Ritual

There are lots of parts of life where I meant to build rituals, but never quite managed.  Luckily there are others where rituals sprouted almost of their own accord.  One of my favorites is our nightly game of hide-and-seek/marco-polo.  It fits perfectly in that space between bathtime and bedtime, and always provides me with an endless stream of chuckles.  For the time being, Mr Renn and Sir O take turns hiding and seeking. (The captain participates fully, helping to seek and shouting "polo" as best he can)  Sir O still has trouble staying hidden until he is found (and his counting is sort of a trainwreck), but no matter.

Work

Between moody/hormonal/exhausted spells, I've been keeping myself busy out my ears with projects.  I suppose I like inventing work for myself, but I think I'd like it better if someone else was funding it all.  Ce la vie.....










In all fairness, I should mention that those moody/hormonal spells are getting increasingly volatile.  Send my poor husband your condolences if you get a minute.  Living with me is none fun right now, but just imagine being me.

Someday sooner or later I will arrive at a state of "done" with this nursery and have something to show for all my absenteeism.  Maybe.  

dilly beans

While we're preserving family recipes, Mr Renn wanted to be sure to get his grandma's dilly bean recipe.  All he wanted for his birthday a few years ago was a jar of them..... the ultimate pickled snack food.

So, with bean plants that are happy to produce for us, he's procured the recipe and is happy to share it with you.

Mary Ila's Dilly Beans

Wash the small, fresh green beans, leave beans whole except

take off the ends. 

 Make a brine of:

3 cups vinegar

3 cups water

6 tablespoons salt

Bring to a boil.

Place a generous layer of fresh dill, 1 small clove of garlic

and 1/4 tablespoon of mustard seed in bottom of

each clean pint jar.

Pack the beans into the clean jars, fill the jars to within

1/2 inch of the top with boiling brine.

Clean the top of jar, put caps on jars, screwing the band

firmily tight.

 Process 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

Make sure jars are covered with about 1 inch of water.

Beans will shrivel some after processing.  They will later

plump in sealed jar.

Store for at least 3 months before eating.  They need time to pickle!

Snail's Pace

With these monkey's underfoot, the going is slow, but I am finally getting to the point where projects are getting completed.
 
 Rome wasn't built in a day, and it certainly wasn't built by pregnant people and small children.
(FYI - those are my knees Sir O is attacking)

There is nothing like a fresh coat of paint

Pretty soon this room is actually going to start looking like something.
I am excited.
And awfully grateful that Mr Renn was willing to paint for me.
3rd trimester + poorly ventilated rooms+ climbing ladders = bad combination for painting.
The paint for the walls was supposed to be matched to Martha Stewart's "Rainwater"

 but the paint matching machine at Mr Renn's alma mater Ace Hardware was broken, so I picked a new color right in the store, Pratt & Lambert's "Nevada Sky", and I'm pretty pleased with it.

With this done, (almost done) I have an awfully long to-do list for next week!  Lots to do, and this baby will come whether I finish it all or not!

thrifting

I'm not sure how my mother feels about my thrifting.
We certainly never did it when I was growing up.  I can remember maybe 3 trips to the DI, ever.
But the thrift stores in PA were too awesome to not take advantage of, and I quickly became a fan.  Between all the awesome milk glass, silver, and old wooden children's toys I found I was in heaven.
Utah is a different planet though - and the thrift stores here are bigger, busier, and have a much higher junk/treasure ratio.  Even craigslist and ksl classifieds have exponentially more junk.

Luckily I'm already hooked, so I won't give it up entirely.




These chairs cost $10, $4, and $25, respectively.  And the only reason I was willing to pay $25 for the turquoise chair was because the color is perfect for the nursery and all I have to do to it is clean it really well.  The other two are project bound.  (Although those projects may be months/years in the making, there's no real budget for "Emily's compulsive desire to have a project")  But they all three make me happy.  As soon as they are shampooed and as clean as I can get them for now, I'll get them out of my parents' garage and everybody will be happy.

5 minutes a day

Maybe I'm late to this party.

Wouldn't be the first time.

My PA friend Shannon introduced us to Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day before we moved.

Mr Renn was sufficiently impressed to start pestering me that I must try making it.  So, one large bucket, 1/2" pizza stone, and a bread peel later, I was ready.

My first batch was rather gummy, but I figured out that Utah being a desert I needed to allow for a few alterations.  I lengthened the pre-baking resting time and added some extra water to the dough, then it was pretty much perfection.

And this is a seriously easy method for making awesome bread.

I just added the healthy bread sequel to my library.  Which is exciting.

Unfortunately my cheap-o pizza stone cracked during my last batch.  Apparently it is worth spending twice as much to buy your stone at Williams Sonoma if it means you only have to buy it once and it gets replaced for free forever.  Sometimes I am a slow learner.

But still, this bread is awesome.
If you are late to the party too, you can thank me later.

contraband

I've been keeping a camera out to document work on all things nursery.....





(Don't worry Tracy, this is not a gorgeous heirloom hardwood piece.  It already had a bad faux finish on it and is made of at least 3 different kinds of wood (in 2 different bursts of alteration and repair apparently))

And Sir O keeps stealing the camera away and documenting his own brand of madness.





I have less than 8 weeks to get everything completed and settled so life can get knocked upside down again.My work is definitely cut out for me.

Staying in the Water

Sir O's swimming lessons have been an adventure.  Somehow the 2 week period of his lessons have chosen to be an abnormally cool and windy opening of August.  Out of 7 lessons so far he's decided he's too cold to stay in the water 4 times.  Today is the last hurrah and then it's over. ( The wind seems to be gone, but the sun's not being very consistent this morning.)  So we've been spending a good chunk of lesson time watching his class from the sidelines (in tears).



