Martha Stewart or Charlie Brown? I'm somewhere in between

So …

Every year for Christmas I like to do something a little different.  One year I did a theme which was “Holiday at Hogwarts,” and featured things such as ornaments made from empty boxes of Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans.  One year I did a “traditional theme” and used wrapping paper to wrap the wall behind my tree to make it pop.  One year I made ornaments from shells we found on the beach and covered them with glitter to make a very Island sort of tree the first year we spent on this island. 

Joseph is pretty easy going when it comes to my themes and ideas and inspirations.  At times this can be infuriating, especially when I want an opinion.  But mostly I find this good for my creativity when Mr. Logical isn’t criticizing my every move.  Joseph’s one request is that we never kill a tree to make our Christmas.  I grew up in the Rocky Mountains of northern Idaho where we cut down our own tree every year.  I loved the smell of white fir and cold coming into the house.  But Joseph (who drives a beast of a pickup truck) thinks that cutting trees isn’t very environmentally-minded.  He bought me a Martha Stewart pre-lit tree that stands four-and-a-half feet tall.  It has white lights and has graced my house many a year regardless of the theme and has always looked great.  This year, however, I wanted something more natural and less symmetrical. 

I had an idea in my head, and when I found this tree on my dog walk one day, I couldn’t resist:

I knew it had potential.  I knew I could make this tree shine.  In my head I saw this tree in all its glory, thanks to my best friend Martha Stewart:

Awesome, right? 

So I set to work.  And soon I discovered a little known secret to the success of evergreens when it comes to the domination of Christmas décor: evergreens are conical and taper towards the top which is infinitely easier to wrap lights around than a tree that gets wider towards the top.  I had to string the lights twice, and I almost poked out an eye five or six times.  I used half a cinder block to prop the tree up and stuffed it with news paper to keep the tree in place, but every time I tried to adjust lights, it slid around a little.  I finally had to enlist Joseph and have him prop it up with a little hemp twine at the bottom. 

And here’s the other little secret about the success of evergreens when it comes to the domination of Christmas décor: they don’t look like skeletons!  My tree looked like I painted Kate Moss brown and tied her up in a corner.  I found myself thinking that a good cheese burger would do my tree some good, but I hung the ornaments from it just the same.  I didn’t have the money this year to buy all new tree jewelry, so I had to make do with the ornaments I had.  I strung my ornaments up with a little purple ribbon to give the ornaments the range to fall into some of the open spaces the branches made, but it still looked bare and sad. 

Okay, I thought, what this tree needs is a little snow. 

I try not to play up snow in my Christmas decorating.  I grew up in snow up to my armpits and there is nothing sadder to me than a snowman lawn ornament in a climate that shuts its cities down when it even thinks about snowing.  If you don’t have snow, don’t promote it.  But snow was the only thing I could think of to give this tree a little weight and fullness. 

If I had my way (and a lot more money) I would have bought a few white feather boas, cut them up, and used their fluffy fabulousness to fill in my scrawny tree.  (I have always thought that Christmas trees were a lot like drag queens anyway.)  So, because I didn’t have any of my own feather boas … that were white … I had to improvise and I found a bag of poly-fill to use for snow.  I pulled out puffs of polyester and stuck it at the end of branches.  The overall look was very sad and I am almost too ashamed to show you this:

What the crap is this?  When Joseph saw it he said it looked like I was trying to make a cotton bush.  That kind of made it worse and please remind me to tell you all about how Joseph almost got shot picking cotton in Louisiana when we went there to visit his family.  (No it wasn’t 1860, it was 2003.)  Needless to say, I furiously ripped every single one of these puffs off of my tree and sat down to rethink my life. 

Deep breath.

So the next thing I tried was an old reliable Christmas treatment: paper snowflakes.  Paper snowflakes got me through many a tough Christmas in apartments that were none too jolly.  What I got was a tree that had these papery, snowflake versions of leaves on it.  Fine. 

Yes, fine enough.  It was time to quit while I was ahead. 

I liked how the white paper snowflakes caught the colors of the Christmas lights.

The tree is continuing to grow on me.  It isn’t perfect, but it’s just fine for me.  But I will probably resort to the Martha Stewart pre-lit 4.5 footer next year.  Much less hassle, and much prettier effect. 

