Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Before and afters are so fun!

The cousin's front porch West Coast style

The cousin's front porch Southern style

What matters most.


Dollar Store bears are the best:)

                        
                                      The Pearly Gates

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully  tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.” 
 Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Gravy and potatoes in a good brown pot.


Brody loves Sunday dinner












Sunday is the perfect day. Church, a good nap, and homemade rolls browning in the oven. And it was even better today because we ate venison fresh from the forest, local potatoes sold from the back of an old Chevy at the corner of Cash and West Washington, potato flax buns with a choice of raw honey or grandma's tart peach preserves from last summer, and caramel dipped honeycrisp apples for dessert. I wish I could add up all the hours of hunting and gardening and beekeeping and baking that went into this one little family dinner. The slow cooking revolution is alive at our kitchen table.


Hunting season has officially beGUN
(Chloe came up with the pun)

Friday, October 25, 2013

Fanny Packs and other fantastic accessories

Chloe won this fanny pack at
Circus Circus in Vegas
 Dear Laura and Victoria,
     My apologies in advance for the following fashionably offensive post.
                                              Love,
                                                   Jennie

Form over function, or function over form? It's the great query at the foundation of design. When form is given more relevance than function in a shoe, the result is Versace stilettos. Function over form produced the Croc and Birkenstocks. The great architects and designers of the ages have found a balance that marries form and function in blissful symmetry, creating works like Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, which is both livable and pragmatic as well as visually eloquent and artistic.
     In my fancy life in the city, I grappled with the Form v. Function quandry daily, and it climaxed in a stylistic battle for my soul over a fanny pack. Fanny packs are incredible and I love them so much. It leaves my hands free, keeps the weight of my baggage in my hips instead of my damaged neck and shoulders, and makes for an easy grab when the iphone rings. I can buckle it on in the morning and forget about it. Such a prefect wonder of effortless functionality!
     I wore my fanny pack all the time, until my Versace wearing friends had a "serious intervention", at which point I pulled my big flashy leather purse out of the closet vowing to behave properly and with fashionable integrity henceforth. One afternoon several weeks after my surgery, I tentatively ventured to the Natural History Museum with my kids. My whole body still hurt, and my neck and back were a wreck. But, I wanted to look cool of course. So I ditched the fanny pack like a good city girl and lugged that dumb fancy purse to the Museum. Within about 5 minutes my back was a tangle of spasms and my shoulder had completely frozen, which caused my neck to clench and my jaw to lock itself into place. I had to walk back out to the car and ditch the purse, which left me with keys and water bottles and phones and so on crammed into the pockets of my skinny jeans. I actually shed some tears, not just of frustration, but of longing for that amazing fanny pack. I suffered all afternoon with keys poking my hip bones through the annoyingly skinny pockets because I allowed form to idiotically win over function.
     Never again, because now I live in the South where function wins every time. I haven't seen high heels for WEEKS! I used to start the day trying to find balance between looking great and not being uncomfortable, pretending that those jingly earrings and all the gold bangles tinkling from my wrist to my elbow weren't more annoying than boots full of bees. Now we use common sense. We think about what we're doing that day, and wear what works. "Mom, are we going to the movies in El Dorado, or riding the ATV's?"

Movies=yoga pants, cute hoodie, Toms, pony tale, fanny pack.

ATV riding=jeans, warm hoodie, tennis shoes, fanny pack.

Of course I still top it all off with lipgloss and my 2 karat wedding bling. I save a lot of money too because instead of paying for magazines like Lucky and Red Book to tell me what looks good, I don't care. And I think Brynna looks very cute on her new ATV with unprocessed hair and the Ducks sweatshirt that I had BANNED her from wearing in our former, less functional, fancy people life. Let's all be more functional.


She hunts too:)

