Of Summer Birthdays

All the kids around here going back to school has made me think of my elementary school days, especially kindergarten with Ms. Drake and first grade with Mrs. Adams. Each one of these teachers made her students feel special and individual, but they were tough ladies who didn't mess around. Ms. Drake was particularly impressive at separating crying mothers and children from each other on the first day of school, and Mrs. Adams assigned us all lunch partners to keep the ruckus to a minimum.

Most of my early elementary teachers had a special ritual for students who celebrated birthdays during the school year. Ms. Drake made a paper crown out of shiny gold paper and the birthday boy or girl was allowed to sit in the privileged space next to her on the floor during circle time while everyone sang "Happy Birthday." Mrs. Adams gave birthday children a special reading book chosen for his or her reading ability at the time of the birthday.

I hated when those children celebrated birthdays. Having a summer birthday meant that the Ms Drakes and the Mrs. Adamses over the years did not hand me a special gift or single me out. Having a summer birthday meant that my mom did not bring cupcakes and Hi-C to school at lunchtime on my birthday. Having a summer birthday meant that my school friends were usually on vacation or had forgotten about me over the summer and did not come to birthday parties. I had serious birthday envy.

But now I love having a summer birthday. In the summer, ice cream and cake melt together more quickly. A summer birthday means I can sit out on the patio with a cold drink in the evening. I have decided that missing out on all the special-ness of the elementary school birthday celebrations means that I deserve to draw my birthday out as long as I want, even over the course of several days.

So this year, my summer birthday meant I could watch a Red Sox game at Fenway the day before my birthday, buy a too-expensive t-shirt, and drink cold beer all afternoon because Amtrak doesn't mind if you drink and ride. Baseball games don't happen in the winter.

A few days later, having a summer birthday meant I could go to the Newport Folk Festival and hear Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the David Wax Museum, and a bunch of other performers all on the same day. The Folk Festival doesn't happen in the winter.

Baseball games and good music beat a shiny paper crown and dry cupcakes.

Spring Cleaning with Earth-friendly Products

The older I've gotten, the more sensitive to smells I've become. Perfume has always bothered me, and I swear my husband wouldn't have gotten a second date if he had been a cologne-wearer. When my sister lived with us, she was responsible for cleaning the bathrooms, and she had to give me fair warning for bathroom cleaning day. She has a love for the smell of Clorox similar to my love for, say, strawberries and fresh lettuce.

When she moved out, I put the ix-nay on any cleaning product containing bleach. I cannot stand that choky feeling and whatever it is that makes me smell bleach for days after it's been rinsed away. But even though I hate cleaning and cleaning products, I do occasionally feel required to spray the kitchen and bathroom down with something more than a little soapy water, so I found a recipe for All-Purpose Cleaning Spray.

I've adjusted it a little over the year or two that I've been making this. Here's my adjusted recipe:

Use a funnel and put 1 t. 20-Mule Team Borax and 2 T. white vinegar into a 24 oz. spray bottle (recycle one or buy a new one from Dollar General). Put the borax in first! Swirl the bottle a little, then pour in about 20 oz. of very hot purified water.

(If you purify your own water at the tap, remember that you shouldn't run hot water through your purifier. You'll have to heat it. Let it cool a little before pouring it into your solution.)

Shake the bottle a few times to make sure the borax is dissolved, then add 1/4 c. of Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 Hemp Citrus/Orange Pure Castile Soap. Shake the bottle well, put the sprayer back on, and you're ready to clean.

Does it work as quickly and as well as other countertop sprays? Not as quickly, but definitely as well. It also costs about 23 cents for the ingredients, so even if I have to use twice as much (which I don't), I'm saving a good deal of money.

And I don't feel like I can't breathe after I've cleaned the kitchen counters.

Tip #2: Straight club soda makes great window cleaner, even after it goes flat. It may take a cleaning or two to get rid of the residue from the ammonia-based cleaners, and you may have to work a little harder, but your mirrors will sparkle.

Another Design

I usually knit garments and accessories using purchased or free patterns designed by other knitters. Because all patterns are copyrighted, I cannot sell items made from their patterns unless I have express permission, and express permission is rarely given. Knitting designers make very little money in relation to the number of people who may be knitting their patterns at any given time, and knitters are often unaware that swapping patterns with each other takes money from the pocket of the designer. Because I have such an overdeveloped sense of justice, I feel guilty sometimes just giving the knitted item away. Crazy, I know, but there it is.

