32 posts tagged “the good life”

What does your flag mean to you?

It means it's my birthday.

Well, Flag Day means that anyway.  Seriously, what has Betsy Ross done for anyone lately?  Flag Day is all about me.

This year:  34.  White cake filled with peach jam and frosted with an almond buttercream (I made it) and generously sprinkled by the kid with star sprinkles.  Salmon cooked on the grill at my parents' house.  New Mexico sparkling wine of some sort.  Top Chef cookbook received and read cover to cover.   Husband's birthday is two days after mine (well, 2 days and 6 years); my parents gave him a gun.  Now, obviously, we are never moving back to Japan.  It's funny because my husband and I talked about him getting a tattoo, and he was all, "Oh, I can't get a tattoo because then I can't go in the public baths and hot springs because they'll think I'm a yakuza."  Sure, he can't get a tattoo, but he can get a gun?  WTF?

Anyway, it was good. 

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. 

How are your Saturday nights different now than they were five years ago?

In about every way possible.  Let's see...5 years ago...I was 28, my boyfriend (now husband) was 22.  We didn't live together yet, and he was still in the Jieitai (Japan Ground Self-Defense Force).  We only really saw each other on weekends, and he would come and stay with me on weekends, then live on base during the weeks. 

Typically on Saturdays we would go somewhere, usually just to Nagoya but sometimes over to Osaka, and walk around and check people out and talk.  Then we'd nearly always go to some izakaya and eat a load of food and drink ourselves to oblivion (that is 2 drinks for T, *somewhat* more for me) and then (barely) catch the last train home (or not--love hotels ROCK) and then crash on my futon.  Neither of us individually made a huge amount of money, but we were both without much in the way of obligation either.  T is a frugal fellow by nature, so usually the wild spending (love hotels, etc.) was on my part, but still, we spent a lot of time out of the apartment, being sort of aimless, drinking and doing whatever we wanted.  Some weekends we'd have parties for his army friends at my apartment, in which case his friend Ichiro would inevitably end up sleeping at my place and turning the air conditioner to "arctic."  Ha.  Ichiro!  I'd almost forgotten him.  In all my life, I have met few people more utterly boring than Ichiro, but I swear to you, he will make a good husband and father someday.  Any interested ladies out there?

Anyway, so that was 5 years ago.  Today, we're married and we have a 3 year old.  We also don't have much money anymore and we have major financial obligations (mortgage!  woot!).  We have these bizarre work schedules that generally mean that we don't see each other, let alone get drunk and sleep together.  We live in the middle of nowhere in a very Mormon part of Idaho (my husband recently joked that while my son and I are away on a trip in May he's going to go to a strip bar, and I had to remind him that there are no strip bars), which means that even if we had a babysitter, there's nowhere really to go.  We spend our nights almost always in the house.  If the kid is in bed and we both happen to be off work, generally we watch a movie while he scratches my back.  That's not a euphemism of any kind--I have a very itchy back.  Probably dry skin, I know.  We might each have a beer, and if we're feeling particularly spunky, I might boil up some edamame to go with it. 

I know how it all sounds--pretty pathetic and very senior citizen.  But it's not.  Don't feel bad for us.  We're both quite satisfied with it, happy even.  We are exactly the people for whom Netflix was invented.

If you could go back and change one thing you've done in your life, what would it be?
Submitted by Devinoid.

What is with these questions?  They're big on the deaths and regrets lately.  I've never understood this particular type of question.  If I changed something I had done in my life--anything--I would be a different person than I am today, in a different place.  Why would I want that?  I like who I am, I have a fantastic marriage, great friends, a lovely extended family, my own house with two unteachable hounds living in the backyard, a good relationship with my parents, and a son who is a really terrific person whom I enjoy spending time with.  So, if I went back and changed something that I've done, any choice I've made, I wouldn't be here now.  Maybe the alternate ending in that Choose-Your-Own-Adventure would be nice, too, but I like this one.  Besides, you never know when you're going to end up in the dungeon of some evil lord.

