Ru, Right Now

I love doing these little posts. They are deceptively hard though. It seems so simple to jot down a fast list but it is actually quite the exercise in slowly down and observing. Its amazing how easy it is to live with people and not really observe them or notice how they are changing and evolving. It takes some real thinking and puzzling and remembering to dig up a nice batch of personal characteristics. I like the sweat involved, its good relational muscle-work.

May we all, notice the ways those we love are growing and changing....and I don't just mean the children. Everyone wants to be seen as alive.

Right now, Ru is like this:

Ru's Favorites

• Daddy's chocolate chip pancakes: His favorite food of all-time at the moment. Its a weekend treat tradition at our house.
• Skateboarding: His current sport of choice. The board and helmet goes everywhere with us in the trunk of the van so that he can whip it out at a moments notice in any store parking lot. He's loving the new skateboard class we found to attend once a week.
• Playing video games: He's really into racing games right now, especially a particular game where you race boats through really vivid terrain. It makes me clutch at my chair arms to watch.
• Competition: He will do almost anything if you can find a way to turn it into either a challenge, a race or a contest. He's a natural athlete psychologically as well physically.
• Pomegranates: If we buy them, he eats them. Suddenly all the pomegranates are gone. Bam!
• Cheeseburgers: Its that pre-teen thing comin' on. I can see it now!
• Comic books: He loves them all, from Archie to Spiderman.
• Snow and ice: He freaks out when all our snow melts and its a party day when it snows again. Its kind of emotional whiplash living in Connecticut in winter for this kid, this however is a good year for him.
• Books on cd: He'll listen by the hour. A and I have both recorded some stories for him and we sometimes get them from the library too. The appetite is bottomless. Reading them himself voraciously is the next hurdle.
• Our chickens: He's the Keeper of the Fowl at our house and he loves to hold the hens and talk to them while he feeds and waters every morning. Love to peek out the kitchen window while I'm getting breakfast and see this gentle piece of him.
• Science: He's my deep outdoors lover. Anything about the world outside will have him hooked.
• Disney's animated Robin Hood: He is quoting little bits of it around the house and its his first pick if a movie is ever suggested.

Ru's Un-Favorites

• Leaving people he loves: He is heartbroken, real tears and genuine misery every time we drive out of his relatives and friend's driveways.
• Soup: I can't kick it. He won't touch the stuff.
• Going to sleep: He'll stay up as late as possible. The boy is a night owl through and through.
• Having Daddy work in California: Ru is a real Daddy's guy and he really hates it that A is working one week a month in another part of the country. Handily, A has planned it so that he is only gone during the five work days and not for any weekend time.
• Zipping his winter coat: I can tell him as many times as I want to but, the boy runs hot and he likes his coat to flap.
• Getting things out of the basement: You know, its a basement. There are things down there.
• Leaving his top shirt button open: He's a straight-laced kind of guy. Every time we go to church I double-check his buttons before we get out because he loves to slyly button up again in the car, chokingly tight, right up to his chin.
• Cooked carrots: I remember not liking them too. Not sure why. They're sweet and crunchy raw and maybe just too perfect from a kid's perspective to be improved upon? I dunno. He hates them.
• Quiet Time: I am iron-fisted about quiet time happening every day and although Ru is too old for napping he still has to spend a quiet hour alone taking a break and he really can't stand it. He's an ultra-extrovert and spending an hour alone in perfect silence is a real exercise when he'd rather be in the middle of a crown laughing loudly and chatting it up.

Thinking About Style

Am thinking quite a lot of about dress and clothing and beauty and fashion tonight. Truth is, I am kind of a closet fan of fashion design. I still feel pretty wanna-be about my stylishness and ability to put outfits together that feel like art. I don't want to be runway and I care not two figs about labels as-such but I think beauty is perennially attractive and the idea of "creating" is madly magnetic to me.

I think that's what is a good bit of the allure for dressing well to me. It is almost a kind of sculpture or something. I was talking to Penny about the topic when she visited this summer and she mentioned that she thinks of it as a branch of her interest in theatre (an interest I share), a kind of everyday costuming. I think that's very fun and I'm not sure it is what drives me but it gets at a bit of the right idea.