Joseph's New Found Skill

As promised I will share with you what Joseph's new crafting skill is.  He bought a book and taught himself to crochet from it, and has been shredding fabric and making rugs ever since.
Here are a few he made for his coworkers for Christmas:

This one was a sort of camp cottage rug.  It had burgundy and navy together with a few greens.  The green plaid really pops in the combination.

I told Joseph he should give these titles and consider them "art pieces."  He named this one "Ripple," as it evokes a forest pond. 

"Ripple" boasted a shiny thread that Joseph crocheted along with some of the jade green material to catch the light and shimmer. 

This one is for his boss, who is one of those Purple People.  I love purple, too, but I love all the other colors too much to become a Purple Person myself. 

This rug is made from all navy material interspersed with blue-printed white fabric.  It reminds me of those wonderful Currier and Ives dishes my Gram has, which I ate off of almost every day of my childhood. 

This one was my absolute favorite.  Joseph made it for a coworker who loves the color orange, and who couldn't love it when it makes such a fabulous hearth side rug?  It reminds me of a sun wheel, or a large, circular bale of hay.  The middle and edge is done in a very dark maroon that really pops with the orange.  Wish I was a better photographer. 

All of the earlier rugs were round rugs like this favorite orange one here, but Joseph found a way to make oblong rugs as well and now uses the oblong shape almost exclusively:

Whichever rug is your favorite, I can tell you from experience that they make your home feel a little cozier than a run-of-the-mill store bought rug.  I have two in my former dining room (current Christmas Tree Room), and I love them. 

Rustic Charm

When I was twenty-five, I knew what I wanted my life to be.  I had just received an Associate’s Degree of Art in ceramic design for lumpy little clay pots I made that were never centered on the wheel, because (I can face it) I was never very good at ceramics.  Oh, I could teach you how to do it, and if you don’t believe me, ask my friend, Lydia from High School.  I taught her how to center her pots and by the end of the year, Lydia was one of the most accomplished ceramic artists in school.  My art teacher even said so.  I was able to pour my wisdom out for Lydia, but I could not teach it to my own hands.  But that never stopped me from loving it. 

            So when I moved to Seattle at the age of twenty-one, going on twenty-two, I moved for two reasons.  First, I was going to go for the boys (being gay in northern Idaho is not recommended to anyone who wants to have a decent date with a decent guy); and second, to get my art degree.  I wanted to be a graphic artist so I could illustrate my own children’s stories.  I even had a binder of stories I had written from high school onward that I was going to use to get myself started.  My friend, Carrie, needed a roommate and I needed a life outside of my home town. 

            The boys came first.  I met Joseph only a little over three months after I moved to the big city.  He had a boyfriend at the time, so it forced us to be friends first, then family, and then when the inevitable happened and his boyfriend left him, partners.  In fact, today is our eleventh anniversary of our first “date.”  It was Joseph who helped me to get into school.  I was accepted both to Cornish College of the Arts and Seattle Art Institute.  Cornish I dropped as soon as I saw the tuition costs.  But the Art Institute was accepted.  Joseph then got me going on a “adjustment” quarter of school in Seattle Central Community College.  It was there in “real college” that I decided I wanted to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art … I know what you’re thinking, the pay checks would be large and plentiful.  So I moved my studies to North Seattle Community College and “majored” in ceramics. 

            My old ceramics professor looked like an owl.  He was short, dumpy, with a little ear hair and a huge set of old army-issue glasses perched on the end of his small, pointed nose.  I had even taken a sculpture class from him and I often heard him say to me, in his sticky, honey voice, “You’ve got to mold it a little pit, and shape it” as he pinched the air in front of him with short, well callused fingers.  My final in my last ceramics class was to make a set of twelve matching dishes.  So I set to work, carefully measuring my cups and trying my best to make them the same.  I also had to produce three jars with lids that fit, and three large plates. 

