:insert something clever:

Languages

2009-06-12T05:56:00.003-04:00

Today I tried to write someone an email in Spanish. A simple, short email, maybe ten lines long at most. Shouldn't be a problem, right? I lived in Spain for a year. I majored in Spanish. I've even dreamt in Spanish before.

The problem is that I've been in Italy for three weeks. Speaking Italian 80% of the time, or more.

Italian and Spanish are terribly too similar. Deceptively so.

This simple little email took me almost half an hour. I might be exagerrating. But, still, it should have taken less than three minutes. And I still think there were mistakes...Italian words and Italian grammar strung throughout...

Oh well.

Too bad the email went to the person in charge of maintaining a list of Spanish tutors and translators in the Ithaca area... It wasn't about that, it was about babysitting a baby that hasn't even been born yet... But, still...I don't know how much longer I'll be on that list...

Alguien me puede hablar en espanol? Necesito practicar...

No worries

2009-05-26T12:09:00.003-04:00

Hello!

Delta pretty much did nothing to help us (he can't even take the return flight). But, my very clever mother found Joel a flight to Rome on AirBerlin for not too bad considering it was less than 24 hours before the flight. The people at the school were kind enough to pick me up at the airport Friday without Joel, take me to the apartment, and pick me up to meet Joel at the train station the next morning after he took a 10 hour train from Rome.

Now we're both here, have eaten lots of tasty food, been inside a fortress, relaxed, slept, etc etc etc.

Yay!

P.S. Since Delta wouldn't let Joel take the return flight either, Joel's flying back on the same flight with me! Yay!

Please pray

2009-05-20T21:18:00.002-04:00

Joel missed his flight. He was supposed to arrive at Port Authority three hours before his flight was to leave and then take a shuttle (they leave Port Aurthority every twenty minutes) to JFK. Two problems, there are apparently two buses(?) that leave Ithaca at 12:40 on the way to NY, one arriving at 5:55 PM and the other at 6:46 PM. I'm not sure how that works (didn't read that until ten minutes ago), but suffice it to say we were assuming he would get there at 6. He didn't. Then the shuttle took an hour and a half to get to the airport so he arrived about half an hour before his international flight was supposed to leave. They made the last call for boarders before he was even close to half-way through the baggage check-in line.

He was flying into Pisa and the flying RyanAir to Lamezia and then a train to Catania...

We don't know yet when Delta can get him where. I arrive in Catania Friday around noon. I really would like him to be there already...or at least very soon afterwards...

Please pray with us for the trip and the complications and for God's glory to be evident.

Summer plans

2009-05-07T09:16:00.000-04:00

Some of you might be wondering what we'll be up to this summer. Or not... But, if you read on you'll find out anyway.

From May 21st or so, to June 20th more or less, Joel and I will be in Catania, Sicily. Joel will be taking courses of some sort at a school there.

The dates are a bit ambiguous because Joel will be leaving a day before I do and leaving a day later (we bought his tickets before mine). He leaves the 20th and gets there on the 21st whereas I leave the 21st and get there the 22nd. I leave June 19th and he leaves on the 20th. A bit confusing, but it should work out. Funny thing, even though we bought my tickets over a month later than buying his, they were almost $500 cheaper!

Before we leave we have to pack up our apartment. Our current lease ends at the end of May and our new lease, at a new place, starts in August. A kind family from church is letting us use their basement to store all of our stuff in the interim. I took over the first load of boxes today! Mostly books but also some Christmas stuff and our tents. Since Joel still has papers to write...I'll be doing most of the packing. It was good to get started.

So, we'll pack up our stuff and put it in the basement excepting a couple of bags that will hopefully have all we'll need for the next two months. Then, off to Italy! While we're there Joel will study and I will...well, I'm not sure, exactly, but I will. :-) I'll spend at least some of the time teaching myself to knit socks. Also I'm sure we'll spend some time on the beach, maybe go on a couple of day trips to Syracuse or Palermo or Etna, cook a good deal, and hopefully have quite a nice time. We'll have our own apartment the whole time we're there, so that will be good. We're hoping to locate a church in the vicinity as we will be there for four Sundays. If you know of any...please inform us.