I aspire to be considered a clothes-horse who, able to whip up wear-able beauty from any available discarded textile but, I am finally over being scared to be edgy and feeling ridiculous whenever I wear anything more interesting than khaki or blue jeans. I don't feel tied to any particular era, to trends of "the now" or to romantic old fashioned sensibilities although all of them are interesting to me.

I feel like I'd like to consider most anything and try all kinds of interesting new outside-my-box options. That said, it's not a particularly big box. Remember that khaki and denim. I spent years of my life in very pedestrian dresses and blue jeans with t-shirts. It is fun to realize that the world, even the world of dull old me, can be more lively and exotic and colorful and surprising.

I have an upcoming fashiony blog idea that I think I'll be playing with soon. In the meantime, here are a few of the things that inspire me stylistically things I look for when I walk into the thrift store, and often my favorite finds.

I love: chokers, batik prints, ultra-long and full skirts with slim waists, stripes in bold nautical colors, sequins, feathers, navy blue, faded flowered calicos, wide leg pants, Indian styling, cotton, linen, little cap sleeves,  shimmery fabrics, ruffles, rows of tiny buttons, pearls with peels and scratches, turquoise anything (the color and the gem), soft baby-chick yellow, headbands, ballet flats, comfortable heels, fawn colored leather, metallic stripes, short swishy skirts, demin, jersey knit, and anything handsewn.

The Great Cheese List

So yes. Cheese. I like cheese. You like cheese. So, today we talk about cheese.

This fall we went (as we often do) to Vermont to getaway into billboards-are-illegal, mountains-are-cool land and we decided to make it a tasting tour. Vermont has a fabulous world of small farmers, locally produced goods and excellent craftsmanship. Of course, Vermont is specifically known for its dairy energy.

There are few other states besides perhaps Wisconsin that can give it a run for its money in the world of bovine-centricness. I'm all about it. It means that Vermont, is a great place to eat cheese.

You've read before how I feel about food. Suffice it to say that I like it. A lot...and handily I'm married to a man who is similarly inclined. We love the pleasure that procuring, preparing and consuming food can give us and we love the adventure that can be involved. Sometimes its the crazy lengths we'll go to to get a cluster of oyster mushrooms down out of our neighbors trees but sometimes its the raw novelty of trying something reportedly fabulous that has never crossed our lips. Cheese, for us, is a great place to look for culinary adventure.

Heaven knows how many cheeses there are out there and we haven't tasted even a quarter of them yet! Hooray for unexplored worlds!

So, this fall when we went to Vermont, mid-stride through our food-tour I (iPhone in hand) started looking up cheese...and in particular looking for recommended cheeses that we ought to try...the kind of life-changing edibles that you have to seek out.

What I ended up with is what I now call affectionately, The Great Cheese List. I am keeping notes on what we've had and how we felt about the experience and slowly compiling my own private ultimate, favorites list.  I keep it in my email so that I pull it up quickly at a moments notice, should we find ourselves unexpectedly blinking into the cheese display at a wonderful grocery. Heh. Don't laugh. Its happened.

This weekend we plan to have the first of what we hope will be a series of cheese focused gatherings at our house...we've asked a couple friends to bring their favorite rindy, bloomy, creamy, slice-able cheeses and we're going to go pick some off our list and hopefully, we'll have a new round of excellt favorites to add to the mother list.

In case you're curious...here's the dish:

1. Auricchio Sharp Provolone
2. Baluchon
3. Banon
4. Beecher's Flagship
5. Beemster
6. Bergenost
7. Berkswell (from Neil's Yard)
8. Besace du Berger
9. Boerenkaas
10. Boursin's sweet cheese w/ guava, raisin and nuts
11. Brie de Meaux
12. Brin d'Amour
13. Cacicavallo
14. Cambozola
15. Camembert Chatelain
16. Campo de Montalban
17. Carpicho de Cabra (the goat version)
18. Chaource
19. Chaumes
20. Chevre Noir
21. Chevrot
22. Clisson (Tome d'Arquitaine)
23. Cotswold
24. Crottins de Chevre (let it get warm)
25. Cypress Grove Midnight Moon
26. Epoisses
27. Etorki
28. Ewephoria
29. Explorateur
30. Fontina Val d'Aosta
31. Fourme d'Ambert
32. French Sheeps Milk Feta (double creme)
33. Gratte Paille Double Creme (Lauren Bacall's favorite)
34. Haloumi
35. Hubbarston Blue Goat
36. Idiazabal
37. Jasper Hill Farm Constant Bliss
38. Le Papillon Roquefort (black foil, not green)
39. Livarot
40. Maytag Blue
41. McAdam Triple Cream cheddar
42. Mignergon de Charlevoix
43. Mimoulette
44. Montbriac
45. Mont Enebro
46. Morbier: We weren't terribly impressed with this one. Its quite mild and not unpleasant just not impressive. Admittedly, we tried it with some rather robust partners so we may give it another go in a different setting. We heard that if we liked Gruyere we had to try Morbier, but the tastes seem unrelated to me. Puzzling.
47. Neal's Yard Ardahan
48. Ossau Iraty
49. Parrano
50. Parrano Robusto (maybe the same as above?)
51. Pecorino Foglia Noce
52. Pepato
53. Perlagrigia
54. Petite Basque
55. Pierce Pt. (from Cowgirl Creamery)
56. Pierre Robert
57. Pleasant Ridge Reserve
58. Queso de la Serena
59. Reblochon
60. Red Cloud
61. Red Square
62. Roaring Forties: A blue I like! A wonderful, nutty cheese with lots of pleasant zing and a sweet background flavor. I can't say I roundly dislike blue cheese anymore.
63. Roccolo
64. Romano Aged Gouda (from Holland): Whew! This stuff is so strong! Its good but a little stronger than something we would like to eat all the time. Kind of a novelty to try...totally different from "gouda."
65. Roquefort Carles
66. Sally Jackson Sheep Milk Cheese
67. Selles sur Cher
68. Sir Wilfrid Laurier
69. Sottocenere
70. Spanish Cabrales
71. St. Andre
72. St. Marcellin: Amazing! Totally melty with a tender rind that is almost like a crust over the pourable insides. Full of high flavor...so wonderful! A favorite for sure. Am kicking myself because we missed it when we were in Lyon. Its the signature cheese of the region and ubiquitous there, apparently. It comes in a little earthenware crock because it is too melty to stand alone.
73. St. Nectaire
74. Taleggio
75. Tipo Cabrales
76. Tuma
77. Turma Persa
78. Vacherin du Mont d'Or
79. Valdeon: A liked it. Too strong for me. Kind of an electric, zappy blue, presented wrapped in chestnut leaves.
80. Vermont Coupole

My Current Favorites:
Appenzeller: (We like black label best, which is the strongest!) A firm, emminantly slicable cheese that is excellent with apple wedges. Perfectly sweet, sharp, fragrant, tangy, quite nutty. Like a Gruyere with its grown-up socks on! A flagship Swiss cheese we met when we finally strolled The Alps together, my childhood dream.

La Tur: A mixed milk cheese from sheep, cow and goat milk. A fabulously creamy smooth texture with a lovely complex flavor. Hints of tang, round flavors, wafts of mushroom, positively mind blowing. So good with honey and almonds. My cousin Drake introduced us to this cheese when we had dinner under his tutelage in Santa Barbara. You can read all about it in this post here!

Burrata: A cheese that I think I maybe heard about on NPR or else found in a book. I can't recall. We tracked it down in Zabar's in NYC. You can find anything in Zabar's. Burrata is creamy and smooth with a little smooth elasticity. It comes wrapped in a pouch of green leaves and is hard to obtain because it expires with such speed. It must be perfectly fresh. The live leaves its wrapped in are a marker of its freshness...if the leaves are still perky then the cheese is still good. I have found some versions sold in fake leaves but they are not nearly as good. The cheese itself is very like a soft fresh mozzarella, but has a hollow center that is essentially filled with a mixture of soft bits of the cheese and cream. I slice it in wedges and eat on thin bread, drizzled with honey.