I do, however, often wish that my dad had lived long enough to meet his grandson.  Nothing would have made my father happier--or it might be better to say that meeting him would have been the only real happiness in my dad's life, since he felt he fucked things up with me pretty badly, and he would have had a second chance with his grandson.  And my son would have loved my dad's singing and bizarre sense of humor.  I sing a lot of crazy songs to my son, but I can't remember the words to "One-Eyed Flying Purple People-Eater" which my dad used to sing to me all the time.  My stepdad is a fantastic grandpa, too, absolutely, but my son and my father would have really hit it off.  Admittedly, I kind of all around wish my dad hadn't died, but I never wished so more than when I had my baby.

But, see, there again.  It is possible that if my first husband had not been a completely self-absorbed prick when my dad died and we went back for the funeral and everything, I might not have divorced him when I did (oh, it would have happened someday, but to be a self-absorbed prick at the funeral of your wife's father is just unacceptable and kind of pushed me over the edge)--and if I hadn't divorced him when I did, I wouldn't have flown off to Japan just when I did, and I wouldn't have been in that street in Numazu that sunny day in March, and I wouldn't have met the T and had this gorgeous son...

I'm going to stop short of saying something cloying like "everything happens for a reason," but you can't go back and change anything.  The bad choices and mistakes had just as much influence over where I ended up, so we have to leave them in there to get here. 

Or, as Rascal Flatts says, "God bless the broken road that led me straight to you."  Yick.

Well, instead of arguing that whatever isn't elitist, I'm just going to whip out my huevos and admit it:  I'm a fucking elitist.  And this is a typical day for my elitist little family.

7:30 a.m.:  My adorable son begins shouting at me:  "Wake up.  It's light outside.  Get up, mama."  I went to bed at 3:30 a.m., having had to work the night before, but I do, in fact, get up.  He promptly strips naked and begins streaking through the house shouting random things such as, "DOOM DOOM DOOM" and "Gir!  Come here, Gir!" while I shuffle bleary-eyed into the kitchen to nuke the last of yesterday's coffee and make a fresh pot.

7:45 a.m.:  Some coffee has been drunk, and the kid has his sippy cup of milk.  He refuses to wear clothing, preferring to wrap himself in a blanket and haul it around and get it dirty all day.  Fine.  Whatever.  I shuffle bleary-eyed down to the basement to attend to the matter of heat.  Thankfully, it did not snow again last night, and I do not have to do any shoveling this morning.  Shoveling out the driveway would, anyway, have to wait until after breakfast.  You need fuel for that shit.

8:00 a.m.:  The fire has gone so cold, I can't even get the coals going again.  Damn.  I guess I wasn't attentive enough at "banking" them last night.  Start new fire.  Adorable, naked son rams a giant stick into the neat little kindling pyramid I've built, destroying the fire.  *sigh*  Order him to go play with his Play-Doh and restart fire.

8:15 a.m.:  With fire raging away and providing us with nearly free heat, I stumble out into the frigid, frigid yard to attend to the mutts.  They are hungry, and their water has frozen.  I deign to pet them as I set their bowls before them.  I go into the kitchen and retrieve a large bucket full of very hot water with which to thaw their water.  I take a few minutes to ponder the snow-covered vegetable garden and deeply ponder just how many tomato plants we can reasonably fit back there.  I reckon it's a lot.  Then I realize I'm freezing my ass off and my footwear is unsuitable for standing in the snow.  Back to the house.

8:30 a.m., give or take:  Start cooking breakfast, now with second cup of coffee.  Grits and eggs today, with some yogurt and melon.  The melon is from last year's garden and was a particularly delicious specimen.  The flavor retention of frozen melon is good, we're finding, but the texture is somewhat lacking.  Anyway, it's nice to have melon in winter, however flaccid.  While the grits are cooking, make a round through the house to check the houseplants for water.  Hmm....the sage really needs water, and so does the fern.  The kid waters the sage (and eats some) while I water the fern.  Serve breakfast in son's Spiderman bowl, causing him to leap off the sofa with joy. 

9:00 a.m.:  Ooh, husband's home.  Smelling of dehydrated potatoes as always (it is, admittedly, better than when he used to come home smelling of salmon roe and salmon guts).  He eschews the grits, makes toast, and then does a round in which he checks that I have dealt satisfactorily with the fire and the dogs.  'S if.