When we return from Italy we will wander on to Chicago to hang out with my sister and her husband. Here we come, Windy City! While there we will also go to the Ford Center/Oriental Theatre to watch Fiddler on the Roof (with Topol himself playing Tevye!). I'm really excited about that. :-)

From Chicago we will come to Oklahoma (at some point in the last few days of June). We plan on hanging out with people that we really miss, seeing babies, attending a wedding, eating at the Greek House, and other various and sundry activities.

Eventually we will leave Oklahoma and hopefully head next to Mississippi to see my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece (the last of whom we have yet to meet!). We might even all go camping while we're there!

Then on to Vermont to see Joel's family and to help with a bridal shower for my brother-in-law's intended. :-)

At the end of all of this (early August) we hope to find ourselves back in Ithaca so as to move into our new apartment, settle back in, see people we will have missed, maybe plant some flowers, and get ready for the new semester. Wow...I'm tired just thinking about all of it!

What are your summer plans?

Shearing season

2009-05-05T20:37:00.001-04:00

Earlier this year Joel and I realized that our pesto stash wouldn't last us until summer. So, we decided to take action.

We worked on two different levels. We bought a bag of hydroponically grown basil from Wegmans (roots included), a packet of basil seeds (Genovese, of course), and a bag of soil. We took cuttings from the grown plants and planted them, along with the stalks that the cutting left behind. We also started some seeds.

This (see below) is what happened.

Yay!

We decided it was pesto time. You will see the aftermath in the follwing photos:

May they triumph through this difficult season and rise again, with more leaves than they had before!

Mmm. Who can complain when they have a pile of basil this high?

The end result. Yummy!

Reading Instructions

2009-04-15T01:46:00.003-04:00

So, there's a little paragraph that has a very important third sentence in the instructions for federal tax form 1040-A:

Scholarship and fellowship grants.
Scholarship and fellowship grants not reported on Form W-2 must be included in the total on line 7. Also, enter “SCH” and the amount in the space to the left of line 7. However, if you were a degree candidate, include on line 7 only the amounts you used for expenses other than tuition and course-related expenses. For example, amounts used for room, board, and travel must be reported on line 7.

While filling out our returns (one federal and three state forms, gleaning information from three W-2's and two 1098-T's), I remembered the first half of that paragraph, but not the second. So, all the numbers seemed high and we owed everyone something. As we were writing out the checks I was double checking to see if we needed to write in the SCH thing or not and re-read the paragraph. Whoa....that changed everything. We re-figured all of the numbers and we only owed two states and the other state and federal owed us refunds. It made for a total difference of over $1400 in our favor! That's a lot nicer than paying so much.

The papers are all being slid into envelopes now and will be mailed in the morning. I sure hope we filled them all out correctly...

A good book

2009-04-04T09:30:00.004-04:00

Most of you probably know what I'm about to tell you. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is a wonderful and must-read book.

I started a recent plunge into Dickens with a book of his Christmas stories that I found at a near-by used book store on their outside one-dollar-a-book shelf. I ended up reading The Cricket on the Hearth, and literally sobbing over the events in the Peerybingles' life (and tears of rejoicing). I convinced Joel to let me read it to him; again I cried and his eyes were not particularly dry either. I wanted more Dickens--I think his only work I had read previously was A Christmas Carol. What we had on our shelves was Pickwick Papers so I started to read it. It probably wasn't the best to follow with. I will finish it at some point, I'm sure (I really don't like not finishing books), but it wandered a bit much for me.