            My final results were a group of fourteen coffee mugs that had varying sizes, wobbles, and dips in their lines.  Their handles were rather similar if you didn’t look directly at them.  The lids all fit my jars, and I had fun producing them, but if you looked at the jar bottoms and my hacking trim jobs.  My plates were great!  I had one large and two small and I was hoping beyond hope that my professor wouldn’t remember they were all supposed to be large and that the middles of my small plates were bowed.  But after my instructor carefully looked my lumpy little pots over with their multi-colored glazes with embellishments of Alphonse Mucha-esque goddess faces painted into some, he kind of smirked and said, “These pieces have a certain … um … rustic charm about them.” 

Yes, I understood what he meant.  They were no beauties, and they weren’t going to win any prizes, but my pieces could hold water and had had my best effort put into them.  I think my old professor with his owl-glasses and his obsession with me molding and shaping my pieces cut me some slack that day.  But I also took “rustic charm” as one of the highest complements I’ve ever received.  I worked hard for that “rustic charm.” 

            So I got my associate’s degree of Art, which is really just a piece of paper telling me to go back to school if I really want to make something of myself.  But that was the year I was going to turn twenty-six and on that birthday Joseph surprised me.  I received a bunch of little presents from him to throw me off the trail, including a learn-how-to-knit kit.  But the big surprise was this: my own potter’s wheel and a kiln to fire my pieces in. 

But where do you set up these things in an urban apartment in Seattle?  Joseph set to work looking for a larger place for us to live and our search took us to Vashon Island, a little island off the coast of West Seattle.  It just so happens that most of my clay came from Vashon Island, as Vashon Buff is the clay preferred by my old instructors.  On his weekends, Joseph scouted many places, and finally came home one day not long after my birthday announcing he had found the perfect place for us to rent: a five acre farm with a couple of old out buildings.  After much convincing of the property managers to let two people, new to the rigors of island commuting and island life, move so deeply into the island off of the main ferry traffic ways. 

            We set up our life here.  I was going to be a local artist and Joseph would join the ranks of commuting back and forth to a job he didn’t care much for, but we were happy.  I took a job at an island deli, and worked on my ceramics.  But slowly those ceramics fell by the wayside as that learn-how-to-knit kit filled up my days and I began knitting bigger and better things.  That first Christmas we opted to stay home in our own house and I surprised Joseph with a hat and scarf I had knit all on my own.  And he surprised me with a chair he made from twigs and scrap wood for our new life. 

            The farms on Vashon Island have names such as Fox Farm, Fairy Hill Farm, Jesus Barn Farm, etc.  Joseph decided we should name our “own” little rented farm, and he came up with the perfect name.  We’re Rustic Charms Farm, where lumpy little pots are made.  We knit hats and scarves and craft boxes and kitchen islands from scrap wood and twigs.  Our wine and our jelly is made from our own fruit trees and berry bushes, and our stew pots are often filled with vegetables from our own little garden.  And this was the life I had wanted, we had made it for ourselves.  But the farm was never ours.  We’ll be moving out soon when our last lease is up.  I had gone back to school in the mean time to work on another dream of mine and that dream started becoming more and more tangible until I was commuting just as much as Joseph was.  Our life here has begun to wane, but it has been a good life and I will be sad to see it go. 

I love Rustic Charms Farm for what it meant to us when we found it and what it means to us now.  It is home. 

Joseph's a Better Crafter than Me

Christmas of 2005 was the year that my knitting flourished and I made hats for everybody in my family.  Everybody.  And I don’t really have a small family, especially on Christmas when the lines everybody drew for themselves dissolve and open up to reveal that they still need those people who can aggravate them like no other people can.  So I had hats with cables knitted into them, hats with ear flaps knitted on them, hats with stripes, hats with checks, and even hats with sparkly, ruby red yarn.  I wrapped each had in wrapping paper I made from collected paper grocery bags and hand stamped and colored for each individual.  And I tied each one with a different bow I made from yarn, hemp twine, and other crafty things. 

Christmas of 2005 was the year that I drew a line in the sand and said enough with commercialism; Joseph and I would only give what we could make.  And this meant for another year or two that Joseph and I would only give what could be made by me.  Joseph just had to sit back and occasionally drive me to get yarn or other supplies for our festivities. 

