13 posts tagged “homo ner”

Holy swizzle sticks.  Last week it snowed.  Seriously.  Not a lot, but it did snow.  Today it was 85 degrees F (let's call it 30 degrees C, for you foreign communist types).  I shake my fist at the heavens. 

Oh, oh, first some good news:  I don't think I told you people, but I totally got a teaching job again.  I am adjunct faculty now.  Their plight is now mine!  I will be teaching medical transcription (yay?) and English for a Montana college.  I will work entirely online and entirely asynchronously so that I can do the work around my other schedules.  It's going to be so fantastic.

We got our "economic stimulus" money today, and it was...puzzling.  There are two adults in our household and one child, so we believed we would be getting $1500 ($600 per adult, $300 per child).  But we actually got $900.  Now, I realize it's stupid to complain about suddenly receiving $900, but we are puzzled as to whether I don't count for $600 because I only work part-time or if T doesn't count because he isn't a citizen (though he is a legal permanent resident, a full-time worker, and a taxpayer).  T thinks it's probably him because it isn't the first time that he hasn't counted for something since he came here.  We think the American immigration system is wack.  But anyway.

Oh, I have to make one comment (or possibly more) about Top Chef before I continue.  This week Antonia made the comment, and from the tone I am assuming she meant to disparage, that Dale only cooks "Asian food."  That's like insulting someone for only cooking "European food."  In fact, in this one episode he made a Japanese-ish salad and then a Vietnamese lunch.  I would venture that there is more difference in flavor profiles and ingredients between Japanese cooking and Vietnamese cooking than there is between Italian and French cooking.  Get over your Occidentalism, bitch.  Besides, in the last episode, Dale actually made a ragu that was one of the only things the judges liked on that team, and so far as I know, Italy is not in Asia.  Sorry, I just really hate it when people think that all "Asian food" is alike (or, worse, that all "Asian culture" is alike).  It really ruffles my feathers. 

OK, OK, onto the good stuff.  Hum de hoodle.  The weeds proliferate.  The weed problem here is never going to be really under control because we have two large fields that are entirely uncultivated and uncontrolled near us, and the seeds blow in from there.  But the number and tenacity of the weeds blows my mind every day.  Fortunately, we eat some of them (dandelions good), but today I pulled up a dandelion that had a taproot of roughly the same diameter as my wrist.  Obviously I didn't get all the taproot, which means it will come back, and when it does, I'm going to break out the big tools and get that taproot and roast it and drink a cup of Victory Chicory.  Yum.

My son is on a kick where he wants dandelion muffins all the time.  For those we use the flowers.  I pull all the petals out of their base and only use the yellow petals, then I just fold them into a regular muffin recipe, and they give a light honey-ish flavor to the muffins.  We like them a lot, and my son is a devoted picker of dandelions when he is offered muffins.  Later this season, I am going to make "poor man's capers" by pickling miscellaneous edible flower buds, and I have dandelion buds on the list.  If we keep picking the flowers now, we might actually have some flower buds again late enough in the season to try it, but we'll see.  I've heard the "poor man's capers" are quite good, and I do have a recipe of sorts, but I haven't made it in the past.  I'm growing a lot of edible flowers this year, so I should have a good variety to choose from, each with its own flavors, and then maybe I can choose a favorite.  It is unlikely that I will ever live in a climate where I can successfully grow real capers, and we can't afford them at the store, so I have my fingers crossed.

I'm finding myself somewhat baffled, also, by the sporadic germination going on in the beet and daikon areas.  I have about 8 daikon that are just growing like mad, and they're all clustered together in this one little section of their designated growing area.  Same with the beets.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why the other seeds around and near them are not germinating.  However, I am a big believer in Darwin, and I will keep seeds from these few, these proud, these survivors, because clearly these seeds have what it takes to survive the harsh conditions in which they find themselves.  I feel like I need to do a Stephen Colbert fist pump now.  I'll bet seeds are much happier in California.  Damn this weather.

Let's see.  My son keeps snacking on herbs before they've really had a chance to grow.  He is especially partial to sage and thyme, although the various mint plants are taking some hits, which is fine because you can't kill mint once it's there.  Raw, straight off the plant.  Am I the only one who finds this odd?

(In other good news, the kid is now entirely diaper free!  Yay!  It took a while to get him off the night diaper, but we let him set his own timeline and do it when he felt ready, and it's worked like a charm.  It's so cute when he wakes up all sleepy-eyed to go potty in the middle of the night and then demands a "huggle."  You can have a huggle anytime, kid.)

