Category: (it's all about the) food

Oh Christmas tree

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Holidays, Marriage

Chrismas tree 2012Oh my God, what a big pile of crap Christmas has left in its wake. Wouldn’t it be great if those damned elves showed up after Christmas to help pick up the house instead of before Christmas to help demolish it?

I am usually a put-the-(fake -tree-up-the-weekend-before-Christmas-and-take-it-down-the-day-after kind of gal. This year, however, with the way Christmas fell on a Tuesday (stupid Christmas–no 3 day weekend this year), my work schedule, my husband’s work schedule, the kids’ school schedules…we didn’t get that tree up until late. My daughter requested that we leave it up until at least New Year’s Day to (over)compensate, and we agreed. Now I am second guessing this decision.

It’s making me anxious. You know, the way it’s standing over there against the wall, looking at me. Reproaching me for not taking it down on Wednesday. Here it is Friday, for Chrissakes, and it’s still here, not knowing what to do with itself. What, with the presents all unwrapped and strewn about the house.

“Give it a rest, already!” it seems to be saying.

Anyone else still have a tree keeping vigil?

Back in the saddle again. Not.

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, Karen's Kitchen, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, no fear

I was thinking that now that the kids are back in school, I should resume my walking routine. I used to walk 3 miles or so every morning around 6:45am, before I did anything else…even before I went to the gym or yoga class. I did it every day just like clockwork.

Until I stopped.

Why did I stop? Or why did I tell myself that I stopped?

  1. Because it was too cold.
  2. Because it was too dark.
  3. Because I was too Goddamned tired.
  4. Because skipping one day couldn’t hurt, right?
  5. Because it was hunting season and my husband (well, most of the time) didn’t want me to risk getting shot by an idiot hunter who mistook my white mittens for a deer’s tail. This really did happen to someone (thankfully not to me).

The real reason, though, is this: I just hate to exercise, pure and simple. There are long spans of time when I convince myself to forget this, usually in the summer and early fall, when I can distract myself by looking at the ocean while I walk.
This time of year? Not so much. Like today, for example. I drove to the beach with good intentions. I was going to walk for 30 minutes or so. When I got there I realized that I had not worn my sneakers, plus it was high tide right up to the wall.

I mean, what could I do? I ask you.

Good thing I brought my book and a small baked good (of the pumpkin variety) to ease my disappointment over not being able to get that walk in after all.

Maybe tomorrow…

Volunteering

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, local fun, teens

My daughter and I signed up to volunteer for two hours this morning to help with tasks involved in getting ready for the annual library book sale. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Even though I looked forward to and attended the book sale almost every year, I had never been involved in any of the activities that preceded it.

We arrived a little early to find a smattering of other early birds there at the crack of 9:00AM, ready to help. We jumped right in.After a few “thank you’s” from Susan, the lovely woman in charge, I said, “Actually, I’m having fun!”

And you know what? I was having fun. More than that, I was having a great time.  Even though it was very muggy and I was sweating and thirsty, I was enjoying what I was doing and the time was passing quickly. As I thought about why, I realized that volunteering to help set up for the library book sale combined two of my favorite things:

  1. Being with the books
  2. Bringing order to chaos

I was especially pleased because I was able to identify, almost without thinking about it, exactly what it was that made me enjoy the work so much. It was a physical job: hauling books from one end of the gym to the other. Usually I don’t love exercise, but then it occurred to me that I was getting my ‘workout’ this morning doing purposeful activity with something to show for it at the end besides sore muscles: the dozens of cartons of books that were arranged on tables, spines, up, ready for the customers tomorrow–another bonus.

Our two hours of volunteering turned into four and a half. We stayed until the job was done.

As it turned out, the day included another one of my favorite things: PIZZA!  Susan unexpectedly treated us to pizza for lunch.  Because in the end, it’s always all about the food…and today, it was also all about the books!

Time: is it on my side?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

I made a decision the week that I turned 50 and also was on vacation: I wouldn’t wear my watch. I had a couple of goals.