 Luckily they're not actually learning how to swim yet.  Just bubble blowing and bobbing for diving rings and playing games.  And in the meantime I get the pure entertainment of watching an older class learn how to dive off the diving board.  I suppose I am mean, but I cannot help chuckling at some of the consistent bellyflops.
Sir O keeps asking me why swimming lessons have to end today.  Despite the blue-lipped drama, he seems to be loving it.



Go figure.

A family recipe of one's own

The fact of the matter is that I haven't got many family recipes that I can trace back to family and no further.  A majority of the "family" recipe's I know of come from the back of some packaged food product.  So when my dad's siblings all expressed the same lovely sentiments for their aunt Joyce's fresh apricot pie (made every 24th of July), I knew this was something special.  I managed to prioritize making it to the annual 24th of July event with Joyce's homemade pie and rootbeer, and I managed to talk her into teaching me how it is done.

This is the stuff that makes life worth living.... if you're me.

I invited all the pie swooners, and we had a lovely evening learning how it's done if it's going to be done Joyce's way.  Lots of enlightenment.

But I'm not one to keep secrets, so here are Mr Renn's notes from the evening:
(and my pie - I struggled with the vent-cutting)

Joyce  Lambson’s Famous Apricot Pie

Crust:  (enough crust to make 3-4 pies).

2 cups butter flavored shortening cold and cut up.

4 cups flour

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

“Enough” (Approximately) 1 cup of ice water (depending on humidity). If it cracks/crumbs while rolling you need to add more water.

Filling: (for 1 pie)

Approximately 4 cups of washed, pitted, and quartered apricots.*

Almost 2/3 cup of sugar (as little as 1/2 cup, depending on sweetness of fruit)

¼ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup (3 Tbsp) minute tapioca

Wash, pit, and quarter apricots, leaving skin on.

Crust:

Mix all dry ingredients, with cold shortening that has been chopped with a knife into ¼ inch cubes.  Use clean hands to mix the ingredients until crumbly.  Run mixture between your fingers, avoiding palms.  You don't want it to homogenize, just be uniformly crumbly.  Add enough cold ice water to the crumbled dough (just enough to make the dough come together in a solid ball.  Avoid kneading, it's make your crust tough.  Form three balls.  Place into freezer while filling is made. (or just refrigerate if making ahead).

To approximate how much filling you will need, fill your pie tin with quartered apricots and then set aside in a bowl.  Mix in sugar, brown sugar, and tapioca.  Set aside.

(Optional: you can emit the brown sugar from the filling at this point and sprinkle it over your filling after dotting with butter instead) 

Retrieve 1 ball of dough from the freezer.  Cut dough in half.   Flatten to a disc shape with your hands, then roll on a well floured surface to approximately 1/8 inch thick. Flip/rotate dough and reflour surface during rolling to avoid sticking.  Fit and press into pie tin.  Sprinkle a dash of flour and sugar to the bottom of the crust.  Insert filling.  Dot with butter (less than 3 TBSP cold butter cut into slivers).



Trim excess dough with butter knife pulling down as you cut.  Place trimmings with other ½ of dough.  Roll second ball (turning and flipping again) on well floured surface to 1/8 inch thick.  Fold into fourths.  Cut center corner at a diagonal, and cut desired vent lines.  Wet edges of filled pie with water. Unfold over top of filled pie.  Press and seal edges. Trim excess dough.  Crimp edges with butter knife and fingers.  Sprinkle top with sugar. (Or brush with milk or an egg wash)  Bake in a 400 degree oven until done (approximately 40 min).  An indicator to it being done is to gently agitate the pan and see if the crust separates from the sides.

Let it cool completely before cutting the pie, otherwise you will have pie soup.

Note* Peaches can be substituted for apricots but some lemon juice would have to be added.

Also note - Joyce recommend mixing up a lot of pie filling while apricots are in season, then lining pie pans with plastic wrap, filling them with filling, and freezing the prepared filling in pie-pan shape. (Remove from pie tin after frozen and keep in airtight bags or containers)  Then you can have "fresh"-ish apricot pie any time of the year. Just plop your frozen filling in the pie crust, and allow a few extra minutes when baking.

For jealous family members and others so inclined, we documented this pretty well.  Photos are here and lots of videos are here. 

Captain Joy-Joy

The Captain has been bubbling with happiness these days. It's hard to keep from smiling when he's in the room.  Everything delights this kid, and it's good for me to see it.  It's good for a hot and cranky pregnant lady to be reminded of how delightful the world is, even on hot August days.

In other news, all my internet time has been given over to an overhaul of my parent's nursery, including multiple craigslist scavenger hunts.  If I can't tackle a nursery of my own, I'm going to throw my nesting energy into a designated grandbaby nursery, come hell or high water I must nest!  My work is cut out for me, here's a "before" picture that's actually an "after a week of sorting through stuff" photo.

in which: Sir O is completely self-contained and I am a spy

Another First

Sir O had his first swimming lesson today.



I've been wanting to get him in swimming lessons for months now, Sir O has an abnormal lack of fear regarding his physical limitations (is that a boy thing?) and so I've lived in terror that he would jump into the deep end of a pool when I wasn't looking.  I figured some "how to not drown" training was in order.

By the time we were remotely settled in Utah (we're still not "settled") and I could turn my brain on again, the only place I could find still accepting students was the community pool.  Pretty much it's 8 classes of 5-8 kids all going on at once.  The noise level is intense, and Sir O is easily distracted by noise.

So most of the class he was wandering off like this:



He reminded me of the dogs in Up when they see a squirrel.