I read a few other things in the meantime (including Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, which was wonderful!), but soon found myself looking for a book again. Joel suggested A Tale of Two Cities and checked it out of the library next visit. I had no knowledge of the story of this book other than having heard it was a good book(on a similar level I had heard that Grapes of Wrath was good and I had heard other sources tell me that that one was quite overrated). Also, having just been wandering about with the reknowned (and quite annoying) Mr. Pickwick I was not terribly inclined to pick up another Dickens (having so quickly forgotten the joy of reading The Cricket on the Hearth).

About a week after we had checked it out, I still hadn't cracked the cover. An occasion presented itself where I was washing dishes and Joel offered to read to me (it makes them go so much faster...well...sometimes slower, but much more smoothly either way). I think we had read two or three of Grimm's fairy tales the night before, so he didn't want to read another of those. And we were both currently reading in Numbers which isn't particularly suited to reading aloud. So, he asked if I had started A Tale of Two Cities, I said no, and he read the first chapter. It was definitely an intriguing chapter, if a bit confusing (especially amidst the sounds of splashing water and clanking dishes). So, I was caught. We continued to read when we had spaces of time (and especially when there were dishes to be washed).

Last night around maybe nine or ten o'clock we started where Mr. Lorry is first proposing to go to Paris to help stabilize Tellson's accounts amidst the mass confusion of the times (about a hundred pages from the end). We finished at three o'clock this morning.

Such a good book. At times I wanted it to stop where it was. I didn't want Charles to go to France. At that point I closed the book and half-filled a bowl with M&Ms and refused to go on for awhile. When I first started to realize Sydney's plans I started making up the story as I went for a little bit (it involved an invisibilty cloak and lots of happily ever after). Joel started to read the next chapter and then couldn't anymore so he handed it over for me to read. There were a few moments I couldn't read, but I wouldn't let Joel take back over.

I wanted to fight the ending, just as sometimes I want to fight Jesus going to the cross. Why did He have to do that? He didn't deserve it and it made for a very, unimaginably so, black day. But oh, what a sunrise on Sunday, and oh, the joyous repercussions for a sinner like me.

That's why A Tale of Two Cities is a good book. It pushes me to the cross.

Knitting

2009-03-26T11:11:00.003-04:00

Recently I've been knitting.

Project one: scarf for Joel. This was to reacquaint myself with basic knit and purl (it had been quite awhile since I'd picked up a pair of knitting needles and I'm not actually positive that I had ever finished a knitting project before...not even a scarf...). I didn't use a pattern, just made little blocks. I think I cast on forty stitches and knit ten, purled ten, knit ten, purled ten, stockinette st for ten rows and then reversed it (for another ten rows...etc, etc, etc).

Project two: coasters.

Project three (work in progress): plastic shopping bag rug. It's not very pretty, but I think that I will be able to tuck in most of those ends once I'm done. I'm cutting the bags into two long strips, knotting the ends together and then just a basic garter stitch. I like the idea of putting more stripes in, but unfortunately about 90% of the bags I have are just clear or white. I also tend to shop at Aldi or use my canvas bags for groceries (a lot easier to handle on the bus) so I'm actually running out of bags already and it's only four inches wide!

Squirrels II

2009-03-10T16:06:00.003-04:00

In my last blog about tree rats the pictures were not the best they could be. So, a few days later I baited them with some bread that I had let rise too long and was thus not very tasty at all (to us). They came and I was prepared with the camera:

The one below is trying to bury some of the bread in one of the pots.

After the event that inspired the last post on these little critters, we put the bag of charcoal inside the grill, out of reach of the squirrels. But we apparently left some "crumbs" that this squirrel was happy to eat (I told you the bread didn't taste very good...but the other squirrels seemed to prefer it to charcoal...maybe this one has finer tastes and was trying to make a point?).

It's Spring! At least it is inside...

2009-03-10T15:36:00.004-04:00

In Oklahoma about now there are daffodils blooming and trees all covered in blossoms (photos stolen from a friend back in Norman - Sally). Not full blown spring yet, but definitely starting.