I have entered into a tentative agreement with a sheep farmer whose sheep produce luxury fleece (and therefore, wool, of course). She's a local farmer, so this idea fits right into my "shop local" attempts, and her spun fleece is lovely and cashmere-like. Our idea is that I will knit items that she can display and sell when she attends fiber festivals. (Yes, all you non-knitters out there, these exist and are quite popular.) I buy the wool from her; she sells my items. Helps her; helps me. And I'm going to be knitting anyway.

The only problem, of course, is that I usually knit items from designers' patterns, and I cannot sell these items. Solution: design my own.

I am especially proud of my second design: the River of Leaves Wrap. Knitted in DK weight cormo (Corriedale/Merino), this wrap is whisper-light but warm and snuggly, and at 11.5 inches wide and 65 inches long, can be worn a variety of ways. As soon as it is dry, I'll post photos of some ways to wear this accessory.

Until then, here is a photo as it is drying. Any one want one? $72 and I'll ship it for free. You can choose the color. This one is hand-dyed in Spruce.

Tomayto-Tomahto

Campus closed for snow and ice, so I'm spending some of my morning picking this year's tomato varieties.


It's hard to choose tomatoes. While the varieties I can buy at Lowe's or Kroger are so hybridized that I can't do much wrong, the heirloom and older varieties are a little more sensitive. For example, I love Black Krims, but they just don't do well in my garden. It's too much work to baby along four or five plants for 10 or 12 tomatoes.

It's also hard to choose because all the varieties look so beautiful in the catalog. It's easy to order too many and end up with 200 tomato plants like we did last year. Who in the world can take care of 200 tomato plants and grow broccoli, too? Not me.

I need some tomatoes for canning. How about Santa Clara Canners? Tomato Growers Catalog describes this tomato as very juicy yet solid, with fruit that weighs 8 to 10 ounces. Perfect for canning. Until I grew Santa Claras, I thought that you were supposed to can the tomatoes that were just not good enough to eat or sell. I highly recommend them. They are kind of picky, though.

When I had to run to the grocery to buy three cans of tomatoes for spaghetti sauce last week, I sorely missed those canned tomatoes gleaming in the pantry. Better not settle for the Santa Claras alone. I think I'll try Bradley, which are described as pink, smooth, blemish free and produce fruits over a concentrated time period. I guess this means I'll have Bradleys overflowing the kitchen sink but only for a little while. These catalog writers must have been trained by the J. Peterman crew.

What else? Paste tomatoes to thicken my sauces: Grandma Mary's Paste, Opalka, Italian Red Pear, Mama Leone, and Howard German. And I can't forget the Polish Linguisas. See what I mean? Six varieties already and I haven't chosen slicers and salad tomatoes yet.

Plenty of choices to make on a cold winter day. I haven't even begun to think of peppers and onions yet.

A Bird in the Hand

Regardless of how much I would like to raise chickens and have "farm-fresh" eggs at the ready, I know there are limits on how much I can do in a day. Having chickens requires having someone at home to watch over them during the day--and this can't be the dog--and someone to put them up in the evening.

Not only are the foxes around here brave enough to venture onto our patio, the neighbors do not seem the sort exactly open to the idea of wayward poultry scratching in their yards. I would have to worry about them--the chickens, the foxes, and the neighbors--all the time. I don't have the energy for that.

I mentioned my love of homegrown eggs in my night class last semester: rich scrambled eggs, yellow cakes that are really yellow. One of the students came up to me after class and said she could bring me all the fresh eggs I could eat. Her father sells organically raised chickens and their eggs, and they keep the smallest eggs for themselves. "I cannot eat four dozen eggs a week," she said. "You're welcome to at least half of them for as long as you want them."

Last Thursday, she brought me two dozen of the sweetest little eggs. They are barely the size of my cupped palm, and I have small hands. Making scrambled eggs for the three of us took an entire dozen, but they are the richest eggs I have ever eaten. When I made the white cake yesterday, I compared the store-bought eggs to the farm eggs, and the color of the yolks is the difference between the color of lemons and oranges.