Operation Shubbery is also coming along grandly.  I don't know if I mentioned before, but when we bought this house, there was very little in the way of shrubbery or shade trees.  Our gigantic hounds promptly killed off the backyard grass, too.  And last summer we baked.  No shade, bare dirt, white house--our backyard was a fucking convection oven.  This year, we put rosa rugosa all along the south fence (that's where most of the wind comes from, and the roses should look good and offer some wind protection).  We also installed three baby trees--no, four.  Three paper birch and a black walnut, though they're all just one-year-old saplings right now.  Along the back of the house, we have put two rose bushes and two blueberry bushes and we're going to add one red-twig dogwood.  My husband has cut sod out of the places where we have the vegetables and the new flower beds and installed the sod in the backyard.  The dogs are sequestered in a portion of the yard.  They have shelter there and very nice shade, and when we are back there with them to mind that they keep out of the veggies patches and refrain from eating the rose bushes, we let them out to roam around the backyard, but so far the sod is living and looks good.  I am really hoping that between the grass, the new bushes (which are admittedly still small) and the sunflower forest we're going to plant, this year won't be quite so bakey back there.  It was truly intolerable last year.  Next year, we are going to put in several more lilacs.  For one thing, we need some screening in the front yard.  We live right across the street from the elementary school, and I often find myself groggily watering my rhubarb in pajamas and cursing at squirrels, and the kids don't need to see that.  For another thing, we need to screen that giant damned propane tank in the back yard.  We have one new lilac there this year, but we really need two to properly screen it so that we can enjoy our flower beds and corn field without having to look at that hulking sign of dependence on fossil fuels that are not only unsustainable but also originate largely in countries whose governments I don't particularly wish to support.  God, I hate the propane.  I love that my cook stove is gas, yes, because electric stoves are stupid (unless it's one of those super induction stoves that I covet so, as if such a thing were ever going to be financially within reach for us), but I hate everything about our heating system.  We have taken note that we need more wood this year, and we will get it and burn it and try to get off the Saudi teat, but damn. 

People, right now, and this is no joke, the plants are eating up all of my available free time.  I even do things with them (repotting, watering, what have you) while I'm watching Stewart and Colbert.  I feel like I am eating, breathing, and sleeping dirt.  It's not entirely awesome, and I'm ready to just get all the little babies planted and get it all mulched so that I can occasionally take a breather.  Bleh.  But official last frost date here is Memorial Day (sure, it could frost after that, but you have to bet that it won't--the only month frost is truly unlikely here is July), so a lot of things can't really go out until then.  I may well die before then.  And now I'm all frantic because I'm actually going to be gone on Memorial Day weekend, and not much will get done (we're going to Austin, TX--my son, me, and my mom).  I alternate between feeling like there's only so much I can do and it will all get done eventually, if not in the most ideally timely manner, and freaking out because it's not all already done now. 

Oh, I need to get some pictures up, don't I?  Eh, when I get back from Austin, I'll figure out how to get the pictures from camera to computer, I promise. 

Anyway, I'll be writing more when things get a bit more sane around here. 

I just wrote several paragraphs flaying some idiotic bitch that I randomly saw on TV today, but then I lost interest.  Yes, she was an idiot.  She was an idiot of a variety that I have met very commonly, namely the idiot who thinks that having friends who are gay and/or Hispanic wins her the Tolerance Merit Badge, despite the fact that said friends grew up in similar conditions, were similarly educated, read the same books, and hold entirely the same political opinions as she does.  Because diversity is all about the skin color or sexual orientation.  Right.  Idiot. 

But then, as I said, I just lost interest.  Idiots are a dime a dozen.  She was certainly not an exceptional idiot--half the college students in Missoula think exactly the same way (and the other half are too drunk to notice such a subtlety as someone's race).  So.  Let's pass her over for more interesting and non-idiotic topics.

Namely!  The asparagus!  It hath risen!  So, fuck you, Californian asparagus!  It's nothing against California or its asparagus, but I'm so excited that the asparagus I tediously planted and laboriously tended last year is coming up this year.  As yet, the stalks are barely peeking above ground, but we will actually be able to harvest and eat some of this year's crop.  Sweet mother Mary!

Oh, and the radicchio overwintered very nicely, and we harvested our first radicchio today!  Hurrah for fresh greens (or reds, as the case may be).  They are calling out to me for some bacon and cream, because nothing enhances healthful greens like a giant dose of heart attack.  Yum.

I don't know if I told you, but I developed an elaborate garden plan this year to milk as many nutrients out of our backyard as possible.  First, there are the cool-weather, spring things like peas and fava beans and spinach.  We basically turned our entire garden space over to these things with the understanding that they will be mostly kaput by the time we need to begin insertion of nightshades (tomato, pepper, eggplant).  In other words, we expect to have approximately one gazillion peas.  The first couple of weeks after planting, we had terrible weather with snow and lots of freezing, and the peas refused to sprout, and I had begun to despair that, as so often in the past, all my plans had come to nought.  But they sure the hell are sprouting now.  We have rows and rows of peas (only two rows of favas, because we do love favas, but last year they failed miserably, and we couldn't see giving a lot of space to something that failed so completely).  We have Alaska bush peas, Green Arrow, Blue Pod Capucijner, and god knows what else--name a variety of pea, and we likely have it sprouting out there.  Some will get frozen.  Some will get dried.  Many will be eaten right there in the garden.  Yum.