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Hot Apple Dumplings

Hot out of the oven in Great-Grandma Daniel's skillet

When my eyes creak open on the morning, I find my mind picking over the events that led me to run away from everything and everyone and head to the hills, literally. The answers I dig up in those early morning mental meanderings are all just a variation on a theme: STRESS. Some stress is so small you barely notice, like long carpool lines at the schools, clocking a hundred miles a day on 8 lane freeways, keeping teeth white and abs toned and roots retouched, answering endless texts and tweets and emails. Those little stressors can create enough cumulative pressure to make people crazy, but it's so gradual that you don't notice the internal pressure gauges nearing the danger zone. I always mentally point to a hundred different little stressors that made me snap. And there were a few big ones too. Trailing the paramedics into the hospital behind my little Brynna lying lifeless on the gurney tops the list, followed by surgeries and suicides and financial and relationship disasters. Brynna survived thank God, but somewhere along the line this year I lost it. I swam in a sea of stress every day, but I looked around and saw that everyone was doing it, so I just kept paddling.
Ready for winter, pioneer home in Missouri
     I found that it was almost impossible to scale down my life and remove stress. So I removed myself, and now that I have this new blank slate of a life I'm doing things different. Over 16 years ago my dear friend Kalei Brinkerhoff baked hot apple dumplings while  we sat at her kitchen table playing Rook with our husbands until 4 in the morning. It was cold outside, Oregon drizzle plinking against the shingles, but we laughed and yawned and warmed ourselves on apple dumplings and hot cocoa, and I decided to start a monthly tradition of cards and apple dumplings with friends at home. But I've been too busy for 16 years, and that recipe card went untouched. Until last Saturday, when I claimed a whole day for myself and my kids to do whatever we wanted to do, and nothing we had to do. I sat on the porch watching squirrels bounce in the leaves, took a bath for so long the water got cold, read fairy tales to Brody, and let Chloe give me a fishtail braid. Then we baked so much food that we had to dole some of the cupcakes and bread out to neighbors, and proved my theory that the aroma of butter and sugar wafting from a sizzling oven has strong anti-anxiety effects. My hair hasn't been professionally treated for 6 months, and my teeth have lost that eye-scorching whiteness, but it's Arkansas and people here would rather enjoy a pan full of hot apple dumplings than be blinded by perfect teeth. My sweet 91 year old neighbor Mr. Broome said his apple dumpling was so good he couldn't make himself save half for later like he planned. Neither could I. 

Apple Dumplings

The recipe for Apple Dumplings was available free in Gold Medal flour bags, as noted in a 1938 advertisement, and has also been included in many of the company’s cookbooks over the years, beginning with the 1904 Christmas Edition of Gold Medal Flour Cook Book.
Apple Dumplings
  • Prep Time 25 min
  • Total Time 1 hr 5 min
  • Servings 6

Ingredients

2
cups all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour
1
teaspoon salt
2/3
cup plus 2 tablespoons cold butter or margarine
4
to 5 tablespoons cold water
6
baking apples, about 3 inches in diameter (such as Braeburn, Granny Smith or Rome)
3
tablespoons raisins
3
tablespoons chopped nuts
2 1/2
cups packed brown sugar
1 1/3
cups water

Directions

  • 1Heat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt. Cut in the butter, using a pastry blender or fork, until particles are the size of small peas. Sprinkle with the cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well with fork until all flour is moistened. Gather the dough together, and press it into a 6x4-inch rectangle.
  • 2Lightly sprinkle flour over a cutting board or countertop. Cut off 1/3 of the dough with a knife; set aside. On the floured surface, place 2/3 of the dough. Flatten dough evenly, using hands or a rolling pin, into a 14-inch square; cut into 4 squares. Flatten the remaining 1/3 of the dough into a 14x7-inch rectangle; cut into 2 squares. You will have 6 squares of dough.
  • 3Remove the stem end from each apple. Place the apple on a cutting board. Using a paring knife, cut around the core by pushing the knife straight down to the bottom of the apple and pull up. Move the knife and make the next cut. Repeat until you have cut around the apple core. Push the core from the apple. (Or remove the cores with an apple corer.) Peel the apples with a paring knife.
  • 4Place 1 apple on the center of each square of dough. In a small bowl, mix the raisins and nuts. Fill the center of each apple with raisin mixture. Moisten the corners of each square with small amount of water; bring 2 opposite corners of dough up over apple and press corners together. Fold in sides of remaining corners; bring corners up over apple and press together. Place dumplings in a 13x9-inch (3-quart) glass baking dish.
  • 5In a 2-quart saucepan, heat the brown sugar and 1 1/3 cups water to boiling over high heat, stirring frequently. Carefully pour the sugar syrup around the dumplings.
  • 6Bake about 40 minutes, spooning syrup over apples 2 or 3 times, until crust is browned and apples are tender when pierced with a fork.
  • 7Serve warm or cooled with syrup from pan.
  • Thank you Betty Crocker Cookbook!