There is hope here as I have seen a few things starting to pop out of the ground...but just barely and definitely not near blooming yet.

What helps my impatience for spring is my collection of indoor plants. They're green (except for the purple ones), mostly happy and every once in awhile they bloom!

A little while ago, one of my amaryllises bloomed.

Here's Joel holding it so that you can get an idea of how big it is. It had four blooms total.

On one of my other amaryllises a flower stalk just starting coming up. I wonder what color it will be... I have two or three different ones, but didn't label them and some of them died over the winter (they had a mold problem) so I don't know what I have left...

Other exciting plant happenings are the little basil and parsley seedlings! Almost all of them have one set of true leaves already and are so cute! We couldn't wait for the basil to grow up, so we also took some cuttings from a hydroponically-grown plant we bought from the grocery store. I don't have pictures yet...but maybe I'll post some soon.

S'mores

2009-03-08T14:41:00.001-04:00

Before today it had been quite awhile since I last blogged, but I had been thinking of blogging during that time and even specific things to blog about. So, here's one of those ideas from maybe two months ago...

The kit:

Graham crackers, mini marshmallows, chunks of chocolate (and some caramel-filled chocolates), sharpened matchsticks (we didn't have any toothpicks), matches, and tea lights

Execution:

Yum.

Note: Might work better with normal sized mashmallows as it was hard to brown the small ones without them bursting into flame. Fun nonetheless.

Glorious French Onion Soup

2009-03-08T13:33:00.010-04:00

We have a cookbook titled "Glorious French Food" by James Peterson and it's one that I'd skimmed through but that we hadn't actually cooked out of yet, until yesterday. We decided that we should make one of the recipes because, really, what is the point of a cookbook if it's never used to cook?

I looked through it and found a recipe for French Onion Soup. We had recently stocked up on onions to make that very dish. So, perfect.

The recipe makes 10 first-course servings. The ingredients seem pretty basic:

5 pounds of onions -> sounds like a lot...but they reduce, so not totally unexpected

4 tablespoons butter -> if anything, seems to be skimping a bit, especially with so much onion

10 cups broth -> the introduction to the recipe says beef stock is best but that it really doesn't matter because it's going to taste like onions and cheese regardless

bouquet garni

salt

pepper

4 cups bread cubes . . .

What's left? Cheese.

25 cups of finely grated Swiss Gruyere or other full-flavored firm cheese (about five pounds)

Whoa! 25 cups? For ten people? That's half a pound per person! For a first course? And it specifically says not to use the "swiss" cheese with all the holes in it which is actually Emmentaler because it doesn't have enough flavor and makes the soup stringy.

But, hey, why not? So, we halved the recipe and bought enough good cheese for two servings (the rest of the soup we can eat with sliced swiss even if it is a bit stringy).

Here's a spoonful of it:

And here's a bowl:

If you've ever had French Onion Soup before and it didn't have ratios similar to these...you are missing out. It was amazing! Definitely only a first-course serving if you're only having one course. One bowl was plenty for a full meal.

French Onion Soup just got a lot more expensive for us to make...but it's so good.

Squirrels

2009-01-02T14:09:00.005-05:00

This isn't quite the order I wanted these pictures in, but I can't figure out how to move them around... So, we'll start with these two:

I went outside one evening to check the mail...there wasn't any but I did find a curious set of tracks in the snow, with a rather deep starting point (most tracks unless made by birds don't have such clear starting points....). This shot is to show you the lack of tracks to the left of the deep imprint:

Whereas this one is a detail shot.

It appears that one of our many squirrels fell out of the tree into the snow. I've seen them fall out plenty of times, but to see the evidence left in the snow was just too much fun to not be photographed.

(This is where I was originally going to start)

Hello! Sorry about the pictures quality on most of these, but they're fast and flighty, so some had to be taken from inside and in others they were on the move.