9:30 a.m.:  I'm falling asleep in my chair, so I ask husband if he can possibly remain alert long enough for me to catch a wee nap.  He assents, and I go to bed but not to real sleep.  I reach a point in exhaustion at which I can no longer sleep well.  It takes days to recover from that, and I don't have days--I have an hour.  *sigh*

10:30 a.m.:  Husband goes to bed, I get up.  I remember to get meat out of the freezer for dinner--about half a kilo of deer tenderloin, to be precise.  I spend some time thinking about how I'm going to cook it, in case I need to make other preparations.  Decide on Japanese food.  Japanese venison?  I will do as Tim Gunn decrees, and make it work.

11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.:  Play with son.  We made Play-Doh sushi and built a house from Lincoln Logs, a house that lacked structural integrity to be sure.  We also decided on some of the seeds we want to order.  He is a full partner in this gardening deal, and this year he will have an entire patch to himself.  He wants peas, pumpkins, watermelons, sunflowers, radishes, tomatoes, and "peppers that aren't spicy" in his patch.  Last year he ate a couple of those Chinese hot peppers straight off the bush and a pepperoncini as well and apparently that memory stuck with him.  He wants, specifically, orange tomatoes and "biiiiiiig" pumpkins.  Alrighty.  Also, upon looking through the flower portion of the catalogs, he has decided he wants them all.  He still isn't dressed.

1:00 pm.:  I decide he should get dressed and manage to get him into underpants and a shirt, anyway.  Oh, hell, lunch?  What to do about lunch?  Well, there is brown rice and pumpkin soup left from last night, so that's what we'll have.  Heat it up, serve it.  Watch The Jungle Book while we're eating.

1:30 p.m.:  Don't finish the movie, because damn it's so sunny outside, and the temperature is approaching freezing (which means it's much warmer than it has been--we've been in the teens [Fahrenheit] lately, which would be below zero in Celsius), so we decide to go for a walk.  This entails a bundling-up process that takes nearly half an hour, as the kid likes to do as much of it by himself as possible, and it takes him longer to get his own boots on than it does if I put them on.

2:00 p.m.:  Depart for the post office and the bank.  I'm walking; he's in his wagon checking out the frosty scenery.  Winter wonderland, indeed.  Get the mail--nothing worth the trip, but nothing bad either.  Head to the bank to get cash for tomorrow (we're going to Jackson, Wyoming, tomorrow with my parents--there is a whole food store in Jackson, and we are in desperate need of provisions).  Make small talk with the bank teller, a woman I deeply distrust.  But I guess she had nice holidays.

2:30 p.m.:  The kid decides he wants to walk home.  Christ, we'll never get home.  It's nice for him to walk, but a breeze is kicking up, and I'm beginning to go all Popsicle.

4:00 p.m.:  Notice grandma and grandpa are home, so decide to stop in and visit for a while.  The visits have their ritual elements.  For example, every time we go there, the kid wants grandpa to open the gun safe and bring out the knives.  My stepdad has quite a few knives in there, and they take out each one and the kid (with help from grandpa) methodically cuts large holes in cardboard boxes.  He cuts until he decides the knife he is using is "too dull" and then they have to either sharpen it or get a new knife.  This continues until the box is shredded and all knives have been used.  Then he starts hauling out the animal calls, particularly the elk bugle which is his favorite.  Then we play a game in which he removes a cookie cutter from grandma's drawer and asks, "How do you say this in Japanese?"  Mom and grandma say, "I don't know.  How do you say that in Japanese?"  The kid says, "GAPA" (which is an unvarying answer--whatever it is, it is always GAPA, and to my knowledge, there is no such word in Japanese.  He just made it all up.) and runs off.  We chase him around, and the chase culminates in tickling him while asserting that he made that up.  Repeat, until most of the cookie cutters are scattered around the floor. 

5:30 p.m.:  Head for home, time to tend the fire and cook dinner.

5:40 p.m.:  Ack!  The fire!  It is cold, so cold.  Start it up again.  Get a real rager going and decide to stick a sweet potato in there to make yaki imo.  Yum.

5:45 p.m.:  Rifle through the freezers and pantry looking for shit to cook.  Edamame from last year's garden, yes!  Decide to make a nikujaga kind of thing with the venison, potatoes and other root veg from the garden.  Find a languishing chunk of cauliflower that needs to be cooked.  Decide to stir-fry it with sesame, chile, and katsuo bushi.  Look at the giant bunch of dried shiso, also from our garden, and decide to make shiso rice.  OK, now there's a plan.  Time to cook.

