holiday edition

Those two days of blogging back in September really must have taken it out of me. My internal voice started narrating (and improving upon) everything I was doing so it would sound better in print, and I was seeing typeface in my dreams. With a tiny brain like this it's not hard to get a brain worm even in such a short time.

So, Christmas is over for another year. I only had two meltdowns.the first one started while I was coring onions, so I didn't really notice right off when it turned into an official cry, and then I was sort of crying snorting and dripping and trying to keep snot out of the stuffing mix, as it's not technically vegan, and our vegan guest was going to have to limit himself to cranberries and tofu if things kept up.

Non-vegan recipe for Lysse:

Pepperoni con rigatoni

two nice onions
one moderate stick of pepperoni

chunk up both, and begin melting down the onions in a little olive oil/butter. then add the pepperoni, and continue to cook over low-medium heat.

toss in a can of chunked tomatoes, and let cook together till reduced a bit.

~meanwhile cooking a pot of rigatoni or any other thick bodied pasta~

Now, slowing while stirring all the time, stir in cream (light, heavy- or milk-or plain soy milk, though I can't testify to how that would turn out) to the reduced tomato mixture. I like to add enough get it back up to sauce consistency, and it will all get thick and firm again if you let it sit at all.

Salad, bread wine- you know the drill.

High Bush Cranberry

A blazingly beautiful day in Maine

Sun, blue sky, Simpson's-quality puffy clouds. A walk in town, visit to a little local art gallery, home to make pesto. Twelve more baggies to put in the freezer, green explosions of summer through the winter to come. The winters in Maine are the price we pay for the summers, and the pesto stored up make the trade off more than even.

Pesto-a non-recipe:

Basil leaves, avoiding the snails, japanese beetles and heavy twigs. 6 cups- at least
pine nuts
garlic
romano, parmesan
olive oil
salt
food processor
blend up the garlic- one healthy clove with some oil, a small handful of the nuts and some salt- heavy crunchy sea salt if you can.

Feed in the basil leaves, adding more oil to keep the blades running smoothly. Then another, larger, handful of pine nuts, added towards the end so they stay in chunks. If destined for the freezer, leave out the cheese for now or toss it in along with the leaves if you're indulging right away.

Protect the pesto from the air: pour a layer of olive oil over the top or the bright green will brown. Baggies with the air pressed out work well, keeping the quantities pretty small : just enough to pile on some fresh pasta.

It's on days like this that the thought of leaving this place breaks my heart.

the house

the First of September

A while ago, while discussing selling this house and leaving rural Maine for the three thousandth time, I set a date: September 2008. By September 2008 we would be moved, into a new place, a new city, maybe a new state.
Today marks the one year warning bell. We've lived in this house for nearly twenty years, two certifiable pack-rats, with two kids who have grown and gone and left their detritus behind, as well as an assortment of half finished projects, unused tools, ill fitting clothes, and, out on the lawn, at least eight cars and trucks in various states of decay.
I've attempted for months now to do something every week if not every day that moves the process forward. Bags and bags to the dump and to Goodwill. A ban on buying anything new for the house- garbage bags excepted.
Now in the final year, I've decided to chronicle it, and take a picture of the place everyday to really give attention to the place that's been home for so long.


We were a couple of broke late stage hippies, living in a bus with our two kids when we came to Maine, lured by the promise of work, and a lower cost of living. Our converted school bus, painted brown and named "the rolling turd", contained beds, kitchen storage, and the partypooper-the-emergencies only- tiny chemical toilet. We traveled up and down the East Coast, and didn't find anyplace we felt we fit, and rolled into Maine as the sumer of 84 came to a close and we needed to find shelter for the winter.
And we found it- a summer house on the New Meadows river, where we installed a shower on the back porch, and had to walk outside and down the hill towards the frozen river to the unheated toilet. We gathered mussels along the river bank, and despite the roughness of the place and the cold, I think we were a pretty happy group. The kids slept in the unfinished attic crawlspace, but they were small, and the little heat from the wood stove tended to rise right to them.