The spinach is going nuts!  The kale!  The daikon!  I am so pleased.  Despite the batty weather, things are going according to plan. 

We did also get some tomatoes this year that are supposed to have some cold hardiness.  Specifically, we have Beaverlodge, Oregon Spring, and Stupice tomatoes.  All of those do need protection from frost but should otherwise be OK in the cold.  I'm a little skeptical.  I learned to garden primarily in Arkansas, and the heat and humidity down there just make this a much different ballgame.  We did bite the bullet and go ahead and plant the Oregon Spring seedlings, though, and so far they look fine.  We're also putting in the potatoes.  Ack!  The potatoes!  What a fiasco!

See, my parents have recently purchased 5 acres where they are building a new house, and I had received permission to plant my potatoes on their land, so I ordered....ohhhh...about 27 pounds of seed potatoes.  That's actually 27 different varieties, one pound each.  I got them from Ronniger's, a source I highly recommend.  I have every color of potato known to man, I'm fairly sure, and I believe we have three different varieties of purple potato (my favorite!).  As it turns out, the water is a long, long way from being hooked up at my parents' new house (the city is dragging their feet--long story), so if I planted the potatoes there, I'd have no way to water them and so would have to just pray for rain everyday.  So, we planted them here.  It's going to be tight to get everything in this year.

I thought earlier that I should list all the varieties of veggies that we're growing to give you a sense of the scale of the enterprise here, but I realized that that was a bad idea.  We have more than 20 varieties of tomatoes alone.  Hell, we probably have more than 40 varieties of tomato, and then there's the peppers and the eggplant and the potatoes and the brassicas!  The brassicas! 

Perhaps I can give you a sense of the stupid overreaching of my plan by telling you we have two different kinds of sesame (kin, which is tan, and kuro, which is black).  Four kinds of scallions, in addition to the chives, shallots, leeks, and onions.  Three types of kale.  Two types of salsify.  Salsify, for chrissakes! 

Lord, I cannot wait.  It's all so delicious. 

OH!  OH!  I have to tell you about this new book I got.  Obviously, since I do the home canning, I am always on the lookout for good cookbooks for that activity.  Canning is not a subject that gets a lot of play in contemporary cookbooks, as you can imagine.  I suppose it is out of style, but it's really something you need a good cookbook for since it is really one of the most scientific and potentially hazardous of all kitchen tasks.  You can't half-ass it when you're dealing with pH and pressure--it's serious business.  Anyway, so I happened upon this book called Pickles to Relish.  It was written by a scientist/home canner who apparently is inhabited by a semi-fictitious alter ego known as "Jamlady."  And both of them are serious.  The first part is a rant about the failures of modern education, the failures of modern society, and a call for a return to the art and science of home pickling.  It gave me goosebumps.  I mean, she is preaching to the converted, but I was so pleased to know that someone (anyone!  even a questionably mentally ill woman!) else thinks this way.  I have no named alter ego, yet I have long felt crazy and isolated by my pickle-making.  It isn't just a hobby, dammit.  It's a way of life!  God, I love crazy pickle-making ladies.  Maybe later this summer I'll have another contest to give away some pickles. 

Also, later this summer, I'm going to start getting with some recipes and processing and storage information for all the vegetables. 

What are you saving up for? 
Submitted by Star. 

A farm. 

That probably comes as little surprise to anyone.  We'd like between 5 and 10 acres on which to produce tons of delicious food, some of which we will sell at farmer's market and some of which we will sell at our little farm stand/bakery/jammery/picklery.  And, of course, the rest of it, we'll just eat.

Picklery?

I guess if I'm going to run for president, I should start saving up for that, too.  Ha.

What fruits and vegetables are in season where you live?  Have you incorporated them into your recipes?

Haha.  Well, I live in a somewhat chilly part of Idaho, which (for all you foreigners) is one of the northern states.  What this means is that we're already getting pretty regular frosts.  My husband has gone around the garden, harvesting what he can, and then killing it all off with such glee that I'm a little shocked.  For now, we are sheltering some of the tomato plants under tarps at night, as the frosts are not heavy frosts, but it won't keep up much longer.  To that end, we harvested (within the past couple of days):