Beltane Farms Chevre: I like to buy this cheese directly from the farmer because I like it young, young, young. Its a tender, moist cheese. Very tangy but with a round sweetness far in the background. I love it eat it spread on ciabatta and topped with basil leaves, olive oil and meaty, fresh tomato slices sprinkled with sea salt

St. Marcellin: So good...creamy, complex, a bit nutty but with a tiny kick, very liquid cheese, great for eating with a spoon. Has a tender rind and comes in a crock to protect it the mooshy little round. 

Bonne Bouche: Pronounced bon-boosh. This is a Vermont cheese which is made by the same company that keeps us Americans in quark. Good, good people. Bonne Bouche is wonderfully brightly flavored and creamy, comes from goat milk, has an ash-coated rind and comes in its own little wooden box, to support the tender disk en-route to your car...which is all the further it got when we bought it. Mmmm...

Sharing The Good

Today, a little post to send you all word about a few of my recent favorites. I do like to share good news...and who knows, maybe one of these things can help you out.

Hair forks: I'm not sure how many people I have in my audience with long hair for whom this accessory/tool is a great big win, but it's sure worth putting the word out. I like to buy my forks on Etsy.com, right from the artisans who make them. My favorite one that I have at the moment is that pale, bird's eye maple, double forked model up there. I like hair forks because its takes just one little thing to put my hair up for the day which means its simple and quick and I'm not dropping pins all over everywhere. I also like the look of the smooth wood and love the feel in my hands.

L-Lyseine: This one is for all those of you out there who suffer from canker sores. Just for the record, canker sores are different from cold sores, have nothing to do with herpes and are usually hereditary. (I got mine from my Papa's gene pool.) The brilliant thing is, you can take this amino acid as simple supplement and be done with them forever. Ru just got his second one ever and I put him on the regime straight away. (Note: I am not a doctor, just a mommy with an opinion.) L-Lyseine taken when you have a canker sore shortens the duration of the injury and lessens the pain and when taken preventatively will  relieve you of the problem for good. (Credit to A's cousin for tipping me off to this brilliant solution to mouth pain!) You can get it in pretty much any grocery store's vitamin section.

Crumb sweeper: I use tablecloths on our table every day. The stickum that a meal leaves behind is just too overwhelming for three times daily scrubbing and soaking and I am lazy. So, I opt for a quick, wisk-it-off-the-table-when-it-gets-messy approach. This handy little tool helps me keep the crumb count reasonably presentable between meals and whizzing it along the table is a lot faster than the scrub, scrub, scrub that washing the table down entails. And although honestly this neon green model that I bought is uglier than sin, I have to say that I still love the idea and hey...it lives in a drawer in the kitchen. How pretty does it have to be?

Mary Jane's Farm Magazine: This is my new favorite magazine. I love it. Country life, green living, diy womanly vim, outdoor relishing, simplicity striving, beautifully romantic, homespun, very few advertisements fun. Credit to my sister Foxy here. She called me immediately when she discovered it newsstand and by the time we were off the phone I had subscribed online and I've never looked back. Every issue is a saver. You can subscribe here!

Garlic Peelers: I promise, I'm not a huge fan of single-use kitchen goods...BUT. This one is worth it. You know how much a pain it is to peel garlic for a recipe? Even with that handy, squish each clove with the side of your chef knife move (then you get garlic juice all over your hands and you smell like garlic bread for days). I got so put off by the whole thing that I started buying that pre-minced stuff in a jar in the produce section. I still use that fabulous stuff for when I'm in a real hurry but, the pain of peeling cloves for fresh garlic zip is gone now, thanks to this brilliant invention. I have no idea how in the world it works but its genius and it works every single time. So simple. Check it out.

Chocolove Raspberries in Dark Chocolate: This is my new favorite chocolate. Its dark chocolate which I like to eat more of partly just because I like but also because the sugar count is lower and the antioxidant count is higher. But, this one...mmm....there are all these little bullets of dried raspberry through the whole bar which means you get a round of zingy little fruit bit with each bite to balance the candy. I am on Weight Watchers at the moment, shedding the baby pounds and keeping myself in portion control training and their system made me realize one other thing that's great about the bar. Its a chocolate bar that has fiber content! How great is that? Its not often that you can get delicious candy that ups your fiber intake for the day. And then there's the fact that each bar comes with a love poem in the wrapper....*grin*....lovely things go hand in hand. I buy these bars at Whole Foods.