It was a nice little set up until I started to feel like I had taken on a chore, not something fun to do in my spare time, and then used my self-inflicted punishment (creating Christmas gifts) to complain to Joseph that he “never does anything for Christmas, and shares in the glory.”  This complaint was lodged the year I had begun my pre-required classes for nursing school and was feeling a little put out studying to really get into knitting or canning for long periods of precious free time.  And like most of my complaints about my role in the relationship, this one back-fired. 

First of all, I am going to tell you a little about my role in the relationship and Joseph’s role in the relationship.  And it is going to sound very much like sexism and a little like feminism in places, but please hear me out because whether or not you believe in anything I am about to say, it works for me and has kept me and Joseph together for eleven years now. 

So, I believe that a successful marriage must have a husband and a wife.  This does not mean that every successful marriage has a man and a woman, please read my words, I said every successful marriage has a HUSBAND and a WIFE.  In the “good old days” the words husband and wife were synonymous with man and woman, because society left little room for any other genders to fill either roles.  But after World War II, especially in the 1950’s when those ideals were getting shoved down our throats, the roles were never quite the same.  So for me, a Husband is the person in the relationship that has that steady energy.  He or she is a little more logical, a little more practical, and a little more in tune with the outside world.  The Wife for me is a little more emotional, a little more idealistic, and a little more in tune with the world inside the home.  Neither one of these is better or worse, and yes, I think the bits of these roles can be shuffled to produce a Wife who is practical and a Husband who is more emotional, but there remain spaces that need to be filled and the successful Husband and Wife will compensate for each other and fill them. 

I am the wife.  Joseph is the husband.  I expect Joseph to watch the news, tell me what’s going on in the outside world, and to generally ignore things like cooking and cleaning even though I hate cleaning and think Joseph’s cooking is amazing.  We have been successful because I do not rebel at being the wife.  In many gay relationships, men rebel at the notion that there could be a wife, as they are two men.  And in many straight relationships, women balk at the idea that household work is a woman’s prerogative.  But I think that the negative connotation that comes with being a wife is just a flavor of the day peppered with liberal and feminist thinking.  I think wives are a vital part of every culture.  The world would collapse upon itself if everyone decided that they were husbands and nobody wanted to be wives.  A case could be made that either role has its benefits and its downside.  Joseph has to balance our check book.  Joseph has to worry about paying bills.  But Joseph also has his lunches packed for him and in his truck when he drives to work each morning with a to-go mug of coffee made lovingly by me in his hands. 

But I digress.  Suffice to say that we have come to identify ourselves with roles in our relationship that correspond to Husband and Wife and we are both very comfortable with those roles. 

So you could imagine that I was not only a little surprised but also a little threatened when Joseph taught himself to use a knitting loom to pick up my knitting slack.  Not only that but his precise, even stitches (Joseph is nothing if not precise) put my homespun knitting to shame.  I started telling people who saw his work that he “cheated” because he uses a knitting loom and not knitting needles.  And you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, either.  Joseph has been the primary knitter for all subsequent Christmases, and it pains me to say that he has taught himself a new craft this year and has begun making gifts which I will blog about in the post Christmas blogs so as not to spoil surprises.  I am beside myself.  As the wife of this relationship, the crafting and the Christmasing should come more naturally to me than to him, but that is not the case.  Somehow every time I complain, the Universe fills Joseph with the very skill I complain about and makes the case that “anyone” can fill my role and my duties.  It’s gotten so a guy can’t complain around here. 

(Yes, I said “Christmasing.”) 

So now I have to find a way to elbow myself back into the Christmas preparations this year, because I will not be upstaged by a know-it-all, Johnnie-Come-Easy like my Husband!   I’m bound and determined to pull something even better than his new craft out of my sleeve!  Just you wait.  Joseph not only crossed the line of Husband work into Wife work, he has threatened my very theory on what makes a marriage successful!  He’s going down! 

When Life Gives You Blackberries

Gram had a raspberry bush outside of the old, red, barn-like garage where my Grandpa kept his tools.  The bush was prickly with small thorns that scratched skin or grabbed clothing.  When we were small, my brothers and cousins and I would hide in it like rabbits.  Sometimes we picked handfuls of berries to sustain ourselves on those days when we would run away and build hideouts in the back field.  The bush was voracious and even sent small shoots through the thick walls of the garage and through cement cracks in the floor.  And the best part about this old bush was the fact that Gram makes the best raspberry jam in the world from its fruit. 