I am thankful for students who enjoy sharing their abundance with me. I should not be so amazed at the number of good people I know, but I often forget how many there are.

Seven Minute Frosting

Granny really couldn't cook very well. I'm sure she was a product of her time, but boiling green beans with ham for two or three days before they were eaten really didn't leave much bean to enjoy. And they were mighty salty. I can't even talk about the mincemeat pie, for which she fancied herself famous. Perhaps she was.

I haven't eaten meat in years, but every now and then I want to taste those beans and choke down a bite of mincemeat pie. (For some reason, I was usually allowed--or was it forced?--to eat only a bite. My memory fails me on this one.)

In the summer, she made us "Snow Joes" with ice we crushed by hand using a heavy, metal contraption. For the flavoring, she used a little sugar, a little water, and half a bottle of pure extract: lemon, peppermint, or rum. But what exactly is the difference between Pure Rum Extract and rum? By the time we went to bed or Mom picked us up, we were tipsy from those kid-version mint juleps.

Every birthday cake that I remember Granny making me was iced with Seven Minute Frosting, one of the only things that she made well every single time. In fact, I don't remember even a holiday-related cake that did not have this frosting; it was a family specialty that Granny, Aunt LaVerne, and their mother, myGrandma Mayme, all made.

Until today, I had never tried to make this frosting. I usually end up making a butter and sugar based "cold" frosting. I was feeling a little homesick for Granny's house today, and I pulled out my recipe box to look for the recipe that I must have copied down from her at some point. I could not find the Seven Minute Frosting recipe in any of the cookbooks I own, so I know it must be hers.

Making Seven Minute Frosting is a lot like making candy. Eggs, cream of tartar, sugar, corn syrup, and water cooked over a hot double boiler for seven minutes or until the mixture forms stiff peaks. I made two batches today, and the first one took twelve minutes and the second one took nine.

When it's finished, it looks like melty marshmallow, even when it turns hard on the cake. I could have cried when I tasted that cake and frosting mixture. It was like being home at Granny's again.

Strange and lovely

With two full days to get through waiting for my son and husband to do other things, I went to a yarn shop in Knoxville. Even though the sign indicated the shop would open at 10, I know knitting shops. I have seen those signs on doors of shops that didn't open all day. It has been a running joke with us as we have traveled out of our way in cities to arrive at shops that are not keeping their posted schedules.

I have also had mixed receptions at yarn shops: one shopkeeper acted as if I were trespassing when I touched her sample knits; one shopkeeper snorted when I said my fair isle techniques were not as neat as hers (this was a long, long time ago); some keepers keep out of my way; some are friendly.

I arrived too early, went to get coffee, played with the iPad a while, then returned to the shop. OPEN! Score.

I wasn't planning to buy much, but I so infreqently get to touch and see finished garments that finding a good shop is always a treat even if I am not buying much and even if the shop is not friendly. This shop (Loopville) is a great in-between shop. Not too much attention, but plenty when I asked for it: an invitation to peruse their magazines and books, an invitation to use their shop computer to look at my Ravelry queue.

Good conversation, too. I shared my thoughts on yarn with one of the workers, and we hit it off. Similar tastes in patterns, yarns, eco-friendliness. She was very helpful, and the more we talked the more we had in common. I have just started a new career journey, and she was just ending a career in the same field; she has just started working in a yarn shop, and I long to be able to do that someday when I have taught all I can stand to teach.

I left the shop with a bag of yarn--not too much and not too expensive--and a feeling that even though I am not prone to finding new friends, I am capable of it. Given the time and opportunity and pool of people, I can do it.

That experience gave me something to compare to my experience back at the baseball camp where I sat for hours waiting for my son. No one there had anything to say to me, even though many of the people sitting around know me and my kid. I was, in fact, being ignored (probably because I am a shy person perceived as being a snob and probably because I am indeed a snob about books, cheese, knitting, and pretenders).

I know that the shopworker wanted to make a sale--it IS her job, of course--but she wasn't faking her genuine conversation. I prefer that. I can make small talk if I have to, but I'm perfectly happy waiting for good conversations to happen organically. If I can have good conversation once every few years with a fellow knitter, book lover, and composition instructor, I'll wait for it.