That's it folks.....a few of my recent finds. Got anything you love at the moment that is too to keep to yourself? I'd love to know about it!

In Case of Fire

Just in case there was a fire....its good to keep these sorts of practical lists on hand, so that I could quickly dash to the computer, comb through old blog posts and tick off the "necessities" as the smoke curled around my toes. Perhaps humming a little Baloo as I went:?

Here's what matters in my house:

59 Things To Keep…..

1. Of course the dear people I live with.  A and the boys would be the first thing I’d ever choose
2. My tattered Spanish/English dictionary I won in a writing contest.
3. The boys baby books
4. My wooden cheesebox full of sentimental goods
5. My ancient cassette tape of Kirby Snively music
6. The photograph of me as a bride hanging on our bedroom wall
7. …oh heck, and the one on my dresser of A and I looking happily into each other’s eyes too!
8. My copy of Joy of Cooking (wedding gift from Mama)
9. The heirloom gold ring that was willed to me at my birth by a great uncle
10. The soft blue t-shirt I’ve had since I was seven
11. My Gourmet cookbook , a gift from my mother-in-law. (Thanks Mum!)
12. My guitar…and Reuben’s too
13. My Spanish/English Bible
14. My antique Alcott collection
15. The earrings I wore in my wedding
16. The Christmas ornament Papa made for me one year. A clear circle with a my parents log house scrimshawed into it
17. The broken, heart-shaped gold locket with red flowers etched into it that my parents gave me when I turned 13 that I will still find a way to get repaired someday!
18. My sketchbooks, paintings, paints and brushes
19. My sewing box
20. My Eureka handvac
21. An orchid or two
22. My wall paint color palette book
23. The tattered rose quilt I made with my grandma on her ancient sewing machine
24. My box of seeds
25. My copy of Mrs. Appleyard’s Year
26. Some washable markers (The two year old would be infinitely happier)
27. The “Garden Bed” perfume A bought me at a little shop in Brooklyn
28. A tube of mascara
29. My bottle of Trader Joe’s Tahitian vanilla extract
30. The digital camera
31. The cedar lined chest Papa made me as a wedding gift.
32. My little wooden rolling pin
33. The bird’s nest attached to a small branch that I’ve toted along through three or four houses now
34. My demitasse spoons (So useful! You have no idea!)
35. My journals
36. The mini teapot my sister bought me when I got married
37. The photos and videos of my children’s births
38. The glass edged dessert plate with strawberries that my grandma gave me when I married
39. My crystal cake pedestal
40.  The ribbon bound bundle of letters A wrote me while we were dating
41. The fake bust of a girl I bought in Meijer as a newlywed
42. My little cream pitcher
43. The end table my grandpa made
44. My engagement ring and wedding band…first real diamond I ever owned.
45. The plastic grocery bag of quilt bits in purple and green satin I’ve been s.l.o.w.l.y hand-sewing since high school.
46. My copies of Milne’s collected Winnie-the-Pooh stories and poetry
47. My gold and black "Cleopatra" formal
48. My character shoes
49. The photo I have of my grandparents, from when my grandpa could walk (he was eventually quadriplegic)
50. The tiny, olive colored, cashmere baby booties I knitted for Ru while I was pregnant
51. My violin
52. My giant recipe binder, full of clear pages containing loads and loads of recipe snippets I have collected through the years including: my stand-by bread recipe, my freezer jam recipe and the sacred Armstrong cheesecake instructions.
53. The delicate amethyst earrings and necklace A gave me a couple of years ago for my birthday
54. The pair of old, pale green, glass lanterns that I mean to hang together in our house someday
55. My farmhouse tea kettle
56. My grandpa's paintings (I own two)
57. Plantie....Miq and Penny's glossy leaved coffee tree I'm babysitting
58. A few prisms from the chandelier over our dining room table
59. The little marble bust of Abraham Lincoln that I found in a thrift store