In my very early twenties, when I was beginning to explore the idea of spirit and the nature of the universe with that idealistic vision that one has in their very early twenties, I had a dream.  In the dream I came to a house or an apartment where a goddess lived.  She was tall and beautiful with long dark hair.  She wore no clothes, she needed none, she was luminous in her own light.  Plants grew in pots hanging from ceilings or along the hardwood floors.  Large wooden bookshelves held libraries of secret tomes that contained the innermost knowledge of the universe.  She invited me inside, and walked me past her bathroom where an Aries man showered and took me to a chair.  She told me she had a gift for me, something that would help me along my life journey.  She rummaged around and pulled out a dusty little wooden box.  When I opened it, I saw that it was full of tiny black grains.  With the wisdom that comes with dreaming, I knew these were blackberry seeds and that they were my gift.  These would help me and guide me along my journey. 

When I woke from the dream, I had to question every detail.  At that time, I had no experience with blackberries, and I wondered if I had meant to dream of Gram’s raspberries.  But no, the dream was what it was: they were blackberries. 

A year or so later, I moved west of the Cascade Mountains, and I met my Joseph, my Aries man.  He and I were hardcore hikers for a while and when we were exploring the back trails of our favorite hiking spot, we found a great sprawling bunch of blackberry bushes.  We picked a bunch and I made us a blackberry pie.  But we also decided that we needed to pick some more and try to make the blackberry wine that our friend, Carrie, encouraged us to try.  That was the first batch of many blackberry wines to come.  And when we moved into our current home, it was hardly surprising that most of the acres were covered with a twisted mess of blackberry vines. 

Unlike raspberries, Blackberry Vines don’t just scratch, they murder.  Their thorns grow thick as fingernails and reach into clothing and boots.  They invite you in with their dark, juicy berries.  You slide easily into their folds.  But as soon as you try to turn or move away from their centers, they have you, they hold you, the scratch you, they claw you.  But as this new place was going to be our little farmstead, and I was training to be a proper farmwife, I thought it was high time I learned to can and to make use of these sinister fruits.  Like knitting and cooking, this new aspect of wifely industry soon turned into a passion, and it wasn’t long before I was making jams and jellies from all the fruit growing on our new spread.  But blackberries were the first. 

My first batch, unfortunately, I burnt.  Joseph bought me a book: Blue Ribbon Preserves by Linda J. Amendt.  (I highly recommend the recipe Amendt gives for zucchini pickles.)  And Joseph bought the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.  Ball, that mason jar company, gave a recipe for making jam without pectin.  You just had to cook down the sugar and fruit until it jelled on its own.  Well, I soon found I didn’t have a feeling for it when that first batch had an undercurrent of charcoal.   I was speaking to Gram about this on the phone, all those years ago, and she gave me the best jam-making advice I’ve ever received.  She said to “just use the recipe on the box [of pectin].”  That’s when I found out that Gram’s raspberry jam wasn’t a secret she dug out of an old, leather-bound book of Grandmotherly secrets, but a real, easy, working recipe from a box of pectin.  And why not?  Farmwives know the value of easy.  Ever since that day I have used the recipe from the Ball box of Pectin, and my family loves my jams.  I would say that my blackberries are to me what Gram’s raspberries are to her: a medium for creating delicious art that comes out of the boiling-water canner looking likes jewels of garnet, amber, and rubies.  Blackberry is my signature jam.  (Joseph, however, disagrees with this.  He hates all the seeds in the jam, and prefers my apple and blackberry jelly.  Well, why not?  One can’t make the same preserve every time!) 

So I spent my morning this morning canning, and musing on my long history with blackberries.  Christmas is right around the corner, and homemade preserves make the best gifts! 

Barbie Project Runway 2011 challenge

This challenge was to create a look based on a fairytale.  Four of us took on the challenge: myself and my friends Jackie, Angela, and Judy. 

