down. I laughed when I found him turning on all the house lights at 2:30am, including the light in the kids' bedroom, and they were unphased by it. He is afraid of the dark.

To supplement the crazy kid collection we added 7 chicks to our family. After the tragedy of our last four hens (which I never did post about because I was actually really sad to loose my ladies to some wild beast that ripped them apart and left their poor feathered carcasses in my front yard) we have planned on getting more hens and the heat subsided. I don't know if the heat has subsided, but we have three week old chicks and we are locking them up tight against intruders. They sure are cute. I love hens as pets. Josh picked them out with Danny and Faith so we haven't concrete names for them all yet. That will change soon.

So what is to become of this crazy family - - I still have two boxes of tomatoes, one vine and one roma, itching to be processed. Got 100 ears of corn and 40lbs of chiles ordered for this weekend and enough fixins to try canning some tomatillo salsa. I am currently in a show rehearsing to open Sept 17th and auditions for two more coming up.

I love it! I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it, and I really really do.

Tubs loves

Josh brilliantly put in a 'seeder' golf ball in the nesting boxes, and Tubs the hen matched it! Now we have one producing hen.....if only the rest would get on board. It is so fun to watch Tubs tuck the golf ball under her as she nests down and then listen to her 'delivery' as she clucks away making a nice egg for us.

Chicken stories

We have found that chickens are fine pets. Some are very smart, others are just bird brains. Example: a while back Chicken got under the back gate and went for a little walk about sometime in the mid afternoon. I thought she would return for dinner, whereas she didn't we went looking for her, taking a walkabout the block in 100 degree weather. The children were concerned and yelled loudly for her. When we came home round the corner I sent the kids in for much needed water and began a brief look around the house again when I noticed Chicken pecking on our front door. She had responded to the kids' calls and was trying to get back in. Smart bird.
This is Chicken. She is one of our Rhode Island Reds, who are the smartest and friendliest of the bunch. As for the rest of the bunch, they all have their personalities.
Cinderella (the white one pictured above) is cautiously skittish around the kids but likes to hang out with the reds so usually is close to the action of picking up and petting.
Tubs is being more resigned but runs for the most part. She gives me the snooty look when I try to get her off the patio, and as soon as my back is turned she will sneak back on the patio.
Pink, much to his chagrin, has turned into rooster. He will be leaving us soon. His pathetic crow and his very rude behavior toward the other hens is getting him ousted.
And Skunky is the loveabley dumb one. Talk about bird brain! She observes but doesn't compute much. She noticed one day that I exited the backyard via the sliding glass door into the house. She did not compute that I had not just liquidated through the glass door but shut something solid behind me. A few minutes later I hear a feather thud at the window and there is tubs, looking shocked. I thought it was funny, yet couldn't help but laugh out loud when she gave it a running start and came right back into the window again. Apparently Skunky rules by 3 strikes and you are out because she took a new angle and tried once again to get through the glass. Dumb sweet bird. The hits may have affected her brain even more because she is even more disconnected since.

One more chicken story for memory. For a few days Danny would come and grab my finger and pull me to the guest bedroom saying "A chicken under the bed Mommy" I went, dutifully knelt down and looked under the bed. Admittedly the first time I was scared that there actually was one of our chickens under the guest bed, not good. But there was nothing under the bed. Danny pointed right to where he saw the chicken and I congratulated him for such wonderful imagination. He did that two days consequitively. The third day Faith came in on the game. I again played with their imaginary games, a bit surprised by the shocked looks they gave me. It wasn't until a couple of hours later when Danny brought me a chicken nugget from the back room with the 'here don't you get it now fool' look on his face and said "Chicken under the bed Mommy." Boy am I glad for his persistence! Now how did that chicken get under there in the first place?