• About 45 pounds (say, 20 kg) of green tomatoes and several pounds of ripe ones (red, orange, yellow, pink).
• About 35-40 pounds (say, 17 kg) of tomatillos.
• Three more pumpkins and 2 more butternut squash.
• Five grocery sacks full of various capsicum/peppers/chiles/whatever you want to call them.  We have poblanos, some kind of sweet Italian long pepper, pepperoncini, a smattering of Thai hot chiles, and some other things that look like jalapenos but are not.  Anyway, tons of chiles! 
• Several cilantro plants that we allowed to go to seed (and are now drying for coriander).  Ditto some dill and fennel.  Like we need more fucking dill seed.
• About 5 pounds (a little over 2 kg, no?) of green beans.
• Six gourds.
• Three errant strawberries that my son attacked with zeal.  The strawberries and peas have been his favorite things, at least until we started getting tomatoes.
• Five or six more onions and a couple heads of garlic.  I don't know where they came from, as we had already dug the onion and garlic beds a couple weeks ago.
• A big, pretty bouquet of pink carnations and yellow calendula.
• The last of the melons, most of which were underripe and not really fit for eating.
• A largish pattypan squash that T. fed to the dogs because he hates pattypan squash with an undeserved vehemence.  The last time I made them, he said (because they're cute, and I mainly grew them because they're cute, I guess, and I thought my son would like them, which he does):  "OH, SO PRETTY!  There, I said it.  Now, I'm going to kill that plant."  In case you didn't catch it, the part in caps was not only said in English, it was said in very, very bitter English.  Dude, it's just a squash.  Why you hatin, hater?

Additionally, we still have broccoli, kale, turnips, rutabaga, radicchio, parsley, cilantro, the aforementioned tomatoes that we are covering, butter lettuce, salsify, carrots, upland cress, Napa cabbage, a bit of corn (yes, oddly, still corn--I don't know how it survives the temperatures, but there it is), and peas still growing.  Oh, and a few Chinese radishes and kohlrabi hanging in there, too.

And, yes, it's bloody well all finding its way into my cooking.  For example, tonight's menu:

• Lentil and chorizo chili.
• Fried green tomatoes with a hot chile relish.  (Green tomatoes, obviously, and chiles from garden)
• Potatoes cooked in freshly made salsa verde. (all of that was from the garden, even the taters)
• Steamed broccoli with a garlic-parsley butter.  (again, all from the garden)
• For dessert, plain yogurt drizzled liberally with peach honey.  Peach honey is serious business, man. 

I also canned 3.5 quarts of the salsa verde and 6 pints of the hot chile relish.  I froze whole poblanos and tomatillos for winter use (mm, poblanos rellenos!).  Over the course of the next few days, there will be a canning and freezing frenzy.  There will be green tomato relish (the ONLY thing to serve with catfish and hush puppies), green tomato mincemeat (for yummy pie), pickled peppers, pepper slaw, red jalapeno jelly, chile chowchow, a batch of green tomato pickles, green tomato cake (no, I haven't tried it before, and T. is highly skeptical, but we're giving it a go), and more salsa verde (much more--I've only done about half of the tomatillos).  I'm also going to the farmer's market on Saturday for apples and whatever else is still around--I'm hoping for some tomatoes and plums, but we'll see.

Now, Zack has asked why I make so many pickle/relish kinds of things.  There are several answers.  For one thing, my family eats a lot of damn pickles.  We have about 5 jars of pickles and relish open in the fridge at any given time, and we eat about 2 jars of pickles per week.  My husband, see, is Japanese.  To him, "meal" essentially equals "rice + pickles and maybe some miso soup if you've got it."  While I was in Japan, I really grew to appreciate the presence of sour at every meal.  And my son loves them, all of them from pickled beets and carrots to my homemade sauerkraut and kimchi.  Current open jars include:  marinated zucchini, mixed pickles with curry spice, turnips and radishes with a shoyu-sesame brine, cucumber dills, pepperoncini, and one jar of fairly basic cucumber-pepper-onion relish.  That's good eats, there.

For another thing, pickling is a practical way to store mass quantities of vegetables, such as we have.  The various pickling processes allow food to be stored long-term without any refrigeration or other energy use (er, well, not kimchi--we keep that in the fridge, as I don't want to heat it to seal it).  They just sit happily in their jars in the basement until we come to devour them.  They can sit that way, if they are properly sealed, for a couple of years, really, though they won't last that long here.  It is easy to seal them, too, as pickles do not need to be sealed under pressure; the brines are enough to keep them safe to eat without the high heat of the pressure canner.  Pressure canners scare me a little, and the thought of botulism scares the hell out of me, particularly since we live a good hour's drive from a hospital, and my son is very young and would not be able to tell me if he was having onset of botulism-like symptoms. 

So, we pickle.  And we make relish.  And we eat them more like side dishes than like condiments.  Ooooh, yummeh.

Rather, I pickle.  It sure wasn't T who was on his feet in the damn kitchen for 6 hours today.  Nor is it T who is here right now contemplating putting the green beans in the Crock-Pot and trying to figure out what the hell to do with the tomatoes that are littering my counters.  They are in various stages of ripeness, not enough to can.  Hmmm.  What's a girl to do with great, delicious bounty?  Hmmm...green beans and tomatoes...with coriander...ooh, methinks I've got a plan. 

Look, guys.  I know I only have a "job" part time and the rest of the time I am supposed to be a housewife.  In my capacity as a housewife and mom, I will gladly:

• Continue in my capacity as Chief Financial Officer of our family, keeping track of funds, deciding how best to disburse funds, staying on top of the bills so our electricity doesn't get shut off and all that shit.  I hate it, but I'll take care of it.
  