My look was based on the Little Mermaid.  At first I researched the latest trends of fall and came up with a design based on a skirt with a high slit and a cream colored top.  The textile I bought for the skirt had a scale pattern that reminded me of a golden coy fish in the ponds at Volunteer Park in Seattle.  But it came down to time, so I utilized the skirt material to make a mermaid dress.  Feathers were added to the train to create drama and to the hair for the “total look.” 

Angela’s look was based on Little Red Riding Hood.  Her look was the only one that utilized pants and a top.  The faux fur trim was reminiscent of the Big Bad Wolf.  And her cloak was draped in a modern way with  rich sequins creating drama. 

Judy’s look was inspired by Cinderella.  Using layers of tulle, Judy created a depth in blues.  Judy as a designer is meticulous and often utilizes small, intricate details.  True to her aesthetic, Judy applied rhinestones to the shoes to give the impression of glass slippers. 

Jackie created a look for a Lady of the Lake from an Irish folktale.  She layered aqua-greens together and draped them in such a way as to make the onlooker see flowing water.  Jackie also utilized copper wire to craft a crown of spirals for her model.

The votes were cast and Angela’s Red Hooded look was the winner of this challenge.  My look was out, as I was the only designer to receive zero votes.  I’ll have to step up my A-game for the up and coming, double-or-nothing Halloween challenge.  Stay tuned! 

The Color Issue

I must say that when it comes to color, I am obsessed.  My favorite color is usually “favorite color combinations” and always changes.  When I was little, my favorite color was unapologetically pink.  Quick on her feet, my mom told me the cool way for big kids at school to tell each other their favorite colors was to break it down into the primary colors that made it.  So kids who liked green, according to Mom, would say “my favorite color is yellow and blue.”  So for Kindergarten and most of first grade, I told everyone my favorite color was “red and white.”  But by second grade, the truth came out, and there are photographs of me on my “special day” wearing a pink construction paper crown with bold red letters saying “SPECIAL PERSON.”  It was in high school with its barrage of art classes, drama costume making, and graphic design when I discovered I loved color in all its hues, especially when it teamed up into schemes and themes. 

So, without further ado, I present a small sampling of the color in my life:

Red is the sunflowers growing in my garden.

Orange is the rowan berries growing on the trees that Joseph planted all over our yard because he knew rowan (Mountain Ash) was my favorite. 

Yellow is a sample of bowls tucked in the corner of one of my cupboards. 

Green is the shoe laces on my current kicks. 

Blue is my new Garden Gnome, Gnomeo. 

Purple is my new back pack. 

So do you think, with all this color in my life, I still might like “Red and White?” 

You tell me. 

Pancakes!

I love pancakes.  I ate them all through my childhood.  When my mom first became a wife at sixteen she memorized this recipe first and made it for the whole family whenever breakfast needed to be quick and hearty.

My Mom’s Pancakes aren’t her original recipe, she may have got it from Betty Crocker or from either of my grandmas.  I have it memorized, too.  It made me a hit with my friend Erika’s daughter when I used to go to their house early in the mornings to car pool.  The recipe is as follows:

Pancake Batter

1 cup flour (all purpose, white)

1 tablespoon sugar (white, granulated)

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large egg

¾ cup of milk

Mix the dry ingredients first and then add the wet.  Cook the batter on a hot griddle or in a waffle iron.  I usually add a little extra water or milk to the mix so they don’t get too puffy. 

I usually just make silver dollar sized pancakes, because that’s how Joseph likes them, but they can be made into any shape.  I used a cookie cutter to make a heart, but that is nothing compared to my mom.  She fully embraced life as a wife and mother and she applied all of her talents to the tasks.  So when she asked me what I wanted for my pancake I usually told her “Snow White” or “Cinderella.”  She would then take one of my story books, and would copy a picture of one of my favorite princesses in pancake batter using a little spoon (a technique I have yet to master).  After the outline had a chance to brown, she’d fill the rest of the picture in and when it was flipped over a perfectly princess-shaped flapjack was revealed!  I used to get frustrated with my Aunt Jenny because she could only achieve Pac-Man for me. 

You can eat them with syrup or fruit, but the true Frank and Frank’s Mom’s way goes as follows in this order: butter, peanut butter, and syrup.  Those are the best pancakes, and the peanut butter makes them good and hearty. 

Enjoy!