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Chicken fried

Sunday boys
Friday boys
So if I haven't said this before, let me be totally clear that I'm a city girl born and raised. I remember well my first quick trip to the South 18 years ago. My new in-laws were hosting a small reception for us in Camden, Arkansas. I boarded the plane in Phoenix in October wearing a crisp, breezy yellow summer dress, espresso colored high-heeled sandals, and big hammered metal earrings, my overly blonde curls piled in a bun on top of my head. I'd spent the day before packing and selecting the right perfume and accessories and cosmetics and worrying how I'd look and what outfits would be appropriate, all the time picturing sipping mint juleps on columned porches with linen-clad gentlemen. The furthest south I'd ever been was the petrified forest of New Mexico. When my hunky fiance had told me he was a Southerner as if that bore consideration, I smiled and said "cool". He seemed very Oregonianish like me except for the faintest of twangs, and I assumed that Southerners were just Oregonians who preferred overalls to flannels, iced tea to Starbucks, and pick-ups to Subarus. After all, this is America and we're all the same.
     We had to actually change planes on the tarmac in Oklahoma, and the air traffic controllers undoubtedly had a good chuckle over the hysterical blonde girl sprinting awkwardly over the icy runway with 50 mile an hour sleet ripping through her yellow sundress. Everyone, EVERYONE else wore overalls, boots, parkas, hats, gloves, scarves, thermal cuffs peeping over wrists and ankles. We landed in Little Rock to a crowd of denim, fleece, and unshaven faces. The airline attendant near the gate said something completely unintelligible that sounded like "Diddle beetle body boo?" which my husband said meant "How was your flight?" He spent the whole weekend translating what was supposed to be English but was really a moonshine-drunk type of Ozark gibberish. And oh, the places we went! Meandering drives through endless trees and hills, past homes the size of sheds with old toilets and trucks on blocks and piles of rusty tools in the yard. I started keeping track of how many front porches had washers and dryers, how many had couches and TV's, how many had people just sitting there in the middle of the day doing nothing but waving to passing cars. I almost couldn't process my first little exposure to the South, it was culture shock extraordinaire.
    In lieu of the front porch and juleps, we ate deer and squirrel for dinner that night. Where I'm from, squirrels are like fluffy pets that live in your Douglas Fir trees. I've actually gone into an artisan gardening store and purchased squirrel accessories, little feeders from which to hang their organic corn cobs, binoculars for a closer look at nature's most adorable ambassador.  Squirrels are NOT food to Yankee girls from the suburbs. So I only begrudgingly nibbled a tiny squirrel knee at dinner and vowed to avoid the South if possible in the future.
     I knew the squirrel eating thing was going to be an issue when we ran away from civilization this summer and headed south. However, I didn't expect that I'd be Googling divorce attorneys after midnight last Tuesday after telling my husband that I will NEVER eat a squirrel the rest of my life, so help me God.
     We had to come to an agreement though. So... HE can eat all the squirrel he wants, and I can eat all the sushi and seaweed and hummus I want, and neither the twain shall cross. Thus, there are squirrels soaking in brine in the fridge today next to my tahini, waiting for the missionaries (two young unsuspecting servants of God from Utah, and from North Carolina where they actually DO sip juleps) to come to dinner this week. Squirrel and dumplings, oh my!
    By the way, if you come to visit, just pack camo and Razorback gear. That's it. Leave the yellow dresses at home unless you really want to be made fun of for looking goofy.
What's cookin', Arkansas style. Organic, free range. and local.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Welcome/GO AWAY!

Beautiful old pioneer cabin, my favorite front porch in Silver Dollar City.
My mom has a funny, reversible sign on her front door. One side reads "Welcome", the other says "GO AWAY!" so she can decide how she greets visitors (or not!).
     We've noticed that when you knock on a neighbor's door in the South, they pull you right inside, like it or not. Last night I tapped on the neighbor's back door well past dark, and even though they were all in their pajamas unwinding for the evening, they grabbed my hand and pulled me in the door, plopped me down in a chair, and asked what I wanted to drink. This has been the norm without exception. If you know someone well enough to knock on their door, you're welcomed like family. My husband and I have remarked that it doesn't matter if people are in the middle of something, or if their hair is brushed or their house is all tidy, you're still welcome. The minute the door opens, you're asked to come in. I've even had neighbors tell me to come sit on the edge of their master bed while they finish sorting socks! Such a familial activity, I felt like I was at my sister's house and it was delightful.
     We had a neighbor from Texas for a while in our favorite little cul-de-sac in Arizona, and he would always insist that we come in. He heard the doorbell from the pool in his backyard one day, sprinted through the house in his dripping swimsuit and towel, and immediately asked me to come on in. Travis from Texas and his sweet wife always had the welcome sign hanging.
      It makes me feel guilty for all the years I've spent standing in my doorway chatting with friends while we sweltered in the Arizona heat because the floors weren't swept, or I had a few plates stacked by the sink, or I hadn't showered after my class at the gym. Even if I knew someone was going to stop by, I'd ask them to text me first!
     When in Rome, do like the Romans, so I'm trying the hospitality thing out, tentatively. I want my neighbors to feel embraced, and even if I have bed-head and my T-shirt is on backwards I'll try to welcome visitors with grace, southern style. Come on in, y'all!