• Be the nurse, do triage, apply Neosporin liberally.
• Cuddle on demand.
• Provide you with an endless supply of tasty, nutritious meals and snacks.  Seriously, do you guys never get full?  What the fuck?  When that kid gets to be a teenager, we're going to need a second mortgage.
• Keep the laundry done.
• Do the gardening and canning and the whole laying in of supplies for the dreaded winter bit.
  
• Stay on top of the interminable maintenance projects, from fixing the cute pop-up book he ripped AGAIN to nailing the top bar back on the gate because SOMEONE didn't do it properly the first time. 
  
• Write to your family in Japan, despite how awkward they make me feel and how few kanji I can remember.  I will similarly keep on top of other obligatory correspondence.  I will also write my terse, sarcastic letters to the utility companies who have failed to do some part of their jobs.
• Make all your appointments like I'm some kind of secretary and file all the immigration paperwork and whatnot.  Because I live to fill out government forms and talk to receptionists.
• Take care of our very needy pets.
• Teach our son to read, to discriminate marigolds from calendula and blueberries from huckleberries, to say please and thank you, lug all 49 pounds of our son around when he gets tired of walking, help him build his rocket so that he can go to the moon, spend whole afternoons collecting rocks and making bird feeders from pine cones and peanut butter.
  

However, we need to get clear on something.  I AM NOT YOUR PERSONAL FUCKING MAID.  Your shoes do not belong in the doorway for all and sundry to trip over them.  Your dirty jeans do not go on the floor in the living room--nay, not on the floor in any room.  Your empty plate from breakfast--I believe you are as capable of cramming it in the dishwasher as I am.  And if you find yourself unable to keep your various bodily fluids off the bathroom floor, at least make a pretense of wiping them up.

Man, I am reminding myself of my mom.  See, my dad threw a lot of stuff.  He was a thrower during his angry times.  She said she got really tired of cleaning up all the crap that he threw around the house, so one time he threw a Twinkie that stuck on the wall, and she just refused to clean it up.  The Twinkie stayed on the wall for about a week.  My dad, though, being who he was, didn't even notice the fucking Twinkie once he had dispatched it across the room, and so it just sat on the wall.  Fortunately, they don't really rot, and I doubt with their chemical load they can even support molds or anything.  Anyway, my mom finally did clean it up, because at some point you have to get back to having a nice home that doesn't have Twinkies stuck to the walls. 

Can we at least pretend that we are nice people with a nice home, where there are not dirty jeans in the living room and shoes in the doorways?  Sigh.  I know I'll end up cleaning it up, but, really guys, what exactly is the problem here?  

I just need a little cooperation.  If I don't get it, I am going to lock myself in the bedroom with a fifth of gin and a stack of Agatha Christie novels, and you guys can fend for yourselves. 

Do you have a pet? What kind of pet do you own, and why did you choose it? 
Submitted by Brendz.  

Well, my family is what you might call a pet family.  We've had pets of one kind and another my whole life.  Currently, my parents have two dogs (a neurotic mutt and a very mellow Lab) and two llamas (one of whom is almost certainly a minion of Satan). 

Even in Japan, I had a cat.  That cat now lives with my in-laws in the boondocks in Saitama Prefecture. 

When we got this house and knew we were going to be settling down for a while, we knew we had to have pets.  My son has always been around my parents' animals and loves them, so we went and got a couple of dogs from an animal shelter immediately upon moving into this house.  They are XTREME puppies.

The black one was called Alice at the shelter, but my son decided to put a D on the front, so now her name is D'Alice, though usually people spell it "Dallas."  As if I'd ever name my dog after something Texan.  Anyway, the poor girl (half border collie, half black lab) spent 7 of her first 8 months of life in that animal shelter, and it shows.  She's needy.  She's very, very smart, but also prone to doing really stupid things.  Not stupid, I suppose, but things that demonstrate that she has low self-esteem or some doggie version of it.  She needs constant love and support and attention, and I think she would benefit greatly from regular doses of Stuart Smalley, but we haven't yet found a way to get that translated into dog.  Poor D'Alice frustrates me greatly.  Neediness and low self-esteem are not traits I particularly love in dogs (or people), but she is a very smart and very nice dog, very gentle with our son (who, I fear, is not always so very gentle with her) and generally a good pet.  The thing that really gets me and occasionally makes me want to throttle her is that the damn dog will not play fetch, not for love nor biscuits.  There is no enticement on earth strong enough to make her go after a ball, stick, or Frisbee.  What the fuck kind of dog doesn't play fetch?  She just sort of looks at the thrown object as if she's thinking, "Hmm.  Why do you keep throwing things?  Silly humans.  Always throwing."  She is also a very protective dog and likes to inform us loudly of any incoming threat, be it hummingbird, squirrel, or tumbleweed.  Anyway, we try to manage her by giving her constant reassurance that she is good enough, smart enough, and doggone it! people like her.  But it's never enough.  Her low self-esteem will suck the bleeding life out of us all.