So, they look cute, right? Happy to be perched on a branch... Or playing tag...

Running down a tree...

Or running up a tree...

Or hanging out among the fallen branches...

Or looking inside stumps for hidden nuts...

They are also happy to amuse the viewer by hanging upside-down from branches and then falling down for lack of a good grip (too quick and unpredictable to photograph but definitely the cutest view...). Occasionally they'll even look in through the back door, curious to see what we're up to.

This summer we witnessed them amusing themselves more than us by knocking down my plants off of the back porch. They'd chew on some, bury nuts in others, and some, just knock off of the porch, often causing the pots to break from the fall, and killing some of the plants by exposing their roots to the summer sun for too long before I realized what had happened and went to save them.

But, now they've done something we had no category for and would never have suspected.... I don't even think you would believe us if we just told you. So, we got pictures. Not very good pictures, but good enough that you can see what's going on.

They're eating our charcoal!!!!!! What?? Why?? Crazy squirrels.

This concludes Epispode 1 of "Squirrel Watch".

Christmas (food highlights)

2008-12-30T13:57:00.001-05:00

Joel and I decided to make a Buche de Noel (Yule Log) cake this year. Components:
Log

and Mushrooms

together:

The log is a rolled cake with a yummy chocolate ganache frosting and the mushrooms are merengues sprinkled with cocoa powder. :-)

I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the food (too busy eating it). But we had lamb racks , rolls, appetizers, cheese board, un risotto di due funghi, devilled eggs, grilled asparagus, and the cake. Our guests brought scalloped potatoes, a yummy tomato cheese pie, and a berry crisp. Yum Yum. We had many leftovers (pictured below), and even more food from ingredients we bought that we didn't have time to make into something.

Leftovers:

Next post: Squirrels...

SNOW

2008-12-12T13:37:00.003-05:00

It has been snowing. A lot. I was going to go grocery shopping...I decided to stay inside.

Work stuff

2008-11-13T09:08:00.002-05:00

So, the new person in Romance Studies came a week ago today. Consequently, tomorrow was to be my last day at Cornell, and this week I was only going to come in half days to help the new person get situated.

Yesterday when I got to work I was told that I wouldn't be there today nor tomorrow as another office needed me to temp and that also there was an opening in Physics for a part-time job that I might be interested in. So, after one pm (when I would have gone home), I went over to visit the office where I am today and then went over to Physics to talk about the job there.

The job here isn't too bad so far. It's actually two part-time secretarial jobs stuck together, one being Cornell in Washington, a sort of internship program and the other CAPS, China and Asia-Pacific Studies. The phone has only rung twice, first someone from Cornell in Washington giving me a rundown of what I should expect for the day and then someone that I forwarded to the office in D.C. I haven't heard a word from CAPS yet... Mostly I've been catching up on reading blogs, which is nice.

So, the job in Physics.... It's part-time, which is great. 25 hours a week, with maybe a full day on Monday and shorter hours the other days, but still five days a week. The title is Undergraduate Coordinator/Events Coordinator. This means I would help the undergraduate figure out which classes to take when, answer all sorts of questions and be generally helpful, publicize events, organize receptions, book hotel rooms for guest lecturers, etc. I'd also help write up some stuff to attract more students to the major. All in all, sounds pretty good. It would also pay pretty well and I would get benefits.

Downsides: it's a lot closer to a real job than I've ever had before, which scares me. Two weeks vacation time (not counting the week between Christmas and New Year's which I would also have off) for the entire year.... No more summers off. I've been pretty spoiled with the student life and being pretty uncommitted to any job I've had...

The more I think about it, the less it scares me and the more it makes sense to apply for it. But there's still some of me saying "AAAAAAAAHH! RUN and HIDE!!". This is a bit ridiculous, I admit.