6:00 p.m.:  The kid is watching a DVD of Horton Hears a Who and guzzling hot tea.  I am chopping and guessing wildly at how much soy sauce and sugar and all of that to put in the various things I'm cooking.  But I am marveling at how much stuff we're still eating out of the garden, and I start daydreaming about next year's garden...again.  I look in the pantry to find the mugi (barley flakes) to put in the rice to make mugi gohan, and curse the fact that all of our grains are in those unlabeled plastic bags because we buy them in bulk.  They are all organic from Bob's Red Mill, but it's easier to buy them in bulk...easier, that is, if you ever bother to label the bags. 

6:45 p.m.:  Dinner's almost ready.  Husband is awake and shuffling around the house.  The kid and I head down to the basement pantry to pick out some pickles.  We opt, for this meal, for green tomato pickles and carrot pickles.  These carrot pickles in particular are really gingery and crisp, and we love them.  All homemade, all from our garden.

7:00 p.m.:  Serve dinner.  The kid keeps picking up giant chunks of the yaki imo, stuffing them into his mouth, and then belatedly realizing they are still too hot for that.  Everything is tasty, although husband thinks the green tomato pickles are weird-ish, and he is less excited about shiso than I am.  But he eats it all, and so does the kid.  The cauliflower is a hit with everyone.

8:00 p.m.:  Time for the kid's bath.  Bathtime is the province of the father.  My only role in bathtime (except in weeks when my husband is working swing shift) is helping the kid undress and ordering him to take his filthy clothes to the laundry, please.  They bathe, I nap. 

9:00 p.m.:  Awake.  It's time to read stories.  We read several stories, then he just completely crashes in my arms.  I put him gently in bed and think motherly sorts of thoughts about his angelic little face and sigh deeply.

10:00 p.m.:  Hey, time to work!  Yay! 

Feck.  Sit here until 3:00 a.m. working.  Have to get up at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow to go to Jackson.  Feck, feck, and more feck.  It's a good thing we're so elite, with our chest freezer and meat stockpile and locally grown veggies and fruits.  I mean, if I was one of those working-class people, I would surely go insane from the lack of sleep.  But now that we are "locavores" and elitists and drive a brand-new Toyota Yaris, we are feeling pretty sweet.  We're ready to oppress the proletariat. 

It is pretty cool to tend the fire, though, and it's even cooler that the stove almost entirely eliminates our use of the propane-fueled furnace.  Propane is, of course, petroleum, and I don't like to use it so much.  It's yet more awesome that I can then use the wood stove to cook parts of our dinner.  I rule.

By the way, the wood we use is all deadwood from the forest.  You can get a permit from the Forest Service to go out and cut up the dead wood that is lying around, wood that would be fuel for a forest fire if you just left it lying around, for super cheap.  No living trees were harmed to heat our home.  Thank you.

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. 

You know it has to be true, as Paula Abdul once said it. 

5 Ways My Husband and I are Total Opposites

1. Everything I know comes from books.  Nothing my husband knows does.
2. I am misanthropic but social.  He is antisocial but not misanthropic.
3. I talk nonstop.  My husband does not talk at all.
4. I'm a freakin mess all the time.  My husband is calm and ordered, without even trying.  It's disgusting.
5. I think of rice as a side dish.  He thinks of rice as a meal.

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.

So, today was my 33rd birthday.  And as we were driving into the big city to see a movie (at a movie theater, even!), we were listening to the classic rock station.  I had not yet started considering myself old, but when the classic rock station is playing songs that you can remember being released in your youth, you must consider that someone out there--not you, not your husband, certainly not your friends--thinks you are becoming classic.  Not hip and cool, but classic. 

The song was Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love."  It's not only a classic but downright iconic.  But, c'mon people.  This is the same station that was just minutes ago playing "A Horse with No Name" and "Hey, Jude."  It was 1985? 86? something when "Addicted to Love" came out.

Damn.  Classic rock.