True Kitchen Confessions

Readers, you may remember those potatoes that I dug up while taming my garden-gone-wild. 

Well, something bad happened to them. We’ll get to that.

I should first admit to you that I am either a brilliant cook or a horrible one and it’s never in-between.  Something that drives me absolutely batty is that Joseph IS a good cook.   He might even be considered GREAT, but I would never tell him for fear it would inflate his already sizeable cooking ego.  Now, let me tell you something, Joseph cooks once, maybe twice a year, and has his domain over such delectable dinners as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  He might dust off his pots and pans for Easter, but that’s pushing it.  And these are also the times we have guests over so I get to hear things like:

“Oh, you are so lucky!”

“You must eat like this every day!”

“I wish my husband would cook like yours does!”

“How do you deserve a guy like this?  What did you do?”

Well, I got news for all of you: I cook 363 days out of the year.  Whenever we eat something, it comes from my pots and pans.  I am the one scrubbing my Dutch oven out after a meal.  I’m the one who does the thankless, no one cares cooking.  What?  No applause?  Well, don’t worry I’m used to it. 

The way I cook used to include recipes when I was younger.  My Gram gave me a copy of Betty Crocker, and I love it.  But I’m the kind of guy who thinks that I’ve got the idea after I’ve cooked something once or twice.  Sometimes this works out great.  For things like stews, I throw whatever I feel like into my trusty Dutch oven, and delicious things always come out (after  a stew or two that did not invite second helpings, I got the idea of what worked and what didn’t).  I also rarely experiment.  (Part of me not experimenting is that Joseph always finds experiments not-as-good as he would have done, thanks.  The other part is I am a tiny bit lazy and don’t like fixing things that aren’t broken.) 

So, back to my potatoes:

You’d think that a guy from Idaho would be able to peel potatoes in seconds flat, but I almost always cook them with the skins on and this is more out of that laziness we’ve discussed rather than a fondness for flavor.  You’d also think an Idahoan would be able to cook a potato …

Joseph wanted Potato Salad, and I thought that the first day of summer would be a great day for fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and a coconut cream pie for desert.  Don’t get excited, I bought the pie!  So I boiled the eggs, added the mayonnaise and the jar of sweet relish along with some other spices (I also am always throwing random spices into things, I can never leave well enough alone).  I boiled the garden potatoes.  I left the large ones alone and boiled the small ones whole.  Then I drained them, added the egg-mayo mixture, and mashed it all together.  It felt a little harder than usual, but that was fine.  Joseph criticizes my potato salad the most for being “mashed potato salad” and having none of the original potato shapes in it. 

Now for the taste test! 

*CRUNCH!!!*

Raw crunchy potatoes were peppered all through the salad.  Apparently the only potatoes that boiled properly were the big ones I cut into pieces.  All those little potatoes just sat in the hot tub and refused to cook. 

My Great Aunt Katie, one of my favorite people of all time, never served a broken egg in her kitchen, even if it meant that she threw away a half of a dozen.  She hated broken eggs: they were a disgrace.  Well, this potato salad was a disgrace and I couldn’t face Joseph’s smugly disgusted look when he bit into a raw potato.  So I went straight to the compost pile and got rid of the evidence. 

After I simmered down, I made batch number two from store-bought russets.  I was out of sweet relish so I had to use my last jar of homemade (thank you) bread-and-butter pickles that came from my very own, garden-grown zucchini.  I chopped these up coarsely to add textural interest … or maybe just because I’m lazy.  (I’m sensing a pattern here.)  I added a new egg-mayo mixture to the batch with a little salt, a little pepper, a little turmeric, and a liberal dash of garlic powder and I had a happy husband! 

I burnt the chicken, for reasons I may get into later … not my fault, I am having oven trouble!!! 

Joseph loved it.  When he got home on Tuesday, he was a hog in heaven.  And what was his favorite part of the whole meal?  Nope, not the potato salad: it was that damn gosh darn, store-bought pie!

Favorites

While I do enjoy bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things with you:

My friend Katie gave me these nesting dolls that are actually measuring cups!

Unicorns are my favorite animals.

Mason Jars come in very handy.

Sunflowers are one of my favorites in the garden.

And of course, Mermaids are my absolute favorite anything!