Before and afters are so fun!

Arizona kiddos. 

Chicken fried kiddos in front of the real deal, Duck Commander headquarters in Monroe, Louisiana. Willie wasn't there that day, darn it!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Everyone should splurge on Honey Crisps in the dehydrator. They're SOOO good, tart and zingy and crazily sweet. I dip mine in fresh squeezed orange juice with 2 drops of Wild Orange essential oil and a good sprinkle of cinnamon. Slice, dip, dry, enjoy. Chloe snuck a bag into church today:)

No I.D. necessary

We opened new bank accounts last week at the local credit union. I sat in the lobby with our little four year old for an hour while my husband set everything up, then I signed my name on a few sheets of paper and left. A week later I went into the branch to cash an $800 check. I didn't have our new debit cards yet, didn't know my account number, couldn't even remember our new address. I handed the teller my check, asked for cash, then waited for her to ask my account number and whatever else she needed to know to look me up. After a few seconds of tap tap tapping on her computer, she asked how I wanted my money. Of course I had to open my mouth and say "Um, don't you need my account number or I.D. or thumb print or something?" No, she didn't. She'd seen me sitting in the lobby a week earlier, knew I had an account, and looked up my name from the check. Here's how she I.D.'d me: she asked, "You are the little gal who sat here in the lobby with the cute boy in the red shorts last week, right?" And that was that.
Hand-made swing in our new back yard
     I'll tell you why I'm loving the simplicity of our new backwoods life. For 16 solid years I would eat lunch at my favorite restaurant, Tia Rosa's, at least twice a week, and I always ordered the same exact meal, the salmon taco combo and a medium horchata. Week after sunny week for years on end, I'd order from the same two people, thousands of dollars worth of the best spicy, peppery Mexican food around. And in all that time, there was never even the slightest flicker of recognition, a smile or a "hey, back again?" or anything that indicated that they'd ever seen my face before. Once, after 15 years, I had lunch there 4 days in a row, and on the 5th day I asked the guy "You know what I want, right?" and winked. He looked at me like his brain had been erased overnight (because in that busy city culture of 7 million inhabitants it's not polite to intrude in somebody's life by memorizing their lunch order!) and he said "Excuse me?" So I ordered my usual and acted like I hadn't seen him 100 times that year either.
     Some days I get frustrated by small town life because I can't locate an organic roasting chicken within an hour drive, and the yoga studio is only open once a week, and the only Red Box in town is dismally picked over. But there's something so profoundly warming about being part of a community where the teller trusts you with $800 based on a pair of little red hand-me-down shorts. It's what home and neighborhood should feel like, I think.


Saturday, October 12, 2013

Before and afters are so much fun!