The yellow one came from the same shelter, but he was only 4 months old when we got him, so he was much less traumatized by the experience.  He is half Lab and half...um...maybe Australian shepherd.  You can't tell.  He looks and acts exactly like a yellow Lab.  They're my favorite dogs, anyway, Labs.  He's going to be a giant--we're hoping he'll stop growing sometime soon.  He has just started to realize that he is now bigger and considerably stronger than poor, afflicted D'Alice, and he does not let himself get hen-pecked by her.  He is affectionate and loyal (he follows my son around all day long, like a big yellow shadow) and will play fetch as long as your arm can hold out.  He is a very low maintenance dog, except for the prodigious quantities of food and water it takes to keep him going.  Oh, and he was named by my son, and thus his name is Crunchy.  My son likes to hug him around the neck while shouting, "I like Crunchy, I like Crunchy, I like Crunchy..." right into his ear.  Like a good Lab, Crunchy is totally unfazed by this (and everything else my son does to him).  Occasionally, when Crunchy has had enough of the torment, he will run shake my son off and go lie down in the shade--unlike D'Alice, whose fear of confrontation and inability to assert herself makes her just cower and lick him in the face when she's had enough, so we have to go over there and separate my son from her and then pet her copiously to assure her that everything is just fine and that she's a good dog.

Good lord, just thinking about D'Alice is making me tired.  I keep expecting her to turn up one morning with stigmata.

This is going to be unsurprising to those of you who know and love me, but I am becoming such a paranoid freak, I am likely to build a compound and start arming myself any day now. 

Let's start from the beginning.  Back when I was pregnant, I did a lot of reading about modern-day child rearing, and there were some things that alarmed me.  Peanut allergies!  Asthma!  Childhood diabetes!  Good christ!!  I knew the whole having-a-child deal was fraught, but it was all just too much.  And I got to thinking, because I do that sort of thing, and I thought that perhaps, since these terrifying conditions are mainly on the rise in the overly industrialized West (and, to some extent now, Japan)--maybe it's the chemicals.  Maybe?  I know some doctors attribute the rise in allergies to the overly sanitized state of our environments here, but maybe it isn't just that they're sanitized of all the natural dirt and bacteria, but maybe it's also the products used to sanitize them.

I have never been one to be overly ...shit, there's no good way to say that.  I am tidy, and I certainly keep the dishes washed and all that, but I don't get too anal about it.  I am not, Fruitlands-style, keeping charts of which sponge gets used to clean what kind of mess.  My cleaning strategy relies on a good measure of sloth and a general lack of fear regarding germs.

Obviously, though, when I had no children, it was much easier.  For one thing, a 2 year old is just messy--he doesn't put away his toys by himself, he spills his yogurt on the floor all the time, he doesn't always make it to the potty in time.  And also I didn't lick counters or floors, so if some E. coli was persisting there, the odds were slim that I would ingest it as I'm just much more fastidious about what goes in my mouth than my son is.

I found myself with a need to balance a need for some order of cleanliness and sanitation on the one hand with our need for clean indoor air to respirate in on the other, particularly for my dear son's young lungs.

Did you know the EPA estimates that, even if you live in a polluted New Jersey city, the air inside your home is 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside?  Think about it for a minute.  If you live in the country, where the outdoor air is less polluted, the number rises to 3-10 times more polluted.  Groovy.

Once you begin this process of detoxifying your home, though, all hell breaks loose.  You have eliminated one toxic contaminant from your home, only to find more in what you previously thought was a harmless product.  To make matters worse, my friends, we cannot afford to buy most of the enviro products.

Fortunately, we are finding (with many, many thanks to Ellen Sandbeck's truly enjoyable and inspiring book, Organic Housekeeping, and also to Martha Stewart's "homekeeping" book in which she surprisingly recommends cleaning products and strategies that are as light on the earth as possible--who knew?) that in many cases homemade cleaning products are often much, much cheaper than their freaky, toxic counterparts. 

The primary cleaning supplies in our house are now baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and borax.  These clean everything from our windows and mirrors to our laundry to our dishes--and borax even acts as an effective ant poison (we only kill ants when there is no other way to keep them out of some food that they shouldn't be in--otherwise, we're pretty much pro-ant).  None of these emit toxic fumes.  Hydrogen peroxide and borax can cause some gastrointestinal discomfort and possibly vomiting if actually ingested--I imagine the vinegar could too, if you really drank a lot.  In other words, to the best of the available knowledge, none of these things will kill any of us, even if accidentally ingested, or even make us very sick.  And they cost hardly anything at all. 

And our air fresheners?  Boston ferns, people.  A few chrysanthemums.  Ah, the sweet smell of clean, fresh, natural air.  No pernicious chemicals polluting our precious bodily fluids.