1. To stop being so ruled by the time of day it was (eg: “time for breakfast” or “time for bed”)

2. To make my vacation feel longer.

So for about 10 days, I didn’t wear my watch. It turned out that on the few occasions when I tried to guess the time, my guesses were usually pretty close: within 15 minutes or so of the actual time. Of course, for the first several days, I looked at my watch-less wrist to see what time it was, but then when I remembered that I wore no watch, I just said, “Okay, I don’t know what time it is,” and was okay with that.

I didn’t start wearing my watch again until today. I put it on this morning, then after i looked at it for the third time and realized that it still said 10:12AM (not to mention that it was also a day behind on the date!), the ugly truth was revealed: THE BATTERY STOPPED.

Really? Really?

Is the Universe sending me a message?

May planting

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening

We planted the last bed on the last day of May. Tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squashes, peppers, spaghetti squash, various eggplants. I’m bummed out that I couldn’t find a purple and white striped eggplant variety this year, or a purple bell pepper, but what can you do? We did find and plant some blue potatoes, and that is our novelty for 2012.

We try to plant something new that we’ve never grown before every year.

I’m going to try one more time for the purple seedlings at the Portland Farmers Market next week, then give up and go with what I got. After we put the plants in, it rained for days. . . and days. . . and days. Not sure if that will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll keep you posted.

The strawberries in our garden still aren’t red. There are dozens of them, all white. I’m keeping an eye on those too, because if the chipmunks beat me to them, I may not get over it.

The asparagus is just about done, but we got several helpings before it went by, so I’m happy for that. Here’s hoping that we all have a long and prolific growing season!

We also snuck in a few straggler plants: watermelon, pumpkins…things that never do well for us. Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll surprise us this year.

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Party!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, Midlife Crisis, relationships, Turning 50

I have never had friends over to my house since I moved here in 2006 that wasn’t associated with a holiday or a kid’s birthday. So, when I decided to have a Creative Memories Scrapbooking Party it was sort of a big deal.
Who to invite was the first thing to figure out. I decided to put the question on Facebook and in a few emails first to see if anyone would even be interested in such a thing. Turned out, quite a few people were interested.

Next, I decided to invite only people who said they were interested (either directly to me or indirectly, through others). I was pleasantly surprised when several of them accepted.  Then came the fun part: what to feed everyone.

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll probably tell you that I’m all about the food. Ask my husband and he’ll probably tell you that I’m all about overdoing the food. I decided to consult my sister-in-law, Andrea, who is great at such things. I took her advice to “Keep it Simple” as well as her advice about quantities to buy.

I spent the morning cleaning the house, and with the help of my son Anthony and my daughter Izzy, we got everything ready early. Then I confidently headed out to shop with my daughter. As the day went on, the cancellations rolled in. I tried not to worry. My husband kept me laughing with text messages and phone calls…”Hello, this is the Wells Police. We have a report of a wild scrapbooking party at your house….” and so forth (thank you, Bill!).

In the end, the Tupperware Party rule prevailed: half of the people who way they are coming ultimately will not.

It was great though. We had plenty of room to work on the projects. Susan, the Creative Memories Consultant (and my friend!) had done all the prep work in advance to make it easy for even a novice scrapbooker.  The lovely women at my party ranged in age from 13 to somewhere just barely into her fifties (you know who you are!). And because it is true that I am all about the food, we had the most delicious cupcakes for dessert from Somethin’ Sweet in Sanford (check out her Facebook page for daily flavors and specials). My guests even let me bore them with my talk about my Book of Fifty (the scrapbook I am working on for my 5oth birthday year).

I had the best time ever. Thank you, everybody.

After the fall

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Karen's Kitchen, Midlife Crisis, the beach

I had a disaster in my kitchen today. I was lifting down some big Pyrex mixing bowls from a shelf, something I’ve done dozens and dozens of times. Something I do almost every day. I was lifting them down to put one back in the stack. As I brought the stack down to the counter, suddenly I heard a crash. I think I heard it before I realized what happened. One moment I was lowering the bowls to the counter, then next moment I had no bowls in my hands and there were millions of pieces of glass covering every inch of my kitchen counter, floor, and my feet.

I was shaking, so I just stood there for a minute while I took stock and tried to breathe. I know that cuts don’t hurt at first, so I was looking for blood to see how bad the damage was. Unbelievably, all of the cuts, and they were few, were superficial.