A new leaf

     It felt like heaven that evening in May, zipping up the hill in the new BMW, my Banana Republic dress flapping against my skinny legs as I pumped the gas with high heeled strappy sandals. Maroon 5 pulsed from my crisp German speakers, and I smiled deeply, completely, whistling and head-bopping and thinking to myself that I had moves like Jagger too. Life could be good again, I had survived. For three long years I had struggled with a mysterious illness in Oregon, spending much of that time huddled in bed under a sandwich of flannel sheets and fleece pajamas while the entire Pacific Ocean dripped down on our dream home day after day. Three years of days where you weren't sure if the sun had really come up entirely, of cold feet, cold skin, ambulance rides and lines at the pharmacy. I had a favorite vein for blood draws, and had become precise with filling those lab cups in the bathroom. Three years of struggling with a foster baby and another new baby just a year apart, a husband who was profoundly unraveling under the shock of caring for five young kids, a disabled and panicked wife, a struggling business, and a massive home-building adventure.
     I remember a span of about 6 months where I never left home except by ambulance, never left my bed without incident really, and thought I'd never be normal again in this life. Our home had a beautiful forest behind it in the summer when we bought the property, and I had spent so much of my life in Arizona that I didn't realize the leaves would fall off in winter and leave the home behind us exposed. From my bed that winter I memorized every line and curve, every shingle and shutter and beam and brick on that home. I knew when the man in the 3rd window from the right woke up, opened the blinds, sat in a chair and watched TV. I always wondered what he watched, but couldn't see the screen. My greatest wish was just to be able to walk down the hall to my kids' bedrooms and read them a book at night, but the hallway was so long and I was too weak. So instead I suffered in bed, looking out the windows at the stranger through the naked forest, thinking how much I was like those trees. I had gone my whole life not knowing who I was under all the fluff. If I had to describe myself, I would've talked about my hobbies, how I had mastered Crepes Suzette, and the miles and miles I had logged in my running shoes. I was a busy and loving mom, a caring neighbor, an avid reader who plowed through a couple books a week, mostly historical or political works. I gardened and raised chickens and entertained friends in our million dollar house, and my yoga mat was as well used as my Bible. And then all the leaves came falling off my tree and I had to look for the first time at who I was underneath it all. Suffering does that to you like nothing else.
     We woke up early one morning after Christmas, black rain pounding the windows, and decided to call it quits and run back to Arizona, buy a new Tuscan house in our old fancy neighborhood on the hill and try to be our old selves again. I received a diagnosis the first week back, sitting at the kitchen counter in my best friend's house. Her doctor dad said he thought I had Valley Fever, wrote something on a post-it note and told me to call some doctor and have some test done. A $40 blood test solved a big part of my mystery and I was 50% better than I had been in a few years after the first tiny pink antifungal pill. It was easy to walk down the hall and read books to toddlers in bed at night and none of the local paramedics got to know me for a while. I had survived. What more appropriate locale than Phoenix, named for the mythical bird warrior rising from the ashes. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt anything, and it really was heaven. The sun was just setting behind my BMW that evening, and it took my breath away as I came to a turnout at the top of the hill, massive gated homes and shiny Jaguars underscoring the fiery sky. I was me again, back in my old life! But. But, but something was off and it took me a bit of time to figure out that I had seen the real me right down to my roots and this wasn't it. It was a hollow sort of happy.
     We spent a few months trying to get it right, almost losing our sweet daughter, undergoing a nightmare surgery and being told I was going to die of c-diff afterwards. We ate stress for breakfast. Life was hard on the inside, but looked so good on the outside. My husband started drowning his anxiety in a mindless TV show called "Duck Dynasty", and I got sucked into it too while I recovered. I know it's a TV show and there's more to life than what you see on screen, but I couldn't believe how relaxed and content those hillbillies seemed. Totally different than my life in every way. It's funny the way life falls into place, but I thought of those Robertsons the day my life fell off a cliff. We had come home after midnight from our long Christmas vacation, only had a couple hours of sleep. My sweet friend Britty texted me to ask if I could watch her little ones that morning, but I was hiking, standing on top of the world in the January sunshine. I didn't text her back, forgot all about it in the middle of unpacking and getting ready for school. Later that evening I sat down to a bowl of soup when my iphone beeped. "Your friend Britty hung herself this morning". Twenty minutes after I didn't text her back. She went into her closet in her pretty house in her fancy gated home in our great neighborhood and hung herself, leaving her young children. In those days afterward my leaves fell off again, and I saw that my roots and trunk were dying under the stress of a life that is supposed to be what everyone is living for, and I just wanted to disappear, to hide my face and slow down. Like those Duck Dynasty people, and the author of our book club book, "A Dirty Life", who ran away to marry an organic farmer and live like a pioneer in upstate New York. I needed to get out, to literally step out of my world, shed every leaf, and disappear for a while.
     And that is how we became Southerners. I have a closet full of pretty clothes I have no occasion to wear, a husband who rotates through various camo ensembles, a son who has a cross-bow stacked on top of violins in his bedroom, and a freezer full of peach jam and venison. In the blink of an eye we gutted who we are, and it's remarkably stressless. My best friend is a 91 year-old Civil War buff, and I jog with a raggedy pack of neighbor dogs. If my grandma could just see me now! I've turned over a new leaf for sure.