It also turns out that vinegar and hydrogen peroxide used in tandem (first one, then the other) kill as many or more bacteria (on, say, foods, countertops, and diaper changing tables) than standard disinfectants.  More importantly, bacteria do not develop resistance to this combination, as they are developing to triclosan and other antimicrobials.  You can harvest lettuce from your garden, spray it with vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, and put it on the table, reasonably confident that it will not give you E. coli.

We are going to be gradually eliminating most other cleaning products from our house (with the addition of Murphy's Oil Soap, as we have hardwood floors).  I now make our own laundry detergent, for roughly 3 cents per load.  I will start making our own, chlorine-free dishwasher detergent when we run out of the freaky chemical detergent. 

Now, we have to start working on the shampoo and toothpaste and all that. 

Here's an ethical dilemma for you good people:  We have typically, through clever combinations of coupons and rebates, got most of our personal hygiene products for free or very close to it.  I am very good at this.  It's all legal--don't worry.  But the question is this:  I have typically amassed great surpluses, particularly of toothpaste, and when I have much more than we need or could use in a reasonable amount of time, I donate it to a food bank or to a women's shelter, and that has always been much appreciated at both places.  However, since I now believe that many of these products contain things that I don't want to inhale/ingest/touch, is it ethical to foist them off on unsuspecting people?  I keep thinking that it's fine, because certainly not everyone shares my concern about their precious bodily fluids, and better to take a risk with phthalates than with dental caries and infection, right?  Right?  I don't know.  If I don't want to expose myself and my own family to it, then is it wrong to expose others?  Bearing in mind, of course, that we absolutely cannot afford to donate the natural products, much as we would like to.  Is this a stupid question?  This is truly one of those things that only neurotic people with too much time on their hands would worry about.

I have just come in from the garden.  I am muddy and sweaty, and my hair is an absolute wreck.  But the garden is gorgeous, gorgeous enough for the both of us.

The first set of beets are almost big enough to go in the pickle jars.  The parsley has somehow, almost overnight, become a shrub, so tall and bushy.  The peas are making a comeback--I don't think we had been watering them enough, and it has been brutally hot and dry, two things peas are not especially fond of.  The miscellaneous squash and melon plants are all sporting lovely flowers and attracting hordes of butterflies.  We have, unfortunately, lost track of which types of squash and melons we planted where, so we just keep examining them and trying to guess what they'll turn out to be.  We do know that the Japanese bitter melons (niga uri) are there in the back, and they have apparently forgiven us for letting them dry out a few times in the beginning and now they are doing well (they are typically grown in Okinawa, so I'm not sure what we were thinking planting them here, except that growing them is the only way we will ever get to eat goya champur again). 

Okra--listen, fellas, I know you all had a hard time with that spat of cold weather we had shortly after I planted you, but I'm pulling for you.  Anything you need to produce some fine, fine okra for pickling--anything--you just let me know, and you can have it.  You're growing well and looking healthy now, but we need you to produce.  Probably, the way the weather has been, you have another couple of months, so we're not worried yet.  But we really need some okra.  You have to earn your keep around here.

Eggplants--hey, guys, I'm sorry that my son dumped a chocolate milkshake on you when you were just baby seedlings.  You have really rallied since then.  I'm impressed.  Even if you never do quite make it to fruiting, we still love you for all you've accomplished so far. 

This one mysterious squash/melon plant (we're not sure what it is) is taking over.  It appears to be on a mission to rule the house and garden.  It grows 3-5 inches every day.  There is finally tiny fruit appearing on it--maybe pumpkin?  Watermelon?  Who knows?  But I'm sure it will be delicious.

Hi, Vic and the grumpy old man who lives on the other side of us!  How you doing?  I understand you guys are retirees and have a lot of free time on your hands.  I also understand that you come from a generation that really valued the aesthetics of vast expanses of unbroken green lawn.  I understand.

However, have you noticed that it does not rain here?  June, the month that was supposed to be our "rainy season," brought nary a drop.  We're having a bit of a drought.  I'm guessing, judging by the astounding verdancy of your lawns and the fact that your sprinklers are sprinkling at all times in some portion of the country club you call a yard, you didn't notice.

Sadly, though, this is a drought, and by all accounts, it is a serious one.  Yet you are dumping hundreds of gallons of potable water on ...GRASS?  Do you not think it might be better to save some of that water for later for, maybe, DRINKING?  Or for raising food, maybe? 

Listen, guys, I know you're from other places, places that got more rain, and you're used to being surrounded by green.  I am not opposed to the color green, not at all.  It's a nice color.  Our lawn is brown because grass--at least this kind of grass--goes dormant during droughts.  This is a drought.  Hence, the lawn is dormant.  Should it ever rain here, it might come back to life.  It might not, but it doesn't matter because we're ripping it all out and replacing it with two kinds of plants:  those that are drought-tolerant and those that provide us with food.  There is some happy overlap between those two categories (would you like to see a Venn diagram, perhaps?), but any plants that we plant for the sole purpose of ornamentation must survive the drought with little help from us.