The damage to the Pyrex was worse: My 2 favorites bowls were broken: the large yellow and the large Amish.

I told my daughter and her friend to stay in her room. I realized my son was home so I called him. “I need help.” He said, “Give me a minute,” then came up, looked around, asked me if I was okay, then got to work. I would like to say that he helped me clean it up, but really, he cleaned it all up while I picked up shards of glass then put them back down again, still too shaken up to do much at all.

I thought of all that while I was walking on the beach later on this morning. I looked at the ocean and thought: The ocean makes everything better.

I was wrong though. After a few moments, I realized this: Family and friends make everything better.  I lost nothing. I have everything.

Twins!

by Karen, posted in family, Midlife Crisis, quest for the best, relationships

My husband and I bought a new couch this month to replace the one we had that was older than our firstborn. How old do you think it was? (Hint: the firstborn son is turning 21 this year).

Of course, we have purchased some new furniture over the years, but our decorating style has been largely yard sale finds and hand-me-downs from relatives, most of whom are long gone.  The TV sits on a cabinet  that used to house a TV set (remember those?). My husband gutted it and refinished the wood and it’s been in every house we’ve ever owned. I love it.

The coffee table has recently been handed over to our son. It also was hand finished by my husband and is beautiful (Son! Use coasters!). We have a small side table that was my grandmother’s and has a sort of usual design that is perfect for holding books. It used to be perfect for holding videos (remember those? That’s how long we’ve had that table).

The point is this: we value our furniture and keep it for a long time. When we got the new couch and replace the old one, we kept the two mismatched floor lamps that flanked it. One was from a yard sale and one we bought at Target, I think. After living with the new set up for a couple of weeks my husband said, “Let’s get two floor lamps that match for once. Can we do that?”

We could. We did. It’s…restful to have some matching furniture.

P.S. Surprise! One lamp went to our son, and the other one went to our daughter.

Maine Women Write Book Club at Kennebooks

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food

I read this book in advance for the Maine Women Write book club at Kennebooks. It started off with a man in a prison cell. Not what I was expecting! From the cover of the book I thought it was going to be a story about farming or something, and there were some parts about farming, eventually, but it is really about relationships. This book is set way up north in Maine, in a trailer park mostly. There are multiple characters introduced right from the start so here’s two words of advice: pay attention! Do not get distracted or allow your mind to wander off or fairly soon enough you won’t know what the heck is going on. The author takes you inside the heads of all these people in brief snippets and that is how the story is told. She somehow makes even the dispicable characters human and interesting, so that you like them all enough to keep reading. There is a murder thrown in, and this mystery also moves the story forward at a good clip. You will want to know how it all turns out and so you will not want to put the book down. You’ll be able to finish it fairly quickly because this is not a wordy book. The author gets her ideas across to you in few words, telling the story more in the spaces between the words, in what is not said as much as what is, right through to the ending. You aren’t explicitly told what is going to happen, but you just KNOW…you figure it out from what is and is not said. I loved this book and I think that you will too. The author, Shonna Milliken Humphrey, attended the Maine Women Write Book Club at Kennebooks last night and I’ll just say this: If you have the chance to attend any talk that Shonna is giving, GO!

Easter

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, Holidays, Midlife Crisis, the beach

How do you celebrate Easter? Even though my kids are older now, and the Bunny has been found out, we still celebrate the holiday in much the same way we did when they were little. I make Easter Baskets of some sort for them. I hide eggs for them to find in an Easter Egg Hunt.

Tip: to keep your older kids interested, instead of candy or colored eggs, hide plastic ones with cash in them.

We have dinner with family and friends. I over-bake when I am entrusted with bringing the dessert course and then over-eat everything put in front of me. I always make “Church Window” cookies in honor of my grandmother. She always made them for me growing up because I loved them and she loved me. I still do the Easter Egg Hunt because my father loved to do that for us when we were little and so now I do it for my kids, but also to honor my dad.

I went for a walk on the beach this morning and was thinking about how Easter was my father’s favorite holiday (I think) and St. Patrick’s Day was my mother’s favorite. I wondered what my kids think my favorite holiday is?