It makes me wonder if someday my son will be watching late-night TV and there will be a commercial for an album of the greatest hits of the 1990s.  They won't be able to call it "Freedom Rock," I guess.  What would they call it--"Self-Loathing Rock"?  "Narcissism Rock"?  And there won't be hippies sitting out in front of their tie-dyed VW bus; instead, there will be "hipsters" sitting in a Starbucks somewhere shooting heroin and the soundtrack will be Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana, and the kids will laugh at how rebellious and deep we thought we were.  How funny.  Because they'll only know us as their parents and their parents' friends, and your parents and their friends are never really that cool.  We obviously never grappled with the complex emotions and radical ideas of individualism that our dear children will be grappling with. 

So, yeah, I'm 33, and I'm a total fogey.  Actually I don't feel any different from when I was 32--yesterday.  Remarkable.

Top 10 awesome things today:

10.  Talked to Zack!  Yippee!

9.  The man and I have, I think, after 2+ years of being married, finally reached an agreement about the ring issue.  I wear on the appropriate finger a ring he gave me, that my friend in Japan designed and made for me, for my birthday several years ago.  He wears no jewelry at all and would prefer to keep it that way.  We can't afford any rings anyhow.  And yet we have both thought there should be something.  I think we finally settled on what that should be.

8.  The asparagus has finally deigned to show itself.  I spent a long, hard day getting that shit in the ground, and I was beginning to fear it would never respond to my ministrations.  Finally! it has.  Altogether, our garden is rocking.  There are also many weeds growing in it that are edible, including two spinach relatives and one type of salsify.  Yum.

7.  T's parents called me from Japan to wish me happy birthday.  They have never previously done so, and they don't usually call for T's birthday either.  I seriously doubt they will call for his birthday this year either.  Anyway, it was nice of them.

6.  My mom babysat the kid for us all afternoon and evening.  My mom was thrilled; the kid was thrilled.  We were able to see a movie (in a theater!) and have dinner (sushi!) and actual conversations that were uninterrupted by shrieks and howls and requests for me to, once again, sing "mata aeru hi made."  Wow, conversation with my husband.  I had almost forgotten he was capable of speech.

5.  Sushi for dinner.  The sushi was pretty good, although the effect was somewhat dimmed by my husband's commentary:  "Why do Americans insist on putting avocado in sushi?  Why do Americans put the nori inside the roll?  This is powdered wasabi.  Do Americans put the nori inside the roll so that it doesn't stick to their teeth?  Americans are really obsessed with their teeth.  This soy sauce tastes strange."  And so forth.  Then he launched into tales of his time as a roe technician in the Alaskan salmon industry.  I would say that if you prefer not to have a large insect jump out at you, you might ought to stay away from the sujiko and ikura.  Mmmmkay.

4.  My husband totally didn't think I was insane when I launched into my theory of Japan and Japanese people.  It was less pretentious than it sounds there.  Indeed, he agreed with me and apparently came to the sudden realization that I had actually learned something during my three years there.  He denied, however, that he would be completely miserable if we returned there as he contends that he didn't care at all what other people thought of him when he lived there before, so why would he start now?  He has a point.

3.  A movie!! In a movie theater!!  With the most excellent eye candy, George Clooney, even.  What the hell, man?  How can he be so delightful and lovely and utterly perfect?  How is such a person possible?  Yes, the movie was Ocean's 13, which is--like George Clooney--stylish and--like Brad Pitt--utterly without substance.  It was fun, but I was really there for George.  My husband, less impressed with George Clooney than I am for reasons that are understandable, found the movie baffling in its vapidity.  I think if he were bisexual, he might have liked it better. 

2.  The long conversations with my husband today have demonstrated that I have not forgotten quite as much Japanese as I thought I had.  It's still there--at least, the grammar is.  I forgot some key vocabulary items, but I can still use all the various types of conditionals appropriately.  Sweet.  I so totally rule.

1.  The kid scrambled into bed with me this morning, sprawled himself out over my torso, and said, "I love you, mama."  That's the best--that's the absolute best thing ever.

And, hey, at least I'm not 35, like some of my cousins I could mention.  And at least it wasn't "Smells like Teen Spirit" on the classic rock station, sandwiched between "Three Steps" and "Crocodile Rock."  And at least the Japanese restaurant, whose katsudon really sucked, had Sapporo beer (although not shochu).

What am I "at least"-ing about?  It was a great day.  And thanks to those of you who emailed and all that--I love you guys, too.