Why?  Well, it seems silly to throw our ever-dwindling supply of potable water down in a vain attempt to recreate the scenery of places where it rains.  This is not England; this is not the Deep South.  Nay, this is not even Minnesota, Vic.  This is Idaho, and if you look around, the native vegetation is--well, yes, much of it is ugly, but it is also willing to suffer the slings and arrows of the hot, dry conditions in which it finds itself living.

Aren't you guys supposed to be from the "waste not, want not" generation?  Didn't your moms make, like, crosstitch samplers and all that?  Didn't you survive the Depression and live to lecture us kids on our wasteful ways?  Am I getting this right, or is that a totally different generation?  Because I'm looking at your sprinklers and thinking you are some wasteful motherfuckers.

Yes, I know, our lawn is hideous.  The one part is all vegetable garden, which is starting to look reasonably nice with all the things coming into bloom (and wasn't I clever to put the scarlet-blooming green beans just there?  They look so nice!).  The other part, I know, the dogs have trampled to death, and we haven't watered at all, and I know the one dog chews up everything so there are miniscule bits of children's toys scattered all through our forlorn turf.  And the front yard--I don't know why my husband planted popcorn at random points in the front yard, and I'm also not sure how that gigantic squash plant (we think maybe it's pumpkin, but it's hard to say) got there, but I blame that on my husband as well.  The front yard is somewhat green, owing to our watering of the random popcorn and pumpkin plants that share the space.  Oh, and yes, that is...well, we're not sure.  Apparently, my son planted birdseed there, so...sunflowers, maybe?  Yes, it's an odd place to have sunflowers coming up, but won't it look festive?  Anyhow, sorry all around about the general appearance of our outdoor spaces.  We have plans.  Those plans include the installation of trees (I'm guessing the former owners of our house had some religious objection to shade, preferring instead to simply bake inside the house as the sun beats down like an angry god.  Did you know that in our backyard, in that shadeless space where the afternoon sun radiates between the white walls of the house and the white walls of the garage, there in that space, the temperatures have been around 120 degrees Fahrenheit of late?  Yes, that hot.  This grass we have here is not made for those conditions).  We promise--we're going to do some landscaping, and it will look nice.  There are alternatives to the expanses of turf.

Also, and I hate to be a nag, but when you mow your lawns, we do not really love the fumes.  Yes, the gas fumes.  From your riding mowers.  You both appear to be in good condition for your age, and your lawns, while large, are just lawns and not really acreage, so I think that perhaps the mini-tractors are unnecessary.  It would be nice, if you're going to waste all the water, if you could not also be simultaneously polluting the air and depleting yet another limited natural resource. 

We won't even mention the bags of Agent Orange and the fact that both of your wives have had cancer, because that would be tactless.  Really tactless. 

I also won't mention that I apparently have a severe allergy--not severe enough to require me to stock EpiPens, sadly--to whatever type of grass you have.  Every time you mow, and especially on days when you both mow, I can hardly breathe at all.  Still I can't expect you to change your ways just for my health.  Thankfully, I have the choice either to suffer along without breathing or dose myself up with medication.  Fun!  It's true that I am also allergic to, for example, lilacs, but that allergy is short lived and goes away entirely once they stop blooming.  The grass thing will continue as long as you keep watering it, apparently.  It's a good thing they have generics of the medications.

Hey, did you see my nasturtiums blooming there?  Pretty, aren't they?  They're very drought-tolerant, although we are having to water them a bit in a drought this severe.  Incidentally, they are also fully edible. 

But seriously, guys, I wish you would reconsider the lawn thing.  It's a pity to see all that land and all that water and all those chemicals used for nothing that will ever amount to anything at all.  It would be ideal if you could grow food.  If not that, then at least something that didn't require the constant watering and the profusion of chemicals to maintain.  It'd be great if I wasn't allergic to it as well, but that's asking a lot, I know.

Now, hey, would you like some zucchini?

What is your home decorating style, and how has it changed over time? Do you have plans to redecorate? 
Submitted by enSue.

It's funny.  We bought a house in February, and I have elaborate plans to decorate it.  And we started.  We did some painting.  Laid out some floor plans.  Got some curtains. 

But now it's gardening season, and the weather is fantastic, and we're outside pretty much all the time anyway.  The inside has all these half-finished projects (and many never started...and very little furniture), but we don't care.  We're busy.  We have a vast veg garden planned and a wildflower garden as well--and the shrubs need pruning, and the berries need transplanting, and the dogs need constant supervision or else they will just eat the entire house, and there is fertilizing and......it's endless. 

As individuals and as a family, we're happier outside than in.  We're dirty most of the time, yes, and our hair bleaches out (well, not my husband's which remains more or less black all the time).  We often smell of the dogs and of llama manure.  We do clean up, you know, on Sundays, but otherwise, we're outside people, and the inside of the house has largely been abandoned.

Now, if you want to know about my yard decorating style, we can talk.