Today, I learned that sometimes you have to just stop being hot and miserable and whiney in your dirty, hot house, and go for a boat ride with your family.

Yes, you WILL cool off, and instantly be in a better mood.

Toaster Oven Smores

You know what you can make in the toaster oven? I'll give you a hint:


Since our favorite lighter of campfires chose bedtime over smore time on this particular evening, we improvised. With heavenly results. Observe:


Maybe Emmett likes smores a little TOO much?

Memorialness

What's more fun than waking up to snow falling on Memorial Day? When it only looks like snow, but it really some strange fluffy stuff floating around the yard. I wish I could upload the video I took, just in case you weren't in the vicinity of Lambert's Cove last Saturday morning. However, I seem to have created said video in such a way that makes it impossible to upload. You live and learn.
Turns out it was the seed pods from the poplar tree, but for a few uncertain moments Emmett and I felt like we had been transported to Pandora.
There was also a really cute video of Emmett conducting the "source of fluff" investigation. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to upload it.
In the meantime, you'll have to make due with this shot of Hunter decorating the veteran's graves at the cemetary across the street.
"Thank you, Sir!"

Easter Puppy

I don't know if it's the added nutrition, or just feeling springtime in the air, but Dogwin is up to his old egg-hiding tricks.














Luckily, I noticed it before I sat down on the couch.

He also hides treats for the kids.















I'm sure it doesn't help that I introduced him to the wonders of farm fresh eggs. Shut up, it's good for him. Or maybe it's because we keep his toys in an old egg basket? Hard to say. All I know is if we leave a basket full of eggs within doggie reach, we come home to presents hidden just about everywhere. Is he saving them for later, or are they little gifts for us? it's probable he's just bored. Or trying to mess with me. But I think he's going to save me a lot of trouble this Saturday night, when I leave my colored eggs in a basket on the floor and go to sleep.

Here comes the eggs again

"Hon! come look at this one!  Look at that color!"  My husband is obsessed with the eggs. Almost as obsessed as I am with my after-school dog walk (I've been known to literally step over dog puke on my way out the door.) 
But who can blame the guy?  We decided against artifically lighting them this year, and our ladies are a few years old, so they stopped laying all together in late fall.  But in mid-January, they started up again.  They aren't quite at full production yet, but what they lack in quantity they are making up for in perky, bright orange-yolked amazingness.  Oh, they are beautiful. 
I asked the hen whisperers if eggs are really better quality after the hens have had a rest, and the answer is sadly, but believably, no.  They are the same old eggs we were getting before they took their break. (Maybe the shells are a bit thicker than during full production, when they can't take in enough calcium to keep up with the daily egg production.) It is just that we've missed them so.  And it seems like a little sign of spring, proof that the days really are getting longer.

Lucky 13

Sun streams in through the barn windows and sets our favorite Christmas present - a solar powered, mechanized prism- spinning. It fills the kitchen with rainbows of varying sizes, wandering the walls and ceiling. I crack the eggs into the flour mixture on the food processor, admiring the bright orange color of the yolks, thankful for the millionth time this week that the hens have resuming laying. I whip the cream. Hunter is trying very hard not to eat all of the bacon before we sit down. You have three pans going on the stove, and Emmett is ladelling out batter for you to swirl and then flip to crepey perfection.
At the crepe table, personal preference is sacred. So I do not comment on the amount of cinnamon sugar, or the lack of fruit on anyone's plate, or the current trend toward rolling bacon up in the crepe (shudder). I experience the contrast of tart kiwi against syrupy sweet strawberry. I float away on a whipped cream cloud, in a rich, buttery ocean of deliciousness.
Then one of the spinning rainbows settles for a moment on Hunter's plate, and he alerts us all: "Look! I have magic bacon!!" Just as quickly, it is gone, and we train our eyes on the dancing rainbows. "Magic crepe! Magic kiwi! Magic Mama!!" Maybe it's the sugar high, or the sun-kissed disco quality the room has taken on, but we collapse in a fit of giggles, my heart bursting with appreciating for this very moment.

It's not just the onions

There are days when I just have to make soup.
Raw, gray, bad news days when nothing is fun. No one is friendly. I just can't get warm. Can't stop thinking those same old thoughts. Sometimes a piece of chocolate will do it. Or a second cup of coffee. But there are days when nothing but soup will do.
As I prepare my ingredients, the sharp onioniness prick my eyes and makes them tear. I am thankful for the excuse and let a few more of its friends follow. Did you know that mincing garlic and chopping kale also make you cry? That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
It's funny how even the cooking of comfort food is a comfort. The focus shifts off of the self, and onto the meal. Deciding between linguica and chicken sausage (I chose both), hunting for kale bugs, not cutting off a fingertip. The act of making a meal for my family starts to make up for the rotten way I treat them when the going gets tough. And there is an element of self preservation involved when cooking on the professional stove that is incompatible with those old feelings of self-loathing.
There is a moment, when the onions start to turn golden and dance in the pan, when I feel the faintest tug of a smile at the corners of my down turned mouth. And then, inhaling the aromas, a flood of relief as the windows fog up with soup steam.
The air is thick with comfort, such a relief from the raw dampness that seeps into the center of your being this dismal time of year. I don't mean to sound so dramatic. I really don't. And I try not to take myself so seriously. But sometimes, shit happens, and I react. Sometimes I hear bad news and am sucked into a downward spiral from which I am temporarily unable to extract myself. I'm not proud. but I'm human. And it happens. I suppose the trick is to allow myself to be sad, attempt as best I can to not let it mutate into general grouchiness towards those I love, and then remain humble enough to be thankful when it is over, and the real me emerges, optimistic once again.
The thing is, the best is yet to come. Sometimes you can make your soup, and eat it, too.