More benefits: Benefits, better health insurance. Also, if I do this instead of some minimum wage job for fewer hours during the week we'd save more money sooner...which means having kids sooner would be easier, at least financially. Also the job does seem fun and challenging and having spent much time in department offices asking questions during my undergraduate years, I really think I could empathize with the students.... I'd be much less likely to get bored than in some data-entry or filing sort of job (though I'm sure there will be at least some of that as well).

And, of course, there's always the possibility that I do apply and don't get the job. There will probably be around 60 applicants.

So, those are most of my thoughts for today. Though, if it stays this slow (I've only gotten one more phone call and still no one has actually come into the office), I might post again later....

Ciao!

Apartment 2

2008-11-10T15:58:00.002-05:00

If you're wondering why the post is Apartment "2", go here.

So, a few long-promised, long delayed pictures from our apartment:

Here's one of the kitchen. Note use of vertical space. Don't note sink...
A view from front room looking at kitchen and "stairs". The wine glasses are hanging from the beams...

A view of front room. Door is just slightly to the left of the field of vision in this pic. In case you were wondering about the lack of bookcases, there's another one behind the couch.

Dining room/office. You can just barely see the second bookcase in this shot. It's hiding behind the plant stand. The plant in front of the coat rack is our cacao tree. The cabinet in the bookshelf is extra pantry space.

Here's another view of the Dining room/office. Can you find the monkeys (no longer in their barrel)?

I'll finish cleaning upstairs and then take a pic or two up there. I hope you enjoyed the tour! A little more crowded than the first set of pictures, no?

Snow

2008-10-29T11:32:00.002-04:00

It's snowing today! Snow. In October. Right where we live there's not quite enough to stay on the ground, but on the hills about there's some accumulation.

Better than all of the rain yesterday. Though the rain was helpful in identifying problem spots in our ceiling.

More about jobs...

2008-10-23T13:10:00.000-04:00

I told you in the last post that the job was temporary, right? So, I have until November 5th (with just maybe a bit of extra hours afterwards to help the new person get situated…). Only two weeks! Yay! You see, I really enjoy the job (when I have something to do), but it's just too many hours.

So, the next idea is this one:

"Cornell Law School's Admissions and Financial Aid Office is seeking a part-time administrative assistant whose responsibilities will include data entry, application processing, filing, reception, interfacing with multiple constituencies including applicants, alumni, faculty, pre-law advisors, administration, and current students. Process and respond to applicant requests. Share responsibility for mail and application processing and other responsibilities as assigned. Organize and schedule Law School tours and classroom visits for prospective students and visitors with Law School student tour guides. Part time nine month position (September through May) 25 hours per week, Mon-Fri 8:30am-2:00pm"

Not only part time, but nine months! I'd have the summers off with Joel, I'd have my afternoons free to cook and sew and bake and garden. And I would get health benefits! So, I applied and am currently "under consideration". We shall see.

News

2008-10-08T12:58:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile since I've blogged...hasn't it?

So, to update you a bit: Joel started classes; I started work.

Work. While reviewing our budget awhile back we decided it would be good for me to get a small, part-time job. I looked about on craig's list, sent some emails, filled out a couple of applications, had a couple of interviews. One was looking great. 15 hours or so a week, eight dollars an hour, at a little coffee shop that's maybe a whole three blocks from our house. It would be plenty for what we needed budget-wise; I'd get to see lots of different people all the time; Joel could maybe get a free shot of espresso every once in awhile, etc. It also sounded like they would like to hire me, so I kind of stopped looking around at other jobs. Then during Joel's department's welcome reception I got a call from the manager of the coffee shop. They had gotten in a few more applications and the newer applicants were willing to work nights and weekends (I was not)...so "sorry, but no." Sadness... At the end of the reception Joel and I offered to help clean up and they offered us some of the leftovers (oh, the cheese!! a bit of mozzarella, chevre, stilton, manchego, and more, plus crackers and grapes and veggies and nuts and raisins....). While cleaning up the nice lady who offered us food asked what I was up to in Ithaca while Joel was studying. I mentioned that I was looking for a part-time job. She said, "Really? Would you mind working full time temporarily? We just offered our current temp the permanent position and she informed us that she had just found another job. So, it's the busiest time of year and we have no one in the position and it takes four weeks to two months to hire someone." Stunned, I said, "Sure." I came in the next morning to fill in paperwork and the next day she emailed me asking me to come in the following day (Friday), to start working.

So, I've been working as an "administrative assistant" in Joel's department. The position that is actually open is Graduate Field Assistant, so they can't consider me for it as I would have direct access to Joel's files and there's some whole legal "conflict of interest" sort of thing involved. But, I also wouldn't want it because full time is just too much for also getting done what needs to be done at home. So, it's a temp job that has so far lasted....six weeks. I'm not sure how much longer, but they said probably two weeks after they hire someone so that that person can give two weeks notice wherever they are working currently. And I know they haven't hired someone yet as they're still interviewing.

So, they're paying me twice as much as I was expecting from the other job, and I get to practice my Spanish and my Italian, work on my photo collage skills, learn exciting new programs like Dreamweaver and FileMaker, gain experience in an office setting, meet everyone in Joel's department, see lots of people all day every day (though I've noticed many fewer on Fridays...), make catering orders for events, decide on what office supplies to order (including flower-shaped post-it notes for one of my coworkers), reserve hotel rooms for guest lecturers, and many other things.

I've also learned that if I find a part-time position somewhere else at Cornell and if I work at least twenty hours a week I can get full benefits. So, I'm looking into that.

We're also settling into a new church home. New Life Presbyterian, http://www.newlifepc.net/. We're in a home fellowship group that's going through Screwtape's Letters. The pastor is going through Mark on Sunday mornings. It's great to be in a church. We've made good friends, have been able to serve, and are getting sound teaching. We even get a few RUF songs every once in awhile. :-)

I have a new task at work, so I'll get back to legitimizing my paycheck. Have a lovely day!

Friend went to Market

2008-09-05T21:06:00.000-04:00

So, in Ithaca, Community Supported Agriculture (aka farmshare) is a big thing. You pay a certain amount to the farmer for the summer and weekly pick up a load of vegetables from the farm, whatever's harvestable that week. Some farmshares include an unlimited "you-pick" option where you can pick as many of whatever they have too much of as you'd like (for instance, flowers, green beans, cherry tomatoes, etc). We have a friend who has one of these farmshares for the summer and the food apportioned to her per week is a bit much, so often she has left some of it there instead of taking it home. At the same time, she seems sorry for the tomatoes that have fallen to the ground that no one seems to want to take the time to wash and possibly cut out a few bad places from and then make into endless amounts of sauce (they're one of the you-pick items currently).

She had once thought aloud about the lack of things to cook with eggplant. I quickly corrected her and announced a few of my favorite recipes, namely ratatouille and caponata amidst others. Two weeks later she presented us with an eggplant. She had tried the ratatouille and liked it (the week before), but didn't want to have it again so soon and knew that we would find something to do with it. We were so excited about it and she was so surprised at us being so excited that this started a new phase in our relationship. She has most generously offered to pick up whatever food there be each week at the farm, even if it's not something she likes. And she picks even more tomatoes. Then on her way back to home from the farm she stops by here and gives us what she won't eat. This marks Week #2 of this generous bounty of fresh produce and it was so wonderful that I felt like blogging about it. So, in the picture below you shall see the gift that she gave us.

From the top and around clockwise-ish: teddy bear sunflowers, HUGE head of lettuce, sweet pepper (largest), mild pepper (medium), hot pepper (long and skinny), three large round tomatoes, mixed greens (between the tomatoes and the purple stuff and underneath), swiss chard (the purple stuff), fresh parsley and oregano, two large carrots, and a ridiculously large and heavy bag of tomatoes, a mix between cherry-sized "pear" tomatoes and another variety similar to romas.

The bagged tomatoes are for making sauce. She loves going to the farm and picking vegetables, but is rather busy. She has kind of enslaved herself into making large batches of sauce every Saturday. She was relieved and happy to give us this bag of tomatoes this week so that she can have a Saturday free from sauce-making.

Isn't God's grace shown through his children's generosity lovely and wonderful?

Flower

2008-08-16T16:12:00.004-04:00

One of my flowers bloomed today. :-) Blooms make me happy and this one, I think, is especially nice. What's cool is that soon, on the same stalk there will be up to seven of these blooms. Yay for plants!

Basil+other good stuff=PESTO!

2008-08-11T17:50:00.002-04:00

So, the small basil field that Joel and I planted earlier this summer was quite ready for a harvest today. So, we gleaned the stalks of their top sets of leaves...and ended up with about three wal-mart sacks full of fresh basil...(only one walmart bag if tightly packed...and I mean tightly). So, we just finished the third batch of pesto, each batch making about 16 oz... and we're almost out of garlic and are less than half-way through the basil. Whew! Conveniently, I've heard that pesto stores well in the freezer. And this is only the first harvest....the plants should provide at least a couple more just about as big.... All from two seed packets having cost about...$2.50 total. And, it's not even all of the seeds from the packets. This is one example of why I like gardening so much!

Maybe some pictures later....

Kombucha

2008-06-28T11:41:00.002-04:00

Joel and I started our very first batch of kombucha last Sunday and today we pulled it out to give it a look before bottling it up tomorrow with raisins and possible other additions.... We are very happy with the new scoby's growth (look how thick it is!!!) and excited to enjoy the finished product come next week. Here are some photos!

In other news, here's a "joke" told to me by Joel:

The doctor comes in and tells a woman who has just given birth, "Well, I have some bad news. Your son...is a giant eyeball."

She responds appropriately in horror, "Oh no! That's dreadful!"

The doctor continues, "There's worse news...he's blind."

After hearing this, I apparently did not respond appropriately and failed to laugh. Joel's reaction is that it's because I'm a woman and women can't appreciate high art.

Jenny Pastor

2008-06-27T18:31:00.004-04:00

We've survived the wedding day, returned from the honeymoon (see picture below for information on who we shared one of our campsites with for a few nights)moved in to a room in a house in Ithaca, NY, went back to Norman for a funeral, visited people in D.C. and Mississippi, and returned to our new home in time to start planting things.....

As for planting things, we also have new friends, Sydney and Erin Penner. Sydney is a farmer and has 6 of the Cornell student garden plots at his disposal (totaling I think he said 3600 sq ft? I'm not quite sure.....). They're about to leave to visit his parents in Nova Scotia and we're going to weed a bit of their garden while they're away, and maybe use a bit of the leftover space (the beans never came up) to plant a bit of our own stuff!

Before knowing this, I had started what I assumed would be a rather meager garden for this year, some zucchini and herbs, and a new addition of some tomato plants. Unfortunately, while scoping out the best spot in our yard for a garden, I was informed that one of the rather large trees was a black walnut....which exudes a toxin, particularly harmful to tomato plants and potatoes. Luckily, they don't seem to harm squash nor carrots.... So, the offer of garden space was great! We'll keep the majority of the zucchini and herbs, and a few tomato plants in pots, but the others, off to the bigger and less toxin-infested garden.

We've also, as of today, started a little compost pile. While raking up some old leaves to cover the kitchen scraps with, I saw some of the biggest earthworms I've ever seen! They're thicker than a pencil and as long as....well...an unsharpened pencil. So, pencil-sized. Anyway, that's pretty big for a worm! So, yay for fertile soil (toxic maybe, but at least fertile for that which can grow....).

More to